By an Act passed in the time
of Knox, and breathing his spirit, it was a high crime to hear mass,
and the third offence was capital.
of Knox, and breathing his spirit, it was a high crime to hear mass,
and the third offence was capital.
Macaulay
He offered Rochester a
simple choice, to pronounce the Bishop guilty, or to quit the Treasury.
Rochester was base enough to yield. Compton was suspended from all
spiritual functions; and the charge of his great diocese was committed
to his judges, Sprat and Crewe. He continued, however, to reside in
his palace and to receive his revenues; for it was known that, had any
attempt been made to deprive him of his temporalities, he would have
put himself under the protection of the common law; and Herbert himself
declared that, at common law, judgment must be given against the crown.
This consideration induced the King to pause. Only a few weeks had
elapsed since he had packed the courts of Westminster Hall in order to
obtain a decision in favour of his dispensing power. He now found that,
unless he packed them again, he should not be able to obtain a decision
in favour of the proceedings of his Ecclesiastical Commission. He
determined, therefore, to postpone for a short time the confiscation of
the freehold property of refractory clergymen. [102]
The temper of the nation was indeed such as might well make him
hesitate. During some months discontent had been steadily and rapidly
increasing. The celebration of the Roman Catholic worship had long been
prohibited by Act of Parliament. During several generations no Roman
Catholic clergyman had dared to exhibit himself in any public place with
the badges of his office. Against the regular clergy, and against the
restless and subtle Jesuits by name, had been enacted a succession of
rigorous statutes. Every Jesuit who set foot in this country was
liable to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. A reward was offered for his
detection. He was not allowed to take advantage of the general rule,
that men are not bound to accuse themselves. Whoever was suspected of
being a Jesuit might be interrogated, and, if he refused to answer,
might be sent to prison for life. [103] These laws, though they had not,
except when there was supposed to be some peculiar danger, been strictly
executed, and though they had never prevented Jesuits from resorting to
England, had made disguise necessary. But all disguise was now thrown
off. Injudicious members of the King's Church, encouraged by him, took
a pride in defying statutes which were still of undoubted validity,
and feelings which had a stronger hold of the national mind than at any
former period. Roman Catholic chapels rose all over the country. Cowls,
girdles of ropes, and strings of beads constantly appeared in the
streets, and astonished a population, the oldest of whom had never seen
a conventual garb except on the stage. A convent rose at Clerkenwell on
the site of the ancient cloister of Saint John. The Franciscans occupied
a mansion in Lincoln's Inn Fields. The Carmelites were quartered in the
City. A society of Benedictine monks was lodged in Saint James's Palace.
In the Savoy a spacious house, including a church and a school, was
built for the Jesuits. [104] The skill and care with which those fathers
had, during several generations, conducted the education of youth, had
drawn forth reluctant praises from the wisest Protestants. Bacon had
pronounced the mode of instruction followed in the Jesuit colleges to
be the best yet known in the world, and had warmly expressed his regret
that so admirable a system of intellectual and moral discipline should
be subservient to the interests of a corrupt religion. [105] It was
not improbable that the new academy in the Savoy might, under royal
patronage, prove a formidable rival to the great foundations of Eton,
Westminster, and Winchester. Indeed, soon after the school was opened,
the classes consisted of four hundred boys, about one half of whom were
Protestants. The Protestant pupils were not required to attend mass: but
there could be no doubt that the influence of able preceptors, devoted
to the Roman Catholic Church, and versed in all the arts which win the
confidence and affection of youth, would make many converts.
These things produced great excitement among the populace, which is
always more moved by what impresses the senses than by what is
addressed to the reason. Thousands of rude and ignorant men, to whom the
dispensing power and the Ecclesiastical Commission were words without a
meaning, saw with dismay and indignation a Jesuit college rising on the
banks of the Thames, friars in hoods and gowns walking in the Strand,
and crowds of devotees pressing in at the doors of temples where homage
was paid to graven images. Riots broke out in several parts of the
country. At Coventry and Worcester the Roman Catholic worship was
violently interrupted. [106] At Bristol the rabble, countenanced, it was
said, by the magistrates, exhibited a profane and indecent pageant, in
which the Virgin Mary was represented by a buffoon, and in which a mock
host was carried in procession. The garrison was called out to disperse
the mob. The mob, then and ever since one of the fiercest in the
kingdom, resisted. Blows were exchanged, and serious hurts inflicted.
[107] The agitation was great in the capital, and greater in the City,
properly so called, than at Westminster. For the people of Westminster
had been accustomed to see among them the private chapels of Roman
Catholic Ambassadors: but the City had not, within living memory, been
polluted by any idolatrous exhibition. Now, however, the resident of
the Elector Palatine, encouraged by the King, fitted up a chapel in Lime
Street. The heads of the corporation, though men selected for office
on account of their known Toryism, protested against this proceeding,
which, as they said, the ablest gentlemen of the long robe regarded as
illegal. The Lord Mayor was ordered to appear before the Privy Council.
"Take heed what you do," said the King. "Obey me; and do not trouble
yourself either about gentlemen of the long robe or gentlemen of the
short robe. " The Chancellor took up the word, and reprimanded the
unfortunate magistrate with the genuine eloquence of the Old Bailey
bar. The chapel was opened. All the neighbourhood was soon in commotion.
Great crowds assembled in Cheapside to attack the new mass house. The
priests were insulted. A crucifix was taken out of the building and set
up on the parish pump. The Lord Mayor came to quell the tumult, but was
received with cries of "No wooden gods. " The trainbands were ordered to
disperse the crowd: but they shared in the popular feeling; and murmurs
were heard from the ranks, "We cannot in conscience fight for Popery. "
[108]
The Elector Palatine was, like James, a sincere and zealous Catholic,
and was, like James, the ruler of a Protestant people; but the two
princes resembled each other little in temper and understanding. The
Elector had promised to respect the rights of the Church which he found
established in his dominions. He had strictly kept his word, and had not
suffered himself to be provoked to any violence by the indiscretion of
preachers who, in their antipathy to his faith, occasionally forgot the
respect which they owed to his person. [109] He learned, with concern,
that great offence had been given to the people of London by the
injudicious act of his representative, and, much to his honour, declared
that he would forego the privilege to which, as a sovereign prince, he
was entitled, rather than endanger the peace of a great city. "I, too,"
he wrote to James, "have Protestant subjects; and I know with how much
caution and delicacy it is necessary that a Catholic prince so situated
should act. " James, instead of expressing gratitude for this humane and
considerate conduct, turned the letter into ridicule before the foreign
ministers. It was determined that the Elector should have a chapel in
the City whether he would or not, and that, if the trainbands refused to
do their duty, their place should be supplied by the Guards. [110]
The effect of these disturbances on trade was serious. The Dutch
minister informed the States General that the business of the Exchange
was at a stand. The Commissioners of the Customs reported to the King
that, during the month which followed the opening of Lime Street Chapel,
the receipt in the port of the Thames had fallen off by some thousands
of pounds. [111] Several Aldermen, who, though zealous royalists
appointed under the new charter, were deeply interested in the
commercial prosperity of their city, and loved neither Popery nor
martial law, tendered their resignations. But the King was resolved
not to yield. He formed a camp on Hounslow Heath, and collected
there, within a circumference of about two miles and a half, fourteen
battalions of foot and thirty-two squadrons of horse, amounting to
thirteen thousand fighting men. Twenty-six pieces of artillery, and
many wains laden with arms and ammunition, were dragged from the Tower
through the City to Hounslow. [112] The Londoners saw this great force
assembled in their neighbourhood with a terror which familiarity soon
diminished. A visit to Hounslow became their favourite amusement on
holidays. The camp presented the appearance of a vast fair. Mingled with
the musketeers and dragoons, a multitude of fine gentlemen and ladies
from Soho Square, sharpers and painted women from Whitefriars, invalids
in sedans, monks in hoods and gowns, lacqueys in rich liveries, pedlars,
orange girls, mischievous apprentices and gaping clowns, was constantly
passing and repassing through the long lanes of tents. From some
pavilions were heard the noises of drunken revelry, from others the
curses of gamblers. In truth the place was merely a gay suburb of the
capital. The King, as was amply proved two years later, had greatly
miscalculated. He had forgotten that vicinity operates in more ways than
one. He had hoped that his army would overawe London: but the result of
his policy was that the feelings and opinions of London took complete
possession of his army. [113]
Scarcely indeed had the encampment been formed when there were rumours
of quarrels between the Protestant and Popish soldiers. [114] A little
tract, entitled A humble and hearty Address to all English Protestants
in the Army, had been actively circulated through the ranks. The writer
vehemently exhorted the troops to use their arms in defence, not of the
mass book, but of the Bible, of the Great Charter, and of the Petition
of Right. He was a man already under the frown of power. His character
was remarkable, and his history not uninstructive.
His name was Samuel Johnson. He was a priest of the Church of England,
and had been chaplain to Lord Russell. Johnson was one of those persons
who are mortally hated by their opponents, and less loved than respected
by their allies. His morals were pure, his religious feelings ardent,
his learning and abilities not contemptible, his judgment weak,
his temper acrimonious, turbulent, and unconquerably stubborn. His
profession made him peculiarly odious to the zealous supporters of
monarchy; for a republican in holy orders was a strange and almost an
unnatural being. During the late reign Johnson had published a book
entitled Julian the Apostate. The object of this work was to show
that the Christians of the fourth century did not hold the doctrine
of nonresistance. It was easy to produce passages from Chrysostom and
Jerome written in a spirit very different from that of the Anglican
divines who preached against the Exclusion Bill. Johnson, however, went
further. He attempted to revive the odious imputation which had, for
very obvious reasons, been thrown by Libanius on the Christian soldiers
of Julian, and insinuated that the dart which slew the imperial renegade
came, not from the enemy, but from some Rumbold or Ferguson in the Roman
ranks. A hot controversy followed. Whig and Tory disputants wrangled
fiercely about an obscure passage, in which Gregory of Nazianzus praises
a pious Bishop who was going to bastinado somebody. The Whigs maintained
that the holy man was going to bastinado the Emperor; the Tories that,
at the worst, he was only going to bastinado a captain of the guard.
Johnson prepared a reply to his assailants, in which he drew an
elaborate parallel between Julian and James, then Duke of York, Julian
had, during many years, pretended to abhor idolatry, while in heart an
idolater. Julian had, to serve a turn, occasionally affected respect for
the rights of conscience. Julian had punished cities which were zealous
for the true religion, by taking away their municipal privileges. Julian
had, by his flatterers, been called the Just. James was provoked beyond
endurance. Johnson was prosecuted for a libel, convicted, and condemned
to a fine which he had no means of paying. He was therefore kept in
gaol; and it seemed likely that his confinement would end only with his
life. [115]
Over the room which he occupied in the King's Bench prison lodged
another offender whose character well deserves to be studied. This was
Hugh Speke, a young man of good family, but of a singularly base and
depraved nature. His love of mischief and of dark and crooked ways
amounted almost to madness. To cause confusion without being found
out was his business and his pastime; and he had a rare skill in using
honest enthusiasts as the instruments of his coldblooded malice. He
had attempted, by means of one of his puppets, to fasten on Charles and
James the crime of murdering Essex in the Tower. On this occasion the
agency of Speke had been traced and, though he succeeded in throwing the
greater part of the blame on his dupe, he had not escaped with impunity.
He was now a prisoner; but his fortune enabled him to live with comfort;
and he was under so little restraint that he was able to keep up regular
communication with one of his confederates who managed a secret press.
Johnson was the very man for Speke's purposes, zealous and intrepid, a
scholar and a practised controversialist, yet as simple as a child. A
close intimacy sprang up between the two fellow prisoners. Johnson wrote
a succession of bitter and vehement treatises which Speke conveyed to
the printer. When the camp was formed at Hounslow, Speke urged Johnson
to compose an address which might excite the troops to mutiny. The paper
was instantly drawn up. Many thousands of copies were struck off and
brought to Speke's room, whence they were distributed over the whole
country, and especially among the soldiers. A milder government than
that which then ruled England would have been moved to high resentment
by such a provocation. Strict search was made. A subordinate agent who
had been employed to circulate the address saved himself by giving up
Johnson; and Johnson was not the man to save himself by giving up Speke.
An information was filed, and a conviction obtained without difficulty.
Julian Johnson, as he was popularly called, was sentenced to stand
thrice in the pillory, and to be whipped from Newgate to Tyburn. The
Judge, Sir Francis Withins, told the criminal to be thankful for the
great lenity of the Attorney General, who might have treated the case
as one of high treason. "I owe him no thanks," answered Johnson,
dauntlessly. "Am I, whose only crime is that I have defended the Church
and the laws, to be grateful for being scourged like a dog, while Popish
scribblers are suffered daily to insult the Church and to violate the
laws with impunity? " The energy with which he spoke was such that both
the Judges and the crown lawyers thought it necessary to vindicate
themselves, and protested that they knew of no Popish publications
such as those to which the prisoner alluded. He instantly drew from his
pocket some Roman Catholic books and trinkets which were then freely
exposed for sale under the royal patronage, read aloud the titles of the
books, and threw a rosary across the table to the King's counsel. "And
now," he cried with a loud voice, "I lay this information before God,
before this court, and before the English people. We shall soon see
whether Mr. Attorney will do his duty. "
It was resolved that, before the punishment was inflicted, Johnson
should be degraded from the priesthood. The prelates who had been
charged by the Ecclesiastical Commission with the care of the diocese
of London cited him before them in the chapter house of Saint Paul's
Cathedral. The manner in which he went through the ceremony made a deep
impression on many minds. When he was stripped of his sacred robe he
exclaimed, "You are taking away my gown because I have tried to keep
your gowns on your backs. " The only part of the formalities which seemed
to distress him was the plucking of the Bible out of his hand. He made
a faint struggle to retain the sacred book, kissed it, and burst into
tears. "You cannot," he said, "deprive me of the hopes which I owe to
it. " Some attempts were made to obtain a remission of the flogging. A
Roman Catholic priest offered to intercede in consideration of a bribe
of two hundred pounds. The money was raised; and the priest did his
best, but in vain.
"Mr. Johnson," said the King, "has the spirit of a martyr; and it is fit
that he should be one. " William the Third said, a few years later, of
one of the most acrimonious and intrepid Jacobites, "He has set his
heart on being a martyr, and I have set mine on disappointing him. "
These two speeches would alone suffice to explain the widely different
fates of the two princes.
The day appointed for the flogging came. A whip of nine lashes was used.
Three hundred and seventeen stripes were inflicted; but the sufferer
never winced. He afterwards said that the pain was cruel, but that, as
he was dragged at the tail of the cart, he remembered how patiently the
cross had been borne up Mount Calvary, and was so much supported by the
thought that, but for the fear of incurring the suspicion of vain glory,
he would have sung a psalm with as firm and cheerful a voice as if he
had been worshipping God in the congregation. It is impossible not to
wish that so much heroism had been less alloyed by intemperance and
intolerance. [116]
Among the clergy of the Church of England Johnson found no sympathy. He
had attempted to justify rebellion; he had even hinted approbation of
regicide; and they still, in spite of much provocation, clung to the
doctrine of nonresistance. But they saw with alarm and concern the
progress of what they considered as a noxious superstition, and, while
they abjured all thought of defending their religion by the sword,
betook themselves manfully to weapons of a different kind. To preach
against the errors of Popery was now regarded by them as a point of duty
and a point of honour. The London clergy, who were then in abilities
and influence decidedly at the head of their profession, set an example
which was bravely followed by their ruder brethren all over the country.
Had only a few bold men taken this freedom, they would probably have
been at once cited before the Ecclesiastical Commission; but it was
hardly possible to punish an offence which was committed every Sunday
by thousands of divines, from Berwick to Penzance. The presses of
the capital, of Oxford, and of Cambridge, never rested. The act which
subjected literature to a censorship did not seriously impede the
exertions of Protestant controversialists; for it contained a proviso
in favour of the two Universities, and authorised the publication of
theological works licensed by the Archbishop of Canterbury. It was
therefore out of the power of the government to silence the defenders of
the established religion. They were a numerous, an intrepid, and a
well appointed band of combatants. Among them were eloquent declaimers,
expert dialecticians, scholars deeply read in the writings of the
fathers and in all parts of ecclesiastical history. Some of them, at a
later period, turned against one another the formidable arms which they
had wielded against the common enemy, and by their fierce contentions
and insolent triumphs brought reproach on the Church which they had
saved. But at present they formed an united phalanx. In the van appeared
a rank of steady and skilful veterans, Tillotson, Stillingfleet,
Sherlock, Prideaux, Whitby, Patrick, Tenison, Wake. The rear was brought
up by the most distinguished bachelors of arts who were studying for
deacon's orders. Conspicuous amongst the recruits whom Cambridge sent to
the field was a distinguished pupil of the great Newton, Henry Wharton,
who had, a few months before, been senior wrangler of his year, and
whose early death was soon after deplored by men of all parties as an
irreparable loss to letters. [117] Oxford was not less proud of a youth,
whose great powers, first essayed in this conflict, afterwards troubled
the Church and the State during forty eventful years, Francis Atterbury.
By such men as these every question in issue between the Papists and
the Protestants was debated, sometimes in a popular style which boys and
women could comprehend, sometimes with the utmost subtlety of logic, and
sometimes with an immense display of learning. The pretensions of the
Holy See, the authority of tradition, purgatory, transubstantiation, the
sacrifice of the mass, the adoration of the host, the denial of the cup
to the laity, confession, penance, indulgences, extreme unction, the
invocation of saints, the adoration of images, the celibacy of the
clergy, the monastic vows, the practice of celebrating public worship in
a tongue unknown to the multitude, the corruptions of the court of Rome,
the history of the Reformation, the characters of the chief reformers,
were copiously discussed. Great numbers of absurd legends about miracles
wrought by saints and relics were translated from the Italian and
published as specimens of the priestcraft by which the greater part of
Christendom had been fooled. Of the tracts put forth on these subjects
by Anglican divines during the short reign of James the Second many have
probably perished. Those which may still be found in our great libraries
make up a mass of near twenty thousand pages. [118]
The Roman Catholics did not yield the victory without a struggle. One
of them, named Henry Hills, had been appointed printer to the royal
household and chapel, and had been placed by the King at the head of
a great office in London from which theological tracts came forth by
hundreds. Obadiah Walker's press was not less active at Oxford. But,
with the exception of some bad translations of Bossuet's admirable
works, these establishments put forth nothing of the smallest value. It
was indeed impossible for any intelligent and candid Roman Catholic
to deny that the champions of his Church were, in every talent and
acquirement, completely over-matched. The ablest of them would not, on
the other side, have been considered as of the third rate. Many of them,
even when they had something to say, knew not how to say it. They had
been excluded by their religion from English schools and universities;
nor had they ever, till the accession of James, found England an
agreeable, or even a safe, residence. They had therefore passed the
greater part of their lives on the Continent, and had almost unlearned
their mother tongue. When they preached, their outlandish accent moved
the derision of the audience. They spelt like washerwomen. Their diction
was disfigured by foreign idioms; and, when they meant to be eloquent,
they imitated, as well as they could, what was considered as fine
writing in those Italian academies where rhetoric had then reached the
last stage of corruption. Disputants labouring under these disadvantages
would scarcely, even with truth on their side, have been able to make
head against men whose style is eminently distinguished by simple purity
and grace. [119]
The situation of England in the year 1686 cannot be better described
than in the words of the French Ambassador. "The discontent," he wrote,
"is great and general: but the fear of incurring still worse evils
restrains all who have anything to lose. The King openly expresses his
joy at finding himself in a situation to strike bold strokes. He likes
to be complimented on this subject. He has talked to me about it, and
has assured me that he will not flinch. " [120]
Meanwhile in other parts of the empire events of grave importance had
taken place. The situation of the episcopalian Protestants of Scotland
differed widely from that in which their English brethren stood. In the
south of the island the religion of the state was the religion of
the people, and had a strength altogether independent of the strength
derived from the support of the government. The sincere conformists were
far more numerous than the Papists and the Protestant Dissenters taken
together. The Established Church of Scotland was the Church of a small
minority. The majority of the lowland population was firmly attached to
the Presbyterian discipline. Prelacy was abhorred by the great body
of Scottish Protestants, both as an unscriptural and as a foreign
institution. It was regarded by the disciples of Knox as a relic of the
abominations of Babylon the Great. It painfully reminded a people proud
of the memory of Wallace and Bruce that Scotland, since her sovereigns
had succeeded to a fairer inheritance, had been independent in name
only. The episcopal polity was also closely associated in the public
mind with all the evils produced by twenty-five years of corrupt and
cruel maladministration. Nevertheless this polity stood, though on a
narrow basis and amidst fearful storms, tottering indeed, yet upheld by
the civil magistrate, and leaning for support, whenever danger became
serious, on the power of England. The records of the Scottish Parliament
were thick set with laws denouncing vengeance on those who in any
direction strayed from the prescribed pale.
By an Act passed in the time
of Knox, and breathing his spirit, it was a high crime to hear mass,
and the third offence was capital. [121] An Act recently passed, at
the instance of James, made it death to preach in any Presbyterian
conventicle whatever, and even to attend such a conventicle in the open
air. [122] The Eucharist was not, as in England, degraded into a civil
test; but no person could hold any office, could sit in Parliament, or
could even vote for a member of Parliament, without subscribing, under
the sanction of an oath, a declaration which condemned in the strongest
terms the principles both of the Papists and of the Covenanters. [123]
In the Privy Council of Scotland there were two parties corresponding to
the two parties which were contending against each other at Whitehall.
William Douglas, Duke of Queensberry, was Lord Treasurer, and had,
during some years, been considered as first minister. He was nearly
connected by affinity, by similarity of opinions, and by similarity of
temper, with the Treasurer of England. Both were Tories: both were men
of hot temper and strong prejudices; both were ready to support their
master in any attack on the civil liberties of his people; but both
were sincerely attached to the Established Church. Queensberry had early
notified to the court that, if any innovation affecting that Church were
contemplated, to such innovation he could be no party. But among his
colleagues were several men not less unprincipled than Sunderland. In
truth the Council chamber at Edinburgh had been, during a quarter of
a century, a seminary of all public and private vices; and some of
the politicians whose character had been formed there had a peculiar
hardness of heart and forehead to which Westminster, even in that bad
age, could hardly show anything quite equal. The Chancellor, James
Drummond, Earl of Perth, and his brother, the Secretary of State, John
Lord Melfort, were bent on supplanting Queensberry. The Chancellor had
already an unquestionable title to the royal favour. He had brought into
use a little steel thumbscrew which gave such exquisite torment that it
had wrung confessions even out of men on whom His Majesty's favourite
boot had been tried in vain. [124] But it was well known that even
barbarity was not so sure a way to the heart of James as apostasy. To
apostasy, therefore, Perth and Melfort resorted with a certain audacious
baseness which no English statesman could hope to emulate. They declared
that the papers found in the strong box of Charles the Second had
converted them both to the true faith; and they began to confess and to
hear mass. [125] How little conscience had to do with Perth's change of
religion he amply proved by taking to wife, a few weeks later, in direct
defiance of the laws of the Church which he had just joined, a lady who
was his cousin german, without waiting for a dispensation. When the good
Pope learned this, he said, with scorn and indignation which well became
him, that this was a strange sort of conversion. [126] But James was
more easily satisfied. The apostates presented themselves at Whitehall,
and there received such assurances of his favour, that they ventured to
bring direct charges against the Treasurer. Those charges, however,
were so evidently frivolous that James was forced to acquit the accused
minister; and many thought that the Chancellor had ruined himself by his
malignant eagerness to ruin his rival. There were a few, however,
who judged more correctly. Halifax, to whom Perth expressed some
apprehensions, answered with a sneer that there was no danger. "Be of
good cheer, my Lord; thy faith hath made thee whole. " The prediction was
correct. Perth and Melfort went back to Edinburgh, the real heads of the
government of their country. [127] Another member of the Scottish Privy
Council, Alexander Stuart, Earl of Murray, the descendant and heir of
the Regent, abjured the religion of which his illustrious ancestor had
been the foremost champion, and declared himself a member of the
Church of Rome. Devoted as Queensberry had always been to the cause of
prerogative, he could not stand his ground against competitors who
were willing to pay such a price for the favour of the court. He had to
endure a succession of mortifications and humiliations similar to those
which, about the same time, began to embitter the life of his friend
Rochester. Royal letters came down authorising Papists to hold offices
without taking the test. The clergy were strictly charged not to reflect
on the Roman Catholic religion in their discourses. The Chancellor took
on himself to send the macers of the Privy Council round to the few
printers and booksellers who could then be found in Edinburgh, charging
them not to publish any work without his license. It was well understood
that this order was intended to prevent the circulation of Protestant
treatises. One honest stationer told the messengers that he had in his
shop a book which reflected in very coarse terms on Popery, and begged
to know whether he might sell it. They asked to see it; and he showed
them a copy of the Bible. [128] A cargo of images, beads, crosses and
censers arrived at Leith directed to Lord Perth. The importation of such
articles had long been considered as illegal; but now the officers of
the customs allowed the superstitious garments and trinkets to pass.
[129] In a short time it was known that a Popish chapel had been fitted
up in the Chancellor's house, and that mass was regularly said there.
The mob rose. The mansion where the idolatrous rites were celebrated
was fiercely attacked. The iron bars which protected the windows were
wrenched off. Lady Perth and some of her female friends were pelted
with mud. One rioter was seized, and ordered by the Privy Council to be
whipped. His fellows rescued him and beat the hangman. The city was
all night in confusion. The students of the University mingled with the
crowd and animated the tumult. Zealous burghers drank the health of the
college lads and confusion to Papists, and encouraged each other to face
the troops. The troops were already under arms. They were received with
a shower of stones, which wounded an officer. Orders were given to fire;
and several citizens were killed. The disturbance was serious; but
the Drummonds, inflamed by resentment and ambition, exaggerated it
strangely. Queensberry observed that their reports would lead any
person, who had not been a witness of the tumult, to believe that
a sedition as formidable as that of Masaniello had been raging at
Edinburgh. They in return accused the Treasurer, not only of extenuating
the crime of the insurgents, but of having himself prompted it, and
did all in their power to obtain evidence of his guilt. One of the
ringleaders, who had been taken, was offered a pardon if he would own
that Queensberry had set him on; but the same religious enthusiasm,
which had impelled the unhappy prisoner to criminal violence, prevented
him from purchasing his life by a calumny. He and several of his
accomplices were hanged. A soldier, who was accused of exclaiming,
during the affray, that he should like to run his sword through a
Papist, was shot; and Edinburgh was again quiet: but the sufferers
were regarded as martyrs; and the Popish Chancellor became an object of
mortal hatred, which in no long time was largely gratified. [130]
The King was much incensed. The news of the tumult reached him when the
Queen, assisted by the Jesuits, had just triumphed over Lady Dorchester
and her Protestant allies. The malecontents should find, he declared,
that the only effect of the resistance offered to his will was to make
him more and more resolute. [131] He sent orders to the Scottish Council
to punish the guilty with the utmost severity, and to make unsparing use
of the boot. [132] He pretended to be fully convinced of the Treasurer's
innocence, and wrote to that minister in gracious words; but the
gracious words were accompanied by ungracious acts. The Scottish
Treasury was put into commission in spite of the earnest remonstrances
of Rochester, who probably saw his own fate prefigured in that of his
kinsman. [133] Queensberry was, indeed, named First Commissioner, and
was made President of the Privy Council: but his fall, though thus
broken, was still a fall. He was also removed from the government of the
castle of Edinburgh, and was succeeded in that confidential post by the
Duke of Gordon, a Roman Catholic. [134]
And now a letter arrived from London, fully explaining to the Scottish
Privy Council the intentions of the King. What he wanted was that the
Roman Catholics should be exempted from all laws imposing penalties and
disabilities on account of nonconformity, but that the persecution
of the Covenanters should go on without mitigation. [135] This scheme
encountered strenuous opposition in the Council. Some members were
unwilling to see the existing laws relaxed. Others, who were by no means
averse to some relaxation, yet felt that it would be monstrous to admit
Roman Catholics to the highest honours of the state, and yet to
leave unrepealed the Act which made it death to attend a Presbyterian
conventicle. The answer of the board was, therefore, less obsequious
than usual. The King in reply sharply reprimanded his undutiful
Councillors, and ordered three of them, the Duke of Hamilton, Sir George
Lockhart, and General Drummond, to attend him at Westminster. Hamilton's
abilities and knowledge, though by no means such as would have sufficed
to raise an obscure man to eminence, appeared highly respectable in one
who was premier peer of Scotland. Lockhart had long been regarded as
one of the first jurists, logicians, and orators that his country had
produced, and enjoyed also that sort of consideration which is derived
from large possessions; for his estate was such as at that time very few
Scottish nobles possessed. [136] He had been lately appointed President
of the Court of Session. Drummond, a younger brother of Perth and
Melfort, was commander of the forces in Scotland. He was a loose
and profane man: but a sense of honour which his two kinsmen wanted
restrained him from a public apostasy. He lived and died, in the
significant phrase of one of his countrymen, a bad Christian, but a good
Protestant. [137]
James was pleased by the dutiful language which the three Councillors
used when first they appeared before him. He spoke highly of them to
Barillon, and particularly extolled Lockhart as the ablest and most
eloquent Scotchman living. They soon proved, however, less tractable
than had been expected; and it was rumoured at court that they had been
perverted by the company which they had kept in London. Hamilton lived
much with zealous churchmen; and it might be feared that Lockhart, who
was related to the Wharton family, had fallen into still worse society.
In truth it was natural that statesmen fresh from a country where
opposition in any other form than that of insurrection and assassination
had long been almost unknown, and where all that was not lawless fury
was abject submission, should have been struck by the earnest and
stubborn, yet sober, discontent which pervaded England, and should have
been emboldened to try the experiment of constitutional resistance to
the royal will. They indeed declared themselves willing to grant large
relief to the Roman Catholics; but on two conditions; first, that
similar indulgence should be extended to the Calvinistic sectaries; and,
secondly, that the King should bind himself by a solemn promise not to
attempt anything to the prejudice of the Protestant religion.
Both conditions were highly distasteful to James. He reluctantly agreed,
however, after a dispute which lasted several days, that some indulgence
should be granted to the Presbyterians but he would by no means consent
to allow them the full liberty which he demanded for members of his own
communion. [138] To the second condition proposed by the three Scottish
Councillors he positively refused to listen. The Protestant religion,
he said, was false and he would not give any guarantee that he would not
use his power to the prejudice of a false religion. The altercation was
long, and was not brought to a conclusion satisfactory to either party.
[139]
The time fixed for the meeting of the Scottish Estates drew near; and it
was necessary that the three Councillors should leave London to attend
their parliamentary duty at Edinburgh. On this occasion another affront
was offered to Queensberry. In the late session he had held the office
of Lord High Commissioner, and had in that capacity represented the
majesty of the absent King. This dignity, the greatest to which a
Scottish noble could aspire, was now transferred to the renegade Murray.
On the twenty-ninth of April the Parliament met at Edinburgh. A letter
from the King was read. He exhorted the Estates to give relief to his
Roman Catholic subjects, and offered in return a free trade with England
and an amnesty for political offences. A committee was appointed to draw
up an answer. That committee, though named by Murray, and composed of
Privy Councillors and courtiers, framed a reply, full indeed of dutiful
and respectful expressions, yet clearly indicating a determination to
refuse what the King demanded. The Estates, it was said, would go as far
as their consciences would allow to meet His Majesty's wishes respecting
his subjects of the Roman Catholic religion. These expressions were far
from satisfying the Chancellor; yet, such as they were, he was forced
to content himself with them, and even had some difficulty in persuading
the Parliament to adopt them. Objection was taken by some zealous
Protestants to the mention made of the Roman Catholic religion. There
was no such religion. There was an idolatrous apostasy, which the laws
punished with the halter, and to which it did not become Christian men
to give flattering titles. To call such a superstition Catholic was
to give up the whole question which was at issue between Rome and the
reformed Churches. The offer of a free trade with England was treated as
an insult. "Our fathers," said one orator, "sold their King for southern
gold; and we still lie under the reproach of that foul bargain. Let
it not be said of us that we have sold our God! " Sir John Lauder of
Fountainhall, one of the Senators of the College of Justice, suggested
the words, "the persons commonly called Roman Catholics. " "Would you
nickname His Majesty? " exclaimed the Chancellor. The answer drawn by
the committee was carried; but a large and respectable minority voted
against the proposed words as too courtly. [140] It was remarked that
the representatives of the towns were, almost to a man, against the
government. Hitherto those members had been of small account in the
Parliament, and had generally, been considered as the retainers of
powerful noblemen. They now showed, for the first time, an independence,
a resolution, and a spirit of combination which alarmed the court. [141]
The answer was so unpleasing to James that he did not suffer it to be
printed in the Gazette. Soon he learned that a law, such as he wished to
see passed, would not even be brought in. The Lords of Articles, whose
business was to draw up the acts on which the Estates were afterwards to
deliberate, were virtually nominated by himself. Yet even the Lords of
Articles proved refractory. When they met, the three Privy Councillors
who had lately returned from London took the lead in opposition to the
royal will. Hamilton declared plainly that he could not do what was
asked. He was a faithful and loyal subject; but there was a limit
imposed by conscience. "Conscience! " said the Chancellor: "conscience is
a vague word, which signifies any thing or nothing. " Lockhart, who sate
in Parliament as representative of the great county of Lanark, struck
in. "If conscience," he said, "be a word without meaning, we will change
it for another phrase which, I hope, means something. For conscience let
us put the fundamental laws of Scotland. " These words raised a fierce
debate. General Drummond, who represented Perthshire, declared that he
agreed with Hamilton and Lockhart. Most of the Bishops present took the
same side. [142]
It was plain that, even in the Committee of Articles, James could not
command a majority. He was mortified and irritated by the tidings.
He held warm and menacing language, and punished some of his mutinous
servants, in the hope that the rest would take warning. Several
persons were dismissed from the Council board. Several were deprived
of pensions, which formed an important part of their income. Sir George
Mackenzie of Rosehaugh was the most distinguished victim. He had long
held the office of Lord Advocate, and had taken such a part in the
persecution of the Covenanters that to this day he holds, in the
estimation of the austere and godly peasantry of Scotland, a place not
far removed from the unenviable eminence occupied by Claverhouse. The
legal attainments of Mackenzie were not of the highest order: but, as
a scholar, a wit, and an orator, he stood high in the opinion of his
countrymen; and his renown had spread even to the coffeehouses of London
and the cloisters of Oxford. The remains of his forensic speeches prove
him to have been a man of parts, but are somewhat disfigured by what he
doubtless considered as Ciceronian graces, interjections which show more
art than passion, and elaborate amplifications, in which epithet rises
above epithet in wearisome climax. He had now, for the first time, been
found scrupulous. He was, therefore, in spite of all his claims on the
gratitude of the government, deprived of his office. He retired into the
country, and soon after went up to London for the purpose of clearing
himself, but was refused admission to the royal presence. [143]
While the King was thus trying to terrify the Lords of Articles into
submission, the popular voice encouraged them to persist. The utmost
exertions of the Chancellor could not prevent the national sentiment
from expressing itself through the pulpit and the press. One tract,
written with such boldness and acrimony that no printer dared to put it
in type, was widely circulated in manuscript. The papers which appeared
on the other side of the question had much less effect, though they were
disseminated at the public charge, and though the Scottish defenders
of the government were assisted by an English auxiliary of great note,
Lestrange, who had been sent down to Edinburgh, and had apartments in
Holyrood House. [144]
At length, after three weeks of debate, the Lords of Articles came to a
decision. They proposed merely that Roman Catholics should be permitted
to worship God in private houses without incurring any penalty; and it
soon appeared that, far as this measure was from coming up to the King's
demands and expectations, the Estates either would not pass it at all,
or would pass it with great restrictions and modifications.
While the contest lasted the anxiety in London was intense. Every
report, every line, from Edinburgh was eagerly devoured. One day the
story ran that Hamilton had given way and that the government would
carry every point. Then came intelligence that the opposition had
rallied and was more obstinate than ever. At the most critical moment
orders were sent to the post-office that the bags from Scotland should
be transmitted to Whitehall. During a whole week not a single private
letter from beyond the Tweed was delivered in London. In our age such
an interruption of communication would throw the whole island into
confusion: but there was then so little trade and correspondence between
England and Scotland that the inconvenience was probably much smaller
than has been often occasioned in our own time by a short delay in the
arrival of the Indian mail. While the ordinary channels of information
were thus closed, the crowd in the galleries of Whitehall observed
with attention the countenances of the King and his ministers. It was
noticed, with great satisfaction, that, after every express from the
North, the enemies of the Protestant religion looked more and more
gloomy. At length, to the general joy, it was announced that the
struggle was over, that the government had been unable to carry
its measures, and that the Lord High Commissioner had adjourned the
Parliament. [145]
If James had not been proof to all warning, these events would have
sufficed to warn him. A few months before this time the most obsequious
of English Parliaments had refused to submit to his pleasure. But
the most obsequious of English Parliaments might be regarded as an
independent and high spirited assembly when compared with any Parliament
that had ever sate in Scotland; and the servile spirit of Scottish
Parliaments was always to be found in the highest perfection, extracted
and condensed, among the Lords of Articles. Yet even the Lords of
Articles had been refractory. It was plain that all those classes, all
those institutions, which, up to this year, had been considered as the
strongest supports of monarchical power, must, if the King persisted
in his insane policy, be reckoned as parts of the strength of the
opposition. All these signs, however, were lost upon him. To every
expostulation he had one answer: he would never give way; for concession
had ruined his father; and his unconquerable firmness was loudly
applauded by the French embassy and by the Jesuitical cabal.
He now proclaimed that he had been only too gracious when he had
condescended to ask the assent of the Scottish Estates to his wishes.
His prerogative would enable him not only to protect those whom he
favoured, but to punish those who had crossed him. He was confident
that, in Scotland, his dispensing power would not be questioned by any
court of law. There was a Scottish Act of Supremacy which gave to the
sovereign such a control over the Church as might have satisfied Henry
the Eighth. Accordingly Papists were admitted in crowds to offices
and honours. The Bishop of Dunkeld, who, as a Lord of Parliament, had
opposed the government, was arbitrarily ejected from his see, and
a successor was appointed. Queensberry was stripped of all his
employments, and was ordered to remain at Edinburgh till the accounts of
the Treasury during his administration had been examined and approved.
[146] As the representatives of the towns had been found the most
unmanageable part of the Parliament, it was determined to make a
revolution in every burgh throughout the kingdom. A similar change had
recently been effected in England by judicial sentences: but in Scotland
a simple mandate of the prince was thought sufficient. All elections of
magistrates and of town councils were prohibited; and the King assumed
to himself the right of filling up the chief municipal offices. [147] In
a formal letter to the Privy Council he announced his intention to fit
up a Roman Catholic chapel in his palace of Holyrood; and he gave orders
that the Judges should be directed to treat all the laws against Papists
as null, on pain of his high displeasure. He however comforted the
Protestant Episcopalians by assuring them that, though he was determined
to protect the Roman Catholic Church against them, he was equally
determined to protect them against any encroachment on the part of the
fanatics. To this communication Perth proposed an answer couched in
the most servile terms. The Council now contained many Papists; the
Protestant members who still had seats had been cowed by the King's
obstinacy and severity; and only a few faint murmurs were heard.
Hamilton threw out against the dispensing power some hints which he made
haste to explain away. Lockhart said that he would lose his head rather
than sign such a letter as the Chancellor had drawn, but took care to
say this in a whisper which was heard only by friends. Perth's words
were adopted with inconsiderable modifications; and the royal commands
were obeyed; but a sullen discontent spread through that minority of the
Scottish nation by the aid of which the government had hitherto held the
majority down. [148]
When the historian of this troubled reign turns to Ireland, his task
becomes peculiarly difficult and delicate. His steps,--to borrow the
fine image used on a similar occasion by a Roman poet,--are on the thin
crust of ashes, beneath which the lava is still glowing. The seventeenth
century has, in that unhappy country, left to the nineteenth a fatal
heritage of malignant passions. No amnesty for the mutual wrongs
inflicted by the Saxon defenders of Londonderry, and by the Celtic
defenders of Limerick, has ever been granted from the heart by either
race. To this day a more than Spartan haughtiness alloys the many noble
qualities which characterize the children of the victors, while a Helot
feeling, compounded of awe and hatred, is but too often discernible in
the children of the vanquished. Neither of the hostile castes can justly
be absolved from blame; but the chief blame is due to that shortsighted
and headstrong prince who, placed in a situation in which he might have
reconciled them, employed all his power to inflame their animosity, and
at length forced them to close in a grapple for life and death.
The grievances under which the members of his Church laboured in Ireland
differed widely from those which he was attempting to remove in England
and Scotland. The Irish Statute Book, afterwards polluted by intolerance
as barbarous as that of the dark ages, then contained scarce a single
enactment, and not a single stringent enactment, imposing any penalty on
Papists as such. On our side of Saint George's Channel every priest who
received a neophyte into the bosom of the Church of Rome was liable to
be hanged, drawn, and quartered. On the other side he incurred no such
danger. A Jesuit who landed at Dover took his life in his hand; but he
walked the streets of Dublin in security. Here no man could hold office,
or even earn his livelihood as a barrister or a schoolmaster, without
previously taking the oath of supremacy, but in Ireland a public
functionary was not held to be under the necessity of taking that oath
unless it were formally tendered to him. [149] It therefore did not
exclude from employment any person whom the government wished
to promote. The sacramental test and the declaration against
transubstantiation were unknown nor was either House of Parliament
closed against any religious sect.
It might seem, therefore, that the Irish Roman Catholic was in a
situation which his English and Scottish brethren in the faith might
well envy. In fact, however, his condition was more pitiable and
irritating than theirs. For, though not persecuted as a Roman Catholic,
he was oppressed as an Irishman. In his country the same line of
demarcation which separated religions separated races; and he was of the
conquered, the subjugated, the degraded race. On the same soil dwelt two
populations, locally intermixed, morally and politically sundered. The
difference of religion was by no means the only difference, and was
perhaps not even the chief difference, which existed between them. They
sprang from different stocks.
simple choice, to pronounce the Bishop guilty, or to quit the Treasury.
Rochester was base enough to yield. Compton was suspended from all
spiritual functions; and the charge of his great diocese was committed
to his judges, Sprat and Crewe. He continued, however, to reside in
his palace and to receive his revenues; for it was known that, had any
attempt been made to deprive him of his temporalities, he would have
put himself under the protection of the common law; and Herbert himself
declared that, at common law, judgment must be given against the crown.
This consideration induced the King to pause. Only a few weeks had
elapsed since he had packed the courts of Westminster Hall in order to
obtain a decision in favour of his dispensing power. He now found that,
unless he packed them again, he should not be able to obtain a decision
in favour of the proceedings of his Ecclesiastical Commission. He
determined, therefore, to postpone for a short time the confiscation of
the freehold property of refractory clergymen. [102]
The temper of the nation was indeed such as might well make him
hesitate. During some months discontent had been steadily and rapidly
increasing. The celebration of the Roman Catholic worship had long been
prohibited by Act of Parliament. During several generations no Roman
Catholic clergyman had dared to exhibit himself in any public place with
the badges of his office. Against the regular clergy, and against the
restless and subtle Jesuits by name, had been enacted a succession of
rigorous statutes. Every Jesuit who set foot in this country was
liable to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. A reward was offered for his
detection. He was not allowed to take advantage of the general rule,
that men are not bound to accuse themselves. Whoever was suspected of
being a Jesuit might be interrogated, and, if he refused to answer,
might be sent to prison for life. [103] These laws, though they had not,
except when there was supposed to be some peculiar danger, been strictly
executed, and though they had never prevented Jesuits from resorting to
England, had made disguise necessary. But all disguise was now thrown
off. Injudicious members of the King's Church, encouraged by him, took
a pride in defying statutes which were still of undoubted validity,
and feelings which had a stronger hold of the national mind than at any
former period. Roman Catholic chapels rose all over the country. Cowls,
girdles of ropes, and strings of beads constantly appeared in the
streets, and astonished a population, the oldest of whom had never seen
a conventual garb except on the stage. A convent rose at Clerkenwell on
the site of the ancient cloister of Saint John. The Franciscans occupied
a mansion in Lincoln's Inn Fields. The Carmelites were quartered in the
City. A society of Benedictine monks was lodged in Saint James's Palace.
In the Savoy a spacious house, including a church and a school, was
built for the Jesuits. [104] The skill and care with which those fathers
had, during several generations, conducted the education of youth, had
drawn forth reluctant praises from the wisest Protestants. Bacon had
pronounced the mode of instruction followed in the Jesuit colleges to
be the best yet known in the world, and had warmly expressed his regret
that so admirable a system of intellectual and moral discipline should
be subservient to the interests of a corrupt religion. [105] It was
not improbable that the new academy in the Savoy might, under royal
patronage, prove a formidable rival to the great foundations of Eton,
Westminster, and Winchester. Indeed, soon after the school was opened,
the classes consisted of four hundred boys, about one half of whom were
Protestants. The Protestant pupils were not required to attend mass: but
there could be no doubt that the influence of able preceptors, devoted
to the Roman Catholic Church, and versed in all the arts which win the
confidence and affection of youth, would make many converts.
These things produced great excitement among the populace, which is
always more moved by what impresses the senses than by what is
addressed to the reason. Thousands of rude and ignorant men, to whom the
dispensing power and the Ecclesiastical Commission were words without a
meaning, saw with dismay and indignation a Jesuit college rising on the
banks of the Thames, friars in hoods and gowns walking in the Strand,
and crowds of devotees pressing in at the doors of temples where homage
was paid to graven images. Riots broke out in several parts of the
country. At Coventry and Worcester the Roman Catholic worship was
violently interrupted. [106] At Bristol the rabble, countenanced, it was
said, by the magistrates, exhibited a profane and indecent pageant, in
which the Virgin Mary was represented by a buffoon, and in which a mock
host was carried in procession. The garrison was called out to disperse
the mob. The mob, then and ever since one of the fiercest in the
kingdom, resisted. Blows were exchanged, and serious hurts inflicted.
[107] The agitation was great in the capital, and greater in the City,
properly so called, than at Westminster. For the people of Westminster
had been accustomed to see among them the private chapels of Roman
Catholic Ambassadors: but the City had not, within living memory, been
polluted by any idolatrous exhibition. Now, however, the resident of
the Elector Palatine, encouraged by the King, fitted up a chapel in Lime
Street. The heads of the corporation, though men selected for office
on account of their known Toryism, protested against this proceeding,
which, as they said, the ablest gentlemen of the long robe regarded as
illegal. The Lord Mayor was ordered to appear before the Privy Council.
"Take heed what you do," said the King. "Obey me; and do not trouble
yourself either about gentlemen of the long robe or gentlemen of the
short robe. " The Chancellor took up the word, and reprimanded the
unfortunate magistrate with the genuine eloquence of the Old Bailey
bar. The chapel was opened. All the neighbourhood was soon in commotion.
Great crowds assembled in Cheapside to attack the new mass house. The
priests were insulted. A crucifix was taken out of the building and set
up on the parish pump. The Lord Mayor came to quell the tumult, but was
received with cries of "No wooden gods. " The trainbands were ordered to
disperse the crowd: but they shared in the popular feeling; and murmurs
were heard from the ranks, "We cannot in conscience fight for Popery. "
[108]
The Elector Palatine was, like James, a sincere and zealous Catholic,
and was, like James, the ruler of a Protestant people; but the two
princes resembled each other little in temper and understanding. The
Elector had promised to respect the rights of the Church which he found
established in his dominions. He had strictly kept his word, and had not
suffered himself to be provoked to any violence by the indiscretion of
preachers who, in their antipathy to his faith, occasionally forgot the
respect which they owed to his person. [109] He learned, with concern,
that great offence had been given to the people of London by the
injudicious act of his representative, and, much to his honour, declared
that he would forego the privilege to which, as a sovereign prince, he
was entitled, rather than endanger the peace of a great city. "I, too,"
he wrote to James, "have Protestant subjects; and I know with how much
caution and delicacy it is necessary that a Catholic prince so situated
should act. " James, instead of expressing gratitude for this humane and
considerate conduct, turned the letter into ridicule before the foreign
ministers. It was determined that the Elector should have a chapel in
the City whether he would or not, and that, if the trainbands refused to
do their duty, their place should be supplied by the Guards. [110]
The effect of these disturbances on trade was serious. The Dutch
minister informed the States General that the business of the Exchange
was at a stand. The Commissioners of the Customs reported to the King
that, during the month which followed the opening of Lime Street Chapel,
the receipt in the port of the Thames had fallen off by some thousands
of pounds. [111] Several Aldermen, who, though zealous royalists
appointed under the new charter, were deeply interested in the
commercial prosperity of their city, and loved neither Popery nor
martial law, tendered their resignations. But the King was resolved
not to yield. He formed a camp on Hounslow Heath, and collected
there, within a circumference of about two miles and a half, fourteen
battalions of foot and thirty-two squadrons of horse, amounting to
thirteen thousand fighting men. Twenty-six pieces of artillery, and
many wains laden with arms and ammunition, were dragged from the Tower
through the City to Hounslow. [112] The Londoners saw this great force
assembled in their neighbourhood with a terror which familiarity soon
diminished. A visit to Hounslow became their favourite amusement on
holidays. The camp presented the appearance of a vast fair. Mingled with
the musketeers and dragoons, a multitude of fine gentlemen and ladies
from Soho Square, sharpers and painted women from Whitefriars, invalids
in sedans, monks in hoods and gowns, lacqueys in rich liveries, pedlars,
orange girls, mischievous apprentices and gaping clowns, was constantly
passing and repassing through the long lanes of tents. From some
pavilions were heard the noises of drunken revelry, from others the
curses of gamblers. In truth the place was merely a gay suburb of the
capital. The King, as was amply proved two years later, had greatly
miscalculated. He had forgotten that vicinity operates in more ways than
one. He had hoped that his army would overawe London: but the result of
his policy was that the feelings and opinions of London took complete
possession of his army. [113]
Scarcely indeed had the encampment been formed when there were rumours
of quarrels between the Protestant and Popish soldiers. [114] A little
tract, entitled A humble and hearty Address to all English Protestants
in the Army, had been actively circulated through the ranks. The writer
vehemently exhorted the troops to use their arms in defence, not of the
mass book, but of the Bible, of the Great Charter, and of the Petition
of Right. He was a man already under the frown of power. His character
was remarkable, and his history not uninstructive.
His name was Samuel Johnson. He was a priest of the Church of England,
and had been chaplain to Lord Russell. Johnson was one of those persons
who are mortally hated by their opponents, and less loved than respected
by their allies. His morals were pure, his religious feelings ardent,
his learning and abilities not contemptible, his judgment weak,
his temper acrimonious, turbulent, and unconquerably stubborn. His
profession made him peculiarly odious to the zealous supporters of
monarchy; for a republican in holy orders was a strange and almost an
unnatural being. During the late reign Johnson had published a book
entitled Julian the Apostate. The object of this work was to show
that the Christians of the fourth century did not hold the doctrine
of nonresistance. It was easy to produce passages from Chrysostom and
Jerome written in a spirit very different from that of the Anglican
divines who preached against the Exclusion Bill. Johnson, however, went
further. He attempted to revive the odious imputation which had, for
very obvious reasons, been thrown by Libanius on the Christian soldiers
of Julian, and insinuated that the dart which slew the imperial renegade
came, not from the enemy, but from some Rumbold or Ferguson in the Roman
ranks. A hot controversy followed. Whig and Tory disputants wrangled
fiercely about an obscure passage, in which Gregory of Nazianzus praises
a pious Bishop who was going to bastinado somebody. The Whigs maintained
that the holy man was going to bastinado the Emperor; the Tories that,
at the worst, he was only going to bastinado a captain of the guard.
Johnson prepared a reply to his assailants, in which he drew an
elaborate parallel between Julian and James, then Duke of York, Julian
had, during many years, pretended to abhor idolatry, while in heart an
idolater. Julian had, to serve a turn, occasionally affected respect for
the rights of conscience. Julian had punished cities which were zealous
for the true religion, by taking away their municipal privileges. Julian
had, by his flatterers, been called the Just. James was provoked beyond
endurance. Johnson was prosecuted for a libel, convicted, and condemned
to a fine which he had no means of paying. He was therefore kept in
gaol; and it seemed likely that his confinement would end only with his
life. [115]
Over the room which he occupied in the King's Bench prison lodged
another offender whose character well deserves to be studied. This was
Hugh Speke, a young man of good family, but of a singularly base and
depraved nature. His love of mischief and of dark and crooked ways
amounted almost to madness. To cause confusion without being found
out was his business and his pastime; and he had a rare skill in using
honest enthusiasts as the instruments of his coldblooded malice. He
had attempted, by means of one of his puppets, to fasten on Charles and
James the crime of murdering Essex in the Tower. On this occasion the
agency of Speke had been traced and, though he succeeded in throwing the
greater part of the blame on his dupe, he had not escaped with impunity.
He was now a prisoner; but his fortune enabled him to live with comfort;
and he was under so little restraint that he was able to keep up regular
communication with one of his confederates who managed a secret press.
Johnson was the very man for Speke's purposes, zealous and intrepid, a
scholar and a practised controversialist, yet as simple as a child. A
close intimacy sprang up between the two fellow prisoners. Johnson wrote
a succession of bitter and vehement treatises which Speke conveyed to
the printer. When the camp was formed at Hounslow, Speke urged Johnson
to compose an address which might excite the troops to mutiny. The paper
was instantly drawn up. Many thousands of copies were struck off and
brought to Speke's room, whence they were distributed over the whole
country, and especially among the soldiers. A milder government than
that which then ruled England would have been moved to high resentment
by such a provocation. Strict search was made. A subordinate agent who
had been employed to circulate the address saved himself by giving up
Johnson; and Johnson was not the man to save himself by giving up Speke.
An information was filed, and a conviction obtained without difficulty.
Julian Johnson, as he was popularly called, was sentenced to stand
thrice in the pillory, and to be whipped from Newgate to Tyburn. The
Judge, Sir Francis Withins, told the criminal to be thankful for the
great lenity of the Attorney General, who might have treated the case
as one of high treason. "I owe him no thanks," answered Johnson,
dauntlessly. "Am I, whose only crime is that I have defended the Church
and the laws, to be grateful for being scourged like a dog, while Popish
scribblers are suffered daily to insult the Church and to violate the
laws with impunity? " The energy with which he spoke was such that both
the Judges and the crown lawyers thought it necessary to vindicate
themselves, and protested that they knew of no Popish publications
such as those to which the prisoner alluded. He instantly drew from his
pocket some Roman Catholic books and trinkets which were then freely
exposed for sale under the royal patronage, read aloud the titles of the
books, and threw a rosary across the table to the King's counsel. "And
now," he cried with a loud voice, "I lay this information before God,
before this court, and before the English people. We shall soon see
whether Mr. Attorney will do his duty. "
It was resolved that, before the punishment was inflicted, Johnson
should be degraded from the priesthood. The prelates who had been
charged by the Ecclesiastical Commission with the care of the diocese
of London cited him before them in the chapter house of Saint Paul's
Cathedral. The manner in which he went through the ceremony made a deep
impression on many minds. When he was stripped of his sacred robe he
exclaimed, "You are taking away my gown because I have tried to keep
your gowns on your backs. " The only part of the formalities which seemed
to distress him was the plucking of the Bible out of his hand. He made
a faint struggle to retain the sacred book, kissed it, and burst into
tears. "You cannot," he said, "deprive me of the hopes which I owe to
it. " Some attempts were made to obtain a remission of the flogging. A
Roman Catholic priest offered to intercede in consideration of a bribe
of two hundred pounds. The money was raised; and the priest did his
best, but in vain.
"Mr. Johnson," said the King, "has the spirit of a martyr; and it is fit
that he should be one. " William the Third said, a few years later, of
one of the most acrimonious and intrepid Jacobites, "He has set his
heart on being a martyr, and I have set mine on disappointing him. "
These two speeches would alone suffice to explain the widely different
fates of the two princes.
The day appointed for the flogging came. A whip of nine lashes was used.
Three hundred and seventeen stripes were inflicted; but the sufferer
never winced. He afterwards said that the pain was cruel, but that, as
he was dragged at the tail of the cart, he remembered how patiently the
cross had been borne up Mount Calvary, and was so much supported by the
thought that, but for the fear of incurring the suspicion of vain glory,
he would have sung a psalm with as firm and cheerful a voice as if he
had been worshipping God in the congregation. It is impossible not to
wish that so much heroism had been less alloyed by intemperance and
intolerance. [116]
Among the clergy of the Church of England Johnson found no sympathy. He
had attempted to justify rebellion; he had even hinted approbation of
regicide; and they still, in spite of much provocation, clung to the
doctrine of nonresistance. But they saw with alarm and concern the
progress of what they considered as a noxious superstition, and, while
they abjured all thought of defending their religion by the sword,
betook themselves manfully to weapons of a different kind. To preach
against the errors of Popery was now regarded by them as a point of duty
and a point of honour. The London clergy, who were then in abilities
and influence decidedly at the head of their profession, set an example
which was bravely followed by their ruder brethren all over the country.
Had only a few bold men taken this freedom, they would probably have
been at once cited before the Ecclesiastical Commission; but it was
hardly possible to punish an offence which was committed every Sunday
by thousands of divines, from Berwick to Penzance. The presses of
the capital, of Oxford, and of Cambridge, never rested. The act which
subjected literature to a censorship did not seriously impede the
exertions of Protestant controversialists; for it contained a proviso
in favour of the two Universities, and authorised the publication of
theological works licensed by the Archbishop of Canterbury. It was
therefore out of the power of the government to silence the defenders of
the established religion. They were a numerous, an intrepid, and a
well appointed band of combatants. Among them were eloquent declaimers,
expert dialecticians, scholars deeply read in the writings of the
fathers and in all parts of ecclesiastical history. Some of them, at a
later period, turned against one another the formidable arms which they
had wielded against the common enemy, and by their fierce contentions
and insolent triumphs brought reproach on the Church which they had
saved. But at present they formed an united phalanx. In the van appeared
a rank of steady and skilful veterans, Tillotson, Stillingfleet,
Sherlock, Prideaux, Whitby, Patrick, Tenison, Wake. The rear was brought
up by the most distinguished bachelors of arts who were studying for
deacon's orders. Conspicuous amongst the recruits whom Cambridge sent to
the field was a distinguished pupil of the great Newton, Henry Wharton,
who had, a few months before, been senior wrangler of his year, and
whose early death was soon after deplored by men of all parties as an
irreparable loss to letters. [117] Oxford was not less proud of a youth,
whose great powers, first essayed in this conflict, afterwards troubled
the Church and the State during forty eventful years, Francis Atterbury.
By such men as these every question in issue between the Papists and
the Protestants was debated, sometimes in a popular style which boys and
women could comprehend, sometimes with the utmost subtlety of logic, and
sometimes with an immense display of learning. The pretensions of the
Holy See, the authority of tradition, purgatory, transubstantiation, the
sacrifice of the mass, the adoration of the host, the denial of the cup
to the laity, confession, penance, indulgences, extreme unction, the
invocation of saints, the adoration of images, the celibacy of the
clergy, the monastic vows, the practice of celebrating public worship in
a tongue unknown to the multitude, the corruptions of the court of Rome,
the history of the Reformation, the characters of the chief reformers,
were copiously discussed. Great numbers of absurd legends about miracles
wrought by saints and relics were translated from the Italian and
published as specimens of the priestcraft by which the greater part of
Christendom had been fooled. Of the tracts put forth on these subjects
by Anglican divines during the short reign of James the Second many have
probably perished. Those which may still be found in our great libraries
make up a mass of near twenty thousand pages. [118]
The Roman Catholics did not yield the victory without a struggle. One
of them, named Henry Hills, had been appointed printer to the royal
household and chapel, and had been placed by the King at the head of
a great office in London from which theological tracts came forth by
hundreds. Obadiah Walker's press was not less active at Oxford. But,
with the exception of some bad translations of Bossuet's admirable
works, these establishments put forth nothing of the smallest value. It
was indeed impossible for any intelligent and candid Roman Catholic
to deny that the champions of his Church were, in every talent and
acquirement, completely over-matched. The ablest of them would not, on
the other side, have been considered as of the third rate. Many of them,
even when they had something to say, knew not how to say it. They had
been excluded by their religion from English schools and universities;
nor had they ever, till the accession of James, found England an
agreeable, or even a safe, residence. They had therefore passed the
greater part of their lives on the Continent, and had almost unlearned
their mother tongue. When they preached, their outlandish accent moved
the derision of the audience. They spelt like washerwomen. Their diction
was disfigured by foreign idioms; and, when they meant to be eloquent,
they imitated, as well as they could, what was considered as fine
writing in those Italian academies where rhetoric had then reached the
last stage of corruption. Disputants labouring under these disadvantages
would scarcely, even with truth on their side, have been able to make
head against men whose style is eminently distinguished by simple purity
and grace. [119]
The situation of England in the year 1686 cannot be better described
than in the words of the French Ambassador. "The discontent," he wrote,
"is great and general: but the fear of incurring still worse evils
restrains all who have anything to lose. The King openly expresses his
joy at finding himself in a situation to strike bold strokes. He likes
to be complimented on this subject. He has talked to me about it, and
has assured me that he will not flinch. " [120]
Meanwhile in other parts of the empire events of grave importance had
taken place. The situation of the episcopalian Protestants of Scotland
differed widely from that in which their English brethren stood. In the
south of the island the religion of the state was the religion of
the people, and had a strength altogether independent of the strength
derived from the support of the government. The sincere conformists were
far more numerous than the Papists and the Protestant Dissenters taken
together. The Established Church of Scotland was the Church of a small
minority. The majority of the lowland population was firmly attached to
the Presbyterian discipline. Prelacy was abhorred by the great body
of Scottish Protestants, both as an unscriptural and as a foreign
institution. It was regarded by the disciples of Knox as a relic of the
abominations of Babylon the Great. It painfully reminded a people proud
of the memory of Wallace and Bruce that Scotland, since her sovereigns
had succeeded to a fairer inheritance, had been independent in name
only. The episcopal polity was also closely associated in the public
mind with all the evils produced by twenty-five years of corrupt and
cruel maladministration. Nevertheless this polity stood, though on a
narrow basis and amidst fearful storms, tottering indeed, yet upheld by
the civil magistrate, and leaning for support, whenever danger became
serious, on the power of England. The records of the Scottish Parliament
were thick set with laws denouncing vengeance on those who in any
direction strayed from the prescribed pale.
By an Act passed in the time
of Knox, and breathing his spirit, it was a high crime to hear mass,
and the third offence was capital. [121] An Act recently passed, at
the instance of James, made it death to preach in any Presbyterian
conventicle whatever, and even to attend such a conventicle in the open
air. [122] The Eucharist was not, as in England, degraded into a civil
test; but no person could hold any office, could sit in Parliament, or
could even vote for a member of Parliament, without subscribing, under
the sanction of an oath, a declaration which condemned in the strongest
terms the principles both of the Papists and of the Covenanters. [123]
In the Privy Council of Scotland there were two parties corresponding to
the two parties which were contending against each other at Whitehall.
William Douglas, Duke of Queensberry, was Lord Treasurer, and had,
during some years, been considered as first minister. He was nearly
connected by affinity, by similarity of opinions, and by similarity of
temper, with the Treasurer of England. Both were Tories: both were men
of hot temper and strong prejudices; both were ready to support their
master in any attack on the civil liberties of his people; but both
were sincerely attached to the Established Church. Queensberry had early
notified to the court that, if any innovation affecting that Church were
contemplated, to such innovation he could be no party. But among his
colleagues were several men not less unprincipled than Sunderland. In
truth the Council chamber at Edinburgh had been, during a quarter of
a century, a seminary of all public and private vices; and some of
the politicians whose character had been formed there had a peculiar
hardness of heart and forehead to which Westminster, even in that bad
age, could hardly show anything quite equal. The Chancellor, James
Drummond, Earl of Perth, and his brother, the Secretary of State, John
Lord Melfort, were bent on supplanting Queensberry. The Chancellor had
already an unquestionable title to the royal favour. He had brought into
use a little steel thumbscrew which gave such exquisite torment that it
had wrung confessions even out of men on whom His Majesty's favourite
boot had been tried in vain. [124] But it was well known that even
barbarity was not so sure a way to the heart of James as apostasy. To
apostasy, therefore, Perth and Melfort resorted with a certain audacious
baseness which no English statesman could hope to emulate. They declared
that the papers found in the strong box of Charles the Second had
converted them both to the true faith; and they began to confess and to
hear mass. [125] How little conscience had to do with Perth's change of
religion he amply proved by taking to wife, a few weeks later, in direct
defiance of the laws of the Church which he had just joined, a lady who
was his cousin german, without waiting for a dispensation. When the good
Pope learned this, he said, with scorn and indignation which well became
him, that this was a strange sort of conversion. [126] But James was
more easily satisfied. The apostates presented themselves at Whitehall,
and there received such assurances of his favour, that they ventured to
bring direct charges against the Treasurer. Those charges, however,
were so evidently frivolous that James was forced to acquit the accused
minister; and many thought that the Chancellor had ruined himself by his
malignant eagerness to ruin his rival. There were a few, however,
who judged more correctly. Halifax, to whom Perth expressed some
apprehensions, answered with a sneer that there was no danger. "Be of
good cheer, my Lord; thy faith hath made thee whole. " The prediction was
correct. Perth and Melfort went back to Edinburgh, the real heads of the
government of their country. [127] Another member of the Scottish Privy
Council, Alexander Stuart, Earl of Murray, the descendant and heir of
the Regent, abjured the religion of which his illustrious ancestor had
been the foremost champion, and declared himself a member of the
Church of Rome. Devoted as Queensberry had always been to the cause of
prerogative, he could not stand his ground against competitors who
were willing to pay such a price for the favour of the court. He had to
endure a succession of mortifications and humiliations similar to those
which, about the same time, began to embitter the life of his friend
Rochester. Royal letters came down authorising Papists to hold offices
without taking the test. The clergy were strictly charged not to reflect
on the Roman Catholic religion in their discourses. The Chancellor took
on himself to send the macers of the Privy Council round to the few
printers and booksellers who could then be found in Edinburgh, charging
them not to publish any work without his license. It was well understood
that this order was intended to prevent the circulation of Protestant
treatises. One honest stationer told the messengers that he had in his
shop a book which reflected in very coarse terms on Popery, and begged
to know whether he might sell it. They asked to see it; and he showed
them a copy of the Bible. [128] A cargo of images, beads, crosses and
censers arrived at Leith directed to Lord Perth. The importation of such
articles had long been considered as illegal; but now the officers of
the customs allowed the superstitious garments and trinkets to pass.
[129] In a short time it was known that a Popish chapel had been fitted
up in the Chancellor's house, and that mass was regularly said there.
The mob rose. The mansion where the idolatrous rites were celebrated
was fiercely attacked. The iron bars which protected the windows were
wrenched off. Lady Perth and some of her female friends were pelted
with mud. One rioter was seized, and ordered by the Privy Council to be
whipped. His fellows rescued him and beat the hangman. The city was
all night in confusion. The students of the University mingled with the
crowd and animated the tumult. Zealous burghers drank the health of the
college lads and confusion to Papists, and encouraged each other to face
the troops. The troops were already under arms. They were received with
a shower of stones, which wounded an officer. Orders were given to fire;
and several citizens were killed. The disturbance was serious; but
the Drummonds, inflamed by resentment and ambition, exaggerated it
strangely. Queensberry observed that their reports would lead any
person, who had not been a witness of the tumult, to believe that
a sedition as formidable as that of Masaniello had been raging at
Edinburgh. They in return accused the Treasurer, not only of extenuating
the crime of the insurgents, but of having himself prompted it, and
did all in their power to obtain evidence of his guilt. One of the
ringleaders, who had been taken, was offered a pardon if he would own
that Queensberry had set him on; but the same religious enthusiasm,
which had impelled the unhappy prisoner to criminal violence, prevented
him from purchasing his life by a calumny. He and several of his
accomplices were hanged. A soldier, who was accused of exclaiming,
during the affray, that he should like to run his sword through a
Papist, was shot; and Edinburgh was again quiet: but the sufferers
were regarded as martyrs; and the Popish Chancellor became an object of
mortal hatred, which in no long time was largely gratified. [130]
The King was much incensed. The news of the tumult reached him when the
Queen, assisted by the Jesuits, had just triumphed over Lady Dorchester
and her Protestant allies. The malecontents should find, he declared,
that the only effect of the resistance offered to his will was to make
him more and more resolute. [131] He sent orders to the Scottish Council
to punish the guilty with the utmost severity, and to make unsparing use
of the boot. [132] He pretended to be fully convinced of the Treasurer's
innocence, and wrote to that minister in gracious words; but the
gracious words were accompanied by ungracious acts. The Scottish
Treasury was put into commission in spite of the earnest remonstrances
of Rochester, who probably saw his own fate prefigured in that of his
kinsman. [133] Queensberry was, indeed, named First Commissioner, and
was made President of the Privy Council: but his fall, though thus
broken, was still a fall. He was also removed from the government of the
castle of Edinburgh, and was succeeded in that confidential post by the
Duke of Gordon, a Roman Catholic. [134]
And now a letter arrived from London, fully explaining to the Scottish
Privy Council the intentions of the King. What he wanted was that the
Roman Catholics should be exempted from all laws imposing penalties and
disabilities on account of nonconformity, but that the persecution
of the Covenanters should go on without mitigation. [135] This scheme
encountered strenuous opposition in the Council. Some members were
unwilling to see the existing laws relaxed. Others, who were by no means
averse to some relaxation, yet felt that it would be monstrous to admit
Roman Catholics to the highest honours of the state, and yet to
leave unrepealed the Act which made it death to attend a Presbyterian
conventicle. The answer of the board was, therefore, less obsequious
than usual. The King in reply sharply reprimanded his undutiful
Councillors, and ordered three of them, the Duke of Hamilton, Sir George
Lockhart, and General Drummond, to attend him at Westminster. Hamilton's
abilities and knowledge, though by no means such as would have sufficed
to raise an obscure man to eminence, appeared highly respectable in one
who was premier peer of Scotland. Lockhart had long been regarded as
one of the first jurists, logicians, and orators that his country had
produced, and enjoyed also that sort of consideration which is derived
from large possessions; for his estate was such as at that time very few
Scottish nobles possessed. [136] He had been lately appointed President
of the Court of Session. Drummond, a younger brother of Perth and
Melfort, was commander of the forces in Scotland. He was a loose
and profane man: but a sense of honour which his two kinsmen wanted
restrained him from a public apostasy. He lived and died, in the
significant phrase of one of his countrymen, a bad Christian, but a good
Protestant. [137]
James was pleased by the dutiful language which the three Councillors
used when first they appeared before him. He spoke highly of them to
Barillon, and particularly extolled Lockhart as the ablest and most
eloquent Scotchman living. They soon proved, however, less tractable
than had been expected; and it was rumoured at court that they had been
perverted by the company which they had kept in London. Hamilton lived
much with zealous churchmen; and it might be feared that Lockhart, who
was related to the Wharton family, had fallen into still worse society.
In truth it was natural that statesmen fresh from a country where
opposition in any other form than that of insurrection and assassination
had long been almost unknown, and where all that was not lawless fury
was abject submission, should have been struck by the earnest and
stubborn, yet sober, discontent which pervaded England, and should have
been emboldened to try the experiment of constitutional resistance to
the royal will. They indeed declared themselves willing to grant large
relief to the Roman Catholics; but on two conditions; first, that
similar indulgence should be extended to the Calvinistic sectaries; and,
secondly, that the King should bind himself by a solemn promise not to
attempt anything to the prejudice of the Protestant religion.
Both conditions were highly distasteful to James. He reluctantly agreed,
however, after a dispute which lasted several days, that some indulgence
should be granted to the Presbyterians but he would by no means consent
to allow them the full liberty which he demanded for members of his own
communion. [138] To the second condition proposed by the three Scottish
Councillors he positively refused to listen. The Protestant religion,
he said, was false and he would not give any guarantee that he would not
use his power to the prejudice of a false religion. The altercation was
long, and was not brought to a conclusion satisfactory to either party.
[139]
The time fixed for the meeting of the Scottish Estates drew near; and it
was necessary that the three Councillors should leave London to attend
their parliamentary duty at Edinburgh. On this occasion another affront
was offered to Queensberry. In the late session he had held the office
of Lord High Commissioner, and had in that capacity represented the
majesty of the absent King. This dignity, the greatest to which a
Scottish noble could aspire, was now transferred to the renegade Murray.
On the twenty-ninth of April the Parliament met at Edinburgh. A letter
from the King was read. He exhorted the Estates to give relief to his
Roman Catholic subjects, and offered in return a free trade with England
and an amnesty for political offences. A committee was appointed to draw
up an answer. That committee, though named by Murray, and composed of
Privy Councillors and courtiers, framed a reply, full indeed of dutiful
and respectful expressions, yet clearly indicating a determination to
refuse what the King demanded. The Estates, it was said, would go as far
as their consciences would allow to meet His Majesty's wishes respecting
his subjects of the Roman Catholic religion. These expressions were far
from satisfying the Chancellor; yet, such as they were, he was forced
to content himself with them, and even had some difficulty in persuading
the Parliament to adopt them. Objection was taken by some zealous
Protestants to the mention made of the Roman Catholic religion. There
was no such religion. There was an idolatrous apostasy, which the laws
punished with the halter, and to which it did not become Christian men
to give flattering titles. To call such a superstition Catholic was
to give up the whole question which was at issue between Rome and the
reformed Churches. The offer of a free trade with England was treated as
an insult. "Our fathers," said one orator, "sold their King for southern
gold; and we still lie under the reproach of that foul bargain. Let
it not be said of us that we have sold our God! " Sir John Lauder of
Fountainhall, one of the Senators of the College of Justice, suggested
the words, "the persons commonly called Roman Catholics. " "Would you
nickname His Majesty? " exclaimed the Chancellor. The answer drawn by
the committee was carried; but a large and respectable minority voted
against the proposed words as too courtly. [140] It was remarked that
the representatives of the towns were, almost to a man, against the
government. Hitherto those members had been of small account in the
Parliament, and had generally, been considered as the retainers of
powerful noblemen. They now showed, for the first time, an independence,
a resolution, and a spirit of combination which alarmed the court. [141]
The answer was so unpleasing to James that he did not suffer it to be
printed in the Gazette. Soon he learned that a law, such as he wished to
see passed, would not even be brought in. The Lords of Articles, whose
business was to draw up the acts on which the Estates were afterwards to
deliberate, were virtually nominated by himself. Yet even the Lords of
Articles proved refractory. When they met, the three Privy Councillors
who had lately returned from London took the lead in opposition to the
royal will. Hamilton declared plainly that he could not do what was
asked. He was a faithful and loyal subject; but there was a limit
imposed by conscience. "Conscience! " said the Chancellor: "conscience is
a vague word, which signifies any thing or nothing. " Lockhart, who sate
in Parliament as representative of the great county of Lanark, struck
in. "If conscience," he said, "be a word without meaning, we will change
it for another phrase which, I hope, means something. For conscience let
us put the fundamental laws of Scotland. " These words raised a fierce
debate. General Drummond, who represented Perthshire, declared that he
agreed with Hamilton and Lockhart. Most of the Bishops present took the
same side. [142]
It was plain that, even in the Committee of Articles, James could not
command a majority. He was mortified and irritated by the tidings.
He held warm and menacing language, and punished some of his mutinous
servants, in the hope that the rest would take warning. Several
persons were dismissed from the Council board. Several were deprived
of pensions, which formed an important part of their income. Sir George
Mackenzie of Rosehaugh was the most distinguished victim. He had long
held the office of Lord Advocate, and had taken such a part in the
persecution of the Covenanters that to this day he holds, in the
estimation of the austere and godly peasantry of Scotland, a place not
far removed from the unenviable eminence occupied by Claverhouse. The
legal attainments of Mackenzie were not of the highest order: but, as
a scholar, a wit, and an orator, he stood high in the opinion of his
countrymen; and his renown had spread even to the coffeehouses of London
and the cloisters of Oxford. The remains of his forensic speeches prove
him to have been a man of parts, but are somewhat disfigured by what he
doubtless considered as Ciceronian graces, interjections which show more
art than passion, and elaborate amplifications, in which epithet rises
above epithet in wearisome climax. He had now, for the first time, been
found scrupulous. He was, therefore, in spite of all his claims on the
gratitude of the government, deprived of his office. He retired into the
country, and soon after went up to London for the purpose of clearing
himself, but was refused admission to the royal presence. [143]
While the King was thus trying to terrify the Lords of Articles into
submission, the popular voice encouraged them to persist. The utmost
exertions of the Chancellor could not prevent the national sentiment
from expressing itself through the pulpit and the press. One tract,
written with such boldness and acrimony that no printer dared to put it
in type, was widely circulated in manuscript. The papers which appeared
on the other side of the question had much less effect, though they were
disseminated at the public charge, and though the Scottish defenders
of the government were assisted by an English auxiliary of great note,
Lestrange, who had been sent down to Edinburgh, and had apartments in
Holyrood House. [144]
At length, after three weeks of debate, the Lords of Articles came to a
decision. They proposed merely that Roman Catholics should be permitted
to worship God in private houses without incurring any penalty; and it
soon appeared that, far as this measure was from coming up to the King's
demands and expectations, the Estates either would not pass it at all,
or would pass it with great restrictions and modifications.
While the contest lasted the anxiety in London was intense. Every
report, every line, from Edinburgh was eagerly devoured. One day the
story ran that Hamilton had given way and that the government would
carry every point. Then came intelligence that the opposition had
rallied and was more obstinate than ever. At the most critical moment
orders were sent to the post-office that the bags from Scotland should
be transmitted to Whitehall. During a whole week not a single private
letter from beyond the Tweed was delivered in London. In our age such
an interruption of communication would throw the whole island into
confusion: but there was then so little trade and correspondence between
England and Scotland that the inconvenience was probably much smaller
than has been often occasioned in our own time by a short delay in the
arrival of the Indian mail. While the ordinary channels of information
were thus closed, the crowd in the galleries of Whitehall observed
with attention the countenances of the King and his ministers. It was
noticed, with great satisfaction, that, after every express from the
North, the enemies of the Protestant religion looked more and more
gloomy. At length, to the general joy, it was announced that the
struggle was over, that the government had been unable to carry
its measures, and that the Lord High Commissioner had adjourned the
Parliament. [145]
If James had not been proof to all warning, these events would have
sufficed to warn him. A few months before this time the most obsequious
of English Parliaments had refused to submit to his pleasure. But
the most obsequious of English Parliaments might be regarded as an
independent and high spirited assembly when compared with any Parliament
that had ever sate in Scotland; and the servile spirit of Scottish
Parliaments was always to be found in the highest perfection, extracted
and condensed, among the Lords of Articles. Yet even the Lords of
Articles had been refractory. It was plain that all those classes, all
those institutions, which, up to this year, had been considered as the
strongest supports of monarchical power, must, if the King persisted
in his insane policy, be reckoned as parts of the strength of the
opposition. All these signs, however, were lost upon him. To every
expostulation he had one answer: he would never give way; for concession
had ruined his father; and his unconquerable firmness was loudly
applauded by the French embassy and by the Jesuitical cabal.
He now proclaimed that he had been only too gracious when he had
condescended to ask the assent of the Scottish Estates to his wishes.
His prerogative would enable him not only to protect those whom he
favoured, but to punish those who had crossed him. He was confident
that, in Scotland, his dispensing power would not be questioned by any
court of law. There was a Scottish Act of Supremacy which gave to the
sovereign such a control over the Church as might have satisfied Henry
the Eighth. Accordingly Papists were admitted in crowds to offices
and honours. The Bishop of Dunkeld, who, as a Lord of Parliament, had
opposed the government, was arbitrarily ejected from his see, and
a successor was appointed. Queensberry was stripped of all his
employments, and was ordered to remain at Edinburgh till the accounts of
the Treasury during his administration had been examined and approved.
[146] As the representatives of the towns had been found the most
unmanageable part of the Parliament, it was determined to make a
revolution in every burgh throughout the kingdom. A similar change had
recently been effected in England by judicial sentences: but in Scotland
a simple mandate of the prince was thought sufficient. All elections of
magistrates and of town councils were prohibited; and the King assumed
to himself the right of filling up the chief municipal offices. [147] In
a formal letter to the Privy Council he announced his intention to fit
up a Roman Catholic chapel in his palace of Holyrood; and he gave orders
that the Judges should be directed to treat all the laws against Papists
as null, on pain of his high displeasure. He however comforted the
Protestant Episcopalians by assuring them that, though he was determined
to protect the Roman Catholic Church against them, he was equally
determined to protect them against any encroachment on the part of the
fanatics. To this communication Perth proposed an answer couched in
the most servile terms. The Council now contained many Papists; the
Protestant members who still had seats had been cowed by the King's
obstinacy and severity; and only a few faint murmurs were heard.
Hamilton threw out against the dispensing power some hints which he made
haste to explain away. Lockhart said that he would lose his head rather
than sign such a letter as the Chancellor had drawn, but took care to
say this in a whisper which was heard only by friends. Perth's words
were adopted with inconsiderable modifications; and the royal commands
were obeyed; but a sullen discontent spread through that minority of the
Scottish nation by the aid of which the government had hitherto held the
majority down. [148]
When the historian of this troubled reign turns to Ireland, his task
becomes peculiarly difficult and delicate. His steps,--to borrow the
fine image used on a similar occasion by a Roman poet,--are on the thin
crust of ashes, beneath which the lava is still glowing. The seventeenth
century has, in that unhappy country, left to the nineteenth a fatal
heritage of malignant passions. No amnesty for the mutual wrongs
inflicted by the Saxon defenders of Londonderry, and by the Celtic
defenders of Limerick, has ever been granted from the heart by either
race. To this day a more than Spartan haughtiness alloys the many noble
qualities which characterize the children of the victors, while a Helot
feeling, compounded of awe and hatred, is but too often discernible in
the children of the vanquished. Neither of the hostile castes can justly
be absolved from blame; but the chief blame is due to that shortsighted
and headstrong prince who, placed in a situation in which he might have
reconciled them, employed all his power to inflame their animosity, and
at length forced them to close in a grapple for life and death.
The grievances under which the members of his Church laboured in Ireland
differed widely from those which he was attempting to remove in England
and Scotland. The Irish Statute Book, afterwards polluted by intolerance
as barbarous as that of the dark ages, then contained scarce a single
enactment, and not a single stringent enactment, imposing any penalty on
Papists as such. On our side of Saint George's Channel every priest who
received a neophyte into the bosom of the Church of Rome was liable to
be hanged, drawn, and quartered. On the other side he incurred no such
danger. A Jesuit who landed at Dover took his life in his hand; but he
walked the streets of Dublin in security. Here no man could hold office,
or even earn his livelihood as a barrister or a schoolmaster, without
previously taking the oath of supremacy, but in Ireland a public
functionary was not held to be under the necessity of taking that oath
unless it were formally tendered to him. [149] It therefore did not
exclude from employment any person whom the government wished
to promote. The sacramental test and the declaration against
transubstantiation were unknown nor was either House of Parliament
closed against any religious sect.
It might seem, therefore, that the Irish Roman Catholic was in a
situation which his English and Scottish brethren in the faith might
well envy. In fact, however, his condition was more pitiable and
irritating than theirs. For, though not persecuted as a Roman Catholic,
he was oppressed as an Irishman. In his country the same line of
demarcation which separated religions separated races; and he was of the
conquered, the subjugated, the degraded race. On the same soil dwelt two
populations, locally intermixed, morally and politically sundered. The
difference of religion was by no means the only difference, and was
perhaps not even the chief difference, which existed between them. They
sprang from different stocks.
