Tendencies to Absolutism--Revocation of the Edict of Nantes-Meeting of Parliament-James announces his appointments of Romish Officers-Address of the Commons-Dissatisfaction of the Peers-Parliament prorogued-Trials for treason-Repeated prorogations, and final dissolution of the Parliament-Preponderance of the Jesuit party in the governmentEmbassy to Rome-Dispensing power of the king-Court of King's Bench affirms the royal power to dispense with the Test Laws-Roman Catholics appointed to beneficesThe Ecclesiastical Commission-The bishop of London suspended from spiritual functions -Monastic bodies settle in London-Mass at Oxford-Trial of the Rev. Samuel JohnsonMassey, a Romanist, Dean of Christchurch-Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge deprivedFellows of Magdalen College, Oxford, ejected.

WHEN the failure of Monmouth's expedition seemed almost inevitable, Louis the Fourteenth wrote to his ambassador in England, "there is every appearance that he will soon meet with the same fate as the earl of Argyle; and that his attempt will have served to render the king of England much more absolute in his kingdom than any of his predecessors." Louis made this incontrovertible deduction from the whole course of history. Tyranny never learns moderation from the resistance which is made to it. The resistance must be strong enough to crush the tyranny, or the second state of the enslaved people will be far worse than the first. The attempt of Monmouth was premature. The nation had vague fears of the disposition of the government, but those fears were not sufficient to justify insurrection. The system of James was not at that time fully developed. The man who undertook to attack that system in its infant strength had not the confidence of the best part of the nation. Yet his rallying cry of "The Protestant Religion " might have convinced any ruler less blind and obstinate than James, that the principle which was sufficient suddenly to raise the industrious people of the western counties into an army of cloth-workers and miners, to make the train-bands throw away their uniforms, and to leave it doubtful whether the militia would fight, would, if provoked beyond a certain point, convert the whole nation into the opponents of the king. Fortunate was it for the future destinies of England that James the Second, who would have been the most dangerous of rulers a century earlier, was the weakest of

VOL. IV.

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402

REVOCATION OF THE EDICT OF NANTES.

[1685.

despots, in his utter ignorance of the new elements of society which had been called into real vitality during the struggles of his father. He was not wanting in ability and in decision of character; he was capable of serious application to business; ne was not utterly prostrated by idleness and luxury as his brother was. But his personal merits were as the fuel to nourish the fire of his intense egoism. Every action of his life had reference to his personality. James, the king, was the one power in the State, that was to counterbalance every other power. If James, the king, could retain an Established Church, to proclaim his divine right to dispense with laws, and to share its honours and riches with the Romanists, till it should be wholly recovered to Rome, it were well. If James, the king, could maintain a large standing army, by the voluntary contributions of the people, it were well. But if Parliament should refuse supplies; if the Church should preach of the supremacy of the law over the will of the sovereign; if the people should murmur under a hated military domination, then, Parliament should be dismissed; a High Commission should again purge the Church of all disloyalty; the soldiers should familiarise burgess and yeoman with the benefits of free quarters. James was not a man to accomplish such designs. He ran straightforward, snapping as the mad-dog runs and snaps, and of course had the same mad-dog ending, as a public enemy.

The Parliament was to meet on the 9th of November. Its meeting had been preceded by the dismissal of Halifax from his office of President of the Council. The king could not induce the ablest man of his time to fall into his own views as to the removal of the Test Act. The schemes of James were maturing; and he desired to be surrounded by ministers who would have no scruples in seconding them. The removal of the barriers which opposed the admission of Roman Catholics to office; the repeal of the Habeas Corpus Act; and the establishment of a large Standing Army, were the objects to which the king devoted himself without reserve. The Jesuits urged on the king, persuading him that "the present juncture is the most favourable one that can be hoped for," to strengthen his authority. "But the opulent and settled Catholics are alarmed for the future, and apprehend a change which may ruin them." So wrote Barillon, the French ambassador. This juncture was not altogether the most favourable. That persecution of the Protestants in France which was carried into effect by the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, took place in October. Under this Edict the Protestants had lived undisturbed in the exercise of their religion. The Edict had been originally declared to be a perpetual and irrevocable law. The most peaceful and industrious communities had flourished under this toleration; and now the law was suddenly abrogated at the will of a despotic king, to whom the people were no more than the beasts of the field. Louis had long carried on a petty warfare against the Calvinists-interfering with education, seizing upon property, closing places of worship. But now, the Protestant religion was to be extirpated in France at one blow. The ministers of the reformed faith were suddenly banished or imprisoned; children were taken away from their parents; women were driven into nunneries; dragoons were let. loose upon the people, to pillage and to destroy. Burnet has described the horrible scenes of what he terms "one of the most violent persecutions that is to be found in history." He says, I went over the greatest part of France while

1685.]

MEETING OF PARLIAMENT.

403

it was in its hottest rage, from Marseilles to Montpelier, and from thence to Lyons, and so to Geneva. I saw and knew so many instances of their injustice and violence, that it exceeded even what could have been well imagined; for all men set their thoughts at work, to invent new methods of cruelty. In all the towns through which I passed, I heard the most dismal accounts of those things possible; but chiefly at Valence, where one Derapine seemed to exceed even the furies of inquisitors. One in the streets could have known the new converts, as they were passing by them, by a cloudy dejection that appeared in their looks and deportment. Such as endeavoured to make their escape, and were seized (for guards and secret agents were spread along the whole roads and frontier of France), were, if men, condemned to the galleys; and, if women, to monasteries. . . . The fury that appeared on this occasion did spread itself with a sort of contagion: for the intendants, and other officers, that had been mild and gentle in the former parts of their life, seemed now to have laid aside the compassion of Christians, the breeding of gentlemen, and the common impressions of humanity. The greatest part of the clergy, the regulars especially, were so transported with the zeal that their king shewed on this occasion, that their sermons were full of the most inflamed eloquence that they could invent, magnifying their king in strains too indecent and blasphemous to be mentioned by me." The persecuted families carried their industry to other countries. To England they brought their silk trade; and they taught us to make the hats which we had been accustomed to buy from France. "The tyrant's revenue," says Evelyn, "was exceedingly diminished; manufactures ceased." At the moment at which the Protestant refugees were pouring into England, James was labouring to attain the same power that Louis had so wantonly exercised. There was no concealment about the matter. Evelyn writes, "I was shewed the harangue which the bishop of Valentia, on Rhone, made in the name of the Clergy, celebrating the French king, as if he was a God, for persecuting the poor Protestants; with this expression in it: That as his victory over heresy was greater than all the conquests of Alexander and Cæsar, it was but what was wished in England; and that God seemed to raise the French king to this power and magnanimous action, that he might be in capacity to assist in doing the same here.'"*

The king opened the Parliament with a bold declaration. The rebellion, he said, was suppressed, but the Militia was insufficient for such services. "There is nothing but a good force of well-disciplined troops in constant pay, that can defend us from such as, either at home or abroad, are disposed to disturb us." He had increased the number of that army. He asked for a supply answerable to the expenses of that force. "Let no man take exception, that there are some officers in the army not qualified, according to the late Tests, for their employments. The gentlemen, I must tell you, are most of them well known to me; and having formerly served with me on several occasions, and always approved the loyalty of their principles by their practice, I think them now fit to be employed under me.' He was afraid, he declared, that some men might be so wicked as to hope and expect that a difference through this might happen between the Parliament and himself; but he

404

ADDRESS OF THE COMMONS.

[1685.

did not apprehend that any such misfortune could happen as a division, or even a coldness; nor anything to shake their steadiness and loyalty to him. Up to a certain point the House of Commons would have borne anything. All the Municipal Corporations of England might be destroyed; corrupt juries might be terrified into false verdicts; judicial massacres might be perpetrated without rebuke; an alderman of London, Cornish, might be hanged at this very time upon the revived story of the Rye-House Plot; a poor widow, Elizabeth Gaunt, might be burnt at Tyburn for giving shelter to a rebel, who afterwards betrayed her; there was no amount of Civil Despotism which a Parliament would not have sanctioned, and a Church declared righteous. But to put the power of the sword into the hands of Popish officers, and to ask the Protestant Commons to pay for this dangerous army, was something more than could be borne. We have happily lived to see these distinctions abolished; but it may be a question if English Protestantism could have ultimately shown its capacity for doing a tardy justice to Roman Catholics, if its most violent prejudices had not been roused at this season, and had not acquired a real strength and dignity by finding that the Cause of religion was also the Cause of liberty. The House of Commons, however the majority was composed of the nominees of the Court, was still penetrated with the old instincts of freedom. It hesitated about voting supplies, before considering the king's address. It beat the Court in a division of 183 against 182. It then, cautiously and timidly, gave the king to understand that he had committed an illegal act in appointing officers without their taking the test; and humbly hoped that "he would be graciously pleased to give such directions that no apprehensions or jealousies may remain in the hearts of his majesty's good and faithful subjects." He frowned upon the Commons. He did not expect such an Address. He had warned them against fears and jealousies. The reputation which God had blessed him with in the world ought to have created a greater confidence in him. The Commons were awe-struck by the threatening brow of this poor inflated creature. A country gentleman, Cook, of Derbyshire, said, he supposed they were all Englishmen, and not to be frightened from their duty by a few high words. The new-born independence of the House was laid low; and Cook was committed to the Tower for daring to say a word of implied reproach. But the spirit of resistance began to spread. The Peers manifested a deeper indignation against the violation of the Test Acts avowed in the royal speech, than the Commons had dared to exhibit. The sarcasm of Halifax was supported by the zeal of Compton, the bishop of London, and by the boldness of lord Mordaunt, afterwards the famous earl of Peterborough. The king was present at a great debate. Jeffreys, the Chancellor, attempted to carry the brutality of the Bench to his new position on the Woolsack. The presence of his master was not sufficient to protect him from the indignation of the proudest nobility of Europe. The government dared not divide upon the motion to take the king's speech into consideration; and the next morning the Parliament was prorogued, without any supplies having been voted.

We have now come to the end of the first Act of the Drama of the English Revolution. The king's manifestation of a temper to govern despotically, and of a design to force an obnoxious creed upon the nation,