414 THE FELLOWS OF MAGDALEN COLLEGE EJECTED. [1686. whose decrees were enforced by troops of cavalry. Hough refused to give up the keys of the college, and the doors were broken open. The bishop of Oxford was installed by proxy, only two fellows of the college giving their attendance. The other fellows at length consented to a modified submission to the authority which had been forced upon them. The king required a public acknowledgment that they had acted undutifully; and that the appointment of the bishop of Oxford was legal: they must sue for pardon. They one and all refused to submit to this humiliation. They were one and all ejected from their college, and declared incapable of holding any ecclesiastical appointment. The Ecclesiastical Commission, by which this edict was issued, forgot that a power might be raised again, as it had once been raised, before which High Commissioners might be swept away, and even the throne might totter to its base. The immediate object of the king was accomplished. Magdalen College soon became a college of Papists, with a Roman Catholic bishop at its head; for Parker, the bishop of Oxford, had enjoyed his dignity only during a few months, in which his authority was so openly resisted that he died, as men believed, of anxiety and mortification. A subscription was raised for the ejected fellows. All but the most bigoted saw that the ties which bound the Church to the Throne were so loosened, that upon one more violent strain the union might be utterly broken. Fall of the Hydes-Tyrconnel Lord Deputy in Ireland-Declarations in Scotland and England for Liberty of Conscience-Abolition of Penal Tests-Effects of the Declaration of IndulgenceThe camp at Hounslow Heath-The Papal Nuncio publicly received by the King-The King's policy towards Dissenters-Dryden's Poem of the Hind and the Panther "-The Declaration commanded to be read in Churches-The Petition of the Seven Bishops They are committed to the Tower-The public sympathy-The trial and acquittal of the Bishops-Birth of the Prince of Wales. THE year 1687 opened with evil forebodings to those who were well-wishers to the Monarchy and the Church. One whose loyalty must have been sorely shaken by the dangerous experiments upon the temper of the nation thus records his impressions: "Lord Tyrconnel gone to succeed the Lord Lieutenant in Ireland, to the astonishment of all sober men, and to the evident ruin of the Protestants in that kingdom, as well as of its great improvement going on. Much discourse that all the White-Staff officers and others should be dismissed for adhering to their religion." The Lord Lieutenant, to * Evelyn, "Diary," January 17. 416 TYRCONNEL LORD DEPUTY IN IRELAND. [1687. whom Tyrconnel is to succeed, is Clarendon. The White-Staff officers are to follow the dismissed Lord-Treasurer, Rochester. The fall of the two Hydes, the brothers-in-law of the king, was of evil omen. It was seen that the ties of relationship, of ancient friendship, of fidelity under adverse circumstances, were of no moment when the one dominant idea of the king was to coerce all around him into his measures for forcing his creed upon a reluctant nation. From the highest minister of the Crown to the humblest country magistrate, all appointments were to be made with reference to this royal monomania: "Popish justices of the peace established in all counties, of the meanest of the people; judges ignorant of the law, and perverting it. So furiously do the Jesuists drive, and even compel princes to violent courses, and destruction of an excellent government both in Church and State."* Tyrconnel, whose violence and rashness were objected to even by moderate Catholics, was instructed to depress the English interest, and proportionately to raise that of the Irish; " to the end that Ireland might offer a secure asylum to James and his friends, if by any subsequent revolution he should be driven from the English throne." But Tyrconnel, says Dr. Lingard, "had a further and more national object in view." He entered, with the sanction of the king, into secret negotiations with Louis XIV., "to render his native country independent of England, if James should die without male issue, and the prince and princess of Orange should inherit the crown." Ireland was then to become a dependency of France-a truly "national object." Tyrconnel went about his work in a wild way. He displaced the Protestant judges, and filled their seats with Catholics. He terrified the cities and towns into surrender of their charters, and gave them new charters which made parliamentary representation a mockery. He had a scheme for dispossessing the English settlers of the property which they had acquired in the forfeitures of half a century previous. His projects were opposed by grave Catholic peers, who said that the Lord-Deputy was fool and madman enough to ruin ten kingdoms. His character and that of his master, were ridiculed in the famous ballad of Lilli-Burlero: "Dare was an old prophecy found in a bog, Lilli burlero, bullen a-la; Ireland shall be ruled by an ass and a dog, James was the ass and Tyrconnel the dog. This ribaldry of Lord Wharton was adapted to a spirited air of Purcell, published ten years before. "The whole army," says Burnet, "and at last the people both in city and country, were singing it perpetually." Wharton afterwards boasted that he had rhymed James out of his dominions. He had produced a song, like, many other songs, of wondrous popularity, with little intrinsic merit. But those whose conviviality, even in our own days, has been stirred by its fascinating melody, may well believe that it was whistled and sung in every street in 1688; and that it had charms for Corporal Trim, and his fellow soldiers in + Lingard. Evelyn, "Diary," January 17. "A very good song, and very well sung, 1687.] DECLARATIONS FOR LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE, 417 Flanders, when its satire upon the "new deputie" who "will cut de Englishman's troat," was utterly forgotten. There is no error more common, even amongst educated persons, than to pronounce upon the opinions of a past age according to the lights of their own age. In February, 1687, James issued in Scotland a Declaration for Liberty of Conscience. In April, 1687, he issued a Declaration for Liberty of Conscience in England. Why, it is asked, were these declarations regarded with suspicion by Churchmen and by Dissenters? Why could not all sincere Christians, of whatever persuasion, have accepted the king's noble measures for the adoption of that tolerant principle which is now found to be perfectly compatible with the security of an Established Church. It was precisely because the principle has been slowly making its way during the contests of a hundred and fifty years, that it is now all but universally recognised as a safe and wholesome principle. It is out of the convictions resulting from our slow historical experience that all tests for admission to civil offices are now abolished for ever. Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, Quaker, Methodist, Independent, Unitarian, Jew, all stand upon the same common ground as the Churchman, of suffering no religious disqualification for the service of their country. But to imagine that such a result could have been effected by the interested will of a Papist king, who had himself been the fiercest of persecutors-who had adopted, to their fullest extent, the hatred of his family to every species of non-conformity,-is to imagine that the channels in which the great floods and little rills of religious opinion had long been flowing, were to be suddenly diverted into one mighty stream, for which time and wisdom had prepared no bed. King James announced to his people of Scotland that, "being resolved to unite the hearts and affections of his subjects, to God in religion, to himself in loyalty, and to their neighbours in Christian love and charity, he had therefore thought fit, by his sovereign authority, prerogative royal, and absolute power, which all his subjects were to obey without reserve, to give and grant his royal toleration to the several professors of the Christian religion after named." The moderate Presbyterians might meet in their houses; but field conventiclers were still to be resisted with the utmost severity. Quakers might meet and exercise their worship in any place. Above all, the various prohibitions and penalties against Roman Catholics were to be void; and all oaths and tests by which any subjects are incapacitated from holding place or office were remitted. The Council of Scotland made no hesitation about "sovereign authority" and "absolute power;" for they had told James at his accession that we abhor and detest all principles and positions which are contrary or derogatory to the king's sacred, supreme, absolute power and authority." In Scotland, the experiment appeared to be successful. The successors of John Knox made no sign of resistance to a decree which gave honour to the image-worshippers. James now summoned his English Council to proclaim to them his new charter of religious liberty. Freedom of conscience was conducive to peace and quiet, to commerce and population; during four reigns conformity in religion had been vainly attempted. All penal laws should be suspended by the royal prerogative. "A Daniel come to judgment," cried some short-sighted Protestants of that day. "A wise and upright judge," cry some libera. philosophers of the nineteenth century. 418 ABOLITION OF PENAL TESTS. [1687. Whilst James was introducing his scheme to his Council, he was sounding every peer and influential commoner who approached him, as to the probability of Parliament sanctioning the abolition of the Test Act. The Houses were shortly expected to meet. It was desirable to secure the adhesion of the members to this object, upon which the king had set his heart. He was met by coldness or open refusal, by many upon whose loyalty he thought he could count; and he believed that the loyalty which held kings to be divine would shrink from no sacrifices of higher principles. Upon those who held places he felt sure that he could successfully operate. "It was against all municipal law," said the king, "for free born subjects to be excluded the service of their prince, or for a prince to be restrained from employing such subjects as he thought fit for his service; and that therefore he hoped they would be so loyal as not to refuse him their voices for annulling such unreasonable laws." * Sir John Roresby was attacked by deputy: "The king ordered the judges, in their several circuits, to feel the pulses of the men; in consequence of which I was, to my great surprise, accosted at York by the judge, who told me he had orders to talk with me on the subject." The prudent governor of York evaded giving a direct expression of his intentions: "Had I answered in the affirmative, I might have incurred the displeasure and censure of the greatest part of the nation; if in the negative I should have utterly disobliged the king." Such negative would have forfeited his place: "Every man that persisted in a refusal to comply with this suggestion was sure to be outed." The labours of the king to gain the support of members of parliament, "even to discoursing every one of them particularly in his closet, which made the English call that way of conference closeting,"† set the worldly courtiers upon devising the most polite forms of expressing love and duty that committed them to nothing. When sir Dudley North was pressed, "he remembered an old Turkish saying, viz., that a man is to say 'no' only to the devil." Penn went over to Holland to sound the prince of Orange. William told him "that no man was more for toleration in principle than he was; he thought the conscience was only subject to God; and as far as a general toleration, even of papists, would content the king, he would concur in it heartily. But he looked on the tests as such a real security, and indeed the only one, when the king was of another religion, that he would join in no councils with those that intended to repeal those laws that enacted them."§ Penn undertook to promise that if the tests were abolished, the king would secure toleration by a solemn and unalterable law. He was answered by a demonstration of the value of irrevocable laws to a bigoted despot,- -a blunt reference to the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. James left off his closetings and his negotiations. His judges and lords-lieutenant were not required to persist in their labours of threat or persuasion. He resolved to do without the Parliament; which he prorogued for six months, with a full determination to be truly the absolute king. On the 4th of April he issued his Declaration for entire liberty of conscience. He would protect the Established Church in its legal rights, but all penal laws against all nonconformists were suspended. All religious tests as a qualification for office Reresby "Memoirs," p. 320. "Life of Sir Dudley North," p. 181. |