284 THE KING'S RUPTURE WITH THE TORIES. impolicy of its administration, had constantly stood on the brink of the most violent revolutions; where quiet seldom subsisted long but as the bitter fruit of terrible examples of cruelty and rapine, and where the majority of the people easily listened to offers of foreign aid against a government which they considered as the most hostile of foreigners. . CHAPTER V. Rupture with the Protestant Tories.-Increased Decision of the King's Designs.-Encroachments on the Church Establishment.-Charter House.-Oxford University College.-Christ Church.-Exeter College, Cambridge.—Magdalen College, Oxon. Declaration of Liberty of Conscience.-Similar Attempts of Charles. ---Proclamation at Edinburgh.—Resistance of the Church. In the beginning of the year 1687, the rupture of James with the powerful party who were ready to sacrifice all but the Church to his pleasure appeared to be irreparable. He had apparently destined Scotland to set the example of unbounded submission, under the forms of the constitution; and he undoubtedly hoped that the revolution in Ireland would supply him with the means of securing the obedience of his English subjects by intimidation or force. The failure of his project in the most Protestant part of his dominions, and its alarming success in the most Catholic, alike tended to widen the breach between parties in England. The Tories were more alienated from the crown by the example of their friends in Scotland, as well as by their dread of the Irish. An unreserved compliance with the King's designs became notoriously the condition by which office was to be obtained or preserved; and, except a very few instances of personal friendship, the public profession of the Catholic faith was required as the only security for that compliance. The royal confidence and the direction of public affairs were transferred from the Protestant Tories, in spite of their services and sufferings during half a century, into the hands of a faction, who, as their title to power was zeal for the advancement of Popery, must be called Papists, though some of them professed the Protestant religion, and though their maxims of policy, both in church and state, were dreaded and resisted by the most considerable of the English Catholics. It is hard to determine, perhaps it might have been impossible for James himself to say, how far his designs for the advancement of the Roman Catholic church extended at the period of his accession to the throne. It is agreeable to the nature of such projects that he should not, at first, dare to avow to himself any intention beyond that of obtaining relief for his religion, and placing it in a condition of safety and honour; but it is altogether improbable that he had even then steadily fixed on a secure toleration as the utmost limit of his endeavours. His schemes were probably vague and fluctuating, assuming a greater distinctness with respect to the removal of grievous penalties and disabilities, but always ready to seek as much advantage for his church as the progress of circumstances should render attainable: sometimes drawn back to toleration by prudence or fear, on other occasions impelled to more, daring counsels by the pride of success, or by anger at resistance. In this state of fluctuation it is not altogether irreconcilable with the irregularities of human nature, that he might have sometimes yielded a faint and transient assent to those principles of religious liberty which he professed in his public acts, though even this superficial sincerity is hard to be reconciled with his share in the secret treaty of 1670; with his administration of Scotland, where he carried his passion for intolerance so far as to be the leader of one sect of heretics in the bloody persecution of another; and with his language to Barillon, to whom, at the very moment of his professed toleration, he declared his approbation of the cruelties of Louis XIV. against his own Protestant subjects. It would be extravagant to expect that the liberal maxims which adorned his public declarations had taken such a hold on his mind as should withhold him from endeavouring to establish his own religion as soon as his sanguine zeal should lead him to think it practicable, or that he should not in process of time go on to guard it by that code of disabilities and penalties which was then enforced by every state in Europe except Holland, "J'ai dit an Roi que V. M. n'avoit plus au cœur que de voir prospérer les soins qu'il prend ici pour y établir la religion Catholique. S. M. B. me dit en me quittant: Vous voyez que je n'omets rien de ce qui est en mon pouvoir. J'espère que le Roi votre maitre m'aidera, et que nous ferons de concert des grandes choses pour la religion.' Barillon, 2d (12th) May, 1687. 1 Fox MSS. 183. and deemed an indispensable security for their religion by every Christian community, except the obnoxious sects of the Socinians, Independents, Anabaptists, and Quakers. Whether he meditated a violent change of the established religion from the beginning, or only entered on a course of measures which must terminate in its subversion, is rather a philosophical than a political question. In both cases, apprehension and resistance were alike reasonable; and in neither could an appeal to arms be warranted until every other means of self-defence had proved manifestly hopeless. Whatever opinions may be formed of his intentions at an earlier period, it is evident that in the year 1687 his resolution was taken; though still no doubt influenced by the misgivings and fluctuations incident to vast and perilous projects, especially when they are entertained by those whose character is not so daring as their designs. All the measures of his internal government, during the eighteen months which ensued, were directed to the overthrow of the Established Church, an object which was to be attained by assuming a power above law, and could only be preserved by a force sufficient to bid defiance to the repugnance of the nation. An absolute monarchy, if not the first instrument of his purpose, must have been the last result of that series of victories over the people which the success of his design required. Such, indeed, were his conscientious opinions of the constitution, that he thought the Habeas Corpus Act inconsistent with it; and so strong was his conviction of the necessity of military force to his designs at that time, that in his dying advice to his son, written long afterwards, in secrecy and solitude, after a review of his own government, his injunction to the Prince is, "Keep up a considerable body of Catholic troops, without which you cannot be safe.” The liberty of the people, and even the civil constitution, were as much the objects of hostility as the religion of the great majority, and their best security against ultimate persecution. " a The measures of the King's domestic policy, indeed, consisted rather in encroachments on the Church than in measures of relief to the Catholics. He, in May, 1686, granted dispensations to the curate of Putney, a convert to the Church of Rome, enabling him to hold his benefices, and relieving him from the performance of ⚫ Life of James II., ii. 621. all the acts inconsistent with his new religion, which a long series of statutes had required clergymen of the Church of England to perform. By following this precedent, the King might have silently transferred to ecclesiastics of his own communion many benefices in every diocese of which the Bishop had not the courage to resist the dispensing power. The converted incumbents would. preserve their livings under the protection of that prerogative, and Catholic priests might be presented to benefices without any new ordination; for the Church of England, although she treats the ministers of any other Protestant communion as being only in pretended holy orders, recognises the ordination of the Church of Rome, which she sometimes calls idolatrous, in order to maintain, even through idolatrous predecessors, that unbroken connexion with the apostles which she deems essential to the power of conferring the sacerdotal character. This obscure encroachment, however, escaped general observation. The first attack on the laws to which resistance was made was a royal recommendation of Andrew Popham, a Catholic, to the Governors of the Charter House (a hospital school, founded by a merchant of London, named Sutton, on the site of a Carthusian monastery), to be received by him as a pensioner on their opulent establishment, without taking the oaths required both by the general laws and by a statute passed for the government of that foundation.c Among the governors were persons of the highest distinction in church and state. The Chancellor, at their first meeting, intimated the necessity of immediate compliance with the King's mandate. Thomas Bennet, Master of the Charter House, a man justly celebrated for genius, eloquence, and learning, had the courage to maintain the authority of the laws against an opponent so formidable. He was supported by the aged Duke of Ormond, and Jeffreys's motion was negatived. A second letter to the same Dispensation to Edward Selater, rector of Esher and curate of Putney, dispensing with sixteen acts of parliament, from 21 Hen. VIII. to 17 Charles II., 3d May, 1686.-Gutch, Collectanea Curiosa, i. 290. and Reresby, 233. Lysons's Environs of London, i. 410. Sclater publicly recanted the Romish religion on the 5th of May, 1689, a pretty rapid retreat. Account of Edward. Sclater's return to the Church of England, by Dr. Horneck. London, 1689. It is remarkable that Sancroft so far exercised his archiepiscopal jurisdiction as to authorise Sclater's admission to the Protestant communion on condition of public recantation, at which Burnet preached: yet the pious Horneck owns that the juncture of time tempted him to smile. 3 Charles I. (Private Act.) 20th December, 1686. Relation of the Proceedings at the Charter House, p. 3. London, 1689. folio. Carte's Ormond, ii. 246.. b a effect was addressed to the Governors, which they persevered in resisting; assigning their reasons in a letter to one of the secretaries of state, which was subscribed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London, Ormond, Halifax, Nottingham and Danby. This courageous resistance by a single clergyman, countenanced by such weighty names, induced the court to pause till experiments were tried in other places, where politicians so important could not directly interfere. The attack on the Charter House was suspended and never afterwards resumed. To Bennet, who thus threw himself alone into the breach, much of the merit of the stand which followed justly belongs: he was requited like other public benefactors; his friends forgot the service, and his enemies were excited by the remembrance of it to defeat his promotion, on the pretext of his free exercise of reason in the interpretation of the Scriptures, which the established clergy zealously maintained in vindication of their own separation from the Roman Church, but treated with little tenderness in those who dissented from their own creed. Measures of a bolder nature were resorted to on a more conspicuous stage. The two great universities of Oxford and Cambridge, the most opulent and splendid literary institutions of Europe, were from their foundation under the government of the clergy, the only body of men who then possessed sufficient learning to conduct education. Their constitution was not much altered at the Reformation the same reverence which spared their monastic regulations happily preserved their rich endowments from rapine; and though many of their members suffered at the close of the civil war from their adherence to the vanquished party, the corporate property was undisturbed, and their studies flourished both under the Commonwealth and the Protectorate. Their fame as seats of learning, their station as the ecclesiastical capitals of the kingdom, and their ascendant over the susceptible minds of all youth of family and fortune, now rendered them the chief scenes of the decisive contest between James and the established church. Obadiah Walker, Master of University College in Oxford, a man of no small note for ability and learning, and long a concealed Catholic, now obtained for himself, and two of his fellows, a dispensation from all those acts of participation in the |