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desire that Bonrepaux should go to Chester for the sake of a full discussion of this important proposition. But that wary minister declined a step which would have amounted to the opening of a negociation, until he had authority from his government. He promised to keep the secret, especially from Barillon, who it was feared would betray it to Sunderland, then avowedly distrusted by the lord deputy. The minister, in communicating this proposition to his court, adds, that he very certainly knew the King of England's intention to be to deprive his presumptive heir of Ireland, to make that country an asylum for all his Catholic subjects, and to complete his measures on that subject in the course of five years; a time which Tyrconnel thought much [too long, and earnestly besought the King to abridge. Bonrepaux also observes, that the Prince of Orange certainly apprehended such designs; and James told the nuncio that one of the objects of the extraordinary mission of Dykveldt was the affair of Ireland, happily begun by Tyrconnel;a as the same prelate was afterwards informed by Sunderland, that Dykveldt expressed a fear of general designs against the succession of the Prince and Princess of Orange. Bonrepaux was speedily instructed to inform Tyrconnel that if on the death of James he could maintain himself in Ireland, he might rely on effectual aid from Louis to preserve the Catholic religion, and to separate that country from England, when under the dominion of a Protestant sovereign. Tyrconnel is said to have agreed, without the knowledge of his own master, to put four Irish sea-ports, Kinsale, Waterford, Limerick, and either Galway or Coleraine, into the hands of France. The remaining particulars of this bold and hazardous negociation were reserved by Bonrepaux till his return to Paris; but he closes his last despatch with the singular intimation that several Scotch lords had sounded him on the succour they might expect from France, on the death of James, to exclude the Prince and Princess of Orange from the throne of Scotland: objects so far beyond the usual aim of ambition, and means so much at variance with prudence as well as duty, could hardly have presented themselves to any mind whose native violence had not been inflamed by an education in the school of conspiracy and insurrection; nor even to such but in a country which, from the division of its inhabitants, and the

Lettere de Mons. D'Adda, 7th Febbraio, 1687.
Seignelai à à Bonrepaux, 29th September, 1687.

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b Id. 20th June, 1687. Sheridan MS.

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,

a "J'ai dit au 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 maître m'aidera, et que nous ferons de concert des grandes choses pour la religion.' Barillon, 2d (12th) May, 1687. 1 Fox MSS. 183.

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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." a 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.

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. 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

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Dispensation to Edward Sclater, 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.)

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20th December, 1686. Relation of the Proceedings at the Charter House, p. 3. London, 1689. folio. Carte's Ormond, ii. 246.

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