Lord Feversham to repair to his helpless master with two hundred of the lifeguards and no more, and to leave it to his majesty either to return to his good city of London or to retire to the continent, as he should think fit. The provisional government and the Prince of Orange made no doubt that James would instantly turn his face towards France; but, to the astonishment of all, James, either by choice or compulsion, or through some deceptions practised upon him, came back to London, and invited his son-in-law, the Prince of Orange, to meet him at Whitehall, that they might there amicably settle the distractions of the nation. But William had certainly no wish for any such interview, and he and his friends were probably alarmed by the commiseration which the Londoners had testified for the fallen sovereign on his passage through the city. What William and his party wanted was the immediate expatriation of the king, which could be converted into a virtual abdication; and to this end they drove, being assisted by some whom James still considered as his personal friends. And, as if to revive that intolerance of all popery to which, immeasurably more than to any other cause, he owed his ruin, he, on the day of his arrival at Whitehall, went to mass, and then, dining in public, had a Jesuit to say grace.* He, however, resumed some of the functions of royalty, and showed no inclination to be gone. To quicken him, four battalions of the Dutch guards and a squadron of horse were marched into Westminster; and James's ex-minister Halifax, and the Lords Shrewsbury and Delamere, waited upon him with a peremptory message. Lord Craven, who was at Whitehall with a few of the guards, declared that the Dutch should not enter there as long as he had breath in his body; but James had none of the spirit of this octogenarian noble, and resistance was clearly worse than useless. The English guards were withdrawn, and the Dutchmen surrounded the palace. Then Halifax waited upon James, who was in his bed, and coolly

* Evelyn, who was present.

told him that he must go to Ham, a house near Richmond belonging to the Dowager Duchess of Lauderdale, as the Prince of Orange intended to enter London on the following morning. James merely said that Ham was cold and damp, and that he should prefer going to Rochester. As this was a step towards France, he was soon informed that his son-in-law agreed; and about noon on the following day James embarked in the royal barge for Gravesend. He was attended by the Lords Arran, Dunbarton, Lichfield, Aylesbury, and Dundee, and followed and watched by a number of Dutch troops in other boats.* The people of London almost forgot the past, and many of them were so much affected as to shed tears, and implore blessings on his dishonoured head. That night he slept at Gravesend, and on the morrow he proceeded to Rochester, where he spent four days, still watched by Dutch troops, who of course favoured rather than obstructed that flight which his fears and everything he saw and heard urged him to. On the night of the 23rd of December he rose from his bed, dressed himself, walked through the garden of the house down to the Medway, and put off in a boat with his natural son the Duke of Berwick, two ex-captains. of the navy, and a groom of the chambers. On the following morning he reached a fishing smack, which had been hired for the voyage, and, passing the guardships at the Nore without molestation or challenge, he landed on the morning of the 25th at the small town of Ambleteuse. And thus was Britain happily delivered from the perverse and incurable dynasty of the Stuarts.

17th December. This night was a council; his majesty refuses to assent to all the proposals, and goes away again to Rochester.

"18th. I saw him take barge. A sad sight!"-Evelyn.

CHAPTER II.

THE HISTORY OF RELIGION.

THE most remarkable phenomenon in the History of Religion in the 17th century is the appearance of the numerous brood of minor varieties of dissenters, styled the Sectaries.

In 1646, the Reverend Thomas Edwards, a zealous Presbyterian minister of London, published a strange work under the title of Gangræna, or a Catalogue and Discovery of many of the Errors, Heresies, Blasphemies, and Pernicious Practices of the Sectaries of this Time, vented and acted in England in these last four years,' in which he enumerates no fewer than sixteen distinct species of heretical sects, namely, Independents, Brownists, Millenaries, Antinomians, Anabaptists, Arminians, Libertines, Familists, Enthusiasts, Seekers, Perfectists, Socinians, Arians, Anti-Trinitarians, Anti-Scripturists, and Sceptics. In the army the Independents and Sectaries were already omnipotent. This last result had been chiefly brought about by the remodelling which the army had undergone the preceding year after the breaking up of the negotiations at Uxbridge. The modern historian of Puritanism says "When the old regiments were broken, the chaplains being discharged of course, returned to their cures; and, as new ones were formed, the officers applied to the parliament and assembly for a fresh recruit; but the Presbyterian ministers, being possessed of warm benefices, were unwilling to undergo the fatigues of another campaign, or it may be, to serve with men of such desperate measures. This fatal accident proved the ruin of the cause in which the parliament were engaged; for

the army being destitute of chaplains, who might have restrained the irregularities of their zeal, the officers set up for preachers in their several regiments, depending upon a kind of miraculous assistance of the Divine Spirit, without any study or preparation; and, when their imaginations were heated, they gave vent to the most crude and undigested absurdities. Nor did the evil rest there; for, from preaching at the head of their regiments, they took possession of the country pulpits where they were quartered, till at length they spread the infection over the whole nation, and brought the regular ministry into contempt."*

"It was the ministers that lost all by forsaking the army, and by taking themselves to an easier and quieter way of life," says Baxter, himself a Presbyterian.† The victory at Naseby, and the other successes which immediately followed "the new model," raised the fame and influence of the army to the highest pitch: in part by moral, in part by material force, the Independents and Sectaries, with Cromwell at their head, carried everything before them in Parliament and elsewhere; the Presbyterian members were thrust out from the House of Commons, Presbytery was overwhelmed and swallowed up by Independency; and Charles I. was sent to the scaffold.

Then commenced that reign of a general, and, practically, almost universal toleration, which subsisted till the Restoration, and of which some account has been given in our preceding volume. The earliest vindication of the principle of religious freedom in its widest extent, seems to have been a tract entitled 'Religious Peace, or a Plea for Liberty of Conscience, long since presented to King James and his high court of Parliament, by Leonard Busher,' which was printed in 1614, and reprinted in 1646. Busher would extend the most perfect toleration not only to all forms of Christianity, but also to every other religion as well as the Christian; nor would he have any punishment or restraint applied even to persons

* Neal, Hist. of the Puritans.

+ Life.

of no religion at all. But this and some other schemes of even an earlier date were nothing more than the speculations of individual writers. The honour of having founded the first church or sect that made universal toleration one of the articles of its creed and practice has been claimed for the Reverend Roger Williams, who was born in Wales in 1598, and educated at the university of Oxford. Williams, after being ordained in the established church, embraced the principles of the persecuted Puritans, and emigrated in 1631 to the young colony of Massachusetts in New England. In three or four years he was banished thence "as a disturber of the peace of the church and commonwealth," and driven to take refuge among the Indians of Rhode Island, where he founded the settlement of Providence. He was soon joined by other exiles from Massachusetts. In 1643 Williams proceeded to England, and, being aided by the younger Sir Harry Vane, he obtained from the Earl of Warwick, then governor and admiral of all the plantations, a charter of incorporation for the new colony. In 1662 a second charter was obtained from Charles II., in which the incorporation was styled "The English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations in New England;" and by this charter the most ample and unrestricted religious freedom was made a fundamental principle of the constitution. It was declared that religion should be wholly and for ever free from all jurisdiction of the civil power; so that not only were all varieties of sects tolerated, but no dominant or favoured sect was established. The results have been described as not altogether satisfactory in some respects. All manner of fanatical sects raised their heads. Williams himself is said to have become an Anabaptist. He survived till 1683, by which time his colony, which is said to have originally consisted of only forty individuals be sides himself, had grown to a population of several thousands. Williams is the author of two publications in support of his favourite principle; the first entitled Bloody Tenent of Persecution for Cause of Conscience, discussed between Truth and Peace,' London, 1644;