read, after an interval of a century and a half, without admiration of its acuteness, address, terseness, and poignancy.a The Nonconformists were acted upon by powerful inducements and dissuasives. The preservation of civil liberty, the interest of the Protestant religion, the secure enjoyment of freedom in their own worship, were irresistible reasons against compliance. Gratitude for present relief, remembrance of recent wrongs, and a strong sense of the obligation to prefer the exercise of religion to every other consideration, were very strong temptations to a different conduct. Many of them owed their lives to the King, and the lives of others were still in his hands. The remembrance of Jeffreys's campaign was so fresh as perhaps still rather to produce fear than the indignation and distrust which appear in a more advanced stage of recovery from the wounds inflicted by tyranny. The private relief granted to some of their ministers by the court on former occasions afforded a facility for exercising adverse influence through these persons, the more dangerous because it might be partly concealed from themselves under the disguise of gratitude. The result of the action of these conflicting motives seems to have been, that the far greater part of all denominations of the Dissenters availed themselves of the declaration so far as to resume their public worship; that the most distinguished of their clergy and the majority of the Presbyterians resisted the solicitations of the court to sanction the dispensing power by addresses of thanks for this exertion of it; that all the Quakers, the greater part of the Baptists, and perhaps also of the Independents, did not scruple to give this perilous token of their misguided gratitude, though many of them confined themselves to thanks for toleration, and solemn assurances that they would not abuse it. About a hundred and eighty of these addresses were presented in ten months, of which there are only seventy-seven exclusively and avowedly from Nonconformists. If to these be added a fair proportion of them at first secretly and at last openly corporators and grand jurors, and a larger share of those who addressed under very general descriptions, it seems a b Halifax Misc. 233. London, 1704. Bates's Life of Philip Henry, in Wordsworth's Ecclesiastical Biography, vi. 290. "They rejoiced with trembling." Henry refused to give in a return of the money levied on him in his sufferings, having, as he said, "long since from his heart forgiven all the agents in that matter. Mr. Bunyan clearly saw through the designs of the court, though he accepted the indulgence with a holy fear." Ivimey's Life of Bunyan, 297. probable that they were almost equally divided between the Dissenting communions and the Established Church. We have a specimen of these mentioned by Evelyn in the address of the Churchmen and Dissenters of Coventry, and of a small congregation in the Isle of Ely, called the “family of love." His complaint that the declaration had thinned his own parish church of Deptford, and sent a great concourse of people to the Dissenters" meeting-house, throws light on the extent of the previous peršecution, and the joyful eagerness of the Nonconformists to profit by their deliverance. The Dissenters were led astray not only by lights of the church, but by pretended guardians of the laws. Five bishops, Crew, bishop of Durham, with his chapter, Cartwright, bishop of Chester, with his chapter and clergy, Barlow, bishop of Lincoln, Wood, bishop of Lichfield, and Watson, bishop of St. David's, with the clergy of their dioceses, together with the dean and chapter of Ripon, addressed the King in terms which were indeed limited to his assurance of continued protection to the church, but at a time which rendered their addresses a sanction of the dispensing power. Croft, of Hereford, though not an addresser, was a zealous partisan of the measures of the court; the profligate Parker was unable to prevail on the chapter or clergy of Oxford to join him, and the accomplished Sprat was still a member of the ecclesiastical commission, in which character he held a high command in the adverse ranks; so that a third of the episcopal order refused to concur in the coalition which the church was about to form with public liberty. A bold attempt was made to obtain the appearance of a general concurrence of lawyers in approving the usurpations of the crown. From two of the four societies called Inns of Court, who have the exclusive privilege of admitting advocates to practise at the bar, the Middle and Inner Temple, addresses of approbation were published, which, from recent The addresses from bishops and their clergy were seven; those from corporations and grand juries seventy-five; those from inhabitants, etc., fourteen ; two from Catholics, and two from the Middle and Inner Temple. If six addresses from Presbyterians and Quakers in Scotland, Ireland, and New England be deducted, as it seems that they ought to be, the proportion of dissenting addresses was certainly less than one half. Some of them, we know, were the produce of a sort of personal canvass, when the King made his progress in autumn, 1687, " to court the compliments of the people," and one of them, in which Philip Henry joined, " was not to offer lives and fortunes to him, but to thank him for the liberty, and promise to demean themselves quietly in the use of it." Wordsworth, vi. 292. Address of Dissenters of Nantwich, Wem, and Whitchurch. London Gazette, 29th August, 9687. b Evelyn, Diary, 16th June, 1687. Ibid. 10th April, 1687. examination of the records of these bodies, do not appear to have been voted by either. The former, eminent above others by fulsome servility, is traditionally said to be the clandestine production of three of the benchers, of whom Chauncy, the historian of Hertfordshire, was one. That of the Inner Temple purports to be the act of certain students and the comptroller, an office of whose existence no traces have been discovered in the books of the inn. As Roger North had been treasurer of the Middle Temple three years before, and the crown lawyers were members of these societies, it is scarcely possible that the government should not have been apprised of the imposture which they countenanced by their official publication of these addresses. The necessity of recurring to such a fraud, and the silence of the other law societies, may be allowed to form some proof that the independence of the bar was not yet utterly extinguished. The subserviency of the bench was so abject as to tempt the government into an interference with private suits, which is one of the last and rarest errors of statesmen under absolute monarchies. An official letter is still extant from Lord Sunderland, as Secretary of State, to Sir Francis Watkins, a judge of assize, recommending to him to show all the favour to Lady Shaftesbury, in the despatch of her suit, to be tried at Salisbury, which the justice of her cause shall deserve."b So deeply degraded were the judges in the eyes of the ministers themselves. • London Gazette, June 9th, 1687. 24th February, 1687. State Paper Office. 326 CHAPTER VII. D'Adda publicly received as the Nuncio.-Dissolution of Parliament.-Final Breach. -Preparations for a new Parliament.-New Charters.-Removal of Lord Lieutenants.-Patronage of the Crown.—Moderate Views of Sunderland.—House of Lords.-Royal Progress.-Pregnancy of the Queen.-London has the Appearance of a Catholic City. THE war between the religious parties had not yet so far subsided as to allow the avowed intercourse of princes of the Protestant communions with the see of Rome. In the first violence of hostility, indeed, laws were passed in England forbidding, under pain of death, the indispensable correspondence of Catholics with the head of the church, and even the bare residence of Catholic priests within the realm.a These laws, which never could be palliated except as measures of retaliation in a warfare of extermination, had been often executed without necessity and with slight provocation. It was most desirable to prevent their execution and to procure their repeal. But the object of the King in his embassy to Rome was to select these odious enactments, as the most specious case, in which he might set an example of the ostentatious contempt with which he was resolved to trample on every law which stood in the way of his designs. A nearer and more signal instance than the embassy to Rome was required by his zeal or his political projects. D'Adda was accordingly obliged to undergo a public introduction to the King at Windsor as apostolic nuncio from the pope; and his reception, being an overt act of high treason, was conducted with more than ordinary state, and announced to the public like that of any other foreign minister The Bishops of Durham and Chester were perhaps the most remarkable attendants at the ceremonial. The Duke of Somerset, the second peer of the kingdom, was chosen from the Lords of the Bedchamber as the introducer; and his attendance in that charac a 13 Eliz. c. 2. 35 Eliz. c. 1. London Gazette, 4th to 7th July, 1687. MSS, D'Adda, 11 Giugl. 1687. of ter had been notified to the nuncio by the Earl of Mulgrave, Lord Chamberlain. But, on the morning of the ceremony, the Duke besought his Majesty to excuse him from the performance of an act which might expose him to the most severe animadversion of the law. The King answered, that he intended to confer an honour upon him, by appointing him to introduce the representative of so venerable a potentate, and that the royal power dispensation had been solemnly determined to be a sufficient warrant for such acts. The King is said to have angrily asked, "Do you not know that I am above the law ?" b to which the Duke is represented by the same authorities to have replied, "Your Majesty is so, but I am not ;" an answer which was perfectly correct, if it be understood as above punishment by the law. The Duke of Grafton introduced the nuncio. It was observed, that while the ambassadors of the emperor, and of the crowns of France and Spain, were presented by earls, persons of superior dignity were appointed to do the same office to the papal minister; a singularity rather rendered alarming than acceptable by the example of the court of France, which was appealed to by the courtiers on this occasion. The same ceremonious introduction to the Queen Dowager immediately followed. The King was very desirous of the like presentation to the Princess Anne, to whom it was customary to present foreign ministers. But the nuncio declined a public audience of an heretical princess; and though we learn that, a few days after, he was admitted by her to what is called "a public audience," yet, as it is neither published in the Gazette, nor adverted to in his own letter, it seems probable that she only received him openly as a Roman prelate, who was to be treated with the respect due to his rank, with whom it was equally politic to avoid the appearance of clandestine intercourse and of formal recognition. The King said to the Duke of Somerset, "As you have not chosen to obey my commands in this case, I shall not trouble you with any other;" and immediately removed him from his place in the household, from his regiment of dragoons, and the lord lieutenancy of his county. He continued for some time to speak with indignation of this act of contumacy, and told the nuncio, that the Duke's nearest relations had thrown themselves Van Citters to the States General, 15th July, 1687. d Van Citters, 22d July, 1687. |