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 BishopsThey 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. Flanders, when its satire upon the " man's troat," was utterly forgotten. 417 new deputie" who "will cut de English 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 proba bility 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. * Father D'Orleans-" History of the Stuarts." "Life of Sir Dudley North," p. 181. § Burnet, vol. iii. p. 133. 1687.] EFFECTS OF THE DECLARATION OF INDULGENCE. 419 were abrogated. Every form of worship, Roman Catholic or Protestant, might be publicly followed. The effects of this Declaration were instantaneous. Ralph Thoresby and his friends used to attend the preaching of "Mr. Sharp, in private, as we could get opportunity, for which we went several miles." The Declaration came, and "Mr. Sharp preached the first sermon in public." The Declaration of king James, he says, "gave us ease in this case; and, though we dreaded a snake in the grass, we accepted it with due thankfulness."* Regarded simply as a matter of political expediency, without reference to higher principles of action, the Declaration of Indulgence of 1687 was a master-stroke worthy of the Jesuitical subtlety to which it doubtless owed its origin. The king had committed himself against the Church of England. The Church of England had resented his manifest design of thrusting Roman Catholics into its preferments. "As he was apt," says Burnet, "to go warmly upon every provocation, he gave himself such liberties in discourse. upon that subject, that it was plain, all the services they had done him, both in opposing the exclusion, and upon his first accession to the crown, were forgotten." There were four bodies of dissenters, whose united support would be an important counterpoise to the dissatisfaction of the churchmen. These were, Presbyterians, Independents, Anabaptists, Quakers. They had all been the victims of Conventicle Acts and of Two Mile Acts. Hundreds of the Presbyterian clergy, long ejected from their pulpits, had been supported by private charity. Some, up to the date of the Declaration, had been lying in the gaols, amongst felons and common debtors, unable to pay the fines which had been imposed upon them for preaching. The Declaration opened a new world to them. They were again free publicly to teach their followers. In new meeting-houses, and in their old barns, they might again declaim against church discipline and set forms of prayer; and warn their hearers against that Popery which was again lifting its head. But then Roman Catholics were equally freed from State-interference with their worship. Mass might be publicly performed; auricular confession might be encouraged; monastic institutions might once more flourish. The penal laws against Papists were utterly suspended. Many dissenters were happy to embrace the relief which was thus afforded them. They were soothed by the high sounding professions of toleration which issued from the royal lips. They were flattered by the agents of the Court into the belief that they again could make head against the Church which had persecuted them. But they were warned by the examples of their two greatest ministers, Howe and Baxter, not to fall into the snare. Young Defoe said to his non-conformist brethren, "I had rather the Church of England should pull our clothes off by fines and forfeitures than that the Papists should fall both upon the church and the dissenters, and pull our skins off by fire and faggot." The most eloquent and sagacious statesman of the day, Halifax, addressed them in his "Letter to a Dissenter" -a model of skilful popular argument: "There must be something extraor dinary, when the Church of Rome setteth up bills, and offereth plaisters, for tender consciences. By all that hath hitherto appeared, her skill in chirurgery # "Diary," vol. i. p. 186. "Own Time," vol. iii. p. 151. Quoted in Wilson's "Life of Defoe," vol. i. p. 128. |