V.
 
 presented to the 
 UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 SAN DIEGO 
 
 by 
 
 Dr. and Mrs. John Galbraith
 
 ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 (Uniform in size and price with this Volume.) 
 
 ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 From the Death of King Henry vn. to the Death 
 of Archbishop Parker, 1509-1575. 
 
 ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY. 
 
 From the Death of Archbishop Parker to the 
 Death of King Charles I., 1575-1649. 
 
 ' In two Volumes of English Church History Lectures, 
 1509-1575 and 1575-1649, Dr. Alfred Plummer, late Master 
 of University College, Durham, shows how skilfully a 
 learned man, who is also a teacher of experience, can 
 gather, and invest with something of a new freshness, the 
 conclusions of original authorities and modern investigators. 
 Dr. Plummer has read very widely, and he has the art of 
 seizing the salient points and making them emphatic by 
 a sharpness of phrase, or an aptness of quotation, which 
 helps to fix them in the memory. There is no wonder 
 that these lectures have been widely popular. They 
 are eminently candid, judicious, and unprejudiced.' 
 W. H. HUTTON, B.D., Fellow and Tutor, St. John's College, 
 Oxford (in the Journal of Theological Studies. ) 
 
 EDINBURGH : T. & T. CLARK, 38 GEORGE STREET.
 
 ENGLISH 
 CHURCH HISTORY 
 
 From the Death of Charles I. 
 to the Death of William III. 
 
 FOUR LECTURES 
 
 BY THE 
 
 REV. ALFRED PLUMMER, M.A., D.D. 
 
 FORMERLY FELLOW AND TUTOR OK TRINITY COLLEGE, OXFORD 
 AND MASTER OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, DURHAM 
 
 Quin etiam infelix virtus et noxia felix, 
 et male consultis pretium est, pradentia fallit, 
 nee fortuna probat causas sequiturque merentes, 
 sed vaga per cunctos nullo discrimine fertur. 
 MANIL. iv. 94-7. 
 
 EDINBURGH 
 T. & T. CLARK, 38 GEORGE STREET 
 
 1907
 
 Printed by 
 MORRISON & GIBB LIMITED, 
 
 FOB 
 
 T. & T. CLARK, EDINBURGH. 
 
 LONDON : SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT, AND CO. LIMITED. 
 NEW YORK I CHARLES SCRIBNER's SONS.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THESE lectures, like the two volumes which have 
 preceded them, 1 were written for popular audiences 
 in connexion with the Exeter Diocesan Reading 
 Society. They are not intended for experts, but 
 were delivered, and are published, in the hope that 
 they may induce a few English people to take more 
 interest in the history of the English Church than 
 they have hitherto done. The three little volumes 
 take the reader, in a somewhat rapid, but (it is 
 hoped) not unintelligible way, through the momen- 
 tous period during which the Book of Common 
 Prayer first took shape and reached almost exactly 
 the form in which we possess it now, and during 
 which the English Church passed through vicissi- 
 tudes, of the critical nature of which the changes 
 made in the Prayer-Book are only a faint reflexion. 
 In all three volumes the aim has been to select, 
 from the overwhelming abundance of facts, just 
 
 1 English Church History from the Death of Henry VII. to the 
 Death of Archbishop Parker. Four Lectures by the Rev. A. 
 Plummer. T. & T. Clark, 1905. 3s. net. 
 
 1 English Church History from the Death of Archbishop Parker to 
 the Death of Charles /. Four Lectures by the Rev. A. Plummer. 
 T. & T. Clark, 1904. 3s. net.
 
 vi PREFACE 
 
 a few of the most important, and to give to the 
 selected facts enough colour and clothing to leave a 
 definite impression upon the hearer's or reader's 
 mind. It has been very gratifying to the writer of 
 these lectures to learn from competent critics that 
 they have been regarded as impartial and fair. They 
 have certainly been written with a strong desire to 
 do justice to both sides independently of the writer's 
 own sympathies. Very possibly this ideal has not 
 always been reached ; but, if only the effort to attain 
 to it is manifest, the reader will be able to sym- 
 pathize with that effort, whatever he may think 
 of the actual results. It is not likely that many 
 readers will agree with quite all that is said about 
 those who were making history during this highly 
 controversial period. 
 
 Although original authorities have been much used, 
 these lectures, like their predecessors, are mainly 
 based upon the best modern works which have come 
 within the lecturer's knowledge, and in some places 
 are derived directly from such works. Yet he has 
 endeavoured to form his own conclusions, and to 
 put forth only what he has made his own by reflexion 
 and conviction. 
 
 The following are the principal modern works 
 that have been used in preparing the lectures : 
 
 AIRY, 0., Charles II. 
 
 BOGUE and BENNETT, History of Dissenters. 
 BITRROWS, MONTAGU, Commentaries on the History of England. 
 BUKGHCLERE, LADY, Oeorge Vittiers, Second Duke of Buck- 
 ingham. 
 Cambridge Modern History.
 
 PREFACE vii 
 
 CARLYLE, T., Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches. 
 
 Church Quarterly Review. 
 
 COLVILLE, A., Duchess Sarah. 
 
 Dictionary of National Biography. 
 
 Encyclopaedia Britannica. 
 
 FREEMAN, E. A., Growth of the English Constitution. 
 
 GARDINER, S. R., Cromwell. 
 
 Cromwell's Place in History. 
 
 The Puritan Revolution (Epochs of Modern 
 
 History). 
 GARDINER and BULLINGER, Introduction to the Study of 
 
 English History. 
 
 GASQTJET, F. A., The Adventures of King James II. 
 GEE and HARDY, Documents illustrative of English Church 
 
 History. 
 
 GREEN, J. R., History of the English People. 
 GUIZOT, F. P. G., Causes of the Success of the English Re- 
 volution. 
 HALLAM, H., Constitutional History of England. 
 
 Introduction to the Literature of Europe. 
 HORE, A. H., The Church in England from William III. to 
 
 Victoria. 
 HUNT, J., Religious Thought in England from the Reformation 
 
 to the Eighteenth Century. 
 HITTTON, W. H., The English Church from the Accession of 
 
 Charles I. to the Death of Anne. 
 LATHBURY, T., History of the Nonjurors. 
 LECKY, W. E. H., History of England in the Eighteenth 
 
 Century, vol. i. 
 
 LINOARD, J., History of England, vols. viii. to x. 
 MACAULAY, T., History of England, vol. i. 
 
 Essays. 
 
 MACOWER, F., Constitutional History of England. 
 MARSDEN, J. B., History of the Later Puritans. 
 MORLEY, J., Oliver Cromwell. 
 MOZLEY, J. B., Essay on Cromwell. 
 OVERTON, J. H., Life in the English Church, 1660-1714.
 
 viii PREFACE 
 
 OXENHAM, H. N., Studies in Ecclesiastical History. 
 
 PERRY, G. G., History of the Church of England from the 
 
 Death of Elizabeth. 
 
 RANKE, L., History of England, vols. iii. and iv. 
 SCHAFF, P., The Reformation. 
 SHAW, W. A., History of the English Church during the Civil 
 
 Wars. 
 
 SKEATS, H. S., History of the Free Churches of England. 
 SMITH, GOLDWIK, The United Kingdom, a Political History. 
 
 Three English Statesmen. 
 
 STEPHEN, LESLIE, English Thought in the Eighteenth Century. 
 STEPHEN, SIB J., Essays in Ecclesiastical Biography. 
 TASWELL-LANGMEAD, T. P., English Constitutional History. 
 TATTNTON, E. L., History of the Jesuits in England. 
 TOUXMIN, JOSHUA, Historical View of the State of Dissenters 
 
 in England. 
 TREVELYAN, G., England under the Stuarts. 
 
 For those who like to take their ideas of history 
 from novels, there is a very large supply dealing with 
 the period between Charles I. and Anne. Only a 
 small portion of them can be mentioned here. Defoe's 
 Life of Colonel Jack and History of the Plague ; Scott's 
 Peveril of the Peak and Woodstock ; Ainsworth's 
 Talbot Harland, Old St. Paul's, Beatrice Tyddesley, 
 and James II. ; Mrs. Marshall's Memoirs of Troublous 
 Times, Winchester Meads, By the North Sea, and 
 Kensington Palace in the Days of Mary n. ; Miss 
 Yonge's The Danvers Papers and The Last of the 
 Cavaliers ; Miss Everett Green's After Worcester and 
 In Taunton Town ; Miss Christabel Coleridge's Lady 
 Betty ; Miss Sarah Tytler's Duchess Frances ; Miss 
 Braddon's London Pride ; Blackmore's Lorna Doone ; 
 Leigh Hunt's Sir Ralph Esher ; Anthony Hope's
 
 PREFACE ix 
 
 Simon Dale ; Austin Clare's The Carved Cartoon ', 
 Conan Doyle's Micah Clarke ; Stanley Weyman's 
 Shrewsbury ; Max Pemberton's A Puritan's Wife. 
 
 The lectures in this volume were delivered at 
 various centres of the Church Reading Society in the 
 Diocese of Exeter during the autumn of 1905 and 
 the spring of 1906. They were also delivered to a 
 large gathering of clergy at the Palace, Gloucester, 
 in May 1906. By the invitation of the Professors 
 of Theology, the first and second lectures were 
 delivered in June 1906 in the Divinity School of 
 Trinity College, Dublin. The first, second, and 
 fourth were delivered to clergy of the diocese of 
 Wakefield in October 1906 at Huddersfield. 
 
 ALFRED PLUMMER. 
 
 BlDEFORD, 
 
 26th January 1907.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PREFACE v 
 
 I. THE TRIUMPH AND FAILURE OF PURITANISM . 1 
 
 II. RESTORATION AND RETALIATION ... 39 
 
 III. THE STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS TOLERATION . 79 
 
 IV. THE LATTTUDENARIAN FAILURE AND SUCCESS . 123 
 
 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE . . . . . 167 
 
 APPENDIX 177 
 
 INDEX 183
 
 1. 
 
 1649-1660. 
 
 THE TRIUMPH AND FAILURE 
 OF PURITANISM.
 
 " Great revolutions happen in this ant's nest of ours. One 
 emmet of illustrious character and great abilities pushes out 
 another : parties are formed, they range themselves in for- 
 midable opposition, they threaten each other's rain, they cross 
 over and are mingled together, and, like the coruscations of the 
 northern aurora, amuse the spectator, at the same time that 
 by some they are supposed to be forerunners of a general dis- 
 solution. 
 
 " There are political earthquakes as well as natural ones, the 
 former less shocking to the eye, but not always less fatal in 
 their influence than the latter. The image which Nebuchad- 
 nezzar saw in his dream was made up of heterogeneous and 
 incompatible materials, and accordingly broken. Whatever is 
 so formed must expect a like catastrophe." 
 
 WILLIAM COWPEB, Letter to Joseph Hill, 1783.
 
 1. 
 
 1649-1660. 
 
 THE TRIUMPH AND FAILURE OF 
 PURITANISM. 
 
 IT has been remarked that the two most sensible 
 things to be said about the trial and execution of 
 Charles I. are (1) that it was an act of war, just as 
 defensible or as questionable as the war itself ; 
 (2) that the regicides treated Charles precisely as 
 Charles meant to treat them. Throughout, it had 
 been " My head or thy head," and Charles had lost. 1 
 But, while we admit the lawfulness of war, we do 
 not admit the lawfulness of putting prisoners-of-war 
 to death. Charles was a prisoner-of-war, and that, 
 not by capture on the field of battle, but by self- 
 surrender. Civilized nations do not put such prisoners 
 to death. And, if the first plea is invalid, the second 
 is untrue. It is not true that, from first to last 
 the contest had been " My head or thy head." 
 Until the Second Civil War in 1648 no one thought 
 of taking the King's head ; and at the time when 
 it was resolved, in the event of victory, to put Charles 
 1 J. Morley, Oliver Cromwdl, p. 286. 
 
 8
 
 4 THE TRIUMPH AND FAILURE 
 
 to death, the King was already a prisoner. There 
 are some ways of looking at the execution of Charles 
 which are less sensible than others ; but there is no 
 way in which it can be regarded as other than a 
 crime of great magnitude. And that for two reasons. 
 First, the King had committed no offence for which 
 the penalty of death was due. Secondly, there 
 was no court competent to sentence him to death. 1 
 
 But, what concerns us more with regard to the 
 period immediately before us, is, that the execution 
 of Charles was not only a great crime but a great 
 blunder. It was a political error of the very first 
 magnitude. 
 
 Cromwell had said, " We will cut off his head, 
 with the crown upon it." But that was precisely 
 what could not be done. Directly the head of 
 Charles i. was off, the crown went to Charles n. 
 So long as Charles I. was in safe custody, the King 
 and his crown were in custody. But to put Charles 
 to death was to release the King : le roi est mort, 
 
 1 The way in which the execution of Charles L was regarded 
 by Royalists, and perhaps by many more, has been eloquently 
 described by Dr. O. Airy : " It was murder, murder most foul 
 and most unnatural. A band of wicked men had done to death 
 more than their King, more than a good and gracious master, 
 and a man of pure and pious life. In his person they had violated 
 the sacredness of monarchy, the sacredness of the Church, the 
 laws and liberties of England, everything for which his servants 
 had sacrificed home, friends, children, and estates, and for 
 which they had been at any moment willing to give their lives. 
 This drumhead court-martial was not the act of the people of 
 England ; it was not an execution, or an incident of warfare ; 
 it was murder, which cried for vengeance " (Charles IT., pp. 58, 59).
 
 OF PURITANISM 5 
 
 vive le rot. The son, who was free, at once became 
 dangerous. The thousands who valued monarchy, 
 but detested the tyranny of Charles I., would never 
 have moved a finger to help the Prince of Wales to 
 set free his father. But they were not unwilling 
 to help Charles n. to avenge his father ; and, when 
 they saw that there was no other way of getting 
 rid of military despotism and restoring monarchy, 
 they were very willing indeed to help the son to mount 
 the throne of his father. Nor was this the whole 
 of the blunder. The violent proceedings against 
 Charles I. gave him an opportunity of putting him- 
 self right with his justly offended subjects. Not 
 merely royalty, but the King himself, was thereby 
 planted afresh and firmly in the affections of his 
 people, and those who had abhorred and opposed 
 his policy, at once began to cherish his memory. 
 As Macaulay says, " No demagogue ever produced 
 such an impression on the public mind as the captive 
 King, who, retaining in that extremity all his regal 
 dignity, and confronting death with dauntless courage, 
 gave utterance to the feelings of his oppressed people, 
 manfully refused to plead before a court unknown 
 to the law, appealed from military violence to the 
 principles of the Constitution, asked by what right 
 the House of Commons had been purged of its 
 most respectable members, and the House of Lords 
 deprived of its legislative functions, and told his 
 weeping hearers that he was defending not only his 
 own cause, but theirs." * 
 
 1 History of England, i. p. 128.
 
 6 THE TRIUMPH AND FAILURE 
 
 Those who committed this act of guilt and folly 
 were Republicans, who professed to be acting in the 
 name and for the interests of the nation. But the 
 majority of the nation (including not a few Re- 
 publicans) abhorred the deed ; and this fact at once 
 made a genuine democratic form of government 
 impossible. You may get rid of despots, but you 
 cannot establish freedom, by the sword. 
 
 We must pass on to consider the first, and, thus 
 far, also the last, English Republic. 
 
 Of the eleven years which separate the death of 
 Charles I. from the restoration of Charles n., less 
 than half can be called, even in a limited sense, a 
 Republic. During the first four years, and during 
 the last year, some of the forms of a Republic were 
 observed ; and a shadow of republican formality was 
 observed even during the Protectorate. But, in 
 reality, the government, during what is called the 
 Commonwealth, was a military Oligarchy, with a 
 tendency to become closer and closer, and end, as 
 it sometimes did end, in the rule of a single despot. 
 It started, at the very outset, in a glaring inconsist- 
 ency. It professed to be setting up free and popular 
 government in place of the tyranny of an hereditary 
 monarch ; and yet it did not dare to appeal to the 
 people whom it claimed to have freed. From the 
 point of view of the Rump Parliament and the 
 regicide army, a dissolution was impossible. There 
 was a multitude of religious and political questions 
 of the utmost importance still unsettled ; and the 
 peril of throwing all these before the electors, excited
 
 OF PURITANISM 7 
 
 and sickened as they were by recent civil convulsions, 
 was enormous. It was risking all that had been 
 fought for during the last seven years. This refusal 
 to appeal to the country was natural, and perhaps 
 necessary, but it was fatal to the establishment of 
 a true Republic. 
 
 A Republic, which is the spontaneous outcome of 
 a nation's own thoughts and desires, has a prospect 
 of becoming permanent. It wins sympathy and 
 respect from those who accept it, and it stimulates 
 them to political and moral activities, which tend to 
 give them unity, strength, and self-respect. But a 
 Republic, which is forced upon a people that has 
 neither thought about it nor desired it, which is out 
 of harmony with national traditions and aspirations, 
 which is introduced by violence and maintained by 
 faction, is not likely to be very long-lived. It may 
 be accepted for a time, either of necessity or as an 
 experiment. But the longer it delays putting its 
 professed principles to the test by a genuine appeal 
 to the people, the more sure, and the more complete 
 in the end, will be its downfall. And such a Republic 
 does more than simply fail and pass away : it dis- 
 credits in the eyes of a generation or two the very 
 principles of popular government. 
 
 Perhaps it would not be untrue to say that the 
 violent measures by which the Commonwealth was 
 introduced placed an amount of power in the hands 
 of Oliver Cromwell which was incompatible with 
 the Commonwealth's growth. He was frequently 
 hampered, and even thwarted, no doubt, by lesser
 
 8 THE TRIUMPH AND FAILURE 
 
 men, who dearly loved to play the part of " candid 
 friend," or simply grudged to him the power which 
 they could not wield themselves. But, when he was 
 not being made to act as the " drudge " of the army, 
 it would hardly be exaggeration to say that, in the 
 main, Cromwell did what he pleased. 1 And what did 
 it please him to do ? What is there that he has 
 established ? No doubt his services to the nation 
 then were numerous and substantial : some of them 
 will have to be noticed presently. But what is there 
 of his initiation that still survives ? Not very 
 much. 
 
 It is Cromwell's destructive work that has been 
 permanent ; his attempts at construction all failed ; 
 in some cases they did not last as long as himself. 
 Cromwell's power was always in the sword ; he was 
 a great general, and a still greater commander in the 
 field. But, where force was of no avail, Cromwell 
 was impotent. The sword can destroy, but it cannot 
 build up ; and Cromwell's system of government, 
 both in Church and State, quickly fell to pieces. 
 But his destructive blows were permanently effective. 
 He struck down the persecuting Church which had 
 inflicted cruel penalties on conscientious dissenters. 
 
 1 The expression, " drudge " of the army, is his own. In 
 addressing the Hundred Officers touching the Kingship, 27th 
 February 1657, the Protector said, that " they had made him 
 their drudge upon all occasions." He mentions the dissolution 
 of the Long Parliament, the nomination of a convention, the 
 Parliament which followed it, its dissolution, the appointment 
 of Major-Generals, and the Second Parliament, as among these 
 occasions.
 
 OF PURITANISM 9 
 
 He struck down the tyrannical monarchy, which 
 claimed by divine right to do as it pleased. He 
 struck down the worthless Parliament, which set at 
 defiance both the nation which had elected it and 
 which it grossly misrepresented, and also the army 
 by which it had been kept in power. And none of 
 these things, in the noxious form in which he de- 
 stroyed them, have ever been set up again. 1 As 
 Guizot has remarked, Cromwell remains for ever 
 " a striking example to the world of what a great 
 man can do and what he cannot do. By sheer force 
 of genius he made himself master of his country and 
 of the revolution which he let loose upon his country ; 
 and he died, consuming his genius in an ineffectual 
 effort to restore what he had destroyed a Parlia- 
 ment and a King." 2 
 
 But we must devote our attention chiefly to the 
 work of Cromwell and the Commonwealth in reference 
 to religion. 
 
 Episcopacy and the historic Church of England 
 had been disestablished by the Long Parliament, 
 when it made its bargain with the Scots, to induce 
 them to help in overthrowing Charles I. Presby- 
 
 1 S. R. Gardiner, Cromwell's Place in History, pp. 45, 46. 
 
 1 Causes of the Success of the English Revolution, p. 72. In- 
 deed, what Cromwell said of himself was not far from the truth ; 
 he was a constable set to keep the peace of the parish. He 
 could maintain his rule against those who opposed it, but he 
 could not obtain for it any sure basis, because he could not 
 win for it the approval of the nation. " The fabric ho had 
 reared was overthrown without an effort, offering no resistance 
 to the destroyer " (Lord Acton, Lectures on Modern History, 
 p. 203).
 
 10 THE TRIUMPH AND FAILURE 
 
 terianism had been adopted by Parliament in 1646 ; 
 and, as an experiment to be tried for three years, 
 it had received the very reluctant sanction of Charles 
 himself. Now that Charles was gone, Presbyterian- 
 ism was regarded as in permanent possession. Why 
 did it not remain in permanent possession ? Why, 
 after such a signal triumph, was it, in less than fifteen 
 years, compelled to retire from the field discredited 
 and disliked ? In the main there were three reasons. 
 1 . It was an alien religion, out of harmony with the 
 English character. 2. It was greedy of power, and 
 in the attempt to make itself absolute overreached 
 itself. 3. It vexed the spirits and shocked the 
 consciences of the majority by its tyranny and 
 intolerance. Each of these three points requires 
 consideration. 
 
 1. Presbyterianism, i.e. Church government by a 
 select body of presbyters or elders, with strict dis- 
 cipline enforced upon all members by means of 
 assembly and classes, is a system of foreign origin. 
 The originator was the Frenchman Calvin, and its 
 headquarters were at Geneva, where he established 
 it. Its rigid methods, attractive to the Scots, never 
 became popular in the English nation, which has no 
 liking for persistent drill, either in public worship 
 or in private life. 1 Moreover, there was in England 
 no enthusiast, like Knox, with the ability and energy 
 to carry congregations along with him. But for 
 the necessity of gaining the Scots, who would accept 
 
 1 Shaw, The English Church during the Civil Wars and under 
 the Commonwealth, ii. p. 22.
 
 OF PURITANISM 11 
 
 no other terms than the adoption of the Covenant, 
 the Long Parliament would never have forced Pres- 
 byterianism on the nation. And even the Long 
 Parliament was powerless to enforce it everywhere. 
 There were plenty of places, especially in the North 
 of England, in which the hateful discipline of the 
 courts of elders, inflicting fines and imprisonment 
 for supposed spiritual offences, never got a 
 foothold. 
 
 2. And the Presbyterians, where they did become 
 dominant, as in London and many large towns and 
 also in various rural parishes, were not content with 
 being the ecclesiastical organization which was 
 established by the State, protected by the State, 
 and controlled by the State. They claimed absolute 
 independence of all State control. 1 If their system 
 and the Government should come into collision, it 
 was the Government that must give way. " The 
 want of Eldership," they said, " was the cause of all 
 evil. No Commonwealth will flourish without it. 
 This Discipline is not a small part of the Gospel ; 
 it is the substance of it. Without this Discipline 
 there can be no true religion. This government is 
 the sceptre whereby alone Christ Jesus ruleth among 
 men. The establishing of the Presbyteries is the 
 full placing of Christ in His Kingdom. They that 
 reject this Discipline refuse to have Christ reign over 
 them, and deny Him in effect to be their King or 
 their Lord. It is the blade of a shaken sword in the 
 hand of the Cherubins, to keep the way of the tree 
 1 P. Schaff, The Reformation, p. 74.
 
 12 THE TRIUMPH AND FAILURE 
 
 of life." 1 The Papacy, with the prestige of many 
 centuries behind it, hardly made greater demands 
 upon the submission of mankind than did this brand- 
 new system from Geneva. 
 
 3. But the English people might have been willing 
 to tolerate this system a little longer, if it had shown 
 anything like moderation in using the position of 
 advantage which Parliament had given to it ; or in 
 exercising the discipline which was of the essence of 
 the system. Before very long, persecution is sure to 
 produce a revulsion of feeling in favour of the per- 
 secuted ; and the way in which the thousands of 
 ejected clergy, with their wives and children, were 
 treated, steadily increased public sympathy for the 
 sufferers. It is difficult to obtain anything like 
 exact numbers ; but John Walker, Rector of St. Mary 
 Major, Exeter, 2 estimated that not less than 7000 
 clergy were ejected from benefices. In Exeter only 
 one, a " compiler," retained his living. In Cornwall 
 70 out of 160 were ejected ; in Northamptonshire 
 100 out of 150. In Suffolk, he was told, scarcely 
 one in ten was left. The ejected minister was sup- 
 
 1 See the quotations in Bancroft, Dangerous Positions and 
 Proceedings. 
 
 2 1098-1720. In 1714 he published his famous book, An 
 Attempt tovxtrds recovering an Account of the Numbers and Suffer- 
 ings of the Clergy of the Church of England, Heads of Colleges , 
 Fellows, Scholars, etc., who were Sequestered, Harrass'd, etc., in 
 the late Times of the Grand Rebellion. He makes out a list of 
 3334, but thinks that the full number of suffering clergy might 
 reach even 10,000. The work is that of a strong partizan, but 
 he is careful in separating authentic evidence from dubious 
 rumour.
 
 OF PURITANISM 13 
 
 posed to have one-fifth of the income to live on. 
 But it was sometimes difficult to get the certificate 
 which stated that you were entitled to this pittance ; 
 and, when you had got the certificate, it was still 
 more difficult to get the fifth, or any portion of it, 
 from the new incumbent. 1 Not unfrequently the 
 new incumbent himself had difficulty in getting his 
 stipend. But some 30,000 persons, chiefly women 
 and children, were in this way in a state of destitu- 
 tion. One wife, who pleaded that she and her 
 children were starving, was told that starvation was 
 " as near a way to heaven as any other." Appar- 
 ently, until 1654, the wife had to apply for the 
 money ; so that unmarried ministers, or widowers, 
 could get nothing. Some of these " delinquent " 
 or " malignant " clergy were shut up in prisons 
 or in vessels in the Thames, and not a few died in 
 consequence of their treatment. 2 
 
 And the offence of " delinquency " was nowhere 
 defined ; therefore it was difficult to prove innocence 
 of it. But the use of the Book of Common Prayer 
 in public or in private, or holding service on Christ- 
 mas Day, was quite sufficient. To have supported 
 
 1 A case is quoted in which an ejected minister got thirty 
 different orders for " fifths," and yet obtained nothing. At 
 first the Committee seems to have granted any proportion of 
 the income ; but in July 1643 the Commons made a fifth the 
 maximum allowance. 
 
 1 Dr. Sterne, who attended Laud on the scaffold, was one of 
 those who suffered in this way. Still worse was the fate of 
 those who were sent to the plantations or to Algiers, to be treated, 
 if they survived, as slaves.
 
 14 THE TRIUMPH AND FAILURE 
 
 Charles I., or to have spoken against the Common- 
 wealth, was also enough. Or the ejectors would 
 fall back upon vague charges of licentiousness of 
 life, or being a " scandalous minister." And it is 
 interesting to know that even portions of Scripture 
 could be " malignant." " God, the heathen have 
 come into Thine inheritance : Thy holy temple have 
 they defiled, and made Jerusalem a heap of stones," 
 was a very malignant text, and to preach from it, 
 or any portion of Ps. Ixxix., was enough to make 
 a minister " delinquent." And, of course, any re- 
 cognition of Episcopacy was " malignant " ; also 
 charging parents to get their children confirmed, or 
 preferring an episcopally ordained minister to one 
 who was not so ordained. 1 
 
 But it must be carefully remembered that it was 
 not only the Presbyterians who were guilty of this 
 intolerant and persecuting policy. The Independ- 
 ents, who in many things were so bitterly opposed 
 to the Presbyterians, were, as regards religious per- 
 secution, just as intolerant as the Presbyterians of 
 those who were attached either to the English Church 
 or to royalty. And persecution was all the more 
 reprehensible in their case, because the Independents 
 had fought as the champions of religious liberty. A 
 Presbyterian on principle was intolerant : his system, 
 
 1 Nevertheless, here and there an Anglican minister escaped 
 ejection, and kept up the Anglican services. Bunyan says 
 that in 1649-1663 he attended a church with " Priest, Clerk, 
 Vestment, and what else." This must refer to an Anglican 
 service. Christopher Hall, Vicar of Elstow, was appointed by 
 Laud, and held the living till 1664. See below.
 
 OF PURITANISM 15 
 
 he maintained, was the only one allowed by Scripture. 
 But the Independents maintained as a principle 
 that each Christian congregation ought to be free to 
 choose its own minister and determine its own 
 ritual. He who contends for religious freedom, and 
 yet persecutes those who differ from him, is one of 
 the most distressing of contradictions. 
 
 Nor were English Churchmen and Royalists the 
 only classes who suffered from this intolerance of 
 Presbyterians and Independents. Romanists,Ranters, 
 Quakers, and other sectaries were similarly treated. 
 The Quakers were often most cruelly handled. And 
 even the most liberal of the Independents seem to 
 have regarded it almost as an axiom that, of course, 
 those who could uphold either popery or prelacy 
 had no claim to toleration. All this ruthless 
 treatment of inoffensive people, whose only crime 
 was that of wishing to worship God in their own 
 way, steadily alienated the feelings of large masses 
 of the nation from the system which sanctioned 
 such injustice, just as surely as the burnings under 
 Mary and Philip had alienated them a hundred 
 years earlier. 
 
 What may be said in explanation, and to some 
 extent in excuse, of the misguided persecutors, and 
 in particular of the Independents, is this. In them 
 the fervour of religious conviction and revolt against 
 ecclesiastical domination had settled down into an 
 arrogant aggressive fanaticism, delighting in out- 
 bursts of enthusiasm, which they regarded as out- 
 pourings of the Spirit, but which resulted in exhibi-
 
 16 THE TRIUMPH AND FAILURE 
 
 tions of intellectual and spiritual pride. 1 They alone 
 knew the meaning of Scripture, and they alone were 
 God's saints. The civil war had turned these sturdy 
 sectarians into equally sturdy soldiers, strong in 
 religious discipline as in military drill. Having come, 
 as a rule, from the lower orders, they found pleasure 
 in domineering over others who had started higher 
 in the social scale than themselves. They were 
 convinced that in the prosecution of the war they 
 had been chosen vessels for the carrying out of 
 God's will, and especially for the executing of His 
 judgments upon the ungodly. Now that the 
 Lord of Hosts had given them the victory, it 
 was their business to see that the people of God 
 were never again either oppressed by godless cava- 
 liers, or seduced by false ministers. Thus both their 
 democratic and their religious enthusiasm led them 
 to have but scant consideration for those who in 
 political or in religious convictions differed from 
 themselves. 
 
 About the treatment of the Romanists under the 
 Commonwealth there does not seem to be a great 
 deal of information. A Jesuit priest named Thomas 
 Harrison was executed at Lancaster in 1G50; and 
 another, named Peter Wright, at Tyburn, 19th May 
 
 1 See Guizot, Causes of the Success of the English Revolution, 
 p. 24. Not only was unction preferred to sober learning, but 
 education was sometimes regarded as a disadvantage and an 
 impediment. South in one of his sermons says, " All learning 
 was then cried down ; so that none were thought fit for the 
 ministry but tradesmen and mechanics, because none else were 
 allowed to have the Spirit,"
 
 OF PURITANISM 17 
 
 1651. Wright had lived abroad from 1633 to 1643, 
 when he was sent back to England as a mission priest. 
 In February 1651 he was arrested in London, tried 
 for high treason under the 27th of Elizabeth, and 
 hanged. In 1652 we hear of a Jesuit priest named 
 Cuthbert Clifton endeavouring to convert " the 
 martyr Earl of Derby " on his way to execution in 
 October 1 651 - 1 The Earl had fought under Charles n. 
 at Worcester, and had escorted the defeated King to 
 Boscobel after the rout. Even after Cromwell became 
 Protector these miserable executions for religious pro- 
 fession did not cease ; and the last person who was 
 put to death in England for being a Roman priest 
 was executed by order of Oliver Cromwell. In 
 1654, Colonel Charles Worsley, who had commanded 
 the troops with which Cromwell expelled the Rump 
 Parliament (20th April 1653), arrested an aged 
 Roman Catholic priest named Southworth, who had 
 been sent into banishment .at Lancaster thirty-seven 
 years before. The old man admitted that he had 
 taken Orders in the Church of Rome, but said that 
 he was guiltless of any treason. Apparently he was 
 advised to withdraw his admission ; but he refused 
 to deny that he was in Roman Orders. He was 
 sentenced to death ; and the French and Spanish 
 Ambassadors were unable to induce the Protector to 
 remit the sentence. Lingard is probably right in 
 saying that, although Cromwell was not in favour of 
 such executions, yet " he had no objection to pur- 
 chase the good-will of the godly by shedding the 
 1 Taunton, History of the Jesuits in England, pp. 428-430.
 
 18 THE TRIUMPH AND FAILURE 
 
 blood of a priest." l A little later Colonel Worsley 
 became one of the most rigorous of the major- 
 generals, October 1G55. He died the following 
 June, and had a magnificent funeral in Westminster 
 Abbey. A Jesuit, named Edward Worsley, who 
 may have been a relation, for they were both Lan- 
 cashire men, was working in London in that very 
 year. 
 
 Cromwell's treatment of Southworth leads us to 
 consider a little more fully his attitude respecting 
 religious toleration ; and, if you pick your evidence, 
 you can make the Protector to be either a detestable 
 persecutor or an apostle of freedom. Some of his 
 utterances are all that a modern advocate of liberty 
 could wish. As early as 1643 he wrote to Crawford, 
 and rebuked him sharply for suspending a lieutenant- 
 
 1 History of England, viii. p. 209. The very feeble and in- 
 effectual opposition which Cromwell made to the horrible sentence 
 pronounced and executed on the fanatic, and perhaps lunatic, 
 James Naylor, is a similar case. On a constructive charge of 
 blasphemy (no words were quoted), Naylor was condemned by 
 Parliament, 17th December 1656, to be pilloried for two hours 
 in New Palace yard on the 18th and then whipped to the Ex- 
 change. On the 20th he was to be pilloried for two hours at 
 the Exchange, have his tongue pierced with a hot iron, and 
 the letter B branded on his forehead. Then he was to be taken 
 to Bristol, paraded on horseback with his face to the tail, and 
 then whipped through the city. Naylor was so prostrate with 
 the whipping from Cromwell's palace to the Exchange that the 
 remainder of the sentence was deferred to the 27th. Cromwell 
 was asked to interfere. He did nothing till the 25th, and then 
 wrote to ask the Speaker for the reason of the House's pro- 
 cedure. The rest of the sentence was carried out in London 
 on the 27th, and at Bristol 17th January 1657.
 
 OF PURITANISM 19 
 
 colonel on account of erroneous doctrine : " Sir, the 
 State, in choosing men to serve it, takes no notice 
 of their opinions. . . . Take heed of being sharp, or 
 too easily sharpened by others, against those to 
 whom you can object little, but that they square not 
 with you in every opinion, concerning matters of 
 religion." 1 He writes to Lenthall, the Speaker, 
 14th June 1645 : " He that ventures his life for the 
 liberty of his country, I wish he trust God for the 
 liberty of his conscience, and you for the liberty he 
 fights for." To the same, after the taking of Bristol, 
 14th September 1645 : " And for brethren, in things 
 of the mind we look for no compulsion, but that of 
 light and reason." To the General Assembly of the 
 Kirk of Scotland he wrote, 3rd August 1650 : " By 
 your hard and subtle words you have begotten 
 prejudice in those who do too much in matters of 
 conscience, wherein every soul is to answer for 
 itself to God. ... Is it therefore infallibly agreeable 
 to the Word of God, all that you say ? I beseech 
 you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you 
 may be mistaken." In dissolving the first Parlia- 
 ment of the Protectorate, 22nd January 1655, he said 
 that in the Civil War they had fought for " liberty 
 from the tyranny of the Bishops to all species of 
 Protestants to worship God according to their own 
 light and consciences. . . . And was it fit for them 
 to sit heavy upon others ? Is it ingenuous to ask 
 liberty, and not to give it ? What greater hypocrisy 
 
 1 Carlyle, Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, i. pp. 148, 176, 
 188; iii. pp. 82, 83.
 
 20 THE TRIUMPH AND FAILURE 
 
 than for those who were oppressed by the Bishops 
 to become the greatest oppressors themselves, so 
 soon as their yoke was removed ? " In addressing 
 the new Parliament, 17th September 1656, he states 
 that, in the twenty months since the dissoluton, his 
 practice has been to let all the nation see that quiet 
 and peaceable people, who do not make religion a 
 pretence for arms and blood, may enjoy liberty of 
 conscience for themselves. 1 
 
 All these professions are difficult to reconcile with 
 some of his utterances in the opposite direction, and 
 still more difficult to reconcile with his intolerant 
 acts. But although there is manifest inconsistency, 
 there is nothing that need cause astonishment. In 
 the first place, it seems to be quite clear that, when 
 Cromwell thought about, or spoke about, religious 
 liberty and freedom of conscience, he always meant 
 liberty for Puritans, and for Puritans only ; and 
 perhaps for not quite all of them. The Church of 
 Rome and the Church of England were always 
 excluded : that was an axiom with him. And perhaps 
 he hardly found room for the Kirk of Scotland. 
 Again, in spite of his friendly intercourse with George 
 Fox, the Quakers were also outside the limits. The 
 people whom he was prepared to recognize as within 
 the limits of the toleration for which he contended 
 
 1 Cromwell often gets the credit of having restored the Jews 
 to England and granted toleration to their worship. In The 
 Return of the Jews to EnglaiuL (Macmillans, 1905), Mr. Henriques 
 has given reasons for doubting whether Cromwell ventured to 
 do more than wink at the settlement of a few Jewish families 
 in the kingdom.
 
 OF PURITANISM 21 
 
 were the Independents, the English Presbyterians, 
 the Baptists, and some minor Protestant sects. The 
 Independents, Presbyterians, and Baptists shared 
 the livings of the Church of England, and those who 
 did not like the services which these ministers 
 afforded might have services of their own, always 
 provided that neither Mass-book, nor the Book of 
 Common Prayer, was used. As Cromwell said, " I 
 meddle not with any man's conscience. But, if by 
 liberty of conscience you mean a liberty to exercise 
 the Mass, I judge it best to use plain dealing and to 
 let you know, where the Parliament of England have 
 power, that will not be allowed of." 
 
 And in the Instrument of Government, by which 
 Cromwell was appointed " the Lord Protector," 
 16th December 1653, we have the same spirit mani- 
 fested in official language. In the 37th Article we 
 have : " That such as profess faith in God by Jesus 
 Christ (though differing in judgment from the 
 doctrine, worship, or discipline publicly held forth) 
 shall not be restrained from, but shall be protected 
 in, the profession of faith and exercise of their religion, 
 so as they abuse not this liberty to the civil injury 
 of others, and to the actual disturbance of the public 
 peace on their parts : provided this liberty be not 
 extended to popery or prelacy, nor to stick as, under 
 the profession of Christ, hold forth and practise 
 licentiousness" The exclusion of Romanists and 
 Episcopalians from toleration was bad enough : 
 but at any rate the exclusion is definite ; it is quite 
 clear who are not to be tolerated. But, under the
 
 22 THE TRIUMPH AND FAILURE 
 
 vague wording of the last clause, the persecution 
 of any unpopular sect was made possible. Those 
 who strongly disapproved of the sect's tenets or 
 practices might say that they were " licentious," 
 and must be put down by force. This was the 
 view taken of the Quakers, for connexion with whom 
 James Naylor suffered. On his case Mr. John 
 Morley justly remarks : " So hideous a thing could 
 Puritanism be ; so little was there in many respects 
 to choose between the spirit of Laud and the hard 
 hearts of the people who cut off Laud's head " 
 (Oliver Cromwell, p. 423). 
 
 But even this very limited toleration was deeply 
 resented. It was a bitter thing to the Presbyterians 
 that any Christians were tolerated, except themselves. 
 On the other hand, those who were neither Presby- 
 terians, nor Independents, nor Baptists, were in- 
 dignant that the ministers of other religious bodies 
 were appointed to livings while theirs were not. 
 Thus, while the rigorists who were established hated 
 Cromwell for allowing non-conformity, the non- 
 conformists hated him for establishing the others. 
 Add to these the Anglicans and Royalists, who hated 
 him as the suppressor of Church services and the 
 slayer of the King. 
 
 The nominated Assembly, commonly called " Bare- 
 bone's Parliament" (4th July -llth December 
 1653), marks the high-water line of Puritan sup- 
 remacy. The Long Parliament had been dismissed 
 for not being sufficiently drastic in its reform of 
 grievances in Church and State. The nominated
 
 OF PURITANISM 23 
 
 Parliament was dismissed for being too drastic. 
 Its proposal to abolish the Court of Chancery of 
 course shocked the lawyers ; but it does not concern 
 us. Its proposals to abolish tithes and Church 
 patronage, and to make marriage a civil contract 
 before a Justice of the Peace, led the way to the 
 dissolution of the Assembly. With the possible 
 exception of the earlier attempt to prohibit the 
 joyous celebration of Christmas Day, hardly any- 
 thing seems to have been so deeply resented by the 
 majority of the nation as the turning of the marriage 
 ceremony from a religious service into a purely civil 
 formality. 1 
 
 Respecting Christmas Day there are some interest- 
 ing entries in John Evelyn's Diary. In 1655 there 
 was still one Church in London in which the use of 
 the Prayer-Book was connived at, St. Gregory's, 
 of which Dr. George Wilde, formerly chaplain to 
 Charles I., was minister. He preached there 25th 
 November, the last Church of England sermon allowed 
 in a church under Cromwell's proclamation. 2 " So 
 
 1 It is significant that Cromwell's own daughters, Mary, who 
 married Lord Fauconberg, 19th November 1657, and Frances, 
 who married Richard Rich, llth November 1657, after the 
 public ceremony, were privately married by episcopally ordained 
 ministers with the service in the Prayer- Book. Cromwell in 
 this pretended to yield to " the importunity and folly of his 
 daughters." Dr. John Hewit, afterwards beheaded for con- 
 spiracy, performed the ceremony for Mary. 
 
 2 But it must not be supposed that the services of the Church 
 of England were extinguished at any time during this period. 
 Usher preached close to Whitehall. Allstree, Dolben, and Fell 
 are represented in a picture in the Hall of Christ Church, Oxford,
 
 24 THE TRIUMPH AND FAILURE 
 
 pathetic was his discourse/' says Evelyn, " that 
 it drew many tears from his auditory." On the 
 last Sunday of that year Evelyn was again at St. 
 Gregory's. He wrote in his Diary : " So this was 
 the mournfullest day that in my life I had seen in 
 the Church of England since the Reformation, to 
 the great rejoicing of both papist and presbyter. 
 The Lord Jesus pity our distressed Church, and 
 bring back the captivity of Zion." After this, Dr. 
 Wilde kept up the Church of England services 
 regularly in a house in Fleet Street. Evelyn men- 
 tions receiving the Holy Sacrament " at Dr. Wilde's 
 lodgings " on Christmas Day, 1656. The next 
 Christmas Day Evelyn went to the chapel of Exeter 
 House in the Strand, where Peter Gunning held 
 Church of England services. " Sermon ended," 
 writes Evelyn, "as he was giving us the Holy 
 Sacrament, the chapel was surrounded with soldiers, 
 and all the communicants and assembly surprised 
 and kept prisoners by them, some in the house, 
 
 as keeping up services. Jeremy Taylor and others ministered 
 in private houses, Juxon at Chastleton House, Hammond at 
 Westwood, Morton in the residence of Sir G. Yelverton. Some 
 got lectureships, and were thus independent of the Presbyterian 
 incumbents, and they said the Church prayers by heart. In 
 the country, some Anglicans retained their livings, as Lewis 
 Atterbury at Milton, Bull at Suddington, Stillingfleet at Sutton. 
 Some went to the Continent and kept up the Anglican services 
 there, as Cosin and Morley. And some of the ejected Bishops 
 still held ordinations in private, as Brownrigg, Duppa, and Hall 
 (Overton, Life in the English Church, 1660-1714). See also 
 History of St. John's College, by Thomas Baker, ejected Fellow, 
 ed. Mayor, ii. pp. 648-650.
 
 OF PURITANISM 25 
 
 others carried away. ... In the afternoon came 
 Colonel Whaly, Goffe, and others, from Whitehall, 
 to examine us one by one ; some they committed 
 to the marshal, some to prison. . . . These were 
 men of high flight, and above ordinances, and spoke 
 spiteful things of our Lord's Nativity. As we went 
 up to receive the Sacrament the miscreants held 
 their muskets against us, as if they would have 
 shot us at the altar, but yet suffered us to finish the 
 Office of Communion, as perhaps not having instruc- 
 tion what to do in case they found us in that action." 
 At the Restoration, Dr. Wilde was made Bishop 
 of Derry, and Mr. Gunning Bishop of Chichester 
 and then of Ely. 1 As to the preaching of the 
 Puritan ministers Evelyn says : " There was nothing 
 practical preached, or that pressed reformation of 
 life, but high and speculative points and strains 
 that few understood." 
 
 But the fact that it was never supposed that 
 toleration was to be extended to those who were not 
 Puritans is not the only thing which helps to explain 
 the glaring inconsistency between some of Cromwell's 
 utterances and a great deal of his conduct. We 
 must also take into account two other points : (1) that 
 his mind was not always quite in the same position 
 respecting this question of religious liberty ; (2) 
 that he had to work with people whose co-operation 
 was indispensable to him, and who thought that 
 
 1 Peter Gunning's own papers will illustrate the condition of 
 things still further (History of St. John's College, by Thomas 
 Baker, ejected Fellow, i. pp. 235, 236).
 
 26 THE TRIUMPH AND FAILURE 
 
 liberty of conscience was a heinous sin. One fanatic 
 said that if the devil had his choice whether the 
 hierarchy and liturgy should be established in the 
 kingdom or toleration granted, the devil would choose 
 toleration. Another said, that to let men serve God 
 according to their own consciences was to cast out 
 one devil that seven worse might enter. 1 Both of 
 these utterances are remarkable. The first admits 
 that to establish the Church of England again would 
 be better than general toleration ; which is, so far, 
 a compliment to the Church of England. The 
 second admits that intolerance is a devil ; which is, 
 
 1 Compare the pictures drawn from life, in Butler's Hudibras, 
 of the intolerant Presbyterians, e.g. : 
 
 " Bears naturally are beasts of prey, 
 That live by rapine ; so do they. 
 What are their orders, constitutions, 
 Church-censures, curses, absolutions, 
 But several mystic chains they make 
 To tie poor Christians to the stake ? 
 For to prohibit and dispense, 
 To find out or to make offence ; 
 Of hell and heaven to dispose, 
 To play with souls at fast and loose ; 
 To set what characters they please, 
 And mulcts on sin or godliness ; 
 Reduce the church to gospel-order, 
 By rapine, sacrilege, and murder ; 
 To make Presbytery supreme, 
 And kings themselves submit to them ; 
 And force all people, though against 
 Their consciences, to turn saints ; 
 Must prove a pretty thriving trade, 
 When saints monopolists are made." 
 
 Pt. i. Canto iii.
 
 OF PURITANISM 27 
 
 so far, a condemnation of persecution. But perhaps 
 neither speaker meant this inference to be drawn from 
 his words ; he merely wished, in the strongest possible 
 terms, to express his abhorrence of toleration. 1 
 
 Cromwell's ideal seems to have been a Puritan 
 State Church, fairly comprehensive in character, 
 but from which all Episcopalians, and perhaps some 
 of the wilder sectarians, were to be rigidly excluded. 
 It was this fatal exclusion of all loyal members of 
 the historic national Church that prevented his scheme 
 from having any permanence, or indeed from being 
 ever fully carried out. 2 The decisive step in this 
 utterly wrong direction had been taken during the 
 Civil War, and now there was no going back. Be- 
 tween 1643 and 1647 many hundreds of the Epis- 
 copal clergy had been expelled from their churches 
 and parsonages with a harshness which in many cases 
 was brutal. The same policy was continued under 
 the Commonwealth ; and after 1655 it was impossible 
 for a dispossessed Episcopalian clergyman to earn 
 money as a teacher or private chaplain, without risk 
 of heavy penalties. 3 No wonder that when the day 
 
 1 In 1703 the General Assembly of Scotland protested that 
 to tolerate Episcopacy would be to establish iniquity by law. 
 
 1 " Puritanism threw away its best chance in England, because 
 all its parties even the democrats assumed as an axiom that 
 no one who was not a Puritan was to share in the Government " 
 (Trevelyan, England under the Stuarts, p. 316). 
 
 * On pain of three months' imprisonment for the first offence, 
 six for the second, and banishment for the third. These per- 
 secuting edicts were absolutely illegal. We do not know to what 
 extent they were enforced ; but the fact that they were enacted 
 and could be enforced caused great distress.
 
 28 THE TRIUMPH AND FAILURE 
 
 of reckoning came there was cruel retaliation. In 
 1662 the Puritan scale had kicked the beam, and 
 hundreds of Nonconformists were harshly ejected 
 from their livings. 
 
 It is perhaps true to say that " Cromwell himself 
 would have wished to tolerate the use of the Prayer- 
 Book." He cared comparatively little for rigidity 
 either in Church or State. He had no punctilious- 
 ness about doctrine or ordinances in the one case, 
 or about constitutional forms and precedents in the 
 other. " I am not a man scrupulous about words or 
 names or such things." But whatever he may have 
 wished, it is quite certain that he joined with those 
 who prohibited the use of the Prayer-Book, even in 
 private. And this again contributed to the over- 
 throw of his experiments (they can hardly be called 
 a system) in ecclesiastical and civil government. 
 There were large numbers to whom the rhythmical 
 cadences of the Book of Common Prayer were very 
 dear ; 1 and, to those who were hearty Royalists, its 
 familiar phrases had become a symbol of political 
 as well as religious faith : just as the long-winded 
 rambling prayer of the Presbyterian or Independent 
 
 1 Robert Sanderson, rector of Boothby Pagnell, used a modified 
 prayer-book, still in existence in his handwriting, which he sup- 
 plemented from memory out of the Book of Common Prayer. 
 John Hacket, whose moderation had caused him to be allowed to 
 retain the small living of Cheam, knew the Burial Service by heart, 
 and on one occasion much edified some Puritans, who did not 
 know till he told them that the beautiful prayers which had so 
 affected them came out of the despised Book of Common Prayer. 
 He became Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield in 1661.
 
 OF PURITANISM 29 
 
 minister was a weekly memorial of that fanaticism 
 which had murdered their King, and made them 
 aliens in the country which they loved as dearly 
 as any Presbyterian or Independent could do. " It 
 was now that Oliver committed the mistake, which 
 thousands of others in like circumstances have 
 committed, of confounding the symbol with the 
 cause. The use of the Common Prayer-Book was 
 proscribed as thoroughly as the Mass." l 
 
 But, just as it was the non-religious element in the 
 nation which saved the Church of England from 
 being captured by the Puritans during the long 
 reign of Elizabeth, so it was the non-religious element 
 in the nation which had most to do with the over- 
 throw of their religious tyranny, after the Church 
 of England had been captured by the Puritans under 
 the Commonwealth. Not that the religious elements 
 in either case were quiescent ; but their efforts 
 sometimes neutralized one another, or were in other 
 ways not sufficiently decisive. 
 
 In all nations this non-religious element is a large 
 one ; and, whenever its interest in a great question 
 becomes roused, it can make itself felt. It is made 
 
 1 8. R. Gardiner (Oliver Cromwell, p. 259). Nevertheless he 
 thinks that " the system of the Protectorate was undoubtedly the 
 most tolerant yet known in England more tolerant, indeed, than 
 public opinion would, if left to itself, have sanctioned " (ibid. 
 p. 233). Bordeaux, the French Ambassador, wrote that, though 
 the laws against Catholics had not been modified, yet the con- 
 nivance shown to Catholics was such as to prove that they 
 received better treatment under the Protector than under any 
 previous Government (25th September 1050).
 
 30 THE TRIUMPH AND FAILURE 
 
 up of two kinds of persons, both very numerous : 
 those who, without being irreligious, are indifferent 
 to most of the questions which divide religious 
 parties, and those who care nothing at all about any 
 form of religion whatever. Under the Protectorate 
 of Oliver Cromwell this large non-religious element 
 had become very restive. It was fair-minded 
 enough to see the injustice with which Royalists and 
 Episcopalians had been treated. It was also well 
 aware that the Government under which it lived 
 was unconstitutional. Neither Cromwell, nor what 
 he was pleased to call his Parliaments, represented, 
 what had been fought for so enthusiastically in the 
 Civil War, the sovereign will of the nation. The 
 only thing that could do that was a Parliament 
 freely elected by the nation. In May 1654 Milton 
 had put forth, in the strong language of which he 
 was such a master, his Second Defence of the English 
 People, in which he belauded, not only Cromwell, 
 but Bradshaw, Fairfax, and Overton. He im- 
 plored the nation to allow itself to be governed by the 
 good and the wise, which in plain language meant 
 the army and Cromwell. That was Milton's ideal, the 
 ideal of political Puritanism. But there were many 
 Englishmen who thought that the nation ought to 
 be governed by its own representatives. In short, 
 the question to be decided was were Englishmen 
 to be governed in accordance with what was sup- 
 posed to be for their good, or in accordance with the 
 national will ? 
 Nor was it only in religion, or in refusing to take
 
 OF PURITANISM 31 
 
 the verdict of a free and general election, that Crom- 
 well receded from principles which he had professed 
 in favour of liberty, and which he would possibly 
 have followed more sincerely, if he had had an 
 entirely free hand. Like the majority of the Inde- 
 pendents, he had at one time wished for the liberty 
 of the press. This the Long Parliament had steadily 
 curtailed ; and the Protector was pushed on and on 
 along the same illiberal lines of policy. It was in 
 October 1655 that the blow fell, and regulations 
 similar to those of modern Russia were adopted. 
 Only a couple of weekly newspapers were to be 
 allowed, and those must be edited by an agent of 
 the Government. " How are the mighty fallen ! " 
 would be the thought of the blind Milton, when he 
 heard of his great leader trampling upon all that 
 he himself had contended for in the Areopagitica. 
 " What advantage is it to be a man, over it is to be 
 a boy at school, if we have only escaped the ferula, 
 to come under the fescue of an Imprimatur ? If 
 serious and elaborate writings, as if they were no 
 more than the theme of a grammar-lad under his 
 pedagogue, must not be uttered without the cursory 
 eyes of a temporizing and extemporizing licenser ? " 
 Paragraph after paragraph had he written in this 
 strain ; and this was the fruit of it all, Cromwell 
 himself establishing a censorship of the press ! 
 
 But what exasperated the non-religious people 
 more than anything else, either in religion or politics, 
 was the manner in which the Protector and the 
 Major-Generals maintained, with uncompromising
 
 32 THE TRIUMPH AND FAILURE 
 
 aggressiveness, all the rigorous gloominess of Puritan 
 morality. It was not enough that severe laws were 
 enacted against betting. Almost every kind of 
 public amusement was proscribed. Ale-houses were 
 closed, not merely lest factious men should congregate 
 in them, but lest any people should enjoy themselves 
 there. Wrestling matches and grinning through the 
 horse-collar on village greens were put down. Every 
 form of theatrical entertainment was forbidden ; and 
 an order went forth that all the Maypoles in the 
 land were to be removed. Horse-racing was pro- 
 scribed, and even a puppet show was regarded as 
 immoral. We perhaps sympathize with these rigor- 
 ists, when we find them putting down the highly 
 popular diversion of bear-baiting. But the idea of 
 preventing cruelty to animals was not the motive 
 of the Puritans. As Macaulay says, " The Puritan 
 hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the 
 bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators. 
 Indeed, he generally contrived to enjoy the double 
 pleasure of tormenting both spectators and bear." 1 
 The army, which dictated and enforced these irritat- 
 ing laws, strictly observed them, and could afford 
 to do so, for the men were handsomely paid. An 
 Italian writer says that at that time an English 
 private got better pay than an Italian captain. 
 
 All' this restraint upon public conduct and family 
 life, and all this suppression of innocent and time- 
 honoured pleasures was made trebly galling to the 
 
 1 History of England, i. p. 161. In his Essay on Milton, Mac- 
 aulay pays a generous tribute to the nobler side of Puritanism.
 
 OF PURITANISM 33 
 
 nation by the character of the people who were the 
 authors or abettors of it. The tyranny of Charles i. 
 had in many respects been more serious, and had 
 cut deeper into the national life. But the Govern- 
 ment f Charles was at least a government of gentle- 
 men ; and the men who carried out his oppressive 
 measures were to a large extent the nobility and 
 gentry of England. It was very much otherwise 
 with the Government of Cromwell. His first Parlia- 
 ment was composed for the most part of mean and 
 illiterate persons. Many of his officers, both in the 
 army and in civil posts, were people of inferior social 
 position. That would not have been fatal, if those 
 who were promoted had always been men of capacity 
 or conspicuous honesty. But Cromwell was cursed 
 with the adhesion of no small amount of black- 
 guardism. The best men of his party were, indeed, 
 honourable and Christian men, with high ideas of 
 morality. They believed that they had received 
 from the Almighty a special commission to do His 
 work in England, and special grace with which to 
 execute it. But along with these were some of the 
 most despicable hypocrites of the time, who found 
 it a very paying thing to imitate the phraseology 
 and manners of the ruling party, and who went 
 about canting as to " saving grace " and " the will 
 of God," in order to cover the vilest iniquity. The 
 genuine fervour of the devout Puritans was trying 
 enough to non-Puritan and non-religious English- 
 men ; for it is somewhat irritating to be treated as 
 a poor sinner by those who profess to be saints. 
 3
 
 34 THE TRIUMPH AND FAILURE 
 
 But the hypocritical sanctimoniousness of those who 
 wished to curry favour with the saints was intoler- 
 able. 1 These men had the watchwords of the party 
 most frequently on their lips ; and, as it was known 
 that their lives were evil, they discredited the whole 
 Puritan Government. Thus the anti-Puritan flood, 
 which was so soon to sweep away both Protector 
 and Commonwealth, went on steadily rising, and 
 overflowed all the barriers which separated religious 
 and political parties from one another. It was no 
 longer found solely or even chiefly among Royalists 
 or Episcopalians, but manifested itself in society 
 generally, and especially among those who cared 
 little about differences of religion. 2 The strong 
 hand of Cromwell kept the great flood-gates closed 
 during his lifetime. Then, after two years of un- 
 certainty under the incompetent guidance of an 
 unwilling ruler, the waters poured forth, and the 
 nation gave a frantic welcome to the merry monarch 
 
 1 See the amusing sketch of " A Shee Precise Hypocrite " in 
 Earle's Microcosmographie, No. 43 : " Shee doubts of the Virgin 
 Marie's Salvation, and dare not Saint her, but knowes her owne 
 place in heaven as perfectly, as the Pew she has a key to. Shee 
 is so taken up with Faith, Shee has no roome for Charitie, and 
 understands no good Workes, but what are wrought on the 
 Sampler. She over flowes so with the Bible, that she spils it 
 upon every occasion." 
 
 * " In the reaction which accompanied the Restoration, 
 Puritanism seemed hopelessly discredited and crushed. The 
 populace hated it for its austerity, and the deepest feelings of 
 the English nation were stung to madness at the memory of their 
 slaughtered king " (Leoky, England in the Eighteenth Century, 
 i. p. 8).
 
 OF PURITANISM 35 
 
 and his jovial court. The rule of Cromwell had 
 taught the people of England two lessons, one of 
 them wholesome, the other very much the reverse. 
 It had taught them to dread the domination of a 
 standing army, 1 and to hate the very name of religious 
 zeal. 
 
 Cromwell seldom said a truer word than that " the 
 safest test of any constitution is its acceptance by 
 the people." It is by the application of that test 
 that all his attempts at Constitution-making stand 
 condemned. Not one of them was ever accepted 
 by the people. 
 
 Cromwell's last year was one of chequered lights 
 and shades. He stood high in Europe, and was 
 supreme in Britain. But he had dangerous enemies, 
 especially at home. He may have wished to govern 
 constitutionally : but often he could not do so, 
 without effacing himself ; and this he would never 
 do. Convinced that he was responsible to God 
 alone, he cared less and less about having human 
 law on his side. 2 For his arbitrary acts, both 
 Royalists and Republicans tried to get him assassi- 
 nated. 
 
 Four days before Cromwell's death a terrific storm 
 
 1 " The profound horror of military despotism, which is one of 
 tho strongest and most salutary of English sentiments, has been, 
 perhaps, the most valuable legacy of the Commonwealth " (ibid. 
 p. 120). 
 
 * " The Protector professed to see the hand of God, a special 
 intervention, when he succeeded. There is not a more perilous or 
 immoral habit of mind than the sanctifying of success " (Lord 
 Acton).
 
 36 THE TRIUMPH AND FAILURE 
 
 passed over England. 1 The storm afterwards became 
 associated with Cromwell's death, and was inter- 
 preted, by his enemies as a sign that the Satanic 
 powers were claiming their own, by his admirers as 
 evidence that Nature itself was groaning in sympathy 
 with the death of the greatest man in the world. 2 
 The two interpretations anticipate the two verdicts 
 respecting him. 
 
 What are we to say of the Great Usurper ? Shall 
 we evade the question with a witticism, and say 
 with Lowell, that, if he is not to be reckoned among 
 English sovereigns, he may at least count among the 
 half-crowns ? Or, with Clarendon, who had joined 
 with him against Strafford, that he was " a brave, 
 bad man " ? Or, with Ludlow, who had fought at 
 his side, and with him had signed the death-warrant 
 of the King, that he was an apostate, who, from 
 the most selfish motives, had aimed at sovereignty 
 throughout ? Or, with the Anabaptists, that he was 
 a " grand impostor," a " loathsome hypocrite," and 
 a " sink of sin " ? No ; these are not true accounts 
 of him. Rather, let us say with Baxter, who had 
 been his chaplain, and had sometimes rebuked him 
 
 1 During the storm, Dennis Bond, a leading Republican, died. 
 The Royalists said that the devil took Bond for Cromwell's 
 appearance. 
 
 2 " Toss'd in a furious hurricane, 
 
 Did Oliver give up his reign ; 
 And was believed as well by saints, 
 As mortal men and miscreants, 
 To founder in the Stygian ferry, 
 Until he was retriev'd by Sterry." 
 
 Butler, Hudibras, Part in. ii.
 
 OF PURITANISM 37 
 
 to his face, that " he meant honestly in the main, 
 and was pious and conscionable in the main course of 
 his life." Baxter adds that " success corrupted him," 
 and " then his general religious zeal gave way to 
 ambition." But perhaps that also is not the exact 
 truth. It was failure rather than success that cor- 
 rupted him, by tempting him to resort to evil 
 methods. Usurpers are not a class of rulers that the 
 world esteems ; but among all usurpers there are few 
 more worthy of esteem than Cromwell. 1 There 
 have been many worse Englishmen, and not so very 
 many greater. But to make him quite a hero, and 
 almost a saint, 2 is to follow him in forgetting the dis- 
 tinctions between right and wrong, without having 
 his excuses for doing so. Two facts, one external and 
 the other internal, have marred the completeness 
 of a really great character. He had to work, either 
 as the leader, or as " the drudge," of an exacting and 
 fanatical army. And, with all his rugged simplicity, 
 
 1 As Horace Walpole said of him : " If we must be ridden, 
 there is some satisfaction when the man knows how to ride " 
 (Letter to the Earl of Hertford, 5th October 1764). 
 
 2 Peter Sterry, one of his chaplains, said of him after his death, 
 " if he was of great use to the people of God when he was amongst 
 us, now he will be much more so, being ascended to heaven to sit 
 at the right hand of Jesus Christ, there to intercede for us, and to 
 be mindful for us on all occasions." Sterry, in praying for 
 Richard, asked the Almighty to make him the brightness of his 
 father's glory and the express image of his person, which Burnet 
 condemned as " indecent words next to blasphemy ' (Oum Times, 
 1668). Compare Dryden's Stanzas on Oliver Cromwett : 
 
 " Heaven in his portrait showed a workman's hand, 
 And drew it perfect, yet without a shade."
 
 38 PURITANISM 
 
 he was somewhat of a fanatic himself. It was these 
 two things, his dependence upon force and his fan- 
 atical self-will, which made it possible that he, the 
 great Puritan, should be the chief cause of the 
 Puritan failure. 1 
 
 1 These lectures were written before the writer had seen the 
 excellent criticism in Lecky's England in the Eighteenth Century, 
 i. pp. 119, 120.
 
 II. 
 
 1660-1678. 
 
 RESTORATION AND 
 RETALIATION.
 
 ' Who comes with rapture greeted, and caressed 
 With frantic love his kingdom to regain ? 
 Him Virtue's Nurse, Adversity, in vain 
 Received, and fostered in her iron breast : 
 For all she taught of hardiest and of best, 
 Or would have taught, by discipline of pain 
 And long privation, now dissolves amain, 
 Or is remembered only to give zest 
 To wantonness. Away Circean revels ! 
 But for what gain ? If England soon must sink 
 Into a gulf which all distinction levels 
 That bigotry may swallow the good name, 
 And, with that draught, the life-blood : misery, shame, 
 By Poets loathed, from which Historians shrink ! " 
 WORDSWORTH, Ecclesiastical Sonnets, in. iii.
 
 II. 
 
 1660-1678. 
 RESTORATION AND RETALIATION. 
 
 PURITANISM, as the dominant form of religion in 
 England, died with Oliver Cromwell. His son 
 Richard, although he succeeded to the Protectorate 
 without a contest, 1 had not the strength of will to 
 maintain Puritanism or anything else. He was an 
 amiable, but forceless person ; and, just as a states- 
 man of our own day has been smiled at under the 
 title of " the Grand old Woman," so Richard was 
 good-humouredly bowed off the scene under the title of 
 " Queen Dick." " Tumbledown Dick " was another 
 nickname for him. 2 There was much shuffling of 
 
 1 As Dryden remarks : 
 
 " No civil broils have since his death arose, 
 But faction now by habit does obey." 
 
 8 Clarendon tells how the Prince of Conti, not knowing who 
 he was, abused Richard to his face as a poltroon, and asked what 
 had become of that fool ? Richard replied that he had been 
 betrayed by those whom he had most trusted, and had been most 
 obliged to his father. He then took leave of the Prince, who two 
 days later found out whom he had been talking to. Butler in 
 Hudibras calls Richard " a lame vicegerent." Dryden calls him 
 " the foolish Ishbosheth." 
 
 41
 
 42 RESTORATION AND RETALIATION 
 
 the cards, until General Monk began to play his hand. 
 Without showing it to any one, and perhaps without 
 knowing himself how he would play it, he marched 
 from Scotland 2nd January 1660, and entered London 
 3rd February. The restored Rump Parliament was 
 sitting, and for a day or two he allowed the members 
 to believe that he was going to be their servant. 1 
 They were soon undeceived. On the llth he sent 
 them a peremptory letter, telling them to issue writs 
 for a new Parliament, and to fix a day for their 
 own dissolution. The news of this was received 
 with acclamation by the people ; " a free Parliament 
 at last ! " And the Rump Parliament was burned 
 in effigy on many a bonfire. 2 It dissolved 16th 
 March. The new Convention Parliament, to which 
 the House of Lords returned as a matter of course, 
 met 25th April. It carried out the first part of the 
 Restoration, the re-establishment of the Constitution. 
 The second part, the re-establishment of the Church 
 of England, was carried out the next year by its 
 successor. The Convention Parliament was by 
 law " no true Parliament, because the King did not 
 summon it ; on the contrary, it summoned the King." 3 
 
 1 " All the world is at a loss to think what Monk will do : the 
 City saying that he will be for them, and the Parliament saying 
 he will be for them " (Pepys, Diary, 18th January). 
 
 2 " At Strand Bridge I could at one time tell thirty-one fires. 
 The butchers at the May Pole in the Strand rang a peal with their 
 knives when they were going to sacrifice their rump" (llth 
 February). " Heard how in many churches in London, and upon 
 many signs there, and upon merchant's ships in the river, they 
 had set up the king's arms " (21st April). 
 
 * Trevelyan, England under the Stuarts, p. 332.
 
 RESTORATION AND RETALIATION 43 
 
 It received from Charles the famous Declaration of 
 Breda, 1st May. This was read amid outbursts of 
 approval ; and without either debate, or division, 
 or laying down of conditions, it was accepted. 1 
 A week later, in a delirium of popular delight, 
 Charles n. was proclaimed King in London. On 
 the 10th he was proclaimed at Oxford, on the 12th 
 at Durham. The Londoners were more than frantic 
 with joy ; one or two dropped down dead : and this 
 limitless enthusiasm overflowed into the country. 
 The whole nation was beside itself with rapture. 2 
 Coventry wrote to Ormond to hasten the King's 
 coming, " to prevent the town's running mad ; for, 
 betwixt joy and expectation, the people hardly 
 sleep." Charles landed at Dover 25th May. Monk 
 welcomed him with humble devotion. The King 
 kissed him, and called him his father. The Mayor 
 of Dover presented a Bible, and Charles replied that 
 " it was the thing that he loved above all things in 
 the world." 3 The progress to London was a pro- 
 longed triumph. At Blackheath the army, which 
 had held the country for so long against him, was 
 drawn up to receive him. It was not enthusiastic, 
 but it presented a loyal address, and Charles was 
 much impressed by the sight of these famous troops, 
 
 1 " At night more bonfires than ever, and ringing of bells, 
 and drinking of the king's health upon their knees in the 
 streets, which methinks is a little too much " (Pepys, 2nd 
 May). 
 
 1 " The world of England," says Anthony Wood, " was perfectly 
 inad." 
 
 Pepys, Diary, 25th May 1660.
 
 44 RESTORATION AND RETALIATION 
 
 still under discipline, although they knew that their 
 reign was over. They might have given trouble ; 
 but it is to their credit that they were willing to 
 part with a power which had been abused, and 
 which had become detestable to the nation. 
 
 On his thirtieth birthday, 29th May, the restored 
 King entered London, and the frenzy of joy reached 
 a climax. 1 The Presbyterian preachers joined in 
 the acclamations ; and once more he was presented 
 with a Bible. With the readiness of a Stuart he 
 exclaimed, that the Bible should form the rule of 
 his life. In the evening both Houses of Parliament 
 welcomed him at Whitehall, and the constitution 
 of King, Lords, and Commons was once more com- 
 plete. In the very room from which his father had 
 stepped to the scaffold the Speaker asked him to 
 confirm Magna Carta and the Petition of Right. 2 
 He said that he was as ready to grant as the people 
 were to ask : his whole wish was to make them as 
 happy as he was himself. Charles n. had many 
 failings ; but niggardliness as regards fair speeches 
 
 1 George Hickes (the Nonjuror) was an undergraduate at 
 Oxford at the time of the Restoration. As Dean of Worcester he 
 preached on 29th May 1684, and spoke of the popular welcome as 
 almost as miraculous as the Restoration. People cried, as if by 
 inspiration, Hosanna to the King ! " Rebels and traitors, 
 Papists and Church Robbers, united with loyal Churchmen to 
 hail the return of the Lord's anointed." He called Charles the 
 stone which the builders rejected, which has now become the 
 head of the corner (Hunt, Rdigioua Tliought in England, ii. p. 74). 
 
 2 The Speaker was Sir Harbottle Grimstone, a Presbyterian. 
 He said that the sufferings of Charles placed him among the 
 martyrs of Christ.
 
 RESTORATION AND RETALIATION 45 
 
 was at any rate after the Restoration seldom 
 one of them. 
 
 "Whate'er he did was done with so much ease: 
 In him alone 'twas natural to please." 
 
 But what did it all mean ? What is the explanation 
 of these frantic expressions of joy for the return of 
 a prince who was a stranger to nearly all of them, 
 and about whose personal character they knew very 
 little ? l In spite of this, however, the enthusiastic 
 welcome was to a considerable extent a personal one. 
 They knew how Charles had been wronged, and how he 
 had suffered in exile; and they were willing to estimate 
 his goodness by the measure of what he had endured. 
 Yet the nation's delight meant a great deal more 
 than that justice was being done to an injured prince, 
 whose character was sure to prove gracious. It 
 meant that the nation's own sufferings were ended ; 
 that the liberty for which it had fought and con- 
 quered, and yet had never secured, had at last come 
 without fighting ; that the tyranny of the conquer- 
 ing army, which had proved worse than that of the 
 conquered King, had been swept away ; and that 
 
 1 James Wei wood remarks that " it looks as if Heaven took a 
 more than ordinary Care of England, that we did not throw up 
 our liberties all at once, upon the Restoration of that King ; for 
 tho' some were for bringing him back upon Terms, yet after he 
 was once come, he possessed so entirely the Hearts of his People, 
 that they thought nothing was too much for them to grant, or for 
 him to receive " (Memoirs, 1699, p. 109). Less than two years 
 before, Dryden had canonized Oliver Cromwell in his first import- 
 ant poem. He now glorifies Charles in Astraea Redux (I860), and 
 the Panegyric on the Coronation (1661).
 
 46 RESTORATION AND RETALIATION 
 
 the long series of unconstitutional experiments, in 
 governing a free people without a free Parliament, 
 had at last come to an end. 1 Above all, it meant 
 that the dismal reign of Puritanism was ended ; 
 and that it was now possible once more to have in 
 their churches the services which they loved, and 
 in their social gatherings the amusements which they 
 loved, without fear of fine or imprisonment. 2 The 
 attempt to force upon the people forms of religion 
 which only a minority of them liked, and standards 
 of morality which nearly all of them abominated, 
 had broken down, as it always does, completely ; 
 and those who had groaned under its shortlived 
 success were almost wild with delight at the com- 
 pleteness of the failure. 3 
 
 1 " It was the dislike felt to a mode of government which dis- 
 guised violence and oppression under the cloak of freedom that 
 led to the restoration of the old constitution " (Ranke, History of 
 England, iii. p. 311). 
 
 8 " They were freed," says Anthony Wood, " from the chaines 
 of darkness and confusion which the presbyterians and phanaticks 
 had brought upon them." 
 
 8 " Over the fall of the Presbyterians," says Goldwin Smith, 
 " considering the intolerance which they had shown, their blas- 
 phemy and heresy laws, and the general part which they had 
 played, it is not easy to shed a tear " (The United Kingdom, ii. 
 p. 16). It should be remembered that it was the Presbyterian 
 Convention Parliament, not the Royalist Parliament which 
 followed it, that ordered the bodies of Cromwell, Bradshaw* 
 Ireton, and Pride to be dug up, dragged to Tyburn, and buried 
 there (where- Connaught Square now stands), while their heads 
 adorned Westminster Hall. Another storm accompanied this 
 proceeding. Pepys tells how ho " went to Charing Cross to see 
 Major-General Harrison hanged, drawn, and quartered. . . . Thus 
 it was my chance to see the King beheaded at Whitehall, and to
 
 RESTORATION AND RETALIATION 47 
 
 And we know also how complete was the reaction. 
 Puritanism had made cheerfulness a sin ; and now 
 nothing was sinful, so long as it was cheerful. In the 
 luxury of defying Puritan notions of morality, 
 morality itself was thrown to the winds. Barefaced 
 vice was welcomed as evidence of the recovery of 
 freedom. Society, from the court downwards, be- 
 came shameless ; and, with the scanty exception of 
 sermons, almost all literature became indecent. 
 
 Puritanism had been stricken with panic months 
 before the nation resolved to recall the King. There 
 have not been many religious changes in England 
 which, without help from the Government, have been 
 more rapid. Almost suddenly, after the death of 
 Oliver Cromwell, Puritanism found that it had lost its 
 hold upon the people, and that it was being deserted. 
 The Puritan leaders began to think far less of sover- 
 eignty than of a safe abdication. As the return of 
 Charles became more and more certain, they looked 
 to him for good terms. There was reason to hope 
 that they would get them ; for in Scotland Charles 
 had swallowed the Solemn League and Covenant, 
 and had taken much trouble to appear truly devout. 1 
 He would pray loudly in his room, when Presby- 
 terian chaplains were within hearing ; and he knew 
 how to look solemn, and use the right phrases, when 
 he went about. When he was abroad, he had 
 
 see the first blood shed in revenge for the King at Charing Cross " 
 (13th October 1660). 
 
 1 The fault was not all on his side. One of the Commissioners 
 who negotiated the agreement owned that " we did sinfully en-
 
 48 RESTORATION AND RETALIATION 
 
 thought it worth while to play to the Puritans at 
 home. He got the Protestant Princess of Turenne 
 to write to her cousin in London and assure her of the 
 young King's conversion. " I heard him speak," she 
 said, u with such testimonies of piety that I was ex- 
 tremely edified. ... I bless God because the marks 
 of election are seen in him." And the letter in due 
 course appeared in print. Drelincourt, a Protestant 
 minister in Paris, wrote to a friend in London, that 
 the young Prince was much commended for his 
 piety. " If, without the intervention of any foreign 
 power, your Presbyterians recall this prince and seat 
 him on the throne, they acquire to themselves and 
 to their posterity immortal glory." 1 Presbyterian 
 clergy went over to Breda, not to impose conditions 
 on Charles, they had no such confidence, but to see 
 what terms he would grant to them. Among these 
 were Calamy, Manton, Reynolds, and Spurstowe. 
 Denzil Holies and some Puritan laymen went with 
 them. Then came the Declaration of Breda, in 
 which the King had stated : " We do declare a 
 liberty to tender consciences, and that no man shall 
 be disquieted or called in question for differences of 
 
 tangle the nation, ourselves, and that poor Prince, making him 
 sign a covenant which we knew that he hated in his heart." 
 
 1 These and other letters are printed in the Phoenix, a collection 
 of rare papers, 1707. James Welwood says of Charles n. that 
 " no age produced a greater Master in the Art of Dissimulation. . . . 
 If he had any one fixed Maxim of Government, it was to play one 
 party against another, to be thereby the more master of both : 
 and no Prince understood better how to shift upon every Change 
 of the Scene " (Memoirs, 1699, p. 131).
 
 RESTORATION AND RETALIATION 49 
 
 opinion in matters of religion, which do not disturb 
 the peace of the kingdom ; and that we shall be 
 ready to consent to such an Act of Parliament as, 
 upon mature deliberation, shall be offered to us, for 
 the full granting of indulgence." 
 
 Charles was too good-natured and easy-going to 
 be vindictive ; and he cared too little about religion 
 to persecute anybody for doctrine or ritual. The 
 question with him would be, whether in the long 
 run it would give him less trouble to resist those 
 who wished him to be intolerant, or to reject those 
 who asked for toleration. For the present, he was 
 very willing to buy the support of the Presbyterians 
 and other Puritans by being civil to them, and leading 
 them on to expect very generous treatment. He 
 was just as ready to gratify the Bishops by professing 
 devotion to the Prayer-Book, 1 and dislike of Presby- 
 terianism ; the latter being genuine enough, for, like 
 his grandfather, he had been sickened of Presby- 
 terianism in Scotland, and he said that Presbyterian- 
 ism was no religion for a gentleman. While he could 
 delight both Anglicans and Puritans by expressing 
 a royal horror of the pretensions of Rome. 
 
 And yet, so far as he was anything, Charles was 
 at heart a Romanist. Not that he believed Roman 
 doctrine, or any religious doctrine whatever. 2 But 
 
 1 This was quickly restored. Evelyn says (8th July 1660) : 
 " From henceforth was the liturgy publicly used in our churches." 
 Of course this means " some of our churches." 
 
 1 " The truth is, King Charles was neither Bigot enough to any 
 Religion, nor loved his Ease so little, as to embark in a Business 
 that must at least have disturbed his Quiet, if not hazarded his 
 
 4
 
 50 RESTORATION AND RETALIATION 
 
 he knew that in this world Rome was the enemy 
 of democracy, and, therefore, the friend of absolute 
 kings ; and he thought that, if religion was of any 
 good for the next world, there was something to be 
 said for a Church which professed to absolve the 
 dying sinner and see him safe through purgatory. 
 His sympathies were with continental monarchs, 
 especially with such a King as Louis xiv., for whose 
 methods he had the greatest admiration. The beliefs 
 and politics of his own nation interested him far 
 less ; and experience had made him cynical about 
 both. He had seen a great deal of religious and 
 political parties ; and he had had dealings with the 
 worst men in each of them men who were not 
 only intriguing and grasping, but sordid also and 
 faithless. From them he judged the rest ; and he 
 was convinced that every man could be bought, and 
 every woman also. 1 Virtue only meant standing out 
 for a higher bribe than was required to buy the others. 
 Moreover, experience had taught him that a man 
 who had sold himself to one side would sell himself 
 again to the other, so that fidelity meant nothing 
 more than serving one's own interests and filling 
 
 Crown" (Welwood, Memoirs, p. 113). The Scotch Presbyterians 
 had sickened him of religion. Burnet says of that time that 
 Charles " heard many prayers and sermons, some of a great 
 length. I remember in one day there were six sermons preached 
 without intermission. I was there myself, and not a little weary." 
 1 Burnet wrote of him : " He has a very ill opinion both of men 
 and of women, and so is infinitely distrustful ; he thinks the world 
 is governed wholly by interests, and indeed he has known so much 
 of the baseness of mankind, that no wonder if he has hard thoughts 
 of them."
 
 RESTORATION AND RETALIATION 51 
 
 one's own pockets. It was, perhaps, a good feature 
 in Charles that he was neither soured nor saddened 
 by these experiences, but only made cynical. Once 
 more, he did not care enough to be saddened. He 
 wanted the English throne, and he wanted a pleasant 
 time upon it ; and he valued the throne much more 
 for the opportunities of pleasure which it afforded 
 than for its own dignity and value. He had been 
 restored to the throne because it was impossible to 
 recover parliamentary government without him. 
 But his restoration to it involved the restoration of 
 Bishops to their sees and of ejected incumbents to their 
 livings ; and the latter was a matter of grave difficulty. 
 How could this be done without grievous Offence to 
 the Presbyterians, to whose help the King's restoration 
 was largely due, and to whom he had promised great 
 consideration ? They had hated Cromwell as much 
 as he had done, and had submitted to the great 
 Independent, only because they could not do other- 
 wise. Resistance would have meant making way 
 for an Independent minister in their place. 
 
 Charles was conciliatory. He made a number of 
 the Presbyterian divines his chaplains in ordinary, 
 and let them preach before him, 1 and have ready 
 
 1 He wrote to his sister, the one person in the world for whom 
 he had real affection : " We have the same disease of sermons that 
 you complaine of there (Paris) ; but I hope you have the same 
 convenience that the rest of the family has, of sleeping out most 
 of the time, which is a great ease to those who are bound to 
 hcarc them." In 1673 he told the preachers that they must not 
 use a MS., but deliver their sermons from memory. This was, 
 no doubt, in order to shorten the discourses. There is the well-
 
 52 RESTORATION AND RETALIATION 
 
 access to him. Among these were Calamy and 
 Reynolds, Bates, Case, Manton, Spurstowe, and 
 Wallace. Ashe and Newcomen declined the honour. 
 Baxter, who was in a class by himself, at the King's 
 express desire, accepted it. These men were moderate 
 in what they asked for their party. They admitted 
 that there was no false doctrine in the Prayer-Book, 
 though they would like to have it revised ; and they 
 wished that the minister should be allowed to " make 
 use of those gifts for prayer and edification which 
 Christ has given him for the service and edification 
 of the Church." Naturally, they desired that 
 Presbyterians should not be turned out of their 
 livings ; and, for the present, it was conceded that, 
 where the ejected Episcopalian incumbent was dead, 
 his successor should not be disturbed, notwithstand- 
 ing the irregularity of his appointment. But this 
 concession gave great offence in some quarters. As 
 regards episcopal government, nearly the whole Pres- 
 byterian party was willing to accept the modified 
 form of it sketched by Archbishop Ussher ; but the 
 nine ejected Bishops who still survived stood out for 
 the restoration of the old scheme in all its fulness. 1 
 
 known story of South pausing in a sermon, to ask someone to 
 wake the Earl of Lauderdale, as his snoring might waken the 
 King. 
 
 1 These were : Juxon of London, Wren of Ely, Pierce of Bath 
 and Wells, Roberts of Bangor, Warner of Rochester, Skinner of 
 Oxford, Duppa of Salisbury, King of Chichester, Frewen of 
 Lichfield and Coventry. Of these, Juxon was translated to 
 Canterbury, Frewen to York, and Duppa, who had been the 
 King's tutor, to Winchester. Of these, Wren had been in the 
 Tower since September 1642 ; and Pierce or Piers had narrowly
 
 RESTORATION AND RETALIATION 53 
 
 Baxter replied to them with much asperity, and 
 thereby somewhat marred his own case. In a 
 Declaration concerning Ecclesiastical Affairs, which 
 was published 25th October, the King held to the 
 principles of the Declaration of Breda, and was 
 generous to the Presbyterians. 
 
 Bishoprics were offered to some of them : Norwich 
 to Reynolds, Lichfield to Calamy, Hereford to 
 Baxter. Deaneries were offered to others : Coventry 
 to Bates, Rochester to Manton, and York to Bowles. 
 Reynolds accepted at once. Calamy wished that 
 they should all accept together, or decline together, 
 but he hesitated about accepting. In the end, he 
 and all the others declined. Perhaps they were 
 afraid of what their friends might say of them. 
 Bowles, on leaving London, said to Monk, now Duke 
 of Albemarle, " My Lord, I have buried the good 
 old cause, and I am now going to bury myself." He 
 never conformed. In his last illness, August 1662, 
 he was asked what he disliked in conformity. He 
 replied, " The whole." Baxter, however, had ad- 
 mitted that to accept a bishopric involved no recog- 
 nition of the old prelacy. 
 
 Before the King's Declaration of 25th October 
 was issued, Hyde, now Lord Chancellor and Prime 
 Minister, had presented a petition from the Inde- 
 pendents and Anabaptists, asking for liberty of 
 
 escaped the same fate. " As to Ussher's Model of Government," 
 they said, " we decline it as not consistent with his other learned 
 discourses on the original of Episcopacy and of Metropolitans, 
 nor with the King's supremacy in matters ecclesiastical.'
 
 54 RESTORATION AND RETALIATION 
 
 public worship, and it was proposed to add a clause 
 to the Declaration offering freedom to all who met 
 for worship, " so be it they do it not to the disturbance 
 of the peace." This was disliked by both Episco- 
 palians and Presbyterians, because it would give 
 freedom, not only to the sectaries, but to Romanists. 
 Baxter strongly opposed it ; and the Declaration, 
 to the Bang's regret, was published without the 
 clause. 
 
 Charles proceeded to fill the vacant sees ; and 
 some of the selections for them were excellent, while 
 all were intelligible. That Sanderson, Cosin, Sheldon, 
 and Morley should all be promoted, namely, to 
 Lincoln, Durham, London, and Worcester, was 
 excellent ; and it was quite intelligible that Gauden, 
 of Eikon Basilike fame, and Walton of the Polyglott 
 Bible, and Monk, brother of the General, should all 
 be offered sees. 1 But there were excellent men who 
 got nothing, or only some trifling preferment ; and, 
 if all the Presbyterians had accepted what had been 
 offered to them, there would have been still more 
 good men left out in the cold. As it was, the appoint- 
 ment of Reynolds to Norwich caused some bitter 
 criticism. It was said that the King and his advisers 
 had passed " an act of oblivion for their friends, 
 and indemnity for their enemies." 2 No doubt there 
 were many that were only too happy to be restored 
 
 1 Boswell reports Johnson as remarking that licentious as 
 Charles n. was, " he knew his people and reverenced merit. The 
 Church was at no time better served than in his reign." 
 
 2 Perry, History of the Church of England, ii. p. 308.
 
 RESTORATION AND RETALIATION 55 
 
 to their old homes, and to be able once more to use the 
 services of the Prayer-Book publicly and without 
 fear ; but one wonders whether Izaac Walton does 
 not idealize a little, when he speaks of tranquil 
 happiness being everywhere prevalent. " A general 
 joy and peace," he says in his Life of Sanderson, 
 " seemed to breathe through the three nations ; 
 the suffering and sequestered clergy (who had long, 
 like the children of Israel, sat lamenting their sad 
 condition, and hanged their neglected harps on the 
 willows that grow by the waters of Babylon) were, 
 after many thoughtful days and restless nights, now 
 freed from their sequestrations, restored to their 
 revenues, and to a liberty to adore, praise, and pray 
 to Almighty God publicly, in such order as their 
 consciences and oaths had formerly obliged them." 
 Walton lived in a tranquil atmosphere with Bishop 
 Morley at Farnham, and wrote his Life of Sanderson 
 some seventeen years after the crisis of the Restora- 
 tion ; and there was probably a great deal on the 
 other side of the shield which he had never known 
 or had forgotten. There was the scramble for royal 
 favour, the bitterness of those who did not get it 
 even after frequent asking, the mutual recriminations, 
 and the consequent vindictiveness. 1 Besides this, 
 there was the patent fact that some of the restored 
 clergy were now quite unfit to have the care of a 
 parish. Necessity had driven them into callings of 
 a very secular character. Or they had lived in 
 
 1 " Le jour d'un nouvcau r&gne est le jour des ingrats " (Cresset, 
 Edouard III.).
 
 56 RESTORATION AND RETALIATION 
 
 squalor and lost all self-respect. Or, in their misery, 
 they had tried to find comfort in drink. After 
 they had come back to their livings, charges of 
 drunkenness and disorderly life were quickly 
 raised ; and, although some of these may 
 have been the malicious inventions of the ousted 
 party, it is likely enough that some of them were 
 true. 
 
 The Savoy Conference, which dragged on through 
 several months (April to July) in 1661, was an unreal 
 contest. Neither side meant to concede anything, 
 and the issue was a foregone conclusion. The 
 Episcopalians knew that they would get their way, 
 and the Presbyterians that they must be defeated. 
 Nevertheless, the Presbyterians wished to put forth 
 a strong statement of their case. Perhaps they 
 would have done better if they had not had so capable 
 a debater as Baxter. He and Bates, with Jacomb, 
 led on that side, Pearson, Gunning, Sparrow, and 
 Morley on the other. Baxter throughout his career 
 was too fond of being the candid friend of all parties. 
 He was greater in criticism than in conciliation. As 
 Orme says of him, his conduct did credit to his con- 
 scientiousness rather than to his wisdom. Refined 
 distinctions influenced his judgment to the neglect 
 of plain principles and facts. He would frame subtle 
 schemes of union, and yet act in a way that would 
 wreck any scheme. 1 He was gentle in spirit, and 
 
 1 Burnet says : "He had a great confusion of things in his 
 head, and could bring nothing into method : so he was a dark and 
 perplexed preacher. Yet many of the ladies of high form loved
 
 RESTORATION AND RETALIATION 57 
 
 believed in toleration, and yet would contend strongly 
 about trifles. His presence at the Conference was 
 in itself almost fatal to its success ; but both sides 
 were to blame. 1 
 
 There were eight points put forward for discussion, 
 but agreement was reached upon none of them. In 
 the end the Conference came to the lame conclusion, 
 " that the Church's welfare, that unity and peace, 
 and His Majesty's satisfaction, were ends upon 
 which they were all agreed ; but, as to the means, 
 they could not come to any harmony." 
 
 Meanwhile the new Parliament, duly summoned 
 by royal writs, had met 8th May. It effected the 
 second part of the Restoration, the re-establishment 
 of the Church of England. Strange that the Con- 
 vention, which was mainly Presbyterian, should 
 produce a Parliament which at once abolished 
 Presbyterianism ! The most urgent matter for it 
 was the confirmation of the Act of Indemnity, which 
 had been passed by the Convention Parliament the 
 previous August. Till that was done, no one who 
 had taken up arms against the Crown was safe. It 
 proved to be a Royalist Long Parliament, for it 
 continued to sit for eighteen years ; and it was in 
 some things as one-sided as the National Long 
 
 to hear him preach ; which, the King used to say, was because they 
 did not understand him." 
 
 1 Hallam gives the chief blame to the Churchmen. No doubt 
 they ought to have been generous to defeated opponents. But, 
 on the other hand, they had for many years received outrageous 
 provocation. See Baker's History of St. John's College, ed. 
 Mayor, ii. p. 645.
 
 58 RESTORATION AND RETALIATION 
 
 Parliament. It is a remarkable thing that after the 
 Restoration the Commons were less tolerant than 
 the Lords. As Macaulay says, the Lower House 
 was " more zealous for royalty than the King, and 
 more zealous for episcopacy than the Bishops." The 
 zeal for royalty abated, as experience of Charles 
 increased and the memory of the Civil War became 
 less vivid ; moreover it was always kept within 
 bounds by consideration of the rights of Parliament. 1 
 But the zeal for Episcopacy and the hatred of dis- 
 senters continued throughout the Parliament's long 
 existence. In May they passed the Corporation Act, 
 which required all corporate magistrates and office- 
 holders to take " the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper 
 according to the rites of the Church of England," to 
 renounce the Solemn League and Covenant, and to 
 swear that it was unlawful, on any pretence what- 
 ever, to take up arms against the Bang. No Romanist 
 or rigid Presbyterian was to be admitted to a municipal 
 corporation or bench of magistrates. 2 Parliament 
 also restored the Bishops to the House of Lords, 
 and they appeared there once more 20th Novem- 
 ber. Pepys wrote in his Diary : "At their going 
 out, how people did look upon them as strange 
 creatures, and few with any kind of love or respect." 
 Charles was against this, for he foresaw that the 
 
 1 Charles n. never ventured to imitate his father in trying to 
 levy taxes without the sanction of Parliament. 
 
 2 This was " on a basis of principles laid down by Hobbes, who 
 denied the rights, and even the existence of conscience." The 
 policy of Clarendon was " to suppress the Roundhead by sup- 
 pressing the Presbyterian " (Lord Acton, Lectures, p. 209).
 
 RESTORATION AND RETALIATION 59 
 
 Bishops would be against any toleration of Roman- 
 ists ; but the Chancellor, now Earl of Clarendon, 
 was strongly in favour of it ; and in public the King 
 expressed satisfaction. The Church of England, he 
 said, was " the best fence God hath yet raised against 
 popery in the world." 
 
 Side by side with Parliament, Convocation had 
 been sitting. A few Presbyterians had been elected, 
 but they were not summoned, and the Convocation 
 was purely Anglican. It accepted some Presby- 
 terian suggestions, 1 but it would make no concessions 
 as to doctrine or ritual. Some six hundred changes 
 were made in the Book of Common Prayer, most of 
 them trifling, but those that were significant were 
 not in the Puritan direction. Some were taken 
 from the Scotch Service Book of 1637. Presbyterians 
 declared that not until now had the Prayer-Book 
 been positively distasteful to them. 
 
 The work of revision was done rapidly, for the 
 Commons were anxious to pass a new Act of Uni- 
 formity ; and it is marvellous that so excellent a 
 revision should have been completed in a month. 2 
 But a large amount of material, previously prepared 
 
 1 The admirable General Thanksgiving is by Reynolds. The 
 Prayer for all conditions of men is in accordance with the Puritan 
 idea that a prayer should contain many petitions. They disliked 
 short collects, and that for the 6th Sunday after Epiphany, 
 added in 1662, is a long one ; so also the Collects for the Ember 
 Weeks. 
 
 * From 21st November to 20th December, on which day the 
 revised Book was signed by the clergy of both Houses and both 
 provinces. But at the Savoy Conference Baxter had produced 
 an entirely new liturgy in a fortnight !
 
 60 RESTORATION AND RETALIATION 
 
 by Overall and Andrewes, and more recently by 
 Cosin, was ready for immediate use. Still, it did not 
 quite please all the Bishops. Some would have liked 
 the old book unaltered. 
 
 The King was in debt, and was anxious for a 
 money vote ; but the Commons were unwilling to lose 
 this hold over him till the religious question was 
 settled by a Uniformity Act. At last, in March 
 1662, the King addressed them on the subject. He 
 had heard that they were very zealous for the Church, 
 and he thanked them for it. But he was indeed 
 unlucky, if, after being reproached with being a 
 Papist abroad, he was now suspected of being a 
 Presbyterian at home. He was as zealous for the 
 Church of England as any of them could wish, and 
 hoped that those who did not love it would come to 
 a better mind. The Uniformity Bill sent up by the 
 Commons was kept by the Lords till the new Prayer- 
 Book appeared. Clarendon presented it 25th March, 
 and proposed that the Act should refer to the new 
 Book. A new clause was added by the Peers to the 
 effect that no one could have cure of souls or ecclesi- 
 astical dignity in the Church of England, unless he 
 had received Episcopal ordination, excepting only 
 the foreign Protestant ministers in London or else- 
 where. The clause was opposed, but passed ; and 
 Clarendon says that it caused very few incumbents 
 to be ejected. 1 Some Bishops worked it with cruel 
 severity, when they required ministers who came to 
 
 1 Many of them had received episcopal ordination before swear- 
 ing to the Solemn League and Covenant.
 
 RESTORATION AND RETALIATION 61 
 
 them for ordination to express a formal renunciation 
 of their Presbyterian Orders. 
 
 Another clause required that all ministers should 
 declare their unfeigned assent and consent to all 
 things contained in the Book of Common Prayer. 
 Baxter asked that it might be stated that " assent 
 and consent " referred to the use of the Book, not 
 to all its contents. The Lords were willing, but the 
 Commons refused. The country members, many 
 of whom had once been Puritans, had, under Crom- 
 well, been driven by both religious and social ex- 
 asperation to the side of Church and King ; and 
 now they had all the zeal of converts. 1 They sup- 
 ported Clarendon in granting everything to the 
 Church, and restoring the full Episcopal system. 
 And they went beyond him. " The Bill was no 
 sooner read in the Commons," says Clarendon, 
 " than every man according to his passion thought 
 of adding something to it that might make it more 
 grievous to somebody whom he did not love." They 
 insisted that the Act should apply not only to clergy, 
 but to schoolmasters and even private teachers. 
 All must conform to the Prayer-Book, and must 
 declare that to swear to the Solemn League and 
 Covenant was an unlawful oath ; and that to take 
 
 1 Of course there were many others who had been Anglican at 
 heart from the first. One way or another it was clear " that the 
 Church of England was still enthroned in the affections of the 
 English people, the very type of their national character, the 
 reflexion of their calm good sense, of their reverence for hoar 
 authority, of their fastidious distaste for what is scenic and self- 
 assuming " (Sir J. Stephen, Essays in Eccles. Biog. ii. p. 19).
 
 62 RESTORATION AND RETALIATION 
 
 up arms against the King upon any pretence what- 
 ever was unlawful. 
 
 The Act of Uniformity became the law of the land 
 19th May 1662. It swept Presbyterianism out of 
 power in the Church, as the Corporation Act had 
 swept it out of power in the State. All ministers 
 who had not submitted to it by 24th August, St. 
 Bartholomew's Day, were to be deposed, and their 
 places filled as if they were dead. The Peers would 
 have allowed a dispensing power to the King ; but 
 this the Commons would not tolerate. 1 
 
 The Presbyterians were not only bitterly dis- 
 appointed, for, after the Declaration of Breda and 
 its successor, they had entertained hopes that the 
 King might refuse to sign the Bill ; they were dis- 
 mayed and exasperated. They said that their 
 fathers had fared better at Hampton Court. The 
 Bishops in revising the Book had not made one 
 important concession. In their Preface (by San- 
 derson) they had professed to " keep the mean 
 between the two extremes," and to do that which 
 " might most tend to the preservation of Peace and 
 Unity in the Church," but they had abated nothing. 
 On the contrary, they had increased the number 
 of Lessons taken from the Apocrypha. The absurd 
 story of Bel and the Dragon must now be read. It 
 was cruel for the strong to exact the uttermost 
 farthing. 2 
 
 It was natural that they should complain, and 
 
 1 Trevelyan, England under the Stuarts, p. 339. 
 8 C. Beard, Hibbert Lectures, 1883, p. 323.
 
 RESTORATION AND RETALIATION 63 
 
 protest, and petition : but they were suffering for 
 what their own party had done during the last 
 fifteen years. The working of Century White's 
 committees was still fresh in men's minds. The 
 outrageous tyranny of the boards of " triers," the 
 establishment of which, as Macaulay says, " was 
 undoubtedly one of the most despotic acts ever done 
 by any English ruler," l had only recently ceased. 
 By them Bishops, clergy, and gentry had been turned 
 out and robbed. Was it unnatural was it wholly 
 unreasonable that Parliament should take every 
 care that these wrongdoers should not only be rendered 
 powerless, but should be made to suffer for their 
 wrongdoing ? They had been cruel in depriving 
 others of their rights. 2 Ought they to complain 
 because these others were not gentle in recovering 
 what was their own ? " Let Mr. Baxter," says 
 Bishop Bramhall, " sum up into one catalogue all 
 the Nonconformists throughout the kingdom of 
 England ever since the Reformation who have been 
 cast aside or driven away ; I dare abate him all the 
 
 1 History of England, i. p. 158. 
 
 1 " Whom neither chains nor transportation, 
 Proscription sale nor confiscation, 
 Nor all the desperate events 
 Of former try'd experiments, 
 Nor wounds could terrify, nor mangling. 
 To leave off loyalty and dangling, 
 Nor death with all his bones affright 
 From vent'ring to maintain the right ; 
 From staking life, and fortune down 
 'Gainst all together, for the crown." 
 
 Butler, Hudibras, Part m. ii.
 
 64 RESTORATION AND RETALIATION 
 
 rest of the kingdom, and only exhibit a list of those 
 who in these late intestine wars have been haled 
 away to prison, or chased into banishment by his 
 party in three places alone, in London and the two 
 universities, or left to the merciless world to beg 
 their bread, for no other crime than loyalty, and 
 because they stood affected to the ancient rites and 
 ceremonies of the Church of England and they 
 shall double them for number." 1 
 
 And yet, though all this was excusable, and 
 perhaps more than excusable, was there not a more 
 excellent way ? As Bishop Warburton says : "It 
 would be hard to say who are most to blame ; those 
 who oppose established authority for things in- 
 different, or that authority which rigidly insists 
 upon them, and will abate nothing for the sake of 
 tender misinformed consciences. I say it would be 
 hard to solve it, had not the Apostle done it for us, 
 where he says : We that are strong ought to bear 
 the infirmities of the weak, and not to please our- 
 selves." But at the Restoration it seemed otherwise. 
 When Dr. Allen said to Sheldon, who in 16G3 became 
 Archbishop of Canterbury : " 'Tis a pity the door is 
 so strait," the reply which he got was : " 'Tis no 
 
 1 Bramhall against Baxter, pp. 166, 167 ; written after the ex- 
 pulsion of the Nonconformists. The dissenting historian Toulmin 
 writes : " The friend of religious liberty will not be disposed 
 to weep over the fate of the presbyterian hierarchy. While it 
 existed, it was only a substitute of one spiritual tyranny, of one 
 system of coercion, for another. In the room of prelates arose 
 presbyters or elders as lords over God's heritage " (Historical View 
 of the State of Dissenters in England, p. 268).
 
 RESTORATION AND RETALIATION 65 
 
 pity at all : if we had thought so many of them 
 would have conformed, we would have made it 
 straiter. 1 
 
 The exact number of those who left their livings 
 rather than conform is not known. Baxter says 
 about 1800, Calamy 2000 : both numbers may be 
 exaggerations, although 2000 is commonly stated. 
 Some of them had received episcopal ordination 
 before the days of the Long Parliament : but most 
 had sworn to the Solemn League and Covenant, and 
 would not repudiate their oath ; and all of them had 
 scruples about the use of the Prayer-Book. So 
 hundreds of farewell sermons were preached to 
 hundreds of congregations, and the preachers went 
 out into the wilderness. 2 
 
 But let us admit that Parliament was doing no 
 more than its duty, and no more than the nation 
 required it to do, when it drew a hard and fast line 
 round the Church of England, and insisted that those 
 
 1 Neal, History of the Puritans, iv. p. 302. This severity drove 
 conscientious men out, while others with easy consciences re- 
 tained their livings, and yet did not conform. Dean Granville 
 writes : "Of all Nonconformists, I confess I have most indigna- 
 tion against those that can accept of a fat benefice and prefer- 
 ment, and yet not conform " (Remains, Surtees' Miscellanea, Part 
 ii. p. 41). 
 
 8 Dissenting historians admit that, although the Nonconform- 
 ist ministers before the Restoration had few superiors in ability, 
 zeal, and learning, yet "the fruits of these men's ministry appear 
 to have been comparatively small. When they were silenced, and 
 men of a very different character were in most places appointed 
 to succeed, the number of those who adhered to their old ministers 
 was generally far from large " (Bogue and Bennett, History of 
 Dissenters, i. pp. 95 ff.). 
 
 5
 
 66 RESTORATION AND RETALIATION 
 
 who could not keep within that line should be re- 
 garded as disloyal Englishmen. Still, there is 
 another line which may be drawn between exclusion 
 from privileges and active persecution, and this line 
 Parliament and some of the Bishops proceeded to 
 cross. Granted that the safety of the Constitution 
 required that no one who refused to conform could 
 be allowed to be a minister in the Church, or an 
 official in the State, that did not prove that Non- 
 conformists ought to be deprived of the ordinary 
 liberties of citizens. The two remaining Acts of 
 what is known as the Clarendon Code are clearly of 
 the nature of active and spiteful persecution. 
 
 The Corporation Act of 1661 and the Act of Uni- 
 formity of 1662 have been already mentioned. In 
 1664, Charles proposed comprehension for Presby- 
 terians and indulgence for Independents and 
 Romanists. Instead of consenting, Parliament 
 passed the First Conventicle Act, It forbade attend- 
 ance at meetings for religious worship other than 
 those of the Church of England, with imprisonment 
 for the first and second transgression, and transporta- 
 tion for the third : and to return to England after 
 transportation was a capital offence. In 1665, 
 Charles proposed that Nonconformists should obtain 
 toleration by making an annual payment. The 
 reply of Parliament to this suggestion was the 
 vexatious and pitiful Five Mile Act, which was 
 directed specially against those ministers who had 
 not subscribed the Act of Uniformity. It enacted 
 that no clergyman or schoolmaster should come
 
 RESTORATION AND RETALIATION 67 
 
 within five miles of any town in which he had acted 
 as " parson, vicar, or lecturer," unless he would 
 swear that he would not " at any time endeavour 
 any alteration of Government either in Church or 
 State," and declare that it is unlawful to bear arms 
 against the King. The Act imposed no religious 
 test, and therefore may be said to be an instance of 
 political rather than religious persecution. But 
 it was aimed at ministers of religion, and was intended 
 to put down Puritanism. 1 It must have made it 
 very difficult for Puritans to get religious instruction 
 for themselves or their children. 2 
 
 Nor did the impeachment and fall of Clarendon 
 in 1667 make matters much better for the Noncon- 
 formists. The Cabal Ministry (1667-1673) reversed 
 a great deal of his policy, but they did not cancel 
 the Clarendon Code. In 1670 the Second Conventicle 
 Act was passed by large majorities. The first was 
 expiring, and the King wished it to expire. He still 
 wanted indulgence for Romanists, and therefore 
 indulgence all round ; but Parliament was as rigorous 
 
 1 Bishop John Earle of Salisbury opposed the Act most strenu- 
 ously, and died at Oxford very soon after the Parliament there had 
 passed the measure. 
 
 8 It is impossible to ascertain the number of Dissenters at this 
 time. Stewart, a Norfolk M.P., stated in the House that con- 
 formity was increasing daily. " In Norwich are 20,000 persons, 
 and not twenty Dissenters." Sherlock, in Test Acts Vindicated, 
 states that in 1676 the Dissenters of all kinds in England, in- 
 cluding Papists, were calculated as one to twenty. If this is 
 near tie truth, the Church could have well afforded to preach 
 toleration. But conformity (often only partial) was one thing : 
 loyalty to the Prayer-Book was quite another.
 
 68 RESTORATION AND RETALIATION 
 
 as ever, although in both Houses there were some who 
 spoke for toleration. The Second Act made the 
 penalties somewhat less severe, but it was more 
 vexatious in its provisions, and made the position 
 of Nonconformists still worse. 
 
 In March 1672, Charles once more tried his hand 
 at toleration by publishing a Declaration of In- 
 dulgence. Protestant Dissenters were to be allowed 
 to meet in public for worship, Romanists in private. 
 The House of Commons at once requested the King 
 to revoke the Declaration as unconstitutional. They 
 told him that his claim " to suspend penal statutes 
 in matters ecclesiastical " was ultra vires : " no such 
 power was ever claimed or exercised by any of your 
 Majesty's predecessors." Next year it passed the 
 Test Act, 1 which was as clearly directed against 
 Roman Catholics as the Five Mile Act had been 
 against Protestant Dissenters. It enacted that in 
 future " no one should be admitted to any office or 
 public position unless he abjured the doctrine of 
 Transubstantiation." 2 This " black charter of 
 English Protestantism " was more political than 
 religious. It is one of the ugly features in the " No 
 Popery " agitations which have so often troubled 
 
 1 Overton says that the Test Act " originated in the panic 
 which arose from the marriage of the Duke of York with a 
 Romanist " (Life in the English Church, 1660-1714, p. 170). But 
 Lord Peterborough did not go to Modena to treat for the hand 
 of Mary Beatrice till late in July 1673, and the marriage took 
 place 30th September. The Teat Act passed in March 1673. 
 
 2 This doctrine was crucial : no Pope could grant a dispensa- 
 tion to Romanists to take such a test.
 
 RESTORATION AND RETALIATION 69 
 
 and disgraced English politics. 1 The King professed 
 to regard it as ridiculous : he would keep his Roman 
 Catholic barber, in spite of all their Bills. Few 
 people knew that he was already bound by secret 
 treaty with Louis xiv. to put down Protestantism 
 in England with the help of a French army. But 
 people did know that the Duke of York, who com- 
 manded the fleet, was a Romanist, and that there 
 were plenty of Romanists about the Court. The 
 Act drove both the Duke of York and Clifford from 
 office, as it was intended to do, and thus shattered 
 the Cabal. Whether Clifford was a Romanist, is 
 unknown. Evelyn, who knew him well, did not 
 know ; and we cannot find out. He died, possibly 
 by his own hand, the following September. Charles 
 never again played a card for Romanism in English 
 politics. But the anti-Roman feeling, which he had 
 provoked, did not die down because he ceased to 
 provoke it. It had to be glutted with many victims 
 before it was allayed even for a time. 
 
 In June 1673, Sir Thomas Osborne became High 
 Treasurer and Prime Minister, and soon afterwards 
 
 1 It is remarkable that all the Dissenters in the Commons 
 voted for the Test Act, although it told against them as well 
 as against Romanists ; for it required all who took office to 
 receive the Sacrament in a parish church before formally re- 
 nouncing Transubstantiation. The Dissenters said, " Never 
 mind us at present. Papists must be kept out at any cost." 
 It is also remarkable that the clergy not only did not protest 
 against, but defended, this dreadful profanation of the Sacra- 
 ment. Swift writes to Stella of Bolingbroke's going " to receive 
 the Sacrament. Several rakes did the same. It was not for 
 piety, but employment."
 
 70 RESTORATION AND RETALIATION 
 
 Earl of Danby. Though " corrupt himself and a 
 corrupter of others," he had some principles, and 
 among them a rooted objection to all trifling with 
 Romanism, and also to all indulgence to Dissent. 
 The Test Act had to some extent united Anglicans 
 and Dissenters against Romanists. Danby kept the 
 Clarendon Code in full working order, and tried to 
 add to it a Bill which would have excluded from 
 both Houses of Parliament all but Anglicans and 
 Royalists. In this he failed. But his promotion of 
 the strenuous opponent of popery, Compton, from 
 the see of Oxford to that of London (December 1675) 
 showed his decided anti-Roman bias. It was in 
 1675 that a Bill of Indulgence to all Protestant 
 Dissenters was again introduced by Buckingham 
 without success. 1 
 
 Sheldon, who had been Archbishop of Canterbury 
 since the death of Juxon in 1663, died 9th November 
 1677. One of his first acts as Primate had been an 
 arrangement with Clarendon that the clergy should 
 no longer tax themselves in Convocation, and thus, 
 perhaps, supply the King with money, which the 
 Commons had refused. In consequence of this the 
 clergy were henceforth able to vote for members of 
 Parliament ; a considerable constitutional change 
 brought about without any direct legislation. Sheldon 
 had been in favour of the enforcement of the laws 
 against Nonconformists ; but he is said to have been 
 
 1 See his speech, Proceedings of the House of Lords, ed. 1742, 
 i. p. 164, partly quoted by Lady Burghclere, George Villicrs, 
 Second Duke of Buckingham, p. 310.
 
 RESTORATION AND RETALIATION 71 
 
 land to some who suffered under them. During the 
 frightful Plague of London in 1665, Sheldon remained 
 at Lambeth and endeavoured to alleviate suffering ; 
 and after the Great Fire he worked indefatigably for 
 the rebuilding of St. Paul's. His death gave Danby 
 an opportunity of exercising great influence over the 
 Church of England. Passing over all the Bishops, 
 he appointed William Sancroft, Dean of St. Paul's, 
 to the Primacy ; and it is said that he did so at the 
 urgent request of James, Duke of York, who thought 
 that Sancroft would restrain the anti-Roman policy 
 of Compton, Bishop of London. If this is true, 
 the Duke seriously misjudged his man. One of 
 Sancroft's first acts as Archbishop was to call upon 
 the Duke to abandon the Romish religion, and be 
 reconciled to the Church of England. One of the 
 few things that we can esteem in James is his stead- 
 fast adherence to the Church of Rome when it was 
 so much to his interest to desert it ; and the interview 
 was without result, so far as the conversion of the 
 Duke is concerned. But, before We go on to the 
 momentous events which took place during the 
 primacy of Archbishop Sancroft (1678-1690), it will 
 be useful to look back a little and gather up some 
 results. 
 
 The Restoration had come too fast for healthy 
 development, and too triumphantly for sobriety 
 and fairness. It had two dangerous enemies, one 
 latent, the other only too conspicuous the spirit of 
 revolution and the spirit of reaction. The revolu- 
 tionary spirit was not dead ; and it long survived,
 
 72 RESTORATION AND RETALIATION 
 
 not only its overwhelming defeat, but the discovery 
 that it was now powerless. It might here and there 
 give a little trouble ; but it had not the smallest 
 chance of success. Yet the mere fact that it was 
 known to be circulating in the veins of not a few 
 Englishmen produced feverish restlessness in society, 
 and was a constant anxiety to the Government. 
 And the reactionary spirit, the common disease of 
 victorious factions, served to intensify this spirit 
 of revolution. Many of the strong measures taken 
 by the triumphant Royalists were either necessary 
 in order to redress grievous wrongs, or were a just 
 retribution for gross violations of justice. Others, 
 again, might seem to be only wise precautions against 
 similar violations in the future. But reparation, 
 when it begins to be simply vindictive, becomes not 
 only a discredit, but a source of danger, to the cause 
 which it is supposed to serve. The religious reaction 
 under Charles u. cannot easily be acquitted of this 
 grievous charge. It is impossible to maintain that 
 it was nothing more than a just redress of the out- 
 rages which had been inflicted upon the Church of 
 England and its clergy. It was vindictive retalia- 
 tion. And so far as the King was concerned, and 
 those who had helped him to draw up his first two 
 Declarations, it was a breach of faith to the more 
 moderate Presbyterians. They had expressed their 
 willingness to accept a great deal that they did not 
 like ; and the King had expressed his willingness to 
 grant them freedom of worship. Charles, no doubt, 
 would have liked to keep his word, not merely to save
 
 RESTORATION AND RETALIATION 73 
 
 himself trouble and gain something for Romanists, 
 but also out of genuine good nature and good sense. 
 But he yielded to the pressure of ecclesiastical pre- 
 judice, and to the intolerance of the country squires 
 in the House of Commons. An attempt was made 
 to save the King's word in two ways. First, that 
 he had promised " to consent to such an Act of 
 Parliament as shall be offered for the full granting 
 that indulgence." If Parliament would not offer 
 any such Act, he could not consent to it. Secondly, 
 at the Savoy Conference the Presbyterians were led 
 on to demand a great deal more than they had pro- 
 posed at Breda. And in the petition which they 
 presented after the Conference they made use of 
 language which was impolitic in its strenuousness. 
 This made it easy to say : " It is quite impos- 
 sible to satisfy these men ; and it is also impossible 
 to know what they mean. Sometimes they say that 
 the things which they dislike are indifferent, and if 
 they are required by lawful authority to adopt them 
 they will regretfully comply ; sometimes they declare 
 that the adoption of these things would be sinful." 
 It may be doubted whether either of these pleas did 
 much towards convincing or soothing the Presby- 
 terians. They could always say with truth : " We 
 did more than any other body towards restoring the 
 King. We deserved, and we were led to expect, 
 consideration. And not one concession of real value 
 has been made to us. On the contrary, we are perse- 
 cuted." The truth was that the religious reaction 
 was too strong for toleration, or even moderation, to
 
 74 RESTORATION AND RETALIATION 
 
 assert itself. It was the cause of most of the mis- 
 takes and crimes which were committed by the 
 Government of Charles n. 1 
 
 It is perhaps true to say, with Guizot, that the 
 bulk of the nation kept itself above both these evil 
 influences. Certainly, it was not seriously affected 
 by what survived of the spirit of revolution. It is 
 less certain that the spirit of religious reaction failed 
 to move it strongly. But we may believe that, in the 
 main, it retained its characteristic good sense. " It 
 is from the reign of Charles n. that this good sense, 
 which is the political intelligence of a free people, 
 has presided over the destinies of England. The 
 revolution, through which the English nation had 
 just passed, had terminated in three great results. 
 They were as yet confused and incomplete, but they 
 were irrevocable. 
 
 "1. The King could never again separate himself 
 from the Parliament. The cause of monarchy was 
 gained, but that of absolute monarchy was lost for 
 ever. 
 
 " 2. The House of Commons was in effect the pre- 
 ponderant branch of the Parliament. The influence 
 of the House of Commons over the affairs of the 
 country was daily more obvious and decisive. 
 
 " 3. These two political facts were accompanied 
 by one of still higher importance the complete and 
 definite ascendency of Protestantism in England." 2 
 
 1 See Lady Newdigate-Newdegate, Cavalier and Puritan in 
 the Days of the Stuarts, chap. vi. 
 8 Guizot, Causes of the Success of the English Revolution, pp. 81 S.
 
 RESTORATION AND RETALIATION 75 
 
 Romanists might join with Bossuet in pointing 
 triumphantly to the dissensions among Protestants ; 
 and in England certainly there was plenty of dis- 
 sension. But Anglicans, Presbyterians, Inde- 
 pendents, and other sectaries were quite agreed 
 about this : that, whether toleration was a good or 
 a bad thing, one thing the nation would never again 
 tolerate submission to the discipline and dog- 
 matism of Rome. The history of England would 
 have been far more free from trouble and from 
 baseness, if Charles n. and James n. could from the 
 first have recognized this fact. But in those days 
 of scheming and counter-scheming, of uncertain aims 
 and shifty principles, it was very difficult for any 
 prince or statesman to know what was possible 
 either in religion or politics. 1 
 
 Among the statesmen of that feverish time there 
 were few more consistent or faithful than Clarendon. 
 
 In 1675, Ken visited Rome in company with young Izaak Walton, 
 the only son of the Compleat Angler. It was the year of 
 the Jubilee, and they saw a great deal at Rome, Venice, and 
 elsewhere. He said on his return, that he was less than ever 
 inclined to Romanism, and, if possible, still more convinced 
 of the purity of the Protestant religion. 
 
 1 " But to return to the Roman Catholics, how can we be 
 secure from the practice of Jesuited Papists in that relisrion ? 
 For not two or three of that Order, as some of them would im- 
 pose upon us, but almost the whole body of them are of opinion, 
 that their infallible master has a right over kings, not only 
 in spirituals but in temporals. Not to name Mariana, Bel- 
 larmine, Emanuel Sa, Molina, Santarel, Simancha, and at least 
 twenty others of foreign countries ; we can produce of our 
 own nation, Campian, and Doleman or Parsons " (Dryden, 
 Preface to Rdigio Laid).
 
 76 RESTORATION AND RETALIATION 
 
 He was a firm friend of the Constitution, and a 
 devoted adherent of the English Church. He was 
 well qualified to guide his unsteady master back 
 to the old paths of legal and moral order, as he had 
 understood them before the Civil War. But some- 
 thing more than that was needed. For years he 
 had lived abroad, and the England to which he 
 returned was very different from the England 
 which he remembered. Forces with which he was 
 familiar had died out ; and forces of which he knew 
 little or nothing were actively working. Being 
 called at once to take the lead in a country in which 
 he was so apparently at home, and so really a stranger, 
 it is wonderful that he did not make even more 
 mistakes than can be attributed to him. He failed 
 to see that the new House of Commons could not 
 be treated like those which preceded the Long 
 Parliament. He tried to dam it back within the 
 old limits, and he was himself swept away. After 
 seven years of ascendency he was impeached and 
 went into exile, hated by the Court for his contemptu- 
 ous propriety, by the Commons for his obstructive 
 conservatism, and by the Nonconformists for his 
 religious intolerance. 1 The King treated him with 
 
 1 Charles wrote himself to the Duke of Ormond, 15th Sep- 
 tember 1667 : " My purpose was also to say something to you 
 concerning my taking the Seals from the Chancellor ; of which 
 you must have heard all the passages, since he would not suffer 
 it to be done so privately as I intended it ; the truth is, his 
 behaviour and humour was grown so unsupportable to myself, 
 and to all the world else, that I could no longer endure it, and 
 it was impossible for me to live with it and do those things
 
 RESTORATION AND RETALIATION 77 
 
 base ingratitude ; but Charles was not the sovereign 
 to stand by an unpopular Minister. On the con- 
 trary, he rejoiced that the unpopularity of Clarendon 
 enabled him to get rid of a statesman who both 
 by word and example rebuked his master's dissolute 
 life. 
 
 It is one of the many things which disgrace 
 Charles n. as a King, that at this political crisis he 
 preferred Buckingham, whose drolleries would keep 
 him in fits of laughter, especially when he mimicked 
 the unpopular Minister, to the statesman whose 
 ceaseless thought and labour had done so much to 
 preserve the Crown for him during the troubles of 
 the last seven years. He had forgotten the pathetic 
 advice which his father, Charles i., had given him : 
 " never to give way to the punishment of any, for 
 their faithful service to the Crown, upon whatever 
 pretence or for whatsoever cause." The dismissal of 
 Clarendon is only too like the surrender of Strafford. 1 
 
 with the Parliament that must be done, or the Government 
 will be lost " (Ellis, Original Letters, 2nd Series, ii. p. 39). 
 
 1 On the fall of Clarendon, see Pepys, 1667, 16th and 31st 
 August; 3rd and 10th and llth September: and, on the evils 
 with which Clarendon had to cope, see 9th and 19th August ; 
 30th December. For the " inveterate selfishness and Oriental 
 ingratitude " of Charles n., see Airy, Charles II. p. 163 : " He 
 had grown to beg with effrontery and to betray without shame."
 
 III. 
 
 1678-1688. 
 
 THE STRUGGLE FOR 
 RELIGIOUS TOLERATION. 
 
 n
 
 " Aufrichtige, volletandige Paritat, als herrschende und im 
 gesammten socialen Leben durchgreifende Gesinnung, ist so lange 
 nicht moglich, ala eine der Kirchen die anderen fortwahrend 
 bedroht und ihnen unablassig vorhalt, wie die Heiden den 
 alien Christen : non licet esse vos ; euer Dasein schon ist ein 
 Uebelstand ; zu einer giinstigeren Zeit wird man wieder an 
 enrer Ausrottung arbeiten. So lange eine solche Auffassung in 
 der einen Kirche noch fortlebt, werden auch die anderen ihre 
 Waffenriistung nicht ablegen, und wird man statt wahren 
 Friedens nur einen Waffenstillstand haben." 
 
 DOLLINGEE, Akademische Vortrage, iii. 295. 
 
 80
 
 III. 
 
 1678-1688. 
 
 THE STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS 
 TOLERATION. 
 
 IF it were our business to follow the political history 
 of these ten or eleven years, some such title as 
 " Plots, Terrors, and Tyrannies " would be appro- 
 priate. It is impossible to trace, however slightly, 
 the fortunes of the English Church during this period 
 without taking some account of political events ; but 
 they must not be allowed to become predominant. 
 The progress that was made in debate and in literature 
 towards the finding of true principles of religious 
 liberty is of more importance to the student of 
 English Ecclesiastical History than the intrigues of 
 kings, courtiers, and mistresses, or the briberies and 
 brutalities of statesmen. 
 
 The latter are of importance to us so far as they 
 hinder or further the cause of freedom of conscience, 
 and they cannot be altogether omitted. After a 
 brief glance at the worst of the intrigues in this 
 period of shameless conspiracies, we will take note 
 6
 
 82 THE STRUGGLE FOR 
 
 of the literary side of our subject, and then glance 
 at the political. 
 
 The infamies, known, conjectured, and possible, 
 connected with the Popish Plot, and the odious 
 personality of Titus Gates, need not detain us. They 
 are among the most shameful pages of English 
 History ; but the disgrace of them does not attach 
 itself in any special way to the rulers of the English 
 Church. 1 It will suffice to quote some remarks from 
 the Memoirs of James Welwood, who wrote about 
 twenty years later. He went abroad in 1 679, returned 
 with William in., and became physician to the King 
 and Queen. He had, therefore, opportunities of 
 obtaining good information. " That there was at 
 that time a Popish Plot," he writes, " and that there 
 always has been one since the Reformation, to sup- 
 port, if not restore the Romish Religion in England, 
 scarce any body calls in question. How far the near 
 prospects of a Popish successor ripened the hopes, 
 and gave new vigour to the designs of that party, and 
 what methods they were then upon, to bring those 
 designs about, Coleman's Letters alone, without 
 other concurring evidence, are more than sufficient 
 to put the matter out of doubt. But what super- 
 structures might have been afterwards built upon 
 an unquestionable Foundation, and how far some of 
 
 1 It must not be forgotten that not one of the victims of this 
 Protestant Terror ever admitted the guilt imputed to him. 
 At the moment of execution they still protested their innocence. 
 As Dryden says in Absalom and Achitophel, the Plot was " with 
 oaths affirmed, with dying vows denied" (Pt. i. 1. 111). The 
 whole description should be road.
 
 RELIGIOUS TOLERATION 83 
 
 the Witnesses of that Plot might come to darken 
 Truth by subsequent Additions of their own, must 
 be defer'd till the great Account, to be made before 
 a higher Tribunal : And till then a great part of the 
 Popish Plot, as it was then sworn to, will in all human 
 probability lie among the darkest scenes of our 
 English History." Welwood goes on to notice three 
 results : (1) It woke up the nation from a lethargy 
 of nineteen years' duration. (2) It confirmed the 
 " unhappy Distinction of Whig and Tory, that 
 has since occasioned so many Mischiefs." (3) It 
 began the struggle between Charles n. and his people, 
 which caused him to dissolve four Parliaments and 
 then never summon any more. 
 
 The disclosure of a real plot, in which James, 
 Duke of York, was one of the chief conspirators, led 
 directly to the proposal of William Sacheverell and 
 Lord Russell that he should be excluded from the 
 succession ; and the passing of an Exclusion Bill 
 became the leading policy of the Whig party. It is 
 easy to be wise after the event ; but the catastrophe 
 of 1688 showed that Sacheverell was wise before the 
 event. No one can say how much misery and 
 shame might have been avoided, if it had been clear 
 from the first that a Roman Catholic Prince would 
 never be allowed to come to the throne. 
 
 The last of the many innocent victims of the 
 Popish Plot was Oliver Plunket, Roman Catholic 
 Archbishop of Armagh. The evidence against him 
 was so contradictory that the first grand jury refused 
 to find a Bill. Plunket was kept in Newgate till
 
 84 THE STRUGGLE FOR 
 
 3rd May 1681, when lie was tried, and on quite 
 ridiculous evidence convicted of treason. Lord 
 Essex pointed out to the King that the evidence 
 against Plunket could not be true. Charles replied 
 that this ought to have been pointed out at the trial : 
 he himself did not dare to pardon any one : " His 
 blood be upon your head, not upon mine." And 
 this was the odious attitude of Charles throughout 
 the long crisis of the Popish Plot. He signed the 
 death warrants of innocent men, rather than risk 
 his popularity, and possibly his Crown, by letting 
 the victims go free. In 1680, when Anglesey ex- 
 pressed surprise at the King's signing Stafford's 
 death-warrant, Charles said, " And why, my Lord, 
 did you give your vote against him ? " The Arch- 
 bishop was hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn, 
 1st July. 
 
 Let us turn from these horrors to the writings of 
 a man who had rather a narrow escape of becoming 
 a victim of the Popish Plot Edward Stillingfleet, 
 afterwards Bishop of Worcester. It is said that, at 
 the time of the Plot, evidence against him was taken 
 by the committee of investigation ; but he was very 
 popular, and was protected by a voluntary guard 
 from any attempt to entrap him. He had published 
 his famous Irenicum in 1659, and again in 1662, 
 suggesting compromise between the Church and 
 Presbyterianism. He maintained that whatever 
 binds Christians as a universal law must be clearly 
 revealed as such. It is quite certain that God means 
 the Church to be under a definite form of government :
 
 RELIGIOUS TOLERATION 85 
 
 He does not will anarchy. But it is not certain what 
 the form of government in each case must be. That 
 " is a mere matter of prudence, regulated by the 
 word of God." Nevertheless, Stillingfleet was 
 strongly against Nonconformity and Separation. 
 The separation of National Churches from one 
 another was not schism ; but the separation of 
 individuals from the Church of their own country 
 was. Dissenters, by opposing the Church of 
 England, were really supporting Romanists in their 
 opposition. This was no new argument : Calvin 
 and Beza had advised the Puritans not to separate 
 from the Church of England : Cartwright had 
 opposed the separation of Browne and Harrison. 
 And it had considerable effect. Not a few Dissenters 
 conformed rather than be supposed to be allies of 
 Rome. 
 
 When Dean of St. Paul's, Stillingfleet preached a 
 sermon before the Lord Mayor, 2nd May 1680, which 
 made a sensation. In it he spoke of the Noncon- 
 formists as schismatics and troublers of the peace of 
 the nation. 1 Baxter and Owen replied, and then 
 Stillingfleet published The Unreasonableness of Separa- 
 tion from the Church of England, 1681, in which he 
 gives the history of the movement, and shows that 
 the early Puritans thought that separation was 
 altogether unlawful. In the preface he expresses 
 
 1 But he was generous to ejected Nonconformists ; e.g. to 
 R. Kennet, incumbent of East Hatly, Cheshire, whom he 
 helped to set up a private school, with a Conformist to do the 
 teaching.
 
 86 THE STRUGGLE FOR 
 
 his willingness to make considerable concessions, 
 especially to the laity. 
 
 Between the Irenicum and The Unreasonableness 
 of Separation the case of the Nonconformists had 
 been well stated in 1667 by " A Lover of Sincerity," 
 in A Proposition made to King and Parliament for 
 the Happiness and Safety of the Kingdom. The 
 Nonconformists, he pleaded, were inoffensive people, 
 doing nothing worse than what Pliny urged against 
 the first Christians meeting together for preaching 
 and prayer. Uniformity would not secure unity, 
 for force will not change conviction. Nonconformists 
 do not object to Bishops, organs, or the Prayer-Book. 
 What they abhor is oaths, declarations, and sub- 
 scriptions. They are afraid of perjuring themselves. 
 Severe impositions defeat the object of the imposers, 
 for they provoke opposition. There ought to be 
 entire freedom of worship, meeting-houses being 
 supervised where there was danger of disloyalty. 
 
 This book was attacked by Thomas Tomkins, 
 chaplain to Archbishop Sheldon, in the Inconveniences 
 of Toleration. The Nonconformists, he said, are not 
 inoffensive : they can devour widows' houses as well 
 as make long prayers. Toleration is condemned by 
 Scripture. Pergamos was rebuked for tolerating 
 the Nicolaitans. Like the Puritans under Elizabeth, 
 the Nonconformists chose to trouble the Church just 
 when there was great trouble in the State. This 
 was in accordance with their seditious principles. It 
 deserves to be remembered that Tomkins was assist- 
 ant licenser of books, and that he was very near
 
 RELIGIOUS TOLERATION 87 
 
 refusing a licence to Paradise Lost. He thought 
 some lines treasonable : 
 
 " As when the Sun new risen 
 Looks through the horizontal misty air," etc. etc. 
 
 He was afterwards Chancellor of Exeter. 
 
 A much more notable work on the side of toleration 
 appeared in 1675, The Naked Truth, or the True State 
 of the Primitive Church, by an Humble Moderator. 
 This was by Herbert Croft, Bishop of Hereford. He 
 told Parliament that their measures for enforcing 
 conformity had visibly failed : compulsion must be 
 abandoned. The Apostles' Creed had been sufficient 
 for the primitive Church, and ought to suffice now. 1 
 Enforced subscription to articles of faith had always 
 done harm. Scripture without formularies was able 
 to make men wise unto salvation. In using the 
 Fathers, we must remember that many of them had 
 been philosophers, and had brought into the Gospel 
 their " school terms and dearly beloved sciences." 
 Christ promised that the gates of hell shall not prevail 
 against the Church ; but where are we told that they 
 shall not prevail against General Councils ? As to 
 ceremonies, it is strange that any one should be 
 zealous, either for or against them. In matters 
 indifferent, children ought to obey without question. 
 But rulers, like parents, ought not to provoke their 
 children. To compel observance of mere ceremonies 
 made people more violent against them, because 
 
 1 In this he is following Jeremy Taylor's Liberty of Prophesying, 
 which appeared in 1647.
 
 88 THE STRUGGLE FOR 
 
 they suspected that more was intended than was 
 apparent. 
 
 Andrew Marvell said that no one could read this 
 treatise without wishing that he had written it him- 
 self. But it was vigorously attacked by the clergy, 
 among others by Francis Turner, Master of St. John's, 
 Cambridge, who did not know that it was by Bishop 
 Croft. He pointed out that it is impossible to keep 
 creeds within the language of Scripture. The words 
 of Scripture raise questions, to discuss which we 
 must use words which are not in Scripture. Doctrine 
 cannot always be expressed in scriptural language. 
 This Bishop Croft would have admitted. His point 
 was, that no one ought to be required, under pains 
 or penalties, to subscribe to what cannot be expressed 
 in the words of Scripture. 
 
 Another person engaged in controversy was Daniel 
 Whitby, Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford (1664), 
 and chaplain to Seth Ward, who had been intruded 
 upon Trinity College as President from September 
 1659 to August 1660, and was afterwards Bishop of 
 Exeter (1662), and then of Salisbury (1667-1689). 
 Ward strenuously supported the Conventicle Act 
 and the Five Mile Act, and was active against Dis- 
 senters. Nevertheless, he was in favour of making 
 the Church of England more comprehensive by 
 modifying the terms of subscription. His chaplain 
 Whitby went great lengths in this direction. In 
 1682 he published The Protestant Reconciler, in which 
 he contended that " the duty of not offending a 
 weak brother is inconsistent with all human authority
 
 RELIGIOUS TOLERATION 89 
 
 of making laws concerning indifferent things." For 
 instance, the efficacy of prayers or of sacraments is 
 not affected by the wearing or not wearing of a 
 surplice : therefore we ought not to offend weak 
 brethren by making any rule on the subject. For 
 this proposition Whitby's book had the distinction 
 of being burned in the School's quadrangle, along 
 with Hobbes' Leviathan, by the University marshal, 
 by order of Convocation, 21st July 1683. Seth 
 Ward induced Whitby to retract this proposition 
 and a good deal more, and Whitby added a second 
 part to The Protestant Reconciler, in which he urged 
 Dissenters to conform. 
 
 These instances must suffice. The whole period 
 teems with literature for and against comprehension 
 and toleration, and it is impossible to determine how 
 far public opinion was affected by what was written. 
 We know that few Nonconformists were won over, 
 and that many Dissenters were very bitter. We 
 know also what was said and done in Parliament ; 
 but we cannot argue securely from this to the senti- 
 ments of the majority in the nation, for many 
 members of Parliament were bribed. Again, we 
 cannot argue securely from what was popular at 
 one time to what was popular a year or two, or even 
 a month or two, later ; gusts of strong feeling were 
 frequently passing through the people, sometimes 
 in quite opposite directions ; and at no time during 
 this troubled period was public opinion unanimous. 
 
 On the same day that Hobbes' Leviathan and 
 Whitby's Protestant Reconciler were publicly burned
 
 90 THE STRUGGLE FOR 
 
 at Oxford, Lord Russell, " the patriot," as lie is 
 sometimes called, was beheaded in Lincoln's Inn 
 Fields for complicity in the group of conspiracies 
 which culminated in the Rye House Plot. The 
 object of those who acted with Russell seems to have 
 been to contend for the principle that the English 
 Constitution allows the right of opposition to the 
 Government, a right which no ecclesiastical censures 
 could abolish. Acting upon this principle, they 
 meant to agitate for a free Parliament, which should 
 discuss national grievances, and provide for the 
 succession to the Crown. We may acquit the leaders 
 of sanctioning the Assassination Plot, though they 
 may have had knowledge of it. It is less easy to 
 believe that they had no intention of using force, or 
 stirring up civil war. But, thanks to the panic 
 created by the Popish Plot, it had become the custom 
 of the courts to make the crime of high treason very 
 indefinite, so that almost any conduct regarded as 
 detrimental to the interests of the King or the Govern- 
 ment could be treated as high treason. The Whigs 
 had sanctioned this, and now their own great leader 
 was to suffer under it. In vain he pleaded that he 
 had " always been averse to all irregularities and 
 innovations, and in favour of the maintenance of 
 the Government upon its old rightful basis." He 
 had been planning to overthrow the Government 
 by summoning a Parliament of a different complexion. 
 He expected to do this without fighting ; but he was 
 probably prepared to use force, if necessary. What 
 he called lawful resistance, the Solicitor-General
 
 RELIGIOUS TOLERATION 91 
 
 told the jury amounted to a project of rebellion. 
 He was found guilty, and sentenced to death. His 
 tragic end, and the heroic conduct of his wife, have 
 thrown a halo round his memory. But we must 
 not forget that he took bribes from France, and that 
 he sanctioned the Popish Plot. 
 
 Shaftesbury had fled to Holland, and had died 
 miserably (21st January 1683) before that part of 
 the various schemes which is known as the Rye 
 House Plot was made. Before Russell was sentenced, 
 Essex had committed suicide in the Tower. Sidney 
 was beheaded 7th December. Thus the party of 
 liberty and reform was left without leaders. The 
 cause of political freedom and religious toleration 
 was wrecked, partly through its own violence, 
 partly through the folly and criminal scheming of 
 its leaders. 
 
 In January 1679, Charles had dissolved the "Long" 
 or " Pensioners " Parliament, in order to save 
 Danby. 
 
 During the excitement caused by the Popish Plot 
 the Whigs carried the elections in the interests of 
 Protestantism. This Protestant majority lost its 
 advantage by want of agreement as to how to deal 
 with the Romanist Duke of York. 1 Some said, 
 Exclude him from the succession. Others said, Let 
 him succeed to the throne, but transfer his executive 
 powers to Parliament. Others said, Let him succeed 
 to the throne, but appoint a regent. .The difference 
 
 1 Lady Newdigate-Newdegate, Cavalier and Puritan in the 
 Days of the Stuarts, pp. 60-70, 247-252.
 
 92 THE STRUGGLE FOR 
 
 between the first of these proposals and the other 
 two was well put by Colonel Titus : " I hope we shall 
 not be wise as the frogs to whom Jupiter gave a 
 stork for a king. To trust expedients with such a 
 king on the throne would be just as wise as if there 
 were a lion in the lobby, and we should vote to let 
 him in and chain him, instead of fastening the door 
 to keep him out" (Debate on the Exclusion Bill, 
 7th January 1681). 1 To the sorrow of the nation, 
 it was the policy of letting him in, and then trying 
 to chain him, that was adopted. 
 
 But this third Parliament did one good piece of 
 work in passing the Habeas Corpus Act. The reign 
 of Charles n. is the reign of comedy, and this famous 
 Act was passed owing to a ridiculous joke. In the 
 Lords, the tellers, for fun, counted the corpus of one 
 fat peer as ten, and in handing in the result of the 
 division omitted to correct the figures, so the Bill 
 passed by a small majority ! The Commons then 
 passed an Exclusion Bill ; and a few weeks later 
 Charles dissolved Parliament. 2 
 
 The fourth Parliament was again decidedly Whig. 
 By repeated prorogations Charles kept it from sitting 
 
 1 James Bramston preserves this witticism in his Art of 
 Politicks : 
 
 " I hear a lion in the lobby roar : 
 Say, Mr. Speaker, shall we shut the door 
 And keep him there ; or shall we let him in, 
 To try if we can turn him out again ? " 
 
 2 The Exclusion Bill was needlessly offensive. There was no 
 need to name the Duke of York : it would have sufficed to 
 make the Test Act apply to the Crown.
 
 RELIGIOUS TOLERATION 93 
 
 for a whole year, October 1679 to October 1680. 
 The Exclusion Bill was passed in the Commons and 
 thrown out in the Lords in November. A Compre- 
 hension Bill, to free Dissenters from all oaths, even 
 that of Allegiance, provided they would sign the 
 Test Act, was being prepared, when in January 
 Charles again dissolved. 
 
 A new Parliament was summoned to meet at 
 Oxford, 21st March. Oxford was chosen in order to 
 have a Royalist and English Church atmosphere, 
 rather than that of London, which was Parliamentary 
 and Latitudinarian, if not Republican and Dissenting. 
 The journey to Oxford was made under menacing 
 conditions. The King had troops placed at various 
 points on the way, and his guards were sent to 
 Oxford itself. In a like spirit, the Whig Lords 
 took an armed escort, while the members of the 
 Lower House went in groups of three or four dozen, 
 supported by constituents wearing " No Popery " 
 ribands. The under-graduates, however, cheered 
 " Charles the Great," and lit bonfires in his honour. 1 
 
 The King made a proposal, which must have cost 
 him a good deal. He said that he could not change 
 the succession by excluding his brother ; but he was 
 
 1 " The youths were all on fire, and when love and joy are 
 mixed, cannot but follow rudeness and boysterousness. Their 
 hats did continually fly, and seriouslie had you been there, you 
 would have thought that they would have thrown away their 
 very heads and leggs." As to the bonfires, " at some were 
 tables of refection erected by our bonny youths, who, being 
 e'ne mad with joy, forced all that passed by to carouse on their 
 knees a health to their beloved Charles " (Anthony Wood).
 
 94 THE STRUGGLE FOR 
 
 willing to allay the anxiety about having a Roman 
 Catholic king. Let William or Mary of Orange be 
 appointed regent in his name. 1 The Court party 
 were not at all pleased at this : they were for no 
 concessions. To their great joy, the Commons re- 
 jected the proposal of a regent. 2 The Commons 
 knew that the King was in dire want of money, and 
 they expected to compel him to exclude the Duke 
 of York, by refusing to grant any money till he con- 
 sented. But Charles got a promise of supply for 
 three years from Louis xiv. This the Commons did 
 not know, and they again passed the Exclusion Bill. 
 Once more the comic element appears in the midst 
 of a political crisis. Two sedan chairs came to the 
 House of Lords, which was sitting in the Geometry 
 School. The King was in one ; the other had the 
 blinds drawn, and it was supposed to contain some 
 one in attendance on His Majesty. Presently the 
 Commons were summoned from the Convocation 
 House, in which they were sitting, to the House of 
 Lords. They hurried across, confident that they 
 
 1 " If means can be found that, in the case of a Popish suc- 
 cession, the administration of the government may remain in 
 Protestant hands. I shall be ready to hearken to any such 
 expedient." 
 
 2 " God be praised, God hath blinded them in so great a 
 measure that they would have all or nothing." The day before 
 the dissolution, Palm Sunday, 27th March, " the king after 
 sermon (from Fell, Bishop of Oxford, in the Cathedral) touched 
 many for the evill " (Anthony Wood). Richard Wiseman, 
 surgeon to Charles n., and really great in his profession, fully 
 believed in the efficacy of the King's touch. During his reign, 
 Charles n. is said to have touched more than 92,000 persons.
 
 RELIGIOUS TOLERATION 95 
 
 were to hear that the King had given way to them. 
 The King was sitting in his State robes, which were 
 necessary for dissolving Parliament, and which had 
 been brought in the second sedan chair. He pro- 
 nounced the formula of dismissal, and then hurried 
 away to Windsor. We may agree with Burnet, 
 that it was " not very decently " done ; but it com- 
 pletely routed the Whigs, who were so taken by 
 surprise that they had no plans. 1 A few hot-headed 
 people were for continuing to sit, in spite of the 
 dissolution. But English respect for the Constitution 
 was too strong for such revolutionary projects ; and 
 the members, who had come in such tumultuous 
 array to Oxford, were soon scattered over the country, 
 each hurrying, like the King, to his home. The 
 Parliament had sat just seven days (21st to 28th 
 March), and Charles was not bound by law to call 
 another for three years. The reign lasted nearly 
 four years more ; but Parliament was never summoned 
 again. The King did not want one ; and the Tories 
 and Church party, who had been so defeated at the 
 last three elections, did not want one either. 2 The 
 most extravagant notions respecting the divine right 
 
 1 Ellis, Original Letters, 2nd Series, iv. p. 65. It was about 
 this time that Burnet sent the King a " very plain letter " of 
 remonstrance about his evil life. It was a long one ; but Charles 
 read it through twice before burning it. 
 
 1 Shaftesbury was arrested in July, and sent to the Tower to 
 be tried in November. A week before the trial, Dryden's Absalom 
 and Achitophel was published. As Sir Walter Scott remarks, 
 " the time of its appearance was chosen with as much art as 
 the poem displays genius."
 
 96 THE STRUGGLE FOR 
 
 of kings, and the royal prerogative, and the duty of 
 non-resistance, were once more fiercely maintained 
 by the Cavaliers, and constantly preached by the 
 clergy. 1 As Wei wood remarks, " A certain Set of 
 Men began a second time to adopt into our religion 
 a Mahometan Principle, under the names of Passive- 
 Obedience and Non-Resistance ; which, since the 
 time of the Impostor that first broach'd it, has 
 been the means to enslave a great part of the 
 world." 
 
 This was the party of absolute reaction, who were 
 willing to lie down before an hereditary monarch and 
 allow him to do what he pleased. They seriously 
 maintained that, if a Nero came by right of birth to 
 the English throne, it would be the duty of English- 
 men to allow him to trample on the laws, and take 
 their lands and their lives, without stirring a ringer 
 to resist him. These amazing opinions were not 
 merely whispered at Court. They were boisterously 
 toasted at the Universities, as if they were the neces- 
 sary views'" of a gentleman ; and were taught from 
 the pulpit, as if they were part of revealed truth. 2 
 
 1 Sir Robert Filmer's Patriarcha, written about 1650, was not 
 published until 1680, and it was warmly welcomed by this 
 extreme party. A second edition, with a preface by Edmund 
 Bohun, appeared in 1685. Locke said of it, that " so much 
 glib nonsense was never put together in well- sounding English " ; 
 and Hallam (Literature of Europe, iii. 440) is equally con- 
 temptuous. But the book had a great success during the Second 
 Stuart Tyranny. 
 
 2 Lake, Bishop of Chichester, said on his deathbed that this 
 doctrine was " the distinguishing character of the Church of 
 England." The clergy who attended Monmouth at the scaffold
 
 RELIGIOUS TOLERATION 97 
 
 Addresses to this effect poured in from all parts of 
 the kingdom, and it might almost have seemed as if 
 some of the Tories thought that there was a positive 
 advantage in the fact that they could prove their 
 loyalty by expressing devotion to a Roman Catholic 
 heir to the throne. Indeed it was said that the 
 attempt to exclude the Duke of York from the 
 succession had had the effect of making him begin 
 to reign during his brother's lifetime. This is 
 exaggeration ; but the Duke did become more in- 
 fluential, while the King's interest in public affairs 
 began henceforth to wane. 
 
 Besides this extreme Tory party, which may be 
 described as the old party of the Cavaliers, with all 
 the romance and chivalry left out, there were two 
 others : (1) the moderate constitutional party, who 
 wished to maintain the monarchy with a reasonable 
 amount of prerogative, and also to uphold the Church 
 of England without any such concessions to Pres- 
 byterians as would destroy its historical character ; 
 and (2) the more revolutionary party, anxious to 
 curtail the Royal prerogative, to exclude the Duke 
 of York from the succession, and to improve the 
 position of the Nonconformists. On the whole, it 
 was this last named party which was doing most for 
 the cause of religious toleration ; but, as we have seen, 
 
 told him that he could not be a member of the English Church 
 unless he accepted it. It may be doubted whether there was 
 any article of the Christian faith that was at that time so much 
 insisted upon as this monstrous addition to it. Burnet, Own 
 Time, 1681. See Collier, Ecdes. Hist. viii. pp. 472, 473, ed. 1852. 
 
 7
 
 98 THE STRUGGLE FOR 
 
 it discredited itself by its violence, and in the con- 
 spiracies connected with the Rye House Plot it lost 
 its leaders. It was the reactionary ultra-Tory party 
 that was triumphant, and it was a party of ferocious 
 intolerance. 
 
 The Clarendon Code of Corporation Act, Conventicle 
 Act, Five Mile Act, and Uniformity Act, was once more 
 worked with ruthless vigour. Magistrates vied with 
 one another in the sport of hunting out Dissenters. 
 Tolerant justices of the peace were struck off the list, 
 and those of the right amount of bigotry were put 
 in their places. The horrible jails were filled to 
 suffocation with Dissenters, and even Whigs who 
 were not Dissenters were hardly safe. The clergy, 
 who were so ready to welcome a Romanist heir to 
 the Crown, had nothing but denunciation for Non- 
 conformists who were not Roman. " So that," as 
 Burnet says, " in all their sermons Popery was 
 quite forgot, and the force of their zeal was 
 turned almost wholly against the Dissenters. 
 And such of the clergy as would not engage in 
 that fury were cried out upon as the betrayers 
 of the Church, and as secret favourers of the 
 Dissenters." He adds that there were not many 
 of these. " The scent of preferment " was too 
 strong. 
 
 Then came the attack upon the charters of London 
 and of other great towns. On any kind of pretext 
 these charters were challenged, and then the Chief 
 Justice Jeffreys, who had come to the front in the 
 trial of Algernon Sidney, was ready to declare them
 
 RELIGIOUS TOLERATION 99 
 
 forfeited. 1 Some corporations surrendered their 
 charters without waiting for them to be criticized. 
 Thus all independent local government was destroyed. 
 The King granted new charters of such a kind as to 
 put the control of the boroughs into the power of the 
 men whom he approved ; and, if he ever summoned 
 another Parliament, he would be able to get the right 
 kind of men returned. Thus, neither in the kingdom 
 at large, nor in the separate municipalities of which 
 it was composed, was there any longer any indepen- 
 dent political power. 
 
 This is what is meant by the Second Stuart Tyranny. 
 It was founded on force and intrigue in England, 
 backed by supplies of money from the King of France. 
 But it was not quite the kind of thing which Louis xiv. 
 had meant to buy, when he made his secret treaties 
 with Charles. He meant the despotism to be con- 
 nected with Roman Catholicism, backed up by 
 Dissenters, who would (it was hoped) be glad to 
 share in the indulgence granted to Roman Catholics. 
 What had come about was this, that the despotism 
 was in closest alliance with Anglicanism, which was 
 taking, as its share of the bargain, the right to inflict 
 upon Dissenters any amount of fines and imprison- 
 ment. 
 
 Towards the close of his reign Charles shirked 
 
 1 " In no age and in no country have State trials been con- 
 ducted with a more flagrant disregard for justice and for decency, 
 and with a more scandalous subserviency to the Crown, than in 
 England under Charles n." (Lecky, England in the Eighteenth 
 Century, i. p. 7). See Irving, Life of Judge Jeffreys, p. 215.
 
 100 THE STRUGGLE FOR 
 
 business more and more. The Duke of York, in 
 defiance of the Test Act, had returned to office, and 
 was allowed more and more power. Perhaps it 
 amused Charles to watch the manoeuvres of his 
 brother and Rochester on the one side, and of the 
 Duchess of Portsmouth, Sunderland, and Godolphin 
 on the other ; or again, at the Privy Council, to hear 
 Lord Keeper North sparring with Chief Justice 
 Jeffreys. One passage of arms between these two is 
 of interest for our subject. 
 
 Jeffreys returned from circuit in October 1684, and 
 reported that he had been surprised to find in the 
 North of England that there were many Roman 
 Catholics in prison. Numbers of these had been 
 good servants of the Crown, and it was not wise to 
 leave them under punishment for supposed share 
 in the Popish Plot, which was now known to have 
 had no existence. Sunderland agreed with him. 
 Halifax opposed him. Then North remarked that 
 there were plenty of Dissenters and other fanatics 
 in prison also. Were they all to be let loose ? If 
 there was a wholesale release, what would become 
 of the peace of the kingdom ? Charles broke up 
 the Council without any decision being reached. 
 
 Four months later Charles n. died. The two 
 Churches, which had each been claiming him as their 
 own during his lifetime, were represented at the 
 bedside of the dying King, and it is significant that 
 testimony is not agreed as to which had the last word. 
 Sancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury, was at Whitehall 
 with other Bishops, and they took it in turn to sit
 
 RELIGIOUS TOLERATION 101 
 
 up in the King's room. They told him to prepare 
 for his end ; and Bancroft spoke with plain earnest- 
 ness : " It is time to speak out ; for, sir, you are about 
 to appear before a Judge who is no respecter of 
 persons." The Duke of York was reminded by Lady 
 Portsmouth of the need to see that his brother died 
 in the fellowship of the Catholic Church. And 
 Father Huddleston, who had saved Charles in the 
 flight from Worcester, was sent for. 1 Charles had 
 listened respectfully to the Bishops, had allowed the 
 Anglican Visitation of the Sick to be read to him ; 
 and, when he had expressed sorrow for his sins, he 
 had let absolution be pronounced over him. But 
 he would not state that he died in communion with 
 the Church of England, nor would he receive the 
 Eucharist from any of the Bishops. 2 It was otherwise 
 when his brother brought the Roman priest. " Sir," 
 said the Duke, " this good man once saved your 
 life ; he now comes to save your soul." 3 The King 
 
 1 Huddleston's own account of his interview with the dying 
 King is extant. One statement, at any rate, cannot be true ; 
 he says that diaries " made an exact confession of his whole 
 life." The whole interview lasted about three-quarters of an 
 hour. Ellis, Original Letters, 2nd Series, iv. p. 78. 
 
 * " Ken applied himself much to the awaking of the King's 
 conscience. He spoke with a great elevation, both of thought 
 and expression, like a man inspired, as one who was present 
 told me. He pressed the King six or seven times to receive 
 the Sacrament. But the King always declined it, saying he was 
 very weak. Ken pressed him to declare that he desired it, 
 and that he died in the communion of the Church of England. 
 To that he answered nothing " (Burnet, History of His Own 
 Time, ii. p. 1013). 
 
 3 Thomas Bruce attributes these words to the King.
 
 102 THE STRUGGLE FOR 
 
 made a confession, and received absolution and 
 extreme unction. He was asked whether he wished 
 to communicate. " Surely," he replied, " if I am 
 not unworthy." And the host was brought in and 
 administered. Huddleston held up a crucifix, told 
 him to fix his thoughts on the Passion of Christ, and 
 withdrew. Was it before or after this that Bishop 
 Ken of Bath and Wells, whom Charles had always 
 liked, came and talked so movingly to him, and 
 prayed with him ? That is the questionable point ; 
 but it does not much matter. That Church which 
 he had never cared to acknowledge during his life- 
 time, received him just before he died ; of that there 
 is no doubt. And shall we say that he was a gentle- 
 man, and a good-natured and humorous gentleman 
 to the last ? 1 During the night before his death 
 he commended Lady Portsmouth and her son to the 
 care of his successor ; " and," he added, " don't let 
 poor Nellie starve." The Queen sent Halifax to 
 excuse her absence, and ask his pardon for any 
 offence she might unwillingly have given. " She 
 ask my pardon ! " cried her husband. " I ask hers 
 with all my heart." In the morning he apologized 
 to those who had waited on him all night " for being 
 such an unconscionable time in dying : he hoped 
 they would excuse it." Was that comedy or 
 courtesy ? A dying man may have the benefit of the 
 
 1 Burnet, who judges Charles n. very severely, says that " he 
 was certainly the best-bred man of the age." The character 
 of the King, which he draws at the end of his reign, should be 
 read (Own Time, 1685). Collier is lenient.
 
 RELIGIOUS TOLERATION 103 
 
 doubt. At noon, on Friday, 6th February, he passed 
 away. 
 
 JAMES n. 1685-1688. 
 
 During the latter days of Charles n., when plots 
 were being feared for the King's life, James offered 
 Charles his own bodyguard for his protection. The 
 King is said to have replied, " Don't be afraid, brother ; 
 no one will kill me in order to make you king." That 
 was true ; but not quite so true as Charles thought. 
 There was a plot to get rid of both brothers. More- 
 over, the nation did not know the character of James 
 so well as Charles did. 1 
 
 England has had its share of bad rulers ; but, ex- 
 cepting John and Philip, none is more repulsive than 
 James n. 2 He had all the bad qualities, and scarcely 
 any of the good ones, which distinguish his father 
 and his brother. He cared as much for his own 
 prerogatives and as little for the good of his people 
 as Charles I., and he was as sensual and unscrupu- 
 lous as Charles n. ; but he had neither the courage of 
 the one, nor the tact, and ability, and good-humour 
 of the other. He was as false as his father, and as 
 heartless as his brother ; but he had not the culture 
 
 1 At the coronation of James the crown fitted badly, and 
 was near falling off his head. This was noted and regarded 
 as an evil omen. Henry Sidney, Keeper of the Robes, held it 
 up, remarking, " This is not the first time that our family have 
 supported the Crown." 
 
 2 Those who have patience to read a long eulogy of James 
 will find it in The Adventures of King James II., with an intro- 
 duction by Abbot F. A. Gasquet, Longmans, 1904.
 
 104 THE STRUGGLE FOR 
 
 or the taste of either. He was as silly and as coarse 
 as his grandfather, James i., but was more mean and 
 far more ill-tempered. Not one of the first three 
 Stuarts was malignant or cruel. They did cruel 
 things, but to gain their own ends ; they did not 
 love cruelty for its own sake. James n. was both 
 malignant and cruel : he took pleasure in inflicting 
 suffering. Burnet tells us that, when James was 
 Viceroy in Scotland, those who were brought before 
 the Council were often tortured. Then, almost all 
 members of the Council would " offer to run away ; 
 the sight was so dreadful. But the Duke was so 
 far from withdrawing, that he looked on all the while 
 with an unmoved indifference, and with an attention, 
 as if he had been to look on some curious experi- 
 ment. This gave a terrible idea of him to all that 
 observed it, as of a man that had no bowels nor 
 humanity in him. Lord Perth, observing this, 
 resolved to let him see how well qualified he was to 
 be an Inquisitor General " (Own Time, 1684). The 
 horrible vengeance taken upon those who had sup- 
 ported Monmouth's rebellion was inspired by him. 
 Jeffreys hung 300 Somersetshire peasants in the 
 Bloody Assize ; 1 but, when he was a dying man in 
 
 1 Burnet says 600 ; the judges sent to the Treasury a list 
 of 320. Inderwick would reduce this to 150 or less (Sidelights 
 on the Stiiarts, p. 392) ; see the National Review, September 1906, 
 p. 71. Anthony Wood gives these numbers : at Dorchester 249 
 condemned, of whom 200 were reprieved : at Exeter 13 re- 
 prieved out of 77 ; at Taunton all but three out of over 400 ; 
 at Wells all but one out of over 300 (20th September 1685). 
 See Irving, Life of Jeffreys, pp. 265, 361, 367.
 
 RELIGIOUS TOLERATION 105 
 
 the Tower, some three years later (12th December 
 1688-18th April 1689), he told Tutchin, Sharp, 
 and Scott that the severities of that Assize were 
 short of what the King had required, and that by his 
 forbearance he had greatly displeased his master. 
 It will be remembered among the horrors of that time 
 that James had Alice Lisle beheaded at Winchester 
 (2nd September 1685) for giving shelter to a fugitive, 
 and had Elizabeth Gaunt burned at Tyburn (23rd 
 October) for a similar act. The latter was the last 
 woman put to death for a political offence in England. 
 As to the patriotism of James n., he was at heart more 
 French than English. The absolutism of Louis xiv. 
 was always in his mind as a thing to be imitated. 
 Louis said of him : " He likes my pistoles just as his 
 brother did." But his brother cared only for French 
 money, to spend on his extravagant pleasures : he did 
 not want the trouble involved in French despotism. 
 James n. wanted to be more than a despot : he thought 
 that he was almost the Vicegerent of the Almighty. 
 
 And here we touch upon the one trait in his char- 
 acter which it is possible to admire, his loyalty 
 to the Church of Rome. 1 Both before and after 
 his accession it would have been greatly to his 
 
 1 Dryden, in his fulsome Threnodia Augustalis on the death 
 of Charles n.. calls attention to the fidelity of James to his 
 religion (line 486) : 
 
 " His truth, like Heaven's, was kept inviolate." 
 Dryden, who had lamented Cromwell as a hero, and had greeted 
 the return of Charles- n. with loyalist enthusiasm, joined the 
 Church of Rome soon after the accession of James. He seems 
 to have remained a sincere Romanist.
 
 106 THE STRUGGLE FOR 
 
 interest to abandon Romanism, and conform to the 
 Church of England ; but he never seems to have 
 regarded such a step as possible for him. He was 
 a Romanist, and would work for Rome. And it was 
 this resolve, in the carrying out of which he went 
 beyond the policy of the Pope himself, that proved 
 fatal to him. And he had had plenty of warnings. 
 
 When his bigoted mother, Queen Henrietta Maria, 
 returned to Somerset House after the Restoration, 
 she said : "If she had known the temper of the 
 nation some years past as well as she did then, she 
 would never have been obliged to leave that house." 
 
 Charles n., on his deathbed, in giving his brother 
 the key of his strong box, advised him not to think 
 of introducing the Romish religion into England, a 
 thing that was both dangerous and impracticable. 
 
 Ronquillo, the Spanish Ambassador, at his first 
 audience after the death of Charles, asked if he 
 might speak his mind quite freely. He then begged 
 James not to pay attention to the priests whom he 
 had about him, who would be sure to importune 
 him to alter the established religion in England ; 
 if he did listen to them, he would have reason to 
 repent of doing so, when it was too late. James 
 was very angry, and asked whether in Spain they 
 did not take the advice of their confessors. 1 " Yes, 
 
 1 James had summoned the Jesuit Petre to Whitehall and 
 given him the rooms which he himself had had as Duke of York ; 
 and Petre had the keeping of the King's conscience. Petre 
 began to wear Roman clerical costume, and while doing so 
 came across Dr. Busby, the great master of Westminster. Busby 
 asked the meaning of this attire. " I had not had it on, honour-
 
 RELIGIOUS TOLERATION 107 
 
 Sir, we do " ; was the reply : " and that is the reason 
 that our affairs go so ill." 
 
 Pope Innocent xi. 1 wrote to James on his accession 
 to the English throne, that " he was highly pleased 
 with his Majesty's zeal for the Catholic religion ; 
 but he was afraid his Majesty might push it too far, 
 and instead of contributing to his own greatness, 
 and to the advancement of the Catholic Church, 
 he might come to do both it and himself the greatest 
 prejudice, by attempting that which the Pope was 
 well assured, from long experience, could not succeed" 
 (Welwood, Memoirs, pp. 133-136). 
 
 All these advisers might as well have spoken to 
 the winds. With James they weighed as nothing 
 compared with the fanatical Jesuits, who ceaselessly 
 had his ear, and one or more of whom was the keeper 
 of his conscience. These men were confident about 
 their aims, and plumed themselves on their success 
 in attaining them. But, like the Society to which 
 they belonged, they won victories which were worse 
 than defeats. They had cunning enough to get the 
 King to do what they desired, but they had not the 
 wisdom to know what they ought to desire. They 
 
 able master, but that the Lord Jesus had need of me." " I 
 never heard that our Lord and Saviour had need of anything 
 but an ass," was the master's reply. 
 
 1 Innocent xi. requested the General of the Jesuits to keep 
 Father Petre, the adviser of James, in better order. The Pope 
 is said to have given not only sympathy but money in support 
 of William of Orange against James and Louis. It was Innocent 
 XI. who condemned the immoral casuistry of the Jesuits, in 
 the Bull Sanctisaimua, 2nd March 1679.
 
 108 THE STRUGGLE FOR 
 
 won point after point in the game which they were 
 playing., and the net result of their successes was 
 absolute disaster. 1 
 
 We may divide the short reign of James n. into 
 three periods. 1. The first nine months (February 
 to November), during which he had the support of 
 not only the Tories and the clergy, but of most 
 moderate men. 2. Two years and nine months, 
 down to the acquittal of the seven Bishops (30th 
 June 1688), during which James went on from one 
 folly and iniquity to another, in violating the Consti- 
 tution and his own express promises. 3. The last 
 six months, down to his landing in France (25th 
 December 1688), during which he tried to undo 
 some of his despotic acts, thereby convincing the 
 nation that, like most bullies, he was a coward 
 when he was seriously threatened with retribution. 2 
 
 1. His relations with the Church of England admit 
 of being summed up very briefly. To a very large 
 extent he owed his Crown to the Anglican clergy : 
 
 1 Father Edward Petre, the King's Confessor, was one of 
 the most active, and he was very influential with Sunderland. 
 James wanted the Pope to give Petre a dispensation to accept 
 promotion in the English Church, such as the Archbishopric of 
 York, which was kept vacant from April 1686 to November 1688. 
 Innocent refused. James then tried to get Petre made Cardinal. 
 Innocent would not hear of it. Whenever the Earl of Castle- 
 maine came to him and began to urge these requests, the Pope 
 was seized with a violent fit of coughing (Welwood, Memoirs, 
 p. 185; Ellis, Original Letters, 3rd Series, iv. p. 311). 
 
 * But it is not just to call James a coward absolutely. If 
 he had been a coward on the field of battle he would not have 
 won the esteem of Turenne.
 
 RELIGIOUS TOLERATION 109 
 
 if they had not, with " faith unshaken to an exiled 
 heir," opposed the Exclusion Bill, it would have 
 passed, and he would have been shut out from the 
 succession. Yet, during the whole of his reign, 
 James did his best to insult and trample upon those 
 who had been so foolishly indulgent towards him. 
 He probably was as greatly mistaken about them as 
 they were about him. They had supposed that he 
 would do no more than absent himself from the 
 services of the national Church and attend Mass in 
 the royal chapel : in all other ways he would give 
 his protection and support to the Church of England. 
 He apparently thought that the High Church 
 Anglicans were so Catholic in their views, that they 
 would very quickly adopt Roman Catholicism, 
 when they had a Roman Catholic sovereign to 
 sustain them in so doing. 1 
 
 For a moment the Anglican clergy were confirmed 
 in their opinion respecting him. With the readiness 
 of a Stuart, he gave the most ample promises as to 
 the correctness of his intentions. Immediately after 
 his brother's death he was proclaimed King, a pro- 
 ceeding which Burnet says was " a heavy solemnity " 
 performed in " dead silence." 2 Then the Privy 
 
 1 Lecky, England in the Eighteenth Century, i. p. 10. Dryden 
 says of the attitude of James to the Church of England : " He 
 cannot bend her and he would not break " (Hind and Panther, 
 line 336). The latter statement is quite untrue. 
 
 1 Calamy, who was present, whereas Burnet was not, says 
 that his heart ached within him at the acclamations made for 
 such a sovereign (Ovm Life, i. p. 116). No doubt the behaviour 
 of the people was not everywhere the same.
 
 110 THE STRUGGLE FOR 
 
 Council met, and the King made a short speech, 
 " which it seems was well considered, and much 
 liked by him, for he repeated it to his Parliament, 
 and upon several other occasions." He had it 
 printed and circulated, and it gave great satisfaction 
 to those who believed that he would keep the promises 
 made in it (Own Time, 1685). 1 He said that " since 
 it had pleased Almighty God to place him in that 
 station, and that he was now to succeed to so good 
 and gracious a king as well as so very kind a brother, 
 he thought fit to declare to them that he would 
 endeavour to follow his example, and especially in 
 that of his great clemency and tenderness to his 
 people ; and that, though he had been reported to 
 be a man for arbitrary power, yet he was resolved 
 to make it his endeavour to preserve the Government 
 of England both in Church and State as it was then 
 established by law. That he knew the principles of 
 the Church of England were for Monarchy, and that 
 the members of it had shewed themselves good and 
 loyal subjects ; therefore he would always take care 
 of it, and defend and support it. That he knew that 
 the laws of England were sufficient to make the King 
 
 1 People in general did believe this : " We have," they said, 
 " the word of a king, and a word never yet broken." In May 
 1685, Parliament unanimously agreed, " That tlu's House doth 
 acquiesce and entirely rely and rest satisfied in his Majesty's 
 gracious word and repeated declaration to support and defend 
 the religion of the Church of England." John Sharp (then 
 Dean of Norwich and afterwards Archbishop of York) said in 
 a sermon, " As to our religion, we have the word of a king, 
 which (with reverence be it spoken) is as sacred as my text."
 
 RELIGIOUS TOLERATION 111 
 
 as great a Monarch as he could wish : and that as he 
 would never depart from the just rights and pre- 
 rogatives of the Crown, so he would never invade 
 any man's property. That, as he had often hitherto 
 ventured his life in defence of this nation, so he was 
 resolved to go as far as any man in preserving it in 
 all its just rights and liberties '* (Welwood, pp. 136, 
 137). 
 
 The fulsome addresses which were made to him in 
 reply to these fair promises confirmed James in the 
 expectation that he would be allowed to do what 
 he pleased. The University of Oxford promised to 
 obey him without limitations or restrictions. The 
 London clergy, on the other hand, who spoke of " our 
 religion established by law, dearer to us than our 
 lives," were regarded as scarcely loyal. Those who 
 presented addresses with these objectionable words 
 were put on a black list for future penalties. But, 
 in the majority of addresses, loyalty went mad in the 
 extravagance of its expressions. 
 
 On the second Sunday of his reign (15th February), 
 James showed his hand a little by going to Mass in 
 state. The Duke of Norfolk, carrying the sword 
 in front of him, stopped at the door of the royal 
 chapel. The King, as he passed him, said, " My 
 Lord, your father would have gone further." The 
 Duke made the happy reply, " Your Majesty's father 
 would not have gone so far." Two days later he 
 buried the late King, " very obscurely," says Evelyn, 
 " and without any manner of pomp." This meanness 
 disgusted very many. But the mean funeral was a
 
 112 THE STRUGGLE FOR 
 
 studied slight to the Anglican clergy ; for it was 
 necessary that Charles should be buried with the 
 Anglican service. At the Coronation (23rd April) 
 James acted in a similar way. The service must be 
 Anglican ; but he had it greatly shortened ; and at 
 the responses, although the Queen said them devoutly, 
 the King never opened his lips. 1 
 
 He showed his hand still more by ordering the 
 Customs to be collected before they were voted by 
 Parliament, which was at once a breach of the laws 
 which he had promised to maintain. Although he 
 had persuaded his brother during the last four years 
 of his reign to govern without a Parliament, James 
 himself was obliged to summon one. He wanted 
 money, if possible, for life ; and he wanted to free 
 Romanists from the penal laws. When Parliament 
 met, he had the face to make to it much the same 
 kind of speech that he had made to the Privy Council 
 (30th May 1685). The Parliament consisted largely 
 of his own creatures. 2 It condoned his having taken 
 the Customs before they had been voted to him. It 
 supplied him with a good income for life. But it 
 refused to abate the penal laws against Roman 
 Catholics. 
 
 Monmouth's rebellion gave James a pretext for 
 raising a standing army and becoming a military 
 
 1 The Coronation Oath, as taken by James n., has never 
 been used since. The Parliament of 1689 prescribed anew form, 
 introducing the words, " the Protestant Reformed religion." 
 
 2 He boasted that there were not many more than forty that 
 were not his own nominees.
 
 RELIGIOUS TOLERATION 113 
 
 despot. Had he aimed at this alone, he might for 
 a time have succeeded, and the nation would have 
 had to pass through another grievous struggle to 
 regain its liberty. But he was also bent on converting 
 the nation to Popery ; and this project wrecked the 
 other. 1 He not only raised an army of 30,000 men, 
 with 13,000 in camp at Hounslow Heath to intimidate 
 London, but he ignored the Test Act, and appointed 
 Romanist officers. This outrage brings the first 
 period to a close. Moderate men saw that they 
 could no longer support him. 
 
 2. The Parliament, which met again in November, 
 was packed, but it protested against the appoint- 
 ment of officers who had not taken the test, and 
 requested the King to cashier them. 2 The Lords, 
 including the Bishops, assumed a similar attitude. 
 Compton, Bishop of London, in the name of his 
 brethren, declared the whole Constitution, ecclesias- 
 tical and civil, to be in danger, and the clergy began to 
 
 1 The Church of England was far too strong for him. Kettle- 
 well thought that it " was never known to be in a more flourishing 
 condition than at this time. All things duly weighed, it became 
 much more powerful by the opposition made against it, and 
 grew by the favours indulged to its adversaries. The number 
 of converts made in the reign of this King to his religion was 
 mostly inconsiderable, if it could be said to be any at all. On 
 the other side, for certain, great numbers of Dissenters were 
 brought into the communion of the Church by the writings of 
 the orthodox clergy. It was remarked as a proof of the 
 flourishing state of the Church, that the rites and ceremonies 
 were better observed, the churches full, the communions more 
 frequent " (Life, 59). 
 
 1 Anthony Wood, Life and Time, 12th February, 20th July, 
 12th August, 1685. 
 8
 
 114 THE STRUGGLE FOR 
 
 preach against Popery. James removed Compton 
 from the Privy Council, and by means of "closetings," 
 i.e. private interviews, tried to win over the leaders 
 of the opposition. Of the Bishops, Crewe of Durham, 
 Sprat of Rochester, and Turner of Ely still supported 
 him. Partly out of hatred of them as Protestants, 
 and partly in hopes of propitiating Anglican clergy, 
 he strenuously persecuted the Dissenters, and urged 
 the prosecution of Baxter, who was bullied in court 
 and imprisoned for two years. James did not forget 
 that the Dissenters had supported the Exclusion 
 Bill (Irving, Life of Jeffreys, pp. 253-255). 
 
 The new Chief Justice, Edward Herbert, said that 
 the King could dispense with the laws. The twelve 
 judges were " closeted," and those who did not 
 agree with the Chief Justice were removed. Then 
 a test case was taken (Sir Edward Hales), and the 
 judges, without stating reasons, decided for the 
 Crown. The Court of King's Bench, therefore, 
 ruled, that the English sovereign is an absolute 
 monarch. 1 Thus one safeguard of the English 
 Constitution was got out of the way. Parliament, 
 packed though it was, was too independent to suit 
 James ; and it was constantly prorogued, without 
 being allowed to transact business. Two safeguards 
 gone : the courts of law corrupted, and Parliament 
 
 1 When William landed at Torbay, one of those who met him 
 was Sir John Maynard, a Lord Commissioner of the Great Seal, 
 and Recorder of the Borough. He was nearly ninety, and 
 William remarked that he had outlived all the men of the law 
 of his own time. Sir John replied, that he would probably 
 have outlived the law itself, if his Highness had not come over.
 
 RELIGIOUS TOLERATION 115 
 
 silenced. There remained the clergy. They dili- 
 gently preached and wrote against Romanism. 
 Seldom before had such learning been exhibited in 
 defence of Anglicanism against Rome. 1 Tillotson, 
 Stillingfleet, Tenison, Patrick, and Wake took the 
 lead. Wake had long been in France, and knew 
 the ins and outs of Roman controversial methods. 
 The replies on the Roman side were surprisingly 
 weak ; sometimes merely bad translations from 
 the French. " Popery," says Burnet, " was never 
 so well understood by the nation, as it came to be 
 on this occasion " (Own Time, 1686 ; comp. Anthony 
 Wood, April 1687). 
 
 The Court of High Commission was revived. It 
 had been abolished by Act of Parliament with royal 
 assent under Charles I., with the proviso that this 
 Court should never be revived by the Crown. But 
 a king who could dispense with the laws could 
 override an Act of Parliament. The revived 
 Court consisted of three Bishops and four laymen. 
 Of these, the Lord Chancellor and two laymen 
 sufficed for a quorum. This Court could censure, 
 suspend, and excommunicate. Archbishop San- 
 croft declined to serve ; but he did not protest, 
 he pleaded age and infirmity. The King adroitly 
 said that, in that case, he would relieve him from 
 attendance at the Privy Council. Crewe, Sprat, 
 and Cartwright were willing to serve, and the Court 
 proceeded to suspend Compton, Bishop of London. 
 
 1 Ellis, Original Letters, 2nd Series, iv. pp. 84, 86. See 
 Lath bury, History of the Nonjurors, p. 4, note.
 
 116 THE STRUGGLE FOR 
 
 Lord Rochester, for refusing to be converted to 
 Romanism, was deprived of the post of Lord Treas- 
 urer. Then the whole government was in the hands 
 of the King, the Jesuit Petre, and the tricky Sunder- 
 land. 1 
 
 James had expected that the prospect of persecut- 
 ing Dissenters would win over English Churchmen 
 to Romanism. That device had failed ; Anglicans, 
 in their abhorrence of Romanism, had drawn closer 
 to Dissenters. This led James to a complete right- 
 about-face as regards policy. He would break the 
 alliance of Church and Dissent against Romanism 
 by favouring Dissenters, and suggesting to them 
 that it was the English Church which had caused 
 them to be persecuted. Instead of Church and 
 Crown against Dissent, it was to be Crown and 
 Dissent against the Church. 
 
 The Bishops unconsciously played into the King's 
 hands. In Lent 1687 some of them charged ministers 
 and churchwardens to present all those who did not 
 attend the Lord's Supper at Easter. Just at this 
 moment James remitted fines and released prisoners, 
 including Baxter. He had the face to tell the 
 Privy Council (18th March) that it had " always 
 been his opinion, as most suitable to the principles 
 of Christianity, that no man should be persecuted 
 
 1 The extreme and illegal measures of James were opposed 
 by some even of the Roman Catholics. But neither the patience 
 of the Protestants nor the moderation of the wiser Romanists 
 had any effect on James, Guizot (Causes of the Success of the 
 English Revolution, p. 114).
 
 RELIGIOUS TOLERATION 117 
 
 for conscience' sake " : and on 4th April the Decla- 
 ration appeared, dispensing with the tests enacted 
 under Charles n., and also the Oaths of Supremacy 
 and Allegiance. Many Dissenters were caught in 
 the snare ; and sixty laudatory addresses were pre- 
 sented by them. 1 The Letter to a Dissenter, probably 
 by Lord Halifax, was very effective in rousing 
 Dissenters to join with Churchmen in resisting the 
 King's attempt to introduce Romanism under cover 
 of a general indulgence to Dissent. 
 
 Then came the ejection of the President and 
 Fellows of Magdalen College, Oxford, for refusing 
 to accept a Romanist as President, 2 and the com- 
 mand to read the Declaration of Indulgence in 
 churches. Bancroft and six Bishops petitioned 
 against this ; and the King said that their petition 
 amounted to rebellion. A tract called Reasons 
 against reading the Declaration was written by Lord 
 Halifax, and distributed by thousands. Only in about 
 two hundred churches in the kingdom was the Decla- 
 ration read ; in London, only in four. 3 Burnet 
 
 1 See Lathbury, History of the Nonjurors, pp. 8 ff. ; Hallam, 
 Const. History of England, iii. p. 73, note. In this short reign 
 more than two hundred treatises were written against Popery : 
 of these only two or three were by Dissenters. Com p. Anthony 
 Wood, 7th August 1687. 
 
 2 This ejection had an immense effect upon public opinion. 
 The President and Fellows were turned out of their freehold. 
 If the King could deal in this way with property, whose pos- 
 sessions were safe ? See Bloxham, Magdalen College and 
 James //., for a full account of the whole transaction. 
 
 3 Evelyn heard it read at Whitehall by one of the choirmen. 
 At Hereford it was read in one church, and the congregation
 
 118 THE STRUGGLE FOR 
 
 says it was plain " that the King had not only the 
 seven petitioning Bishops to deal with, but the body 
 of the whole Nation, both Clergy and Laity " (Own 
 Time, 1688). Yet the Jesuits persuaded the de- 
 mented King to send the seven Bishops to the Tower, 
 8th June. They were acquitted, 30th June. Shouts 
 of applause and exultation greeted the verdict, 
 and were echoed even by the troops on Hounslow 
 Heath. The whole kingdom made public festival, 
 as if for a great victory ; and on the very day of the 
 acquittal the invitation to William of Orange, to 
 come over and save England from the tyrant, was 
 dated. It also was signed by seven leading men, 
 and one of them was Compton, Bishop of London. 1 
 
 3. Perhaps there has never been a moment, in all 
 its eventful history, when the Church of England 
 has been so intensely popular as at the trial of the 
 seven Bishops. Just as, fifty years before, leading 
 Churchmen had sanctioned attacks on civil liberty, 
 and had caused the Church to be proportionately 
 detested ; so now, leading Churchmen had made a 
 great stand in defence of civil liberty, and the Church 
 
 at once left ; at Oxford, not in a single church. Lamplugh, 
 Bishop of Exeter, would not sign the petition of the seven 
 Bishops, but he wrote approbo on the margin. Yet, desiring 
 to be safe, he ordered the Declaration to be read in the Cathedral. 
 The Dean sent him word that, if he liked to betray the Church, 
 he should not betray the Cathedral ; he himself would sooner 
 be hanged at the doors than that the Declaration should be 
 read there. 
 
 1 The other six were : Henry Sidney, the Earl of Devon, Lords 
 Shrewsbury and Lumley, Edward Russell, and Danby, the Tory 
 Minister of Charles n.
 
 RELIGIOUS TOLERATION 119 
 
 was proportionately beloved. 1 Evelyn writes, 
 23rd July : " Sprat, Bishop of Rochester, wrote a 
 very honest and handsome letter to the Commis- 
 sioners Ecclesiastical, excusing himself from sitting 
 any longer among them, he by no means approving 
 of their prosecuting the clergy who refused to read 
 the Declaration for liberty of conscience, in prejudice 
 of the Church of England." This was all the more 
 ' handsome ' of Sprat, inasmuch as he himself, as 
 Dean of Westminster, had read the Declaration in 
 the Abbey, thereby causing a stampede of the con- 
 gregation. When he finished reading, there was 
 no one left, but the choirmen and the scholars. 
 
 A son had been born to James while the Bishops 
 were in the Tower (10th June). 2 This helped to seal 
 his fate. So long as it was certain that one of his 
 Protestant daughters, born of an English mother 
 (Anne Hyde), would succeed him, the nation was 
 inclined to be patient of his despotism. But now 
 there was the possibility that this son of an Italian 
 princess (Mary of Modena) would begin a line of 
 popish and un-English kings. Besides this, the 
 stream of persecuted Protestants passing from 
 France to England told the English nation what 
 
 1 It is sometimes said that Samuel Wesley, father of the great 
 Methodist leader, was one of the clergy who were urged in vain 
 to support the King. But Samuel was not then in Orders. He 
 was ordained deacon by Sprat, 7th August 1688, and priest by 
 Compton, 24th February 1690. 
 
 8 It was Trinity Sunday ; on which day Edward the Black 
 Prince is said to have been born in 1330 : see Dryden's Britannia 
 Rediviva.
 
 120 THE STRUGGLE FOR 
 
 horrors Romanism was committing on the Continent. 
 It was in vain that James gave orders for the resto- 
 ration of the rightful President and Fellows of 
 Magdalen College, and made other attempts at re- 
 paration. 1 It was too late ; and these concessions 
 were regarded as signs of cowardice rather than of re- 
 pentance. The clergy, to whom he had owed his 
 Crown, and whom he had repaid with contemptuous 
 arrogance, now threw their influence against him, 
 as previously they had thrown it for him ; and the 
 invitation to William of Orange was the result. The 
 nation, the nobility, and the Church were all united 
 against the Romanist despot. On his birthday 
 (14th October), Evelyn tells us that no guns were 
 fired from the Tower. Three weeks later William 
 was at Torbay ; and in less than two months James 
 had fled from the throne which he ought never to 
 have been allowed to ascend. 
 
 The downfall of James n. was the exaltation of 
 the principle of toleration ; toleration, not as an in- 
 dulgence to be granted or withheld at the pleasure 
 of the sovereign, but as a recognized condition 
 of government. Before coming to England, the 
 Prince and Princess of Orange let it be known that, 
 in their opinion, " no Christian ought to be per- 
 
 1 " Not an effort was made, not a drop of blood was shed, in 
 defence of James. No less abject in the presence of danger 
 than he had been obstinate in refusing to foresee it, he tried to 
 regain by weakness what he had lost by temerity. He retracted 
 all that he had done, granted all that he had refused. . . . His 
 meanness was as unavailing as his temerity had been impotent " 
 (Guizot, p. 116).
 
 RELIGIOUS TOLERATION 121 
 
 secuted for his conscience, or be ill-used because 
 he differs from the public and established religion ; * 
 and therefore, that they can consent that the Papists 
 in England, Scotland, and Ireland be suffered to 
 continue in their religion with as much liberty as is 
 allowed to them by the States of Holland ; in which 
 it cannot be denied but they enjoy a full liberty of 
 conscience. 2 And as to the Dissenters, their High- 
 nesses did not only consent, but did heartily approve 
 of their having an entire liberty for the full exercise 
 of their religion ; and were ready to concur to the 
 settling and confirming of this liberty " (Wei wood, 
 Memoirs, p. 150). Still, as we shall see, it was only 
 an imperfect and inconsistent form of toleration, 
 and not full religious liberty, that was won by the 
 Revolution of 1688. 
 
 1 Even the fiery Tertullian had contended for this principle : 
 " nee religionis eat cogere religionem, quce sponte suscipi debeat, non 
 w" (ad Scapulam, 2). 
 
 1 In Reresby's Memoirs it is stated that there were four 
 thousand Roman Catholics in the army which William brought 
 over to secure Protestantism in England. This may be exag- 
 geration ; but such a statement would not have been made 
 unless the numbers had been large. Pope Innocent xr. sympa- 
 thized with the expedition, and many Romanists may have 
 done the same. " It proved almost as easy to dethrone the 
 Stuarts as to restore them " (Lord Acton, Lectures, p. 228).
 
 IV. 
 
 1688-1702. 
 
 THE LAT1TUDINARIAN 
 FAILURE AND SUCCESS. 
 
 123
 
 ' To purchase kingdoms, and to buy renown, 
 
 Are arts peculiar to dissembling France ; 
 You, mighty monarch, nobler actions crown, 
 And solid virtue does your name advance. 
 
 Your matchless courage with your prudence joins 
 The glorious structure of your fame to raise ; 
 
 With its own light your dazzling glory shines, 
 And into adoration turns our praise. 
 
 Had you by dull succession gained your crown 
 (Cowards are monarchs by that title made), 
 
 Part of your merit Chance would call her own, 
 And half your virtues had been lost in shade. 
 
 But now your worth its just reward shall have : 
 What trophies and what triumphs are your due ! 
 
 Who could so well a dying nation save, 
 
 At once deserve a crown, and gain it too ? " 
 
 SWIFT, Ode to King William. 
 
 124
 
 IV. 
 
 1688-1702. 
 
 THE LATITUDINARIAN FAILURE AND 
 
 SUCCESS. 
 
 FROM her former troubles, in the struggle with 
 Charles i. and the military despotism which followed 
 it, England had learned, by bitter experience, that 
 a revolution is a gigantic evil, beset with dangers 
 and disfigured by crimes ; an evil which the most 
 reasonable and patient of peoples may be compelled 
 to undergo, but which they will dread and will 
 endeavour to avoid, until it is forced upon them 
 by necessity. In her recent troubles, under the 
 tyranny of James n., England had not forgotten 
 this lesson. The nation endured much, and waited 
 long, in the hopes of being able to escape from another 
 revolution. Nor did the people acquiesce in such 
 a remedy, until they saw that there was no other 
 way of preserving their independence, their property, 
 and their religion. It is one of the glories of the 
 Revolution of 1688 that it was an act, on the part 
 of the nation and its leaders, of necessary self- 
 
 125
 
 126 THE LATITUDINARIAN 
 
 defence. In religion, it failed and it succeeded ; it 
 failed, by its unwisdom, to produce comprehension ; 
 but it succeeded in inaugurating a large measure 
 of toleration. 
 
 Another of the glories of the Revolution of 1688 is 
 that in England it was bloodless. Not a single battle 
 was fought in support of James ; not a single states- 
 man was sent to the scaffold for having faithfully 
 served him. There was no Marston Moor or Naseby ; 
 no execution of a Strafford or a Laud ; still less was 
 there any Bloody Assize. Even Jeffreys himself was 
 allowed to end his days in the Tower, in which he 
 had taken refuge from the vengeance of the mob. 
 The brutal Kirke remained colonel of " Kirke's 
 Lambs," and Crewe retained the wealthy see of 
 Durham. The charters of the towns, which had 
 been cancelled under Charles n., were restored. The 
 Whig statesmen suggested that those who had taken 
 part in surrendering the charters should be dis- 
 franchised, at any rate for a time, and they would 
 have excepted many from any act of indemnity. 
 But all this was foreign to William's character. He 
 made his Act of Grace very comprehensive ; and, 
 even where he knew that men were not to be trusted, 
 he relied upon their shrewdness to see that their 
 worldly interests lay with him rather than with 
 James or his son. 
 
 From one very great difficulty James himself freed 
 the new rulers by running away. Had he remained 
 in the kingdom he might have been a source of great 
 trouble ; and William was not very pleased when
 
 FAILURE AND SUCCESS 127 
 
 James' first attempt at flight proved abortive. 
 Deposed and captive sovereigns are a serious em- 
 barrassment to their successors. Henry iv. had 
 found it so with Richard n., and Edward iv. with 
 Henry vi. In more recent times there were the 
 difficulties of Elizabeth with Mary of Scots, and of 
 Cromwell with Charles I. James was told that he 
 might reside at Rochester, or one or two other places. 
 From Rochester escape to the Continent would be 
 very easy, and, therefore, he selected it. 1 When 
 he fled the second time, no one stopped him, and 
 on Christmas Day 1688 he reached Ambleteuse on 
 the French coast. It was close to this spot that 
 William of Normandy, more than six centuries before, 
 had collected the fleet with which he crossed to the 
 conquest of England. The fugitive King took refuge 
 on the shore whence his predecessor had set out to 
 conquer. The one left home to win a Crown, the 
 other to lose one. James never set foot in his own 
 kingdom again. 
 
 But it was William in. who resembled William I. 
 in his passage from France to England to win a 
 Crown. Both of them had previously visited the 
 country which they were to rule. William of Orange 
 had been in England in 1678 on a visit to Charles u., 
 just as William of Normandy had visited Edward 
 the Confessor in 1051. In both cases the foreign 
 
 1 The house from which he escaped to the Medway still exists. 
 James in his Memoirs remarks that the guards were not very 
 vigilant, which "confirmed him in the belief that the Prince 
 of Orange would be well enough contented he should get away."
 
 128 THE LATITUDINARIAN 
 
 visitor saw enough to prepare him for important 
 developments in the future. Probably the Prince of 
 Orange saw that his being summoned to reform the 
 government of England was only a question of time. 
 In the ten years between his first visit and his return, 
 the question of the succession to the English Crown 
 had become one of European importance. There was 
 a hope cherished at Rome, and at several Courts 
 on the Continent, that Protestantism as a political 
 factor might be wiped out. To establish a Roman 
 Catholic dynasty in England would be a very im- 
 portant step in this direction. The attempt had 
 been made, and was having some success, when the 
 folly of James and his Jesuit advisers precipitated 
 the crisis which had caused William of Orange to be 
 invited to England, and James n. to take refuge in 
 France. 1 
 
 Then, was the Revolution of 1688 merely the 
 change from a Romanist king to a Protestant one ? 
 It was a great deal more than that : it was both a 
 recovery of what was ancient, and an advance to 
 something that was very modern. It was a recovery, 
 after the long interval of personal monarchy under 
 the Tudors and the Stuarts, to the more constitutional 
 monarchy of the later Plantagenets. And it was an 
 
 1 In his Appeal to Honour and Justice, Defoe points out how 
 useful to the nation, and how fatal to James himself, was the 
 precipitation with which he acted. 
 
 " For arbitrary power is so strange a thing, 
 It makes the Tyrant, and unmakes the King ! " 
 
 The True-Born Englishman.
 
 FAILURE AND SUCCESS 129 
 
 advance from the parliamentary government at the 
 close of the fifteenth century, in which the Lords 
 predominated, to the parliamentary government at 
 the close of the seventeenth century, in which the 
 Commons predominated. The principle (which has 
 prevailed ever since, and which appears to be final) 
 was now for the first time generally recognized in 
 England, that, in the last resort, the decision in the 
 State rests, not with the sovereign, but with the 
 people. This principle has developed enormously 
 since 1688, and now the people control government 
 to an extent that was impossible then. But no 
 new principle has been introduced. What has taken 
 place is this : the portion of the nation which forms 
 the controlling body has greatly increased ; and the 
 amount of control which it exerts has also increased. 
 But there has been no change of principle. 
 
 Yet it has been said that the Revolution of 1688 
 was exclusively aristocratic, 1 planned and carried 
 out by the higher classes entirely for their own 
 advantage. There is an element of truth in this ; 
 but to state the matter in this form is strangely 
 misleading. The Revolution of 1688 was aristocratic, 
 not in its essential characteristics, but simply in the 
 manner in which it was brought about. It was the 
 
 1 " The English Revolution," says Lecky, " was a movement 
 essentially aristocratic " (England in the Eighteenth Century, i. p. 
 16). Lord Acton says that it was "essentially monarchical"; 
 yet on the same page he says: " Parliament became supreme in 
 administration as well as in legislation. The King became its 
 servant on good behaviour, liable to dismissal for himself or his 
 Ministers " (Lectures, p. 231). 
 
 9
 
 130 THE LATITUDINARIAN 
 
 English aristocracy that took the lead, and made 
 the cause to triumph. But the cause which 
 triumphed was not that of the aristocracy, but of 
 the whole of the English people. In its essential 
 characteristics the revolution was democratic in a 
 very marked degree. It asserted and secured two 
 political principles which are as truly democratic 
 as any to be found in history : (1) the essential rights 
 common to all citizens, and (2) the effectual partici- 
 pation of the nation in its own government. From 
 the religious point of view, also, the revolution was 
 democratic. It was made in accordance with the 
 religious convictions of the large majority of the 
 people, and one of its main objects was to give those 
 convictions permanence and predominance. On its 
 political side the revolution was parliamentary ; on 
 its religious side it was Protestant. 
 
 James n. blundered to the very last. He left the 
 kingdom under three great delusions. He thought 
 (1) that the absence of the sovereign, who was such 
 an integral part of the Constitution, would throw 
 everything into such confusion, that he would soon 
 be welcomed back on his own terms ; (2) that, backed 
 by France, he would return stronger than he was 
 before ; (3) that he was an instrument, chosen by 
 Providence, to bring back England under the juris- 
 diction of Rome. He was hopelessly mistaken on 
 all three points. (1) After the first surprise of his 
 flight was over, the nation saw that it was well rid 
 of him, and at once proceeded to elect a king that 
 would suit its requirements. (2) He never returned
 
 FAILURE AND SUCCESS 131 
 
 at all, either stronger or weaker, and never had a 
 chance of returning. (3) Providence had quite other 
 plans respecting the English people. Two more 
 centuries have brought the nation no nearer to 
 re-accepting the jurisdiction of Rome. 
 
 William of Orange did not get to the bottom of the 
 situation when he said, that the one thing about 
 which he found all parties in England agreed was 
 the necessity of war with France. The desire for 
 war with France was in this case inspired by a 
 religious rather than by a political feeling. It was 
 not merely, or even mainly, as the hereditary oppo- 
 nent of England that France was regarded by the 
 English nation as a power that must be attacked 
 and humbled, but France as the representative of 
 Roman Catholicism. 1 It was with the help of this 
 detested France that James had hoped, and was still 
 hoping, to enforce his own ideal as regards govern- 
 ment and religion upon the nation ; and all English 
 ideas of national independence, of freedom from 
 continental and papal interference, of an English 
 people with an English Government and an English 
 Church, revolted against the project. James had 
 little chance of being taken again on trial, however 
 he might have behaved himself ; but, if anything 
 was needed to make his return impossible, it was the 
 
 1 In 1690 the Pope said to the Earl of Melfort, who was urging 
 him to help James n., " I am fixed in myself that England will 
 throw off that Monster, and call back their own King. I pray 
 for it every day, and would give my life to procure it." But he 
 would not give any money (Ellis, Original Letters, 2nd Series, 
 v. pp. 204, 205).
 
 132 THE LATITUDINARIAN 
 
 fact that in flying before the storm, which he himself 
 had raised, he sought a home and help at the Court 
 of the provocative and persecuting King of France. 
 There were, of course, a few in England who were 
 still devoted to James as a Stuart with hereditary 
 right, and a few who were devoted to him as a staunch 
 Roman Catholic. There were also a good many who 
 thought that, in the uncertainty of the times, it 
 would be prudent to maintain some kind of secret 
 friendliness towards him. 1 But, with slight excep- 
 tion, the nation may be said to have unanimously 
 resolved that no prince should reign in England 
 upon the terms which James desired to impose. 2 
 Let us sum up the proceedings of the Convention, 
 
 1 Thomas Brown (1663-1704), the author of the celebrated 
 epigram on Dr. Fell, might have said of many people what he 
 said of Sherlock the elder : 
 
 " The same allegiance to two kings he pays, 
 Swears the same faith to both, and both betrays." 
 
 There is also this anonymous epigram on both the Sherlocks, 
 father and son : 
 
 "As Sherlock the elder with his jure divine 
 Did not comply till the Battle of Boyne, 
 So Sherlock the younger still made it a question 
 Which side he would take till the Battle of Preston." 
 
 2 This is true of the clergy as well as of the laity. But the 
 clergy would have liked William to have been Regent, not 
 King, the royal title being still left to James. Evelyn in 1689 
 writes that " the Bishops were all for a Regency." This would 
 have calmed the scruples of those who could not transfer their 
 oath of allegiance from James to William and Mary. But it 
 was quite unworkable. William said that, unless he had the 
 title of king, he would return to Holland (Lathbury. History 
 of the Nonjurors, p. 30).
 
 FAILURE AND SUCCESS 133 
 
 which had been summoned by the Lords at a crisis, 
 when the King had fled, and there was no House of 
 Commons. (1) It declared, that the late King 
 James n., after endeavouring to subvert the Pro- 
 testant religion and the laws and liberties of the 
 kingdom, had abdicated the government, and left 
 the throne vacant. (2) It deprived his posterity 
 of the right of succession. (3) It bestowed the 
 Crown on a foreign prince jointly with an English 
 princess, but in such a way that her share of the 
 Crown was nominal. (4) It fixed the succession for 
 certain contingencies, leaving future Parliaments 
 to deal with further contingencies. 
 
 All this shows what a change in public opinion had 
 taken place during the short reign of James n. Under 
 the strong Tory reaction during the last four years 
 of Charles n., the majority of the nation had loudly 
 maintained that even a full Parliament, with the 
 King at its head, had no power to alter the succession. 
 Not even the Whigs had gone so far as to maintain 
 that, not merely one dangerous heir, but a whole 
 royal family, might be set aside for the good of the 
 Commonwealth. The deposition of kings was held 
 to be one of the worst doctrines of Popery and 
 fanaticism. And now, six or eight years later, 
 nearly every person accepted these revolutionary 
 principles almost as a matter of course. The bulk 
 of the nation acquiesced in what was done by the 
 Convention, and probably approved of it. 
 
 The Declaration of Rights, drawn up by the Con- 
 vention and presented to William in the presence of
 
 134 THE LATITUDINARIAN 
 
 both Houses, 1 became the Bill of Rights by the action 
 of a regular Parliament the following December. 
 The Bill of Eights added one important provision to 
 the Declaration, namely, that no one in communion 
 with the Church of Rome, or married to a Papist, 
 could enjoy the Crown or government of this realm. 
 
 Two other points, included neither in the Declara- 
 tion nor in the Bill of Rights, must be noted. 
 
 1. The almost absolute independence of English 
 judges dates from the moment when their office 
 was granted to them during good behaviour, instead 
 of during the King's pleasure. This was finally 
 secured in 1701 by the Act of Settlement, which en- 
 acted that a judge could not be dismissed, except 
 on the joint address of both Houses of Parliament. 
 
 2. The liberty of the Pulpit and of the Press. In 
 the Middle Ages thought had, to some extent, been 
 
 1 This took place 13th February 1689. Evelyn thus writes 
 (23rd February) : " I saw the new Queen and King proclaimed, 
 Wednesday, 13th February, with great acclamation and general 
 good reception. Bonfires, bells, guns, etc. It was believed 
 that both, especially the Princess, would have showed some 
 seeming reluctance at least of assuming her father's Crown, 
 and made some apology, testifying her regret that he should 
 by his mismanagement necessitate the nation to so extraordinary 
 a proceeding, which would have showed very handsomely to 
 the world, and according to the character given of her piety ; 
 but nothing of all this appeared : she came into Whitehall 
 laughing and jolly, as to a wedding, so as to seem quite trans- 
 ported. . . . The Prince, her husband, has a thoughtful counte- 
 nance, is wonderful serious and silent, and seems to treat all 
 persons alike gravely, and to be very intent on affairs." A 
 little later people said that the Queen talked as much as the 
 King thought, and as the Princess Anne ate.
 
 FAILURE AND SUCCESS 135 
 
 kept free by the antagonism between Church and 
 State ; but the Church, while contending for its own 
 freedom from State control, had endeavoured, in 
 the supposed interests of truth, to repress the free 
 expression of opinion. The Tudors had beaten down 
 the undue claims of ecclesiastics, but they had 
 not granted freedom themselves. Nor had their 
 successors. Every party that came into power had 
 tried to make their power a means of enforcing their 
 own religious principles. But at last men were 
 beginning to see that religion does not need, and 
 indeed is much better without, the application of 
 physical force. Truth will prevail without the 
 infliction of pains and penalties ; and the supremacy 
 in matters of opinion which mediaeval ecclesiastics had 
 claimed for the corporate Church, was now allowed 
 to belong to the individual reason and conscience. 
 
 Few things had manifested the temper of the age 
 more strongly than the fact that Dissenters had 
 contended side by side with Churchmen against the 
 arbitrary Declaration of indulgence made by James. 
 They saw that what James could bestow, on his 
 own personal authority, he could take away in an 
 equally despotic fashion. That was no true religious 
 liberty which was dependent upon the indulgence of 
 a royal bigot. 
 
 Again, Churchmen had acquired a deeper con- 
 viction of the stability of the English Church. 1 It 
 
 1 As Dryden says in his description of the Panther which 
 represents the Church of England ; she 
 
 " Had more of Lion in her than to fear."
 
 136 THE LATITUDINARIAN 
 
 had no need to secure itself against Romanists and 
 Dissenters by such questionable means as the per- 
 secuting Acts of the Clarendon Code. The strength 
 of the Church of England did not lie in such defences 
 as these, but in the reverence and affection which 
 it inspired in the majority of the nation. Most men 
 saw that relief of some kind must be conceded, 
 although the precise way in which relaxation should 
 be granted was still a debated question. 
 
 Perfect liberty of conscience was as yet only a 
 theory with a few thinkers. The policies which at 
 that time were advocated by statesmen and religious 
 leaders were those of comprehension and of toleration. 
 William himself was strongly for comprehension ; 
 and he was supported by Tillotson, Stillingfleet, and 
 the Latitudinarians. But the Latitudinarians were 
 not strong, except in London and the large towns. 
 The clergy generally were against comprehension. 
 So also were those sects, such as Baptists and Quakers, 
 which objected to the principle of an Establishment. 
 No measure of comprehension could benefit those 
 who did not wish to be comprehended. 1 Compre- 
 hension meant that the public worship of the Church 
 
 1 The dissenting historian H. S. Skeats points out that the 
 refusal of Parliament to repeal the Test and Corporation Acts 
 is intelligible. The clergy, of course, were against all such 
 proposals ; " but their opposition was not the only cause of 
 this failure. The truth is, that neither the people at large nor 
 the majority of the Dissenters cared about them. Dissent was 
 not popular," and leading Dissenters thought that, if a Compre- 
 hension Bill passed, the Test and Corporation Acts would cease 
 to affect them (History of the Free Churches of England, 1688- 
 1851, pp. 126, 127).
 
 FAILURE AND SUCCESS 137 
 
 should be modified, in order that as many as possible 
 of the Dissenters who objected to Church ritual 
 should be able to come in. The scheme broke down 
 for the same reason that a similar policy proposed 
 by Chillingworth, Hales, and others came to nothing 
 a generation or two earlier. Many of the points ob- 
 jected to by Dissenters were regarded by Churchmen 
 as of vital importance, and omission would have been 
 as offensive to them as observance was to Noncon- 
 formists. They not unreasonably asked why they 
 should give up what was ancient, and what experience 
 showed was acceptable and edifying to members of 
 the Church, in order to please those who were not 
 members of the Church. By making the proposed 
 changes they would distress Church people, and 
 perhaps after all not win very many Dissenters. 
 In the end, the Comprehension Bill was referred to 
 Convocation, in the Lower House of which it did 
 not long survive. 
 
 The alternative policy of toleration was then 
 adopted ; and the Toleration Act passed without 
 difficulty, 24th May 1689. It was regarded as a 
 great triumph of religious liberty at the time ; but 
 it has been much criticised in recent times as a very 
 niggardly and inadequate measure, and involving 
 glaring inconsistencies. Compulsory attendance at 
 the services of the Church of England was abolished, 
 and the right of common worship was guaranteed 
 to communions outside the Church of England, 
 provided that they worshipped with unlocked doors. 
 But the Conventicle Act and the Act of Uniformity
 
 138 THE LATITUDINARIAN 
 
 were not repealed ; they were only relaxed in the 
 case of those who proved their loyalty by taking 
 the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy, and their 
 Protestantism by denying transubstantiation. 1 Nor 
 were the Test Act and the Corporation Act repealed ; 
 and it was expressly provided that no indulgence 
 was to be granted to Romanists, or those who denied 
 the doctrine of the Trinity. 2 Dissenting ministers 
 were still required to sign the Articles, excepting 
 the 34th, 35th, 36th, and part of the 20th. Still, 
 the Toleration Act was a great advance, and it con- 
 stituted a new condition of things for the Church of 
 England as well as for Nonconformists. Locke was 
 the great exponent of the principles of this advance 
 in his Letters on Toleration. But he regarded the 
 Act as imperfect. " Our government," he said, 
 " has not only been partial in matters of religion, but 
 those also who have suffered under that partiality, 
 and have therefore endeavoured by their writings 
 to vindicate their own rights and liberties, have for 
 the most part done it upon narrow principles, suited 
 to the interests of their own sects." But there 
 were some who looked beyond the interests of their 
 
 1 " The English mind had arrived at one of its favourite 
 compromises. The Church of England could no longer per- 
 secute, but it was still privileged. A dissenter was disqualified 
 from office, though not regarded as a criminal" (Leslie Stephen, 
 English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, i. p. 88). 
 
 * Thomas Aikenhead was hanged at Edinburgh, 8th January 
 1697, for saying that the doctrine of the Trinity was self -contra- 
 dictory, that Christ was an impostor, and similar errors, although 
 he recanted everything before trial.
 
 FAILURE AND SUCCESS 139 
 
 own communion. Among these were some of the 
 leading writers in the Church of England, Hammond, 
 Jeremy Taylor, Stillingfleet, and Tillotson, who 
 advocated toleration for all but idolaters. No doubt 
 some theologians have held that magistrates ought 
 to oppose all error and maintain truth. But the 
 Church of England does not claim the interference 
 of the magistrate, except in the case of those religious 
 opinions which are dangerous to society. Self- 
 defence required the exclusion of Romanists from 
 power. Locke argued that, although idolatry might 
 be tolerated, yet the Church of Rome could not, 
 because it taught that no faith was to be kept with 
 heretics. Tillotson, in a sermon, told the House of 
 Commons that they must provide against Popery, 
 " which is more mischievous than irreligion itself." 1 
 The Presbyterians were among those who held that 
 the State must establish truth and extirpate error. 
 And even the Independents, who, as we have seen, 
 
 1 The persecution of Protestants as heretics, which was going 
 on in various parts of the Continent, had a great effect on public 
 opinion in England. Refugees were constantly bringing news 
 of how men, women, and children were made to suffer the most 
 hideous cruelties, simply because of their religion. James 
 Stanhope, youngest son of the first Earl of Chesterfield, when 
 his father was British Minister at Madrid, went with him, and 
 in 1691 went to Italy and served under the Duke of Savoy. 
 In Majorca he saw twenty-seven heretics and Jews burned in 
 one day. Next day twenty more were to be burned, and others 
 a few days later. These early experiences had something to do 
 with the steadfastness with which, twenty years later, Stanhope 
 resisted all Jacobite attempts and contended for the Hanoverian 
 succession.
 
 140 THE LATITUDINARIAN 
 
 laid down the principle that the State ought to 
 tolerate all religions, expressly excluded Popery and 
 Prelacy, and as regards Romanism and the Church 
 of England were most intolerant. Locke knew 
 better than this. He pointed out that religious 
 doctrines cannot be demonstrated. They are matters 
 of faith, not of knowledge ; and therefore force, 
 which is the foundation of the State, can have no 
 place in religion. 1 
 
 It may be doubted, however, whether the abstract 
 justice of some such measure was the fact which 
 caused the Toleration Act to pass so easily. 2 It was 
 seen that there was no serious risk in making such 
 concessions. The whole number of Dissenting com- 
 munions, when added together, was greatly inferior 
 to the Established Church. It was not probable 
 that they would all combine ; but, even if they did, 
 the Church would still be able to hold its own against 
 them. 
 
 1 " Locke expounded the principles of the Revolution of 
 1688, and his writings became the political Bible of the following 
 century. They may be taken as the formal apology of Whiggism ' ' 
 (Leslie Stephen, English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, ii. p. 
 135 ; the whole chapter should be read). 
 
 2 The idea of there being any abstract justice in toleration, as 
 it existed in Holland and afterwards in England, was laughed 
 to scorn by Bossuet in his reply to Basnage ; " Heureuae contrie, 
 oil rheretique eat en repos auaai bien que Vorthodoxe, oil Von con- 
 serve lea viptrea comme les colombea et lea animaux innocents, 
 ou ceux qui composent les poisons, jouiaaent de la mime Iran- 
 quillite que ceux qui preparent lea remedeal qui n'odmirerait 
 la cleimnce de cea Etols riformda?" (Defense de VHistoire des 
 Variations, p. 2).
 
 FAILURE AND SUCCESS 141 
 
 The abolition of the censorships of the Press, which 
 may be called the complement of the Toleration Act, 
 and may be mentioned here in connexion with it, did 
 not come till a few years later (1695). 1 Then English- 
 men might not only worship in the way which seemed 
 to them to be right, but, both in religion and politics, 
 might express their convictions in print ; and they 
 might do so quite independently of the consideration 
 whether what they published was likely to be approved 
 by the Government. Some years before this, to have 
 allowed such freedom would have seemed one of the 
 most dangerous of experiments, making government 
 almost impossible. Although Russia does not yet 
 believe it, experience has proved that the freedom 
 of the press makes government more easy. Restless 
 subjects let out their discontent in words, instead of 
 forming conspiracies. Moreover, by allowing free 
 discussion, Government gets rid of a most invidious 
 
 1 The reasons given at the time for not renewing the censor- 
 ship of the press, which had been accidentally allowed to lapse, 
 were not those urged by Milton in the Areopagitica. The Act 
 had been difficult to carry out, and had, moreover, proved 
 abortive. " Each of the parties longed for perfect freedom to 
 assail its adversary in the press." Nevertheless, " the violence 
 and scurrility of political writing, instead of increasing, were 
 diminished when the curb was removed. Nothing worse than 
 the Jacobite libels against William and Mary in the earlier part 
 of their reign could have been produced under any state of the 
 law. A free press, however, was still exposed to the onslaughts 
 of party vengeance, which could expel Steele from the House of 
 Commons for a fair party pamphlet, order a pastoral of Burnet 
 to be burned by the common hangman, and put Defoe in the 
 pillory for what would now be deemed a harmless squib " 
 (Goldwin Smith, The United Kingdom, ii. p. 114).
 
 142 THE LATITUDINARIAN 
 
 kind of duty. It has less cares and less work, and 
 avoids precisely that branch of work which is sure 
 to cause friction and faction. It is impossible, with 
 a good grace, to keep on preventing people from 
 saying what they think and wish to say. The 
 gracious thing is to allow them to say what they 
 please. This, then, is the second part of the great 
 changes made by the bloodless Ee volution of 1688. 
 The first was, that henceforth government must be 
 carried on in accordance with the will, not of the 
 King, but of the people, as expressed by the House 
 of Commons. The second was, that the House of 
 Commons has no control over the expression of 
 opinion outside its own walls. 
 
 If the Toleration Act was niggardly in the treat- 
 ment which it provided for Romanists and Protestant 
 Dissenters, niggardly also was the treatment which 
 the clergy of the Church of England received with 
 regard to the oath of allegiance to William and 
 Mary. It would have satisfied all requirements if 
 they had been told that they must promise not to 
 try to dethrone the new sovereigns, or conspire in 
 favour of James. This nearly all of them would 
 have been willing to do. They did not expect or 
 wish to have James restored. But they had sworn 
 allegiance to James ; they had preached the doctrine 
 of non-resistance ; and, as long as James lived, a 
 good many of them could not see their way to swear- 
 ing allegiance to any one else. Their very reason- 
 able scruples deserved tender consideration. But 
 Parliament would have nothing less than the oath
 
 FAILURE AND SUCCESS 143 
 
 of allegiance to William and Mary. Those who 
 refused to take it, after due time for reflexion, were 
 to be deprived. 1 Five of the seven Bishops who had 
 gone to the Tower rather than obey James in an 
 unlawful demand, now gave up their sees rather than 
 break their oath of allegiance to him. One or two 
 other Bishops did the same, and about four hundred 
 clergy gave up their livings. It was magnificent ; but 
 was it war ? The duties of sovereign and subject 
 are reciprocal. Can a sovereign neglect all his duties 
 and desert his subjects, and still retain a claim 
 upon their allegiance ? Nevertheless, the Nonjurors 
 were consistent, and were willing to suffer for their 
 convictions. 2 Their exodus has been compared with 
 that of the Nonconformist ministers who left their 
 livings rather than obey the Act of Uniformity of 
 1662. The cases are so far parallel, that on both 
 occasions there was an exodus from the Church of 
 earnest and conscientious clergy at a time when 
 earnest and conscientious clergy were greatly needed. 
 But there is also this difference between the cases. 
 
 1 If they did not take the oaths by 1st August 1689 they 
 were to be suspended ; if they still refused, they were to be 
 deprived, 1st February 1690. Yet Evelyn found Bancroft still 
 at Lambeth, 7th May 1691. Bancroft told him that he had 
 been advising Beveridge not to take Ken's see to which he 
 had been nominated. Evelyn remark?, that " wise men think 
 it had been better to have let them alone, than to have pro- 
 ceeded with this rigour to turn them out for refusing to swear 
 against their consciences." 
 
 1 It is pleasing to remember that the last act of the Nonjuring 
 Bishops in the House of Lords was to propose two Bills, one 
 for Toleration and one for Comprehension.
 
 144 THE LATITUDINARIAN 
 
 Most of the ministers who seceded in 1662 held 
 principles which were inconsistent with their position 
 as clergy of the Church of England. Those who 
 seceded in 1690 held the principles of the Church 
 of England with the utmost fidelity. The second 
 loss, though smaller in numbers, was more serious 
 in its immediate effects. So serious was it, that the 
 saintly Ken doubted whether he ought to resign for 
 such a cause ; but, in the end, he refused the oath, 
 and resigned his see. 1 Frampton of Gloucester 
 and Ken were against the policy of perpetuating the 
 schism by consecrating fresh Bishops. Sancroft 
 delegated his powers as Archbishop to Lloyd, Bishop 
 of Norwich, and then Lloyd, White, and Turner 
 secretly consecrated Hickes and Wagstaffe to be 
 Bishops of Thetford and Ipswich, 24th February 
 1694. Lloyd would have signed the petition, for 
 which the seven Bishops were sent to the Tower, 
 but for delay in transmission. But he worked hard 
 for his imprisoned brethren at considerable risk to 
 himself. Turner, the deprived Bishop of Ely, went 
 the length of plotting to restore James, with the help 
 
 1 It was unfortunate that the lawyers who drew the Act of 
 Parliament did not provide that the Nonjuring Bishops and 
 incumbents should be deprived of their spiritual jurisdiction 
 by proper ecclesiastical process. In that case, although the 
 deprivations might still have been condemned as unjust, they 
 could not have been challenged as invalid. On the other hand, 
 the Nonjuring clergy made hardly any attempt to discharge 
 their duties towards the sees or parishes of which Parliament 
 had deprived them. They denied the validity of the depriva- 
 tion, and yet acted as if they had been released from responsi- 
 bility.
 
 FAILURE AND SUCCESS 145 
 
 of a French army. He was allowed to escape, 1 
 but his political schemes brought much discredit 
 upon the cause of the Nonjurors. Bishop Lake of 
 Chichester, one of the seven in the Tower, said that 
 he considered the day of death and the day of judg- 
 ment as certain as the 1st of August and the 1st of 
 February, and that he would act accordingly. He 
 did not live to be deprived, for he died 30th August 
 1689. Before his death he dictated and signed a 
 declaration of his loyalty to the English Church, his 
 adherence to the -doctrine of non-resistance, and his 
 willingness to die rather than take the oaths. 2 This 
 was altogether honourable to him. But it is not easy 
 to defend the conduct of the later Nonjurors. That 
 those who had sworn allegiance to James should 
 refuse to take oaths to any one else was intelligible. 
 But that those who had taken no oath to James, 
 and who did not wish to dethrone Anne, should yet 
 keep up a schism by refusing to swear allegiance to 
 the sovereign, was unhappy perversity of judgment. 
 Granted that in 1690 the State had been ruthless, 
 
 1 " Dr. Tumor, late Bishop of Ely, being taken last week 
 by Mr. Wilcox the messenger, is discharged, on condition he 
 will transport himself beyond sea " (Narcissus Luttrell, State 
 Affairs, iv. 154). 
 
 2 See Baker's History of St. John's College, Cambridge, ed. 
 Mayor, ii. pp. 681-696. Nor was it only incumbents and Bishops 
 who were ejected for refusing the oath of allegiance. Dr. Gower, 
 Master of St. John's College, Cambridge, allowed many Fellows 
 to retain their Fellowships without taking the oath ; but the 
 Government proceeded against him, and King's Bench twice 
 issued a mandamus to eject these nonjuring Fellows, 10th August 
 and 23rd September 1693.
 
 146 THE LATITUDINARIAN 
 
 and had infringed the liberties of the Church in 
 filling up sees which were not vacant either by 
 resignation or death ; was that a reason for 
 refusing to swear allegiance to a new ruler many 
 years later ? In 1690 the Government might have 
 imprisoned the Nonjurors, without depriving them ; 
 would that have been a better thing for the 
 Church ? 
 
 By no means all the clergy who took the oaths 
 were satisfied with their position. Ever since they 
 had been in Orders they had preached the doctrines 
 of divine hereditary right and of passive obedience : 
 what had become of their principles ? l Had William 
 in. any better claim than Oliver Cromwell ? It was 
 plain that William was no more an Anglican at 
 heart than Cromwell was : he was a Calvinistic 
 Presbyterian. The Bishops, who were his nominees, 
 were mostly Latitudinarians, and were not trusted 
 by the clergy. Hence the bitter disputes in Con- 
 
 1 " Have you not for many years heard the clergy preach up 
 the Divine right and indefeasible authority of kings, together 
 with passive obedience, as the chief distinguishing doctrines 
 whereby their Church approved itself apostolic beyond all 
 Churches ? Nay, were not the doctrines of loyalty to the 
 king insisted upon more than faith in Christ ? And yet, when 
 their particular interest required it, their doctrine of non-re- 
 sistance was qualified by non-assistance the whole stream of 
 loyalty was turned from the king to the Church ; the inde- 
 feasible right was superseded by a miraculous conquest without 
 blood ; the oath of allegiance to the Divinely rightful King 
 James has its force allayed by another oath of the same import- 
 ance to the de facto King William " (An Account of the Orowth 
 of Deism in England, 1696, p. 8).
 
 FAILURE AND SUCCESS 147 
 
 vocation towards the end of the reign (Lathbury, 
 pp. 53 ff.)- 
 
 Within a short time of his accession William had 
 the appointment of both the Archbishops and of 
 thirteen other Bishops. The first appointment 
 that he made, that of Gilbert Burnet to the see of 
 Salisbury, was very unpopular. 1 But Burnet quickly 
 justified it by excellent work in a very neglected 
 diocese, by kindness to Nonjurors, 2 by opposing 
 the appointment of laymen to serve on the Commis- 
 sion for Convocation, and by contending in Parlia- 
 ment for a more generous treatment of the clergy. 
 The son of a liberal-minded Presbyterian father, 
 and enjoying for twenty-one years the closest in- 
 timacy with the saintly Leighton, Burnet was 
 throughout his influential career a robust upholder 
 of Broad Church views both in religion and politics. 
 He loved controversy, but he was free from bitter- 
 ness ; and he loved managing, but he did not stoop 
 to intrigue. Lord Hailes thought him " a man of 
 the most surprising imprudence," which perhaps 
 meant that Burnet was very fond of getting hold of 
 a secret, and was quite unable to keep one. He 
 has been much abused, but chiefly by those who 
 
 1 See Dryden's attacks on Burnet, in the second part of 
 Absalom and Achitophcl (396 ff.) under the name of Balak, and 
 the much more elaborate one under the name of the Buzzard in 
 The Hind and the Panther (iii. 1121 ff.). Swift also was very 
 bitter. 
 
 2 Burnet paid the ejected vicar of a parish in his diocese the 
 amount of the income which he had lost, out of his own pocket, 
 for the remainder of his life.
 
 148 THE LATITUDINARIAN 
 
 hated his politics ; and historical facts are better 
 testimony than interested vituperation. It is pos- 
 sible to condemn some things that he did ; but it 
 is still more possible to find a great deal to admire : 
 and even those who dislike him most may admit 
 that he was one who, both in Church and State, 
 always meant well. 1 
 
 It was mainly in accordance with Burnet's advice 
 that the sees of the deprived Bishops were filled up, 
 and he probably had much influence in other epis- 
 copal appointments. He tells us that they were 
 excellent, and we can certainly admit this with 
 regard to some of them. Men like Tillotson, Stilling- 
 fleet, and Patrick were ornaments to any Church ; 
 and Cumberland, Hough, and Sharp were also good 
 appointments. All of them were moderate-minded 
 men, whose influence made for peace and toleration ; 
 while some of them, as we have seen, were in favour 
 of large measures of comprehension. On the whole, 
 we may be thankful that the methods of compre- 
 hension which some of them were willing to adopt, 
 or even to advocate, were not accepted. Here 
 again, as at the Kestoration, the House of Commons 
 was more conservative and less tolerant than the 
 Lords ; 2 and measures of comprehension, which 
 
 1 Lecky, England in the Eighteenth Century, i. pp. 80, 81. 
 Burnet states that he originated the plan of devoting annates, 
 or first fruits and tenths of benefices, to augmenting poor livings. 
 He urged this on William in., who was willing; but Sunderland 
 was an obstacle. In the next reign he was successful, and 
 " Queen Anne's Bounty " was founded. 
 
 2 To us this seems a strange fact, but at that time it was
 
 FAILURE AND SUCCESS 149 
 
 easily passed the Lords, were strongly opposed in 
 the House of Commons, and still more strongly in 
 the Lower House of Convocation. 
 
 It was mentioned above that Burnet opposed 
 the appointment of laymen to serve on the Commis- 
 sion for Convocation. 1 This Commission was charged 
 " to prepare such alterations and amendments of 
 the liturgy and canons, and such proposals for the 
 reformation of ecclesiastical courts, and to consider 
 of other such matters, as may most conduce to the 
 good order, edification, and unity of the Church 
 of England." The report of this Commission was 
 to be presented to Convocation, which was to adopt 
 such recommendations as it approved. After much 
 disputing, none of the recommendations were ap- 
 proved ; and we can contemplate their rejection 
 without regret. 2 Among other things, the use of 
 
 quite natural that the Peers should be more liberal than the 
 squires and other country members in the Commons. The 
 Lords lived much more in the world, were in touch with leading 
 statesmen, and had far more political information than could 
 be found in the weekly newspaper, on which those who lived 
 far away from London had to depend. 
 
 1 There were ten Bishops ; Lamplugh (York), Compton 
 (London), New (Winchester), Lloyd (St. Asaph), Sprat (Roches- 
 ter), Smith (Carlisle), Trelawney (Exeter), Burnet (Salisbury), 
 Humphreys (Bangor), and Stratford (Chester) ; and twenty 
 priests, including Beveridge, Patrick, Sharp, Stillingfleet, 
 Tenison, and Tillotson. Burnet remarks that much fairness 
 was shown in the appointments. 
 
 * " The question comes to be this cannot we better deal 
 with diverging tendencies which we object to, which we hope 
 to overcome, and which we want to put straight, by retaining 
 them within the system of the Church, and thereby subjecting
 
 150 THE LATITUDINARIAN 
 
 the surplice was to be made optional, the conse- 
 cration of the elements for Holy Communion was 
 to be allowed to persons not in priest's Orders, and 
 various changes were to be made in the wording of 
 the Prayer-Book, the Collects in particular being 
 enlarged in accordance with the ideas of the age 
 as to what constituted " eloquence." From all this 
 we have been spared. But there were some good 
 suggestions. Monthly Communion, in addition to 
 Christmas, Easter, Whitsunday, and " some Lord's 
 day soon after harvest " : so that here we have an 
 early proposal for harvest festivals, which was not 
 realized for another hundred and fifty years. And 
 an explanatory note to obviate difficulties was 
 appended to the Athanasian Creed. 
 
 It was about this time, or a little later, that the 
 terms "High Church" and "Low Church" came into 
 common use, in the first instance among members 
 of Parliament and other laymen. The High Church 
 
 them to the growing spiritual experience of the whole body ? " 
 (Creighton, Life and Letters, ii. p. 429). Had the recommenda- 
 tions of the Commission been carried out, a secession far larger 
 than that of the Nonjurors would probably have been the result. 
 No less than five hundred and ninety-eight changes were proposed. 
 The document containing them was left in Tenison's hands, and 
 for a long time it could not be found. It reappeared in 1727, 
 and was placed in the Lambeth Library. It now forms a Blue 
 Book under the title, A Return to an Address of the House of 
 Commons, March 14, 1854, and ordered by the House to be 
 printed, June 2, 1854. Burnet regarded the refusal of the 
 Lower House to accept the proposed changes as providential: 
 it prevented a grievous schism. See Lathbury, History of Con- 
 vocation, chap. xi.
 
 FAILURE AND SUCCESS 151 
 
 were for enforcing all laws which were still in exist- 
 ence against Dissenters, and they stigmatized as 
 " Low Church " those who were for moderation. 
 " Latitudinarian " was a wider term than " Low 
 Church." While the latter was sometimes reserved 
 for those who had Puritan sympathies, " Lati- 
 tudinarian " included both the Puritans and those 
 who were in favour of concession and comprehension. 
 The Bishops were mostly regarded as Latitudinarian 
 or Low, while the large majority of the clergy were 
 High. 
 
 With regard to the Latitudinarian Churchmen of 
 that time, it must be remembered, that, whatever 
 we may think of schemes for comprehension, tolera- 
 tion on a large scale had become a political necessity. 
 In order to understand this, we must glance at 
 ecclesiastical affairs in Scotland. 
 
 The English Bishops, whether or no they swore 
 allegiance to William, at least refrained from declar- 
 ing against him. The Scottish Bishops declared 
 against him without hesitation. They taught that 
 loyalty to James was a religious duty ; " might God 
 smite his enemies with shame." James had done 
 a good deal towards protecting Episcopacy in 
 Scotland ; and the Scotch Episcopate adhered to 
 him unconditionally. 1 After William had been 
 
 1 " William m. found Scotland a difficult problem. Horace 
 Walpole wrote to Sir Horace Mann, 6th September 1746 : " I 
 think of what King William said to Duke Hamilton, when he 
 was extolling Scotland, ' My Lord, I only wish it was a hundred 
 thousand miles off, and that you was king of it ! ' ' This was 
 written when the Young Pretender was marching to Prestonpans.
 
 152 THE LATITUDINARIAN 
 
 proclaimed in England, Rose, Bishop of Edinburgh, 
 was presented to him. " I hope," said William, 
 " that you will be on my side." " Sir," replied Rose, 
 " so far as law, reason, or conscience shall allow me." 1 
 William turned away without saying a word ; and 
 Burnet let it be known far and wide that, if the 
 Episcopalians opposed William in Scotland, he would 
 throw himself on the support of the Presbyterians. 
 In the Scottish Convention the Presbyterians had 
 the majority, and they determined to make their 
 religion supreme. They demanded the abolition 
 of Episcopacy among smaller matters ; and on these 
 conditions were willing to accept William and Mary. 
 William closed with the offer. A Scottish deputa- 
 tion formally presented the Crown at Whitehall, 
 llth May, and rehearsed the conditions on which 
 it had been accepted. When a clause was read 
 binding the King and Queen to extirpate heretics, 
 William interposed. " It was his purpose to use 
 only evangelical means ; he would never become a 
 persecutor." He was assured that the clause meant 
 no more than this ; and then he and the Queen swore 
 to observe the conditions, and they became King 
 and Queen of Presbyterian Scotland as well of 
 Episcopalian England. 
 The Stuarts had tried to make both countries 
 
 1 Lathbury, History of the Nonjurora, p. 417, from Rose's letter, 
 At that time about half the population of Scotland seems to have 
 been Presbyterian. Writers on each side claim a majority. If 
 the Bishops had accepted him, William would not have estab- 
 lished Presbyterianism. He was anxious not to disturb the 
 Episcopalian clergy who did not disturb his government.
 
 FAILURE AND SUCCESS 153 
 
 Episcopalian : Cromwell had tried to make both 
 countries Presbyterian : and both attempts had 
 failed. In each country that form of religion which 
 was specially at home there, had in the end prevailed. 
 Now that William and Mary were sovereigns of an 
 Episcopalian Establishment in England and a Presby- 
 terian Establishment in Scotland, it was intolerable 
 that either Episcopalians or Presbyterians should 
 be under any disabilities in any part of the realm. 
 Hence, as already stated, a large measure of tolera- 
 tion became a political necessity ; and under William 
 of Orange, who had been the great Protestant leader 
 on the Continent, England became once more the 
 recognized home of religious liberty for all who were 
 not Papists. 
 
 William and Mary continued to appoint Latitu- 
 dinarian Bishops ; l but private patrons for the most 
 part appointed High Church incumbents ; and this 
 produced a chasm between Bishops and their clergy, 
 which was a serious disadvantage to the Church. 2 
 
 1 During the Queen's lifetime, William largely left the selection 
 to her. After her death he asked a board of six Bishops to advise 
 him as to episcopal appointments. The six were Tenison, Sharp, 
 Burnet, Stillingfleet, Patrick, and Lloyd of St. Asaph's. Such a 
 board, of course, would recommend men of their own views ; so 
 that Latitudinarians continued to be appointed, as before. See 
 Burnet, Own Time, 1662. 
 
 1 We may compara that which exists in the Greek Church at the 
 present time, owing to the fact that the parochial clergy are 
 necessarily married, while the Bishops are necessarily monks. 
 Unless his wife dies, no parochial clergyman can become a Bishop : 
 consequently very few Bishops have had experience of parish 
 work.
 
 154 THE LATITUDINARIAN 
 
 There was a strong prejudice against all the Bishops 
 who had accepted the sees vacated by the depriva- 
 tion of the Non jurors. The nomination of Tillotson 
 to the Primacy in 1691 was as unwelcome to the 
 majority of his clergy as it was to himself. He was 
 in favour of concessions to Nonconformists, which 
 his clergy regarded as fatal. He allowed communi- 
 cants to receive sitting ; and he objected to the 
 Athanasian Creed. His High Church opponents 
 accused him of being a Unitarian, or even an atheist. 
 His parents, they said, were Anabaptists, and he 
 himself had never been baptized. They called him 
 " undipped John." x He was much displeased at the 
 rejection by Convocation of the Recommendations 
 of the Commission ; and by repeated prorogations 
 he prevented Convocation for ten years from meeting 
 again. It was during this period of silence that the 
 controversy betweed Atterbury and Wake respecting 
 the rights of Convocation took place. Atterbury 
 contended that Convocation had the constitutional 
 right to meet and pass measures, which required 
 nothing more than the royal assent to make them 
 legally binding. Wake contended for the Erastian 
 doctrine of State control of ecclesiastical synods. 
 Warburton summed up the result somewhat neatly : 
 " Atterbury goes upon principles, and all that Wake 
 and Kennett could possibly oppose are precedents." 
 Trelawney, Bishop of Exeter, made Atterbury 
 Archdeacon of Totnes and Prebendary of Exeter 
 
 1 The register of his baptism still exists at the parish church of 
 St. John the Baptist, Halifax, 10th October 1630.
 
 FAILURE AND SUCCESS 155 
 
 Cathedral, in recognition, as Atterbury said, of his 
 " honest endeavours to retrieve the synodical rights 
 of the clergy." But, though Atterbury was re- 
 garded as victorious, yet Wake's final book (1703) 
 has become the recognized authority on the subject. 
 
 Archbishop Tillotson died 22nd November 1694. 
 He was succeeded by Tem'son, who, at the Queen's 
 suggestion, had been nominated Bishop of Lincoln 
 in 1691. Soon after he was nominated to Canterbury, 
 Queen Mary died (28th December), and he attended 
 her on her deathbed. 1 He is said to have been 
 instrumental in bringing about a reconciliation 
 between William and the Princess Anne. He rebuked 
 the King for his misconduct with Elizabeth Villiers, 
 and the King had a great regard for him. But he 
 was far from popular with the High Church 
 clergy. 
 
 The death of Queen Mary was a great blow to her 
 husband ; and the shock was communicated to the 
 country. Of late years William and Mary had lived 
 very happily together, which had not always been 
 the case ; 2 and now the nation saw that, beyond all 
 
 1 Tenison preached her funeral sermon, in which he praised 
 her highly. Ken rebuked him for saying nothing about her 
 unfilial behaviour to her father. William had so high an opinion 
 of Tenison that in 1695 he revived the custom of giving great civil 
 appointments to Bishops, and made him one of the Lords Justices 
 who were to administer affairs during the King's absence on the 
 Continent. 
 
 2 When she knew that her malady was smallpox and likely to 
 be fatal, she got up and spent hours at her writing-table, destroy- 
 ing letters which might lead others to see her husband in an 
 unfavourable light (Mrs. A. Colville, Duchess Sarah, p. 106).
 
 156 THE LATITUDINARIAN 
 
 question, it was being ruled by a foreigner. This had 
 really been the case from the accession ; for, though 
 Mary had the rights of joint sovereign, her share of 
 the government of the country had been little more 
 than nominal. 1 But now that she was dead, her 
 foreign husband was left sole sovereign. This was 
 expressly provided for in the Act of Settlement, and 
 it was not thought necessary even to dissolve Parlia- 
 ment on account of the death of the Queen. 
 
 William owed his Crown to his wife. It was not 
 only the fact, that, but for her, he would not have 
 been asked to ascend the throne ; but for her, he 
 would hardly have retained it. His immense useful- 
 ness to the nation no doubt did a great deal towards 
 keeping him on the throne ; but the nation's affec- 
 tion for his wife perhaps did at least as much. 2 This 
 was made evident, when conspiracies against him 
 broke out afresh at her death. Although there had 
 been no executions, no banishments, no confisca- 
 tions of property, no persecution of any religious 
 bodies, the nation was not grateful, not even con- 
 tented. 3 William in., with all his laborious recti- 
 
 William told Burnet that he had never known in her any fault ; 
 no one but he knew her perfections. 
 
 1 This was in accordance with her own wish. Only when her 
 husband was out of England did she take the management of 
 affairs into her own hands, and she then showed that she had the 
 necessary ability. 
 
 2 See Prior's Ode, Presented to the King, on the death of Queen 
 Mary. She is now in heaven, and from her glory angels con- 
 jecture ^what her husband must be like. " Half of thee is deified 
 before thy death." 
 
 3 Richard Blackmore's King Arthur, an epic poem in which
 
 FAILURE AND SUCCESS 157 
 
 tude, was less popular than Charles n. And it is 
 this which makes the reign of William in. one of the 
 most disappointing in English history. There was 
 so much that was satisfactory, and yet people were 
 not satisfied. The truth is, that both in Church 
 and State the generation of William and Mary was 
 labouring more for posterity than for themselves. 
 Good seed was being sown, and serious mistakes 
 were at times being made ; but it was a future 
 generation that reaped the benefit of both. 
 
 William of Orange is one of the best known figures 
 of modern history. Most of those who at times 
 read history have seen his portrait, and remember 
 something of that spare figure, with its pinched 
 face, its aquiline nose, its determined mouth, and 
 its grave and almost gloomy expression. 1 He was 
 one of those men who seem never to have been young. 
 While quite a boy he was thrown back upon his own 
 
 William's victories in his struggle with Louis xiv. are allegorized, 
 is no evidence of William's popularity : nor is the praise of the 
 King in the Dispensary, in which Samuel Garth laughs at King 
 Arthur. Versifiers are often courtiers, and Blackmore was made 
 a knight. See Johnson's Lives of the English Poets. As Gresset 
 says in Le Lutrin Vivant (1734), " Le cri d'un peuple heureux 
 est la seule 61oquence, Qui scait parler des Rois." 
 
 1 Unlike as they were in most respects, William in. resembled 
 James n. in having none of the gaiety which distinguished 
 Charles n. Indeed, they had hardly any sense of humour. 
 James n. is credited with only one approach to a joke. When in 
 1688 he was daily or hourly receiving news that this or that person 
 had gone over to William, his son-in-law, George of Denmark, 
 always greeted the tidings with " Est-il possible ? " At last 
 James was informed that Prince George had joined the Dutchman. 
 " Ah," said James, " Has Est-U possible gone too ? "
 
 158 THE LATITUDINARIAN 
 
 self-sufficiency ; for at fifteen he was deprived by a 
 jealous government of all those about him in whom 
 he had been accustomed to confide. The result 
 was an early moral maturity of a surprising type. 
 He had self-reliance enough to stand the blow ; 
 but it drove back his sympathies, and made him 
 at one-and-twenty one of the most self-contained 
 and reserved princes in Europe. This youthful 
 Tiberius had already acquired a stoical control 
 over his words and features, so that few could tell 
 from his replies or looks what he really thought 
 or felt about all that was going on around him. Of 
 the children of Charles i., two were serious, and two 
 were foolish. The two foolish ones lived and reigned ; 
 the two earnest ones, the Duke of Gloucester and 
 William's mother, died young. When William 
 visited England in 1673, his likeness to his mother 
 was remarked ; and it was a likeness of character 
 as well as of face. In marked contrast to his two 
 uncles, Charles and James, he was a Protestant of 
 the stern Calvinistic type, with a firm belief in the 
 doctrine of predestination, in which he is said to 
 have found great comfort. To his natural gravity 
 and gloomy religious convictions, both of which 
 made him disinclined to gaiety, we must add a state 
 of almost permanent ill-health. His early struggles, 
 against the pressure of internal factions in Holland 
 and the aggressiveness of Louis xiv., all tended to 
 intensify the seriousness of his character and the 
 strength of his will. His relations with his new 
 subjects in England did not tend to bring out the
 
 FAILURE AND SUCCESS 159 
 
 sympathies which had been checked by his early 
 experiences at home. His own bearing did not 
 invite confidence ; and, when the first enthusiasm 
 with which he was greeted had passed away, an 
 attitude of mutual coldness remained. As the 
 saviour of the laws and religion of England he was 
 welcomed ; as the maintainer of them he was neither 
 liked nor trusted. This was sad, but it was inevitable. 
 He was a foreigner, spoke English as a foreigner, 
 and had foreigners about him. Besides this, there 
 was natural prejudice against the man who had 
 risen by the downfall of his own father-in-law and 
 uncle. 1 He seemed to have seized an inheritance 
 before the owner of it was dead. He had some 
 bitter enemies, and many lukewarm friends. The 
 latter wished him to win, but they were by no means 
 sure that he would. The Stuart cause might after 
 all come to the top, and they did not wish to commit 
 themselves too deeply by vigorous support of William. 
 But his enemies had committed themselves ; and 
 they worked hard to overthrow him, for their whole 
 
 1 This appears in Dryden's epigram : 
 
 " Old Jacob, in his wondrous mood 
 
 To please the wise beholders, 
 Has placed old Nassau's hook-nosed head 
 
 On poor ^Eneas' shoulders. 
 To make the parallel hold tack, 
 
 Methinks there's something lacking ; 
 One took his father pick-a-back, 
 The other sent his packing." 
 
 Jacob Tonson, the great publisher, without consulting Dryden, 
 got an artist to illustrate Dryden's translation of the JSneid with 
 pictures in which .Eueas was made to resemble William in.
 
 160 THE LATITUDINARIAN 
 
 hope lay in his failure. And, besides half-hearted 
 friends and uncompromising enemies, there were 
 pitiful traitors, who, while professing to join him, 
 were always ready to do him a secret ill- turn, in 
 order to claim reward for it, in case of a Stuart 
 Restoration. In such surroundings, how could 
 William win the affection of the subjects whom he 
 benefited ? He was cold, and his people felt his 
 coldness. Neither of them had a fair chance of 
 understanding the true feelings of the other. Neither 
 of them had a fair chance of showing their own better 
 side to the other. 
 
 We need some definition of greatness before we 
 can decide whether William in. ought to be reckoned 
 among really great men. He was best as a com- 
 mander in the field ; but, competent as he was in 
 all three capacities, neither as king, nor as states- 
 man, nor as general, was he quite first-rate. He was 
 one of those men who produce results far greater 
 than themselves. The great question of his day 
 was how to prevent the ever-increasing power of 
 France from destroying the independence of the 
 rest of the world. To beat back this menacing 
 monarchy was the work of William's life : and he 
 accomplished it in face of enormous difficulties. 
 France had wealth, great intellectual power, a 
 strong internal government, headed by a king 
 excellently fitted to express the national policy. 
 But William, with his strong predestinarian views, 
 believed that it was the destined duty of his life to 
 withstand the domination of this great Roman
 
 FAILURE AND SUCCESS 161 
 
 Catholic power that was persecuting Protestants 
 and threatening Europe. This work must be 
 carried through, whatever the chances of success 
 might appear to be. In opposition to the selfish 
 glorification of France, William preached and fought 
 for the interests and independence of the other 
 States in Europe. In opposition to Papal exclusive- 
 ness and persecution, he contended for the principle 
 of religious toleration. And, both as a matter of 
 belief and of policy, he upheld Protestantism of 
 all lands against Romanism. In conducting this 
 vast campaign of resistance to France, his success in 
 uniting heterogeneous elements is very remarkable. 
 He induced not only Emperors and Kings to join 
 with Republics, but also Roman Catholic powers l 
 to join with Protestant powers, in order to oppose 
 with success the compact, concentrated, and vic- 
 torious power of France. 2 This is the great historic 
 achievement of William m., and it was for the sake 
 of accomplishing it that he valued his position as 
 King of England. The Crown in itself had no great 
 attraction for him ; but the possession of it enabled 
 him to prevent a Roman Catholic from regaining it ; 
 
 1 The Spanish Ambassador at the Hague is said to have ordered 
 Masses in his chapel for William's success. 
 
 1 " As a diplomatist, the chief of a motley coalition full of 
 jealousy, self-seeking, and fractiousness, including the cumbrous 
 majesty of the empire and the imbecile pride of Spain, William 
 was superb. . . . The treaty of Ryswick, following the taking 
 of Namur, was on the whole, thanks to William's diplomatic 
 force and wisdom, a treaty of peace with honour " (Qoldwin 
 Smith, The United Kingdom, ii. pp. 119, 120). 
 II
 
 162 THE LATITUDINARIAN 
 
 and it also enabled him to contend with better 
 chance of success against Roman Catholic France. 
 When he passed away, -8th March 1702, what Burke 
 afterwards said of him was eminently true : " The 
 man was dead, but the Grand Alliance survived in 
 which King William lived and reigned." 
 
 In Europe he succeeded in uniting divergent forces 
 against a common enemy. Just so far as there was 
 a common enemy he succeeded in uniting divergent 
 forces in England. When he first came to the rescue, 
 the danger of a restoration of James n. made Church- 
 men and Dissenters, Whigs and Tories, unite in 
 supporting him. Just at the end of his reign, when 
 James n. died and Louis xiv., with blind and criminal 
 folly, acknowledged the son of James as King of 
 England, the large majority of Englishmen once 
 more united in enthusiastic support of William. 
 But in between these two extreme points he was less 
 successful. It is true that under him the discordant 
 tendencies which had produced the Rebellion and 
 the Commonwealth found a more harmonious and 
 legitimate direction in developing, instead of destroy- 
 ing, the national Constitution. It was discovered that 
 the national desire for freedom, which had brought 
 about the Rebellion, and the historic forms of govern- 
 ment, which had been brought back by the Restora- 
 tion, were not so radically irreconcilable as had been 
 supposed ; and perhaps William helped the discovery 
 and acted upon it. But he did not succeed in 
 reconciling the Whigs with the Tories, or the Church 
 of England with the Dissenters. With regard to the
 
 FAILURE AND SUCCESS 163 
 
 latter, he, perhaps, was not sufficiently acquainted 
 with the history of the Church of England to act 
 with full wisdom or with full success. He did not 
 see that there was any essential difference between 
 the Church of England and Protestant Churches on 
 the Continent ; and he naturally thought that, if the 
 English Church could be made more like the Pro- 
 testant bodies of Holland and Germany, the English 
 Dissenters would cease to dissent, and harmony 
 would be restored. As we have seen, he failed in 
 this policy, partly because the Lower Houses of 
 Parliament and of Convocation were much more 
 ready to enforce penalties than to make concessions, 
 and partly because no concessions that a loyal 
 Churchman could consistently have made would 
 have satisfied the main body of Dissenters. To 
 heal a schism which has gone on in bitterness for 
 many years is a far more difficult task than to pre- 
 vent a schism from taking place. Concessions which 
 would suffice to induce a dissatisfied minority from 
 seceding, by no means suffice, after years of estrange- 
 ment, to induce them to return. It would have 
 been easy greatly to reduce the numbers of the 
 ministers who went out in 1662. It would have been 
 easy altogether to prevent the exodus of the Non- 
 jurors in 1690. And we may reasonably lament that 
 there was not a greater willingness in high places to 
 make the necessary concessions. But it is less easy 
 to lament that William and Tillotson did not succeed 
 in inducing Convocation to make such changes in 
 the formularies of the Church of England as would
 
 164 THE LATITUDINARIAN 
 
 have induced the Dissenters to re-enter it. Quite 
 as many would have gone out at one door as would 
 have come in at the other. What the Church of 
 England does owe to William in. is that he did not 
 attempt to carry out in a high-handed way the 
 changes which he desired ; having failed to obtain 
 them by constitutional means, he did not endeavour 
 to enforce them by means that were unconstitutional. 
 Secondly, it owes him gratitude, because, when he 
 was unable to accomplish his own wishes, he did 
 not refuse to help in any other way. He carried a 
 measure of toleration, which, however imperfect from 
 the point of view of true religious liberty, was a great 
 advance upon the miserable system of mutual 
 persecution which had prevailed for so many years. 
 We have, perhaps, ceased to look at William in. 
 through Whig spectacles, but, as Mr. Traill says, 
 " after we have thrown aside the magnifying glass 
 of Whiggism, the objects which it was used to ex- 
 aggerate still fill the eye. His character was stern, 
 forbidding, unamiable, contemptuously generous, as 
 little fitted to attract love as it was assured of com- 
 manding respect ; but it bears in every lineament 
 the unmistakable stamp of greatness " (William the 
 Third, by H. D. Traill, 1888). His faults were 
 neither forgotten nor forgiven by his own generation, 
 and his merits could not be measured till long after- 
 wards. 1 He lived without being liked, and he 
 " departed without being desired." 
 
 1 In the next generation they were scarcely recognized. Dr. 
 Johnson " never spoke of King William but in terms of reproach,
 
 FAILURE AND SUCCESS 165 
 
 and, in his opinion of him seemed to adopt all the prejudices of 
 Jacobite bigotry and rancour " (Johnsoniana, No. 265). Defoe 
 saw the change during William's lifetime. 
 
 " William, the great successor of Nassau, 
 Their prayers heard, and their oppressions saw: 
 He saw and saved them. God and him they praised ; 
 To this their thanks, to that their trophies raised. 
 But glutted with their own felicities, 
 They soon their new deliverer despise. 
 Say all their prayers back ; their joy disown ; 
 Unsing their thanks, and pull their trophies down. 
 Their harps of praise are on the willows hung, 
 For Englishmen are ne'er contented long." 
 
 The True-Born Englishman, Jan. 1701.
 
 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 
 
 1649. Execution of Charles i., 30th January. 
 
 Charles n. proclaimed in Edinburgh, 5th February. 
 
 Act for abolishing the Kingly Office, 17th March. 
 
 Act for abolishing the House of Peers, 19th March. 
 
 Act declaring the People of England to be a Common- 
 wealth, 19th May. 
 
 Act against the Licentiousness of the Press, 20th Sep- 
 tember. 
 
 Charles u. lands in Jersey and is proclaimed King, 
 October. 
 
 Cromwell in Ireland, 15th of August to December. 
 
 Milton's Eikonoklastes. 
 
 1650. Cromwell returns to the House of Commons, 4th June. 
 Cromwell enters Scotland, 22nd July. 
 
 Battle of Dunbar, 3rd September. 
 
 Execution of Thomas Harrison, Jesuit priest, at Lancaster. 
 Birth of William nr., 4th November. 
 Jeremy Taylor's Life of Christ and Holy Living. 
 Baxter's Saints' Rest. 
 Hobbes's Human Nature. 
 1661. Execution of Peter Wright, Jesuit priest, at Tyburn, 
 
 19th May. 
 Report on converting Duresme College to a College " for 
 
 all the Sciences of Literature," 18th June. 
 Battle of Worcester, 3rd September. 
 Hobbes's Leviathan. 
 
 1652. Committee to consider what Cathedrals shall be pulled 
 down, 9th July. 
 
 167
 
 168 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 
 
 1663. Cromwell expels the Bump Parliament, 20th April. 
 
 Nominated Assembly (Barebone's Parliament), 4th July. 
 The High Court of Chancery to be taken away, 5th 
 
 August. 
 
 The Assembly dissolves itself, llth December. 
 Cromwell made Protector by the Instrument, 16th 
 
 December. 
 Walton's Compleat Angler. 
 
 1654. First Protectorate Parliament, 3rd September. 
 Committee on the stopping of Diurnals and News Books, 
 
 22nd September. 
 
 Execution of Southworth for being a Romish priest. 
 Milton's Second Defence of the English People. 
 
 1655. Parliament dissolved, 22nd January. 
 Government by Major-Generals, August. 
 
 Use of the Prayer-Book forbidden, 24th November. 
 Jeremy Taylor's Golden Grove and Unum Necessarium. 
 Fuller's Church History of Britain. 
 
 1656. Death of Archbishop Ussher, 21st March. 
 Second Protectorate Parliament, 17th September. 
 Committee to regulate the Press, 20th October. 
 James Naylor sentenced, 17th December. 
 
 First part of the sentence carried out, 18th December. 
 Cromwell writes to the Speaker about Naylor, 25th De- 
 cember. 
 
 Second part of the sentence carried out, 27th December. 
 James Harrington's Oceana. 
 
 1657. Parliament proposes to make Cromwell King, 23rd Feb. 
 Cromwell to name his successor, 5th March. 
 
 Blake's victory at Santa Cruz, 20th April. 
 Cromwell refuses the title of King, 12th May. 
 The Humble Petition and Advice, 25th May. 
 Cromwell again installed as Protector, 26th June. 
 The Protector nominates 63 to form an Upper House, 
 10th December. 
 
 1 658. Parliament dissolved, 4th February. 
 Dunkirk surrendered to the English, 25th June. 
 Death of Oliver Cromwell, 3rd September. 
 
 Eichard Cromwell proclaimed Lord Protector, 3rd 
 September.
 
 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 169 
 
 1659. Parliament meets, 27th January. 
 
 Parliament recognizes Richard aa Protector, 14th February. 
 
 Parliament dissolved, 22nd April. 
 
 Richard ceases to be Protector. 
 
 The Long Parliament restored, 7th May. 
 
 John Pearson's Exposition of the Creed. 
 
 Stillingfleet's Irenicum. 
 
 1660. The Solemn League and Covenant to be set up in every 
 
 Church, 5th March. 
 Parliament dissolved, 16th March. 
 Convention Parliament meets, 25th April. 
 Declaration of Breda received, 1st May. 
 Charles n. proclaimed King, 8th May. 
 Charles n. enters London, 29th May. 
 Act of Indemnity, 29th August. 
 Marriage of James, Duke of York, to Anne Hyde, 3rd 
 
 September. 
 
 Royal Declaration on Ecclesiastical Affairs, 25th October. 
 Parliament refuses to ratify the Declaration, 28th 
 
 November. 
 Consecrations of Griffith, Henchman, Morley, Sanderson, 
 
 and Sheldon, 28th October. 
 Consecration of Cosin, 2nd December. 
 Convention Parliament dissolved, 29th December. 
 Jeremy Taylor's Ductor Dubitantium. 
 John Bunyan's Grace Abounding. 
 
 1661. Consecrations of Gauden and Reynolds, 6th January. 
 Consecration of Jeremy Taylor, 27th January. 
 Savoy Conference meets, 15th April. 
 
 Coronation of Charles n., 23rd April. 
 
 Pensioners' Long Parliament (1661-79) meets, 8th May. 
 
 Corporation Act passed, May. 
 
 Death of Thomas Fuller, 16th August. 
 
 Bishops attend the Upper House, 20th November. 
 
 Revision of the Prayer-Book, 21st November to 20th 
 
 December. 
 Cowley's Discourse concerning Oliver Cromwell. 
 
 1662. Birth of Richard Bentley, 27th January. 
 Death of Bishop Brian Duppa, 16th March. 
 Royal Society founded, 22nd April.
 
 170 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 
 
 1662. Birth of Queen Mary n., 30th April. 
 
 Uniformity Act passed, 19th May. 
 
 Marriage of Charles n. to Katharine of Braganza, 20th 
 
 May. 
 
 Puritan clergy expelled, 24th August. 
 Birth of Francis Atterbury. 
 First Declaration of Indulgence, 26th December. 
 
 1663. Death of Juxon, Archbishop of Canterbury, 4th June. 
 Sheldon, Archbishop of Canterbury, August. 
 
 1664. First Conventicle Act. 
 
 The Great Plague in London began in December. 
 
 1665. Birth of Queen Anne, 6th February. 
 
 Churches dedicated to King Charles the Martyr at Fal- 
 
 mouth and Plymouth. 
 
 Five Mile Act passed at Oxford, 30th October. 
 Death of Bishop John Earle at Oxford, 17th November. 
 
 1666. Great Fire of London, 2nd to 6th September. 
 
 1667. The Dutch in the Medway, llth to 29th June. 
 Peace of Breda, 21st July. 
 
 Death of Abraham Cowley, 28th July. 
 
 Death of Bishop Jeremy Taylor, 13th August. 
 
 Clarendon leaves England, 29th November. 
 
 Birth of Jonathan Swift, 30th November. 
 
 The Cabal Ministry (1667-73) reverses Clarendon's policy. 
 
 Milton's Paradise Lost. 
 
 1668. Buckingham's duel with Lord Shrewsbury, 21st January. 
 Triple Alliance of England, Holland, and Sweden, 
 
 January. 
 
 Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, 2nd May. 
 Birth of Joseph Bingham, September. 
 
 1669. Secret proposals to reconcile England to the Church of 
 
 Rome. 
 
 1670. Birth of William Congreve, January or February. 
 Secret Treaty of Dover, 20th May. 
 
 Visit of William of Orange to England, October. 
 Second Conventicle Act. 
 
 1671. Death of Bishop John Cosin, 15th January. 
 Death of Anne Hyde, Duchess of York, 31st March. 
 Milton's Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes, 
 
 1672. Second Declaration of Indulgence, 15th March.
 
 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 171 
 
 1672. Birth of Richard Steele, March. 
 Birth of Joseph Addison, 1st May. 
 
 John Pearson's Vindicice Epistolarum S. Ignatii. 
 
 1673. Pearson, Bishop of Chester, 9th February. 
 Test Act passed, March. 
 
 Sir T. Osborne (Danby) Prime Minister, June. 
 Marriage of James to Mary of Modena, 30th September. 
 
 1674. Peace of Westminster, 9th February. 
 Death of Clarendon at Rouen, 9th December. 
 Cressy's Epistle Apologetical to a Person of Honour. 
 
 1675. Bishop Croft's The Naked Truth. 
 
 1676. Secret treaty between Charles n. and Louis xiv., 17th 
 
 February. 
 Birth of Robert Walpole, 26th August. 
 
 1677. Death of Isaac Barrow. 
 
 Marriage of William of Orange to Mary of York, 4th 
 
 November. 
 Death of Archbishop Sheldon, 9th November. 
 
 1678. Consecration of Archbishop Bancroft, 27th January. 
 The Popish Plot. 
 
 Act to prevent Romanists sitting in Parliament, Novem- 
 ber. 
 
 Danby impeached, 21st December. 
 Walton completed the five Lives. 
 Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, Part I. 
 
 1679. The Pensioners' Long Parliament dissolved, 24th January. 
 Innocent xi. condemns Jesuit Casuistry, 2nd March. 
 New Parliament meets, 6th March. 
 
 Danby sent to the Tower, 10th April (released 1684). 
 
 Habeas Corpus Act, 27th May. 
 
 Parliament dissolved, 12th July. 
 
 New Parliament at once prorogued, 17th October. 
 
 Death of Thomas Hobbes, 4th December. 
 
 Burnet's History of the Reformation, Vol. I. 
 
 1680. Death of Denzil Holies, 17th February. 
 Exclusion Bill passes the Commons, llth November. 
 Exclusion Bill thrown out in the Lords, 15th November. 
 Execution of Lord Stafford, 29th December. 
 Filmer's Patriarcha. 
 
 Bunyan's Life and Death of Mr. Badman.
 
 172 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 
 
 1681. Parliament dissolved, 18th January. 
 
 New Parliament at Oxford, 21st to 28th March. 
 Charles H. declares his attachment to Protestantism. 
 Archbishop Plunket hanged, drawn, and quartered, 1st 
 
 July. 
 
 William of Orange again visits England, July. 
 Shaftesbury sent to the Tower, July. 
 Shaftesbury acquitted, 24th November. 
 Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel, November. 
 Burnet's History of the Reformation, Vol. II. 
 Stillingfleet's Unreasonableness of Separation. 
 Barlow's Brutum Fvlmen. 
 
 1682. Whitby's Protestant Reconciler. 
 Bunyan's Holy War. 
 
 Dryden's The Medal, March ; MacFlecknoe, October ; 
 Religio Laid, November. 
 
 1683. Death of Shaftesbury, 21st January. 
 Bye House Plot, April. 
 Execution of Lord Russell, 21st July. 
 Hobbes's Leviathan burned at Oxford, 21st July. 
 Birth of George n., 30th October. 
 
 Execution of Algernon Sidney, 7th December. 
 Death of Izaak Walton, 15th December. 
 
 1684. Danby released from the Tower, February. 
 Duke of York made Lord High Admiral, May. 
 Death of Bishop Peter Gunning, 6th July. 
 Death of Bishop George Morley, 29th October. 
 Bunyan completed the Pilgrim's Progress. 
 
 1685. Consecration of Ken, Bath and Wells, 25th January. 
 Death of Charles n., 6th February. 
 
 Birth of George Berkeley, 12th March. 
 
 Coronation of James n., 23rd April. 
 
 First Parliament meets, 19th May. 
 
 Attainder of the Duke of Monmouth, 15th June. 
 
 Battle of Sedgemoor, 6th July. 
 
 Alice Lisle beheaded at Winchester, 2nd September. 
 
 Elizabeth Gaunt burned at Tyburn, 23rd October. 
 
 Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, October. 
 
 Trelawney, Bishop of Bristol, November. 
 
 Parliament prorogued, 20th November.
 
 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 173 
 
 1686. Continual prorogations : 10th February, 10th May, 
 
 22nd November. 
 
 Persecution of the Waldenses by Amadeus n. of Savoy. 
 Death of Bishop John Pearson, 16th July. 
 Birth of William Law. 
 
 1687. Parliament prorogued, 15th February, 20th March, 
 
 28th April. 
 
 Declaration for Liberty of Conscience issued, 4th April. 
 Death of the Duke of Buckingham, 16th April. 
 Parliament dissolved, 2nd July. 
 Expulsion of the Fellows of Magdalen. 
 Newton's Principia. 
 
 1688. Order that the Declaration be read in all Churches, 4th May. 
 Six Bishops protest, 18th May. 
 
 Birth of Alexander Pope, 21st May. 
 
 Seven Bishops sent to the Tower, 8th June. 
 
 An heir to the Crown born, 10th June. 
 
 The seven Bishops acquitted, 30th June. 
 
 Death of John Bunyan, 31st August. 
 
 James u. fled from Whitehall, llth December. 
 
 James n. landed at Ambleteuse, 26th December. 
 
 1689. Death of Bishop Seth Ward, 6th January. 
 Declaration of Rights, 13th February. 
 James n. landed at Kinsale, 22nd March. 
 Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury, 31st March. 
 Coronation of William and Mary, llth April. 
 Death of Judge Jeffreys in the Tower, 18th April. 
 Birth of Samuel Richardson. 
 
 Toleration Act passed, 24th May. 
 Battle of Killiecrankie, 27th July. 
 Death of Bishop John Lake, 30th August. 
 Bill of Rights, December. 
 Locke's First Letter on Toleration. 
 
 1690. Dissolution of Parliament, 27th January. 
 Deprivation the Non jurors, 1st February. 
 Act of Grace, 20th May. 
 
 Battle of the Boyne, 1st July. 
 
 James n. landed at Brest, 23rd July. 
 
 Locke's Essay concerning Human Understanding. 
 
 Locke's Second Letter on Toleration.
 
 174 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 
 
 1691. Tillotson, Archbishop of Canterbury, 31st May. 
 Death of Richard Baxter, 8th December. 
 Death of the Hon Robert Boyle, 30th December. 
 
 1692. Marlborough deprived of his offices, 10th January. 
 Royal Proclamation against Profanity and Vice, 21st 
 
 January. 
 
 Massacre of Glencoe, 13th February. 
 Birth of Joseph Butler, 18th May. 
 Battle off La Hogue, 19th May. 
 Locke's Third Letter on Toleration. 
 
 1693. Origin of the National Debt, 20th January. 
 Death of Archbishop Sancroft, 24th November. 
 Sherlock's Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity. 
 
 1694. Secret consecration of Hickes and Wagstaffe, 24th Feb- 
 
 ruary. 
 
 Death of Archbishop Tillotson, 22nd November. 
 Tenison, Archbishop of Canterbury. 
 Triennial Act passed, December. 
 Death of Queen Mary, 28th December. 
 
 1695. The King's Injunctions, 15th February. 
 Death of John Kettlewell, 12th April. 
 
 New Whig Parliament meets, 22nd November. 
 Assassination Plot discovered. 
 Locke's Reasonableness of Christianity. 
 
 1696. Toland's Christianity not Mysterious. 
 
 1697. Execution of Sir John Fen wick, 28th January. 
 Treaty of Ryswick, 10th September. 
 
 1698. S.P.C.K. founded by Dr. Bray and others, 8th March. 
 Death of Bishop Thomas White, 30th May. 
 
 New Tory Parliament, 6th December. 
 
 1699. Burnet's Exposition of the XXXIX Articles. 
 
 1700. Death of Dryden, 1st May. 
 
 Death of George, Duke of Gloucester, 29th July. 
 
 Death of Innocent xii., 27th September. 
 
 Death of Bishop Francis Turner, 2nd November. 
 
 Death of Charles n. of Spain, November. 
 
 Atterbury v. Wake respecting Convocation (1700-1703). 
 
 1701. Convocation meets for business, 10th February. 
 
 The Lower House censures Burnet's Articles, 30th May. 
 Charter of the S.P.G., 16th June.
 
 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 175 
 
 1701. Death of James n., 6th September. 
 
 Louis xiv. acknowledges the Pretender, 16th September. 
 
 1702. Death of William ra., 8th March. 
 
 First daily paper, Daily Courant, llth March. 
 
 Coronation of Anne, 23rd May. 
 
 War declared against France, 4th May.
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 THE DESPOTISM AND FANATICISM OF 
 OLIVER CROMWELL. 
 
 IT was pointed out in the first lecture (p. 35) that 
 none of Cromwell's despotic attempts at framing a 
 Constitution for the government of England was 
 accepted by the people. Many were willing to 
 submit to them, and even to support him in main- 
 taining them, because they believed that he, and 
 perhaps he alone, stood between them and anarchy ; 
 and those who were unwilling to submit were made 
 to do so by military force. But very few, excepting 
 the army, and by no means all of them, accepted 
 his government with full approval. He had told 
 the fragment of the Long Parliament, when he 
 contemptuously turned them out in April 1653, that 
 " the Nation loathed their sitting." 1 That was 
 
 1 There is no necessary contradiction between his saying to 
 the expelled members, "It is you that have forced me to this," 
 and his telling the Hundred Officers, 27th February 1657, that 
 it was the army that had compelled him to dissolve the Long 
 Parliament. The conduct of the Long Parliament exasperated 
 the army, including Cromwell, and the army urged their com- 
 
 12
 
 178 APPENDIX 
 
 true ; but it loathed his subsequent experiments in 
 government just as much. The reign of the Saints, 
 which followed the expulsion of the Rump, was an 
 attempt to build up a Commonwealth on the literal 
 words of Scripture ; and it was a huge failure. One 
 at times wonders whether Cromwell had any definite 
 end in view, or was a mere opportunist, living from 
 hand to mouth. He himself said that " he goes 
 farthest who knows not where he is going," which 
 would seem to imply that he regarded blind impro- 
 vidence as the guiding principle of a statesman. 
 When he put an end to the Long Parliament in 
 1653, all English institutions had been levelled to the 
 ground, the Episcopal Church, the King, the Lords, 
 and the Commons. Only the army remained, and 
 that was not an English institution. When he died 
 in 1658, he seemed to have found out that the old 
 Constitution was not so bad after all ; for he had 
 set up an imitation of King, Lords, and Commons. 
 It is difficult to believe that he had all along planned 
 anything of the kind. 
 
 And we may safely dismiss the theory, which used 
 to find favour in some quarters, that from the first 
 he was scheming to place himself upon the throne 
 of the King whom he had defeated and slain. 1 In 
 
 mander to turn the Parliament out. The army was nominally 
 the servant of the Parliament ; but, in reality, the Parliament 
 was powerless without the support of the army. Through the 
 army it had deposed and murdered the King ; and through 
 the army it was itself deposed. 
 
 1 Out of regard to the republican temper of the army, which 
 had fought to abolish monarchy, Cromwell unwillingly refused
 
 APPENDIX 179 
 
 one of his speeches he says: "I did endeavour to 
 discharge the duty of an honest man in those services 
 to God and His people's interest, and to the Common- 
 wealth " ; and perhaps, in the main, this claim is 
 just. He was a great Englishman, and he rendered 
 his country many great services, sometimes by 
 executing, sometimes by thwarting, the desires of 
 his countrymen. His despotism was sometimes 
 as oppressive and as defiant of law as the despotism 
 of Charles i. But there was this great difference 
 between the two. Charles ruled despotically in his 
 own interest, and because he liked despotism. 
 Cromwell ruled despotically in the interests of the 
 nation, and because to cease to be despotic would 
 have been to cease to rule. But Cromwell could be 
 fanatical ; and a great man who is a fanatic is to 
 that extent a great man spoiled. In him " the 
 destructive aims of Puritanism were most clearly 
 revealed. He was intolerant of everything opposed 
 to the highest and most spiritual religion, and of 
 the forms which, as he thought, choked and hindered 
 its development. With a strong arm he pronounced 
 a distinct negative to everything persistently antago- 
 
 the title of " King." But, 26th June 1657, he went through 
 a solemn ceremony in Westminster Hall, which may be called 
 coronation without the crown. What did the republicans think 
 of it ? At the coronation of Napoleon, the republican General 
 Augereau was asked whether anything was lacking to the 
 magnificence of the pageant. " Nothing," was the reply, 
 " except the half million of men who died to do away with all 
 this." General Delmas is said to hare made a similar reply 
 to the First Consul after the great service in Ndtre Dame, Easter 
 Day 1802, to celebrate the Concordat with Pius vn.
 
 180 APPENDIX 
 
 iiistic to what he regarded as the interest of the 
 people of God." x That is the attitude of fanaticism 
 to be intolerant of whatever is opposed to one's 
 own ideas of what is right. All fanatics are morally 
 and intellectually the worse for their fanaticism. 
 They erect fancies into eternal truths, mistake 
 their own will for God's will, and treat their personal 
 foes as God's foes. We see these defects appearing 
 from time to time in Cromwell : and it is impossible 
 for us to know how far he was sincere in his declara- 
 tions that he believed himself to be acting as God's 
 instrument for the well-being of the nation. It is 
 quite certain that he sometimes acted as the instru- 
 ment of the army to the detriment of the nation, 
 and also in direct opposition to the nation's wishes. 
 The nation did not wish for the murder of the King ; 
 it did not wish for the prohibition of the Prayer- 
 Book ; and it did not wish for the utterly illegal 
 tyranny of the Major-Generals. It is difficult to see 
 that any of these things could have been for the 
 good of the nation. 
 
 It is perhaps true that Cromwell desired to be 
 conciliatory, and that he often adopted what he 
 considered to be an inferior course, when it com- 
 mended itself to others, rather than force on them 
 what he considered to be the best course. But it is 
 
 1 S. R. Gardiner, CromwelFs Place in History, p. 46. Dryden's 
 aphorism, however, still remains true : 
 
 " So hardly can usurpers manage well 
 Those whom they first instructed to rebel." 
 
 Hind and Panther, lines 617, 518.
 
 APPENDIX 181 
 
 remarkable how many of his old supporters were 
 driven by him from public life, or even imprisoned, 
 during the latter part of his career. Vane, one of 
 his closest associates; Harrison, who had stuck to 
 him all through the Civil War and at the dissolution 
 of the Long Parliament; Hazlerigg, who guarded 
 the border at the crisis of Dunbar; Okey, who 
 had led the dragoons at Naseby and signed the 
 warrant for the execution of the King; Overton, 
 who had fought at Dunbar and been governor of 
 Edinburgh, of Aberdeen, and of Hull; Lambert, 
 who had taken the lead in making Cromwell 
 Protector; and Cooper, one of his most trusted 
 councillors, were all of them either in prison or in 
 disgrace. 
 
 This estrangement of old friends and colleagues 
 was no doubt one cause of Cromwell's nepotism. 
 He was obliged to fall back upon his own family ; 
 and the amount of promotion which they received 
 is remarkable. But no doubt many of them deserved 
 it. His son, Henry Cromwell, was Lord Deputy 
 of Ireland. His son-in-law, Fleetwood, was Com- 
 mander-in-chief in Ireland, member of the Council, 
 Major-General of the eastern district, and member 
 of Cromwell's House of Lords. John Claypole, 
 another son-in-law, was Master of the Horse and 
 one of Cromwell's Peers. John Desborough, his 
 brother-in-law, was Commissioner of the Treasury 
 and General of the Fleet. John Jones, another 
 brother-in-law, was Governor of Anglesey and one 
 of Cromwell's Peers. Valentine Walton, a third
 
 182 APPENDIX 
 
 brother-in-law, was Commissioner of the Navy 
 and also for the Government of the Army. Sir 
 William Lockhart, who married Cromwell's niece, 
 was Ambassador in Paris and Governor of 
 Dunkirk.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Act, Conventicle, 66, 88. 
 
 Corporation, 58, 62, 138. 
 
 Five Mile, 66, 68, 88. 
 
 Test, 68, 92, 100, 113, 138. 
 
 Toleration, 137, 138, 140. 
 
 of Indemnity, 57. 
 
 of Uniformity, 59, 62. 
 
 of Habeas Corpus, 92. 
 
 of Settlement, 134, 156. 
 Acton, Lord, 9, 35, 58, 121, 
 
 129. 
 
 Aikenhead, Thomas, 138. 
 Airy, 0., 4, 77. 
 Alexander VHI., 131. 
 Anabaptists, 36, 53. 
 Andrewes, Bishop, 60. 
 Areopagitica, Milton's, 31, 141. 
 Assembly, the nominated, 22. 
 Athanasian Creed, 150, 154. 
 Atterbury, Francis, 154. 
 Atterbury, Lewis, 24. 
 
 Baker, Thomas, 24, 57, 145. 
 Bancroft, 12. 
 Baptists, 21, 22, 136. 
 Barebone's Parliament, 22. 
 Bates, William, 52, 53, 56. 
 Baxter, 36, 37, 52, 53, 56, 57, 
 
 69, 61, 114, 116. 
 Bear-baiting, 32. 
 Beard, C., 62. 
 Beza, 85. 
 
 Bill of Rights, 134. 
 Blackmore, Richard, 156. 
 
 Bloxham, 117. 
 
 Bogue and Bennett, 65. 
 
 Bond, Dennis, 36. 
 
 Bordeaux, Ambassador, 29. 
 
 Bossuet, 75, 140. 
 
 Boswell, 54. 
 
 Bowles, Edward, 53. 
 
 Bradshaw, 30, 46. 
 
 Bramhall, Bishop, 63. 
 
 Bramston, James, 92. 
 
 Breda, Declaration of, 43, 48, 
 
 53, 62. 
 
 Brown, Thomas, 132. 
 Brownrig, Bishop, 24. 
 Bruce, Thomas, 101. 
 Bull, George, 24. 
 Bunyan, John, 14. 
 Burghclere, Lady, 70. 
 Burke, 162. 
 Burnet, 37, 60, 56, 95, 97, 98, 
 
 101, 102, 104, 109, 117, 141, 
 
 147, 149, 152, 153. 
 Bushby, Dr., 106, 107. 
 Butler's Hudibras, 26, 36, 41, 
 
 63. 
 
 Cabal Ministry, 67, 69. 
 Calamy, 48, 62, 65, 109. 
 Calvin, 10, 85. 
 Carlyle, 19. 
 
 Cartwright, Thomas, 85. 
 Censorship of the Press, 31, 141. 
 Charles i., execution of, 3-5, 44. 
 tyranny of, 33. 
 
 183
 
 184 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Charles H., proclamation of, 43. 
 character of, 49, 61, 77. 
 religion of, 49, 100-102. 
 and the Presbyterians, 47, 
 
 49, 51, 72. 
 and the Romanists, 50, 68, 
 
 84. 
 and the Bishops, 52, 54, 
 
 58. 
 and his brother, 100, 101, 
 
 103. 
 
 and Clarendon, 76, 77. 
 and Parliament, 91-96. 
 and Louis xiv., 69, 94, 99. 
 death of, 102. 
 
 Charters, attack on, 98, 126. 
 Chillingworth, 137. 
 Christmas Day, 23. 
 Church of England, strength of 
 
 the, 108, 118, 120, 136, 140. 
 Clarendon Code, 66, 70, 98, 136. 
 Clarendon, Lord, 36, 41, 63, 58, 
 
 60, 75-77. tU 
 Clifford, Baron, 69. 
 Clifton, Cuthbert, 17. 
 Commission, Court of High, 115, 
 
 119. 
 
 Comprehension Bill, 136, 143. 
 Compton, Bishop, 70, 113, 118, 
 
 119, 149. 
 
 Conventicle Act, 66, 88. 
 Convention Parliament, 42, 132. 
 Convocation, 59, 70, 137, 146, 
 
 149, 163. 
 Coronation of James n., 103, 
 
 112. 
 
 Coronation Oath, 112. 
 Corporation Act, 68, 62, 138. 
 Cosin, Bishop, 24, 54, 60. 
 Cowper, William, 2. 
 Creighton, 149, 150. 
 Crewe, Bishop, 114, 126. 
 Croft, Bishop, 87. 
 Cromwell, Oliver, and the army, 
 8,37. 
 
 and the Romanists, 16-18. 
 and toleration, 18-22, 25, 
 27. 
 
 Cromwell, Oliver, and the Jews, 
 20. 
 
 and the Prayer-Book, 28. 
 and the Press, 31. 
 and the hypocrites, 33. 
 death and character of, 35- 
 
 38. 
 
 Cromwell's daughters, 23. 
 Cromwell, Richard, 37, 41. 
 
 Danby, Earl of, 70, 118. 
 Declaration of Breda, 43, 48, 53, 
 
 62. 
 Declaration of Indulgence, 68, 
 
 117, 135. 
 
 Declaration of Rights, 133. 
 Defoe, Daniel, 128, 141, 165. 
 " Deliquency," 13, 14. 
 Derby, Earl of, 17. 
 Dissenters, numbers of, 67, 152. 
 Dissenters support the Test 
 
 Act, 60. 
 
 Dolben, John, 23. 
 Dollinger, 80. 
 Downfall of intolerance, 34, 46, 
 
 120. 
 
 Drelingcourt, 48. 
 Dryden, 37, 41, 45, 75, 82, 95, 
 
 105, 109, 119, 135, 147, 159. 
 Duppa, Bishop, 24, 52. 
 
 Earle, John, 34, 67. 
 
 English Church, strength of the, 
 
 108, 118, 120, 136, 140. 
 English Republic, 6. 
 Essex, Lord, 84. 
 Evelyn, John, 23, 24, 25, 49, 
 
 111, 116, 117, 119, 120, 143. 
 Exclusion Bill, 83, 91, 92, 94, 
 
 114. 
 
 Execution of Charles I., 3, 4. 
 South worth, 17. 
 Archbishop Plunket, 83. 
 Lord Russell, 91. 
 
 Fauconberg, Lord, 23. 
 Fell, John, 23, 94. 
 Filmer's Patriarcha, 96.
 
 INDEX 
 
 185 
 
 Five Mile Act, 66, 68, 88. 
 Fox, George, 20. 
 Frampton, Bishop, 144. 
 Freedom of the Press, 141. 
 Frewen, Bishop, 52. 
 
 Gardiner, S. R., 9, 29. 
 Garth, Samuel, 157. jj 
 Gasquet, F. A., 103/j 
 Gauden, John, 54. *i 
 Gaunt, Elizabeth, 105. 
 George of Denmark, 157. 
 Goldwin Smith, 46, 161. 
 Gower, Dr., 145. 
 Granville, Dean, 65. 
 Gresset, 55, 157. 
 Grimstone, Sir Harbottle, 44. 
 Guizot, 9, 16, 74, 116, 120. 
 Gunning, Peter, 24, 25, 56. 
 
 Habeas Corpus Act, 92. 
 
 Hacket, John, 28. 
 
 Hales, John, 137. 
 
 Halifax, Lord, 117. 
 
 Hall, Christopher, 14. 
 
 Hallam, 57,96, 117. 
 
 Hammond, Henry, 24, 139. 
 
 Harrison, Thomas, 16. 
 
 Harvest festivals, 150. 
 
 Henriques, 20. 
 
 Herbert, Chief Justice, 114. 
 
 Hewit, John, 23. 
 
 Hickes, George, 44, 144. 
 
 " High Church," 150. 
 
 Hobbes, 58. 
 
 Hobbes' Leviathan, 89. 
 
 Holies, Denzil, 48. 
 
 Huddleston, 101. 
 
 Hudibras, Butler's, 26, 36, 41, 
 
 63. 
 Hunt, John, 44. 
 
 Indemnity, Act of, 57. 
 Independents, 14-16, 53, 139. 
 Inderwick, 104. 
 Innocent XL, 107, 121. 
 Irenicum, Stillingfleet's, 84. 
 Irving, 104, 114. 
 
 Jacombe, Thomas, 56. 
 
 James, Duke of York, 69, 71, 
 
 83, 101. 
 
 James rr., character of, 103-105, 
 157. 
 and the Roman Church, 
 
 105-108. 
 and the English Church, 
 
 108-113. 
 and Dissenters, 116, 117, 
 
 135. 
 
 blunders of, 118, 120, 130. 
 Jeffreys, Judge, 98, 100, 104, 126. 
 Jesuits, 16-18, 75, 107, 128. 
 Jews in England, 20. 
 Johnson, Dr., 54, 157, 164. 
 Judges, independence of, 134. 
 Juxon, Bishop, 24, 52, 70. 
 
 Ken, Bishop, 75, 101, 102, 143, 
 
 144. 
 
 Kennet, R., 85. 
 Kettlewell, 113. 
 King, Bishop, 52. 
 Kings, captive, 127. 
 King's Evil, 94. 
 Kirke, Colonel, 126. 
 Knox, 10. 
 
 Lake, Bishop, 96, 146. 
 Lamplugh, Bishop, 118, 149. 
 Lathbury, 115, 117, 132, 147, 
 
 150. 
 
 Latitudinarians, 136, 151, 153. 
 Laud, 13, 14. 
 
 Lecky, 34, 35, 38, 99, 109. 
 Leighton, Archbishop, 147. 
 Lenthall, 19. 
 Lessons taught by Cromwell, 9, 
 
 35. 
 
 Leviathan, Hobbes', 89. 
 Lingard, 17. 
 Lisle, Alice, 105. 
 Lloyd, Bishop, 144. 
 Locke, 96, 138, 139, 140. 
 Long Parliament, 11, 22, 57. 
 Louis xiv., 60, 69, 94, 99, 105, 
 
 162.
 
 186 
 
 INDEX 
 
 " Low Church," 150. 
 Lowell, 36. 
 Ludlow, 36. 
 Luttrell, Narcissus, 145. 
 
 Macaulay, 5, 32, 58, 63. 
 Magdalen College, Oxford, 117j 
 
 120. 
 
 Major- Generals, 8, 31. 
 " Malignant," meaning of, 13, 
 
 14. 
 
 Manton, Thomas, 48, 52. 
 Marvell, Andrew, 88. 
 Mary and Philip, 15. 
 Mary n., 134, 155, 156. 
 Mary of Modena, 68, 119. 
 Maynard, Sir John, 114. 
 Micro-coamographie, 34. 
 Milton, 30, 31, 87, 141. 
 Monk, General, 42, 53. 
 Monmouth, Duke of, 96, 104. 
 Morley, George, 24, 54, 55, 56. 
 Morley, John, 3, 22. 
 Morton, Bishop, 24. 
 
 Naked Truth, The, 87. 
 Naylor, James, 18, 22. 
 Neal, Daniel, 65. 
 Newdigate-Newdegate, 74, 91. 
 Nonjurors, The, 142-146. 
 Non-religious Englishmen, 29- 
 
 32 
 
 Norfolk, Duke of, 111. 
 North, Lord Keeper, 100. 
 
 Orme, William, 56. 
 Osborne, Sir Thomas, 69. 
 Overall, Bishop, 60. 
 Overton, 24, 68. 
 Owen, John, 85. 
 
 Parliament, Barebone's, 22. 
 
 the Convention, 42, 57. 
 
 the Long, 11,22,57. 
 
 the Pensioners', 57, 91. 
 
 the Rump, 17, 42. 
 
 at Oxford, 93. 
 Passive obedience, 96. 
 
 Patriarcha, Filmer's, 96. 
 Patrick, Bishop, 115, 148, 163. 
 Pepys, 42, 43, 46, 58, 77. 
 Persecution, political, 67. 
 
 religious, 12, 14, 22, 27, 66, 
 
 67. 
 
 Perth, Lord, 104. 
 Petre, the Jesuit, 106, 108, 116. 
 Philip and Mary, 15. 
 Pierce, Bishop, 52. 
 Plunket, Archbishop, 83, 84. 
 Popish Plot, 82, 90. 
 Portsmouth, Lady, 100, 101. 
 Prayer-Book, 21, 28, 59, 65, 150. 
 Presbyterianism, 10, 14, 26, 46, 
 
 49, 57, 73, 151. 
 Press, censorship of, 31, 141. 
 Prior, Matthew, 156. 
 Protestant Reconciler, The, 88. 
 Puritanism, 22, 25, 27, 32, 34, 
 
 41, 47. 
 
 Quakers, 15, 20, 136. 
 Queen Anne's Bounty, 148. 
 Queen Henrietta Maria, 106. 
 Queen Mary n., 134, 155, 156. 
 
 Eanke, 46. 
 Republic, English, 6. 
 Reresby, Sir John, 121. 
 Revolution, evils of, 2, 125. 
 Revolution of 1688, 126-129. 
 Reynolds, Edward, 48, 52, 53, 
 
 69. 
 
 Rich, Richard, 23. 
 Roberts, Bishop, 52. 
 Romanists, 16, 21, 68, 75, 85. 
 Ronquillo, Ambassador, 106. 
 Rose, Bishop, 152. 
 Rump Parliament, 17, 42. 
 Russell, Lord, 83, 90, 91. 
 Rye House Plot, 90, 98. 
 Ryswick, Treaty of, 161. 
 
 Sacheverell, William, 83. 
 Bancroft, Archbishop, 71, 100, 
 
 117, 143. 
 Sanderson, Robert, 28, 54.
 
 INDEX 
 
 187 
 
 Savoy Conference, 56, 57, 59. 
 Schaff, Philip, 11. 
 Scott, Sir Walter, 95. 
 Second Stuart Tyranny, 99. 
 Settlement, Act of, 134, 156. 
 Seven Bishops, the, 117. 
 Shaftesbury, 91, 95. 
 Sharp, Archbishop, 110, 148, 
 
 153. 
 
 Shaw, 10. 
 
 Sheldon, Bishop, 54, 64, 70. 
 Sherlock, Thomas, 67. 
 Sidney, Algernon, 91, 98. 
 Sidney, Henry, 103, 118. 
 Skeats, H. S., 136. 
 Solemn League and Covenant, 
 
 11, 47, 60, 65. 
 
 South worth, execution of, 17. 
 Sparrow, Anthony, 56. 
 Sprat, Bishop, 114, 119, 149. 
 Spurstowe, William, 48, 52. 
 Stanhope, James, 139. 
 Steele, Sir Richard, 141. 
 Stephen, Sir J., 61. 
 Stephen, Leslie, 138, 140. 
 Sterne, Dr., 13. 
 Sterry, Peter, 36, 37. 
 Stillingfleet, 24, 84-86, 139, 149, 
 
 153. 
 
 Storm at Cromwell's death, 35. 
 Sunderland, Lord, 100, 116. 
 Swift, 69, 124, 147. 
 
 Taunton, E. L., 17. 
 
 Taylor, Jeremy, 24, 87, 139. 
 
 Tenison, Archbishop, 149, 155. 
 
 Tertullian, 121. 
 
 Teat Act, 68, 92, 100, 113, 138. 
 
 Tillotson, Archbishop, 139, 149, 
 
 154. 
 Toleration, 20-22, 26-29, 120, 
 
 121. 
 Toleration Act, 137, 138, 140, 
 
 142, 164. 
 
 Tomkins, Thomas, 86. 
 Tonson, Jacob, 159. 
 Touching for King's Evil, 94. 
 Toulmin, Joshua, 64. 
 
 Trail, H. D., 164. 
 Trevelyan, 27, 42, 62. 
 " Triers," boards of, 63. 
 Turenne, Princess of, 48. 
 Turner, Francis, 88, 144. 
 Tyranny, Second Stuart, 99, 125. 
 
 Uniformity, Act of, 59, 62. 
 Ussher, Archbishop, 52, 53. 
 
 Villiers, Elizabeth, 155. 
 Vindictive legislation, 12, 66, 72. 
 
 Wagstaffe, Bishop, 144. 
 Wake, William, 115, 154. 
 Walker, John, 12. 
 Walpole, Horace, 37, 151. 
 Walton, Brian, 54. 
 Walton, Isaac, 65. 
 Warburton, Bishop, 64. 
 Ward, Seth, 88. 
 Warner, Bishop, 62. 
 Welwood, James, 45, 48, 49, 82, 
 
 96, 107, 111, 121. 
 Wesley, Samuel, 119. 
 Whitby, Daniel, 88. 
 White, Century, 63. 
 Wilde, George, 23, 25. 
 William i., 127. 
 
 William rn., character of, 157- 
 160. 
 
 religion of, 146, 158. 
 
 and France, 131, 160-162. 
 
 and Scotland, 151. 
 
 and the English Church, 
 146, 148, 163, 164. 
 
 and Dissenters, 121. 
 Wiseman, Richard, 94. 
 Wood, Anthony, 43, 46, 93, 94, 
 
 104, 113, 117. 
 Wordsworth, 40. 
 Worsley, Colonel, 17, 18. 
 Worsley, Edward, 18. 
 Wren, Bishop, 62. 
 Wright, Peter, 16. 
 
 York, James, Duke of, 69, 71 
 83, 101.
 
 MORRISON & GIBB LIMITCD 
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 T. and T. Clark's Publications. 
 
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 Edited by J. HASTINGS, D.D. 
 
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