CHAPTER VI.
At the time when English gaols were filled with Nonconformists, and English citizens were driven into exile, the English Sovereign offered an asylum to Protestant refugees from France; thus, at the same moment, persecuting his own conscientious subjects, and befriending those like-minded, who suffered from the tyranny of Louis XIV.
FRENCH PROTESTANTS.
After the Edict of Nantes, in 1591, had formally guaranteed to the Huguenots liberty of worship, vexatious interferences with their religious rights goaded them to resistance, and revived those political and military combinations which had proved so mischievous to the French Reformation. But, before the middle of the seventeenth century, the French Protestants became a purely religious community. The Count d’Harcourt bore witness to their loyalty in the well-known words, “the Crown tottered on the King’s head, but you have fixed it there:” and Cardinal Mazarin testified to their good conduct, when he said, “I have no cause to complain of the little flock,—if they browse on bad herbage, at least they do not stray away.”[118] The latter illustrious statesman, although a religious enemy, was a political protector of his Protestant countrymen; and, soon after his death in 1661, they became fully aware of the loss which they had sustained. His Royal master determined to govern alone, at the very moment when he became more than ever the slave of the Church; and, gathering up the reins entirely within his own hands, he sought to atone for his immoralities by the extirpation of heretical opinions. The conversion of the French King was a change from courtly gallantries to religious persecution,—from sensuality to intolerance,—from vice to crime. It is impossible to say, in how many districts he interdicted the exercise of the Reformed religion; how many places of worship he razed; how many schools he suppressed; how many Protestant endowments he confiscated for Roman Catholic purposes. Ordinances, declarations, decrees, and other acts of Council swiftly followed one after another, striking the heretics with blow upon blow.[119]
In 1681, Louis began his atrocious system of dragonnading, which consisted in billeting ten or twelve military brigands in a Protestant family, with authority to do anything short of murder, for the conversion of its members to Popery. Curés shouted to these new apostles, “Courage, gentlemen, it is the will of the King.”[120] Horsemen fastened crosses to the ends of their musquetoons, and compelled people to kiss them. They whipped their victims, they smote them on the face, they dragged them about by the hair of their heads, and drove them to church as they might drive so many cattle.
1681.
In the middle of the seventeenth century, French exiles had established themselves in different parts of England. A French Church had been founded at Winchelsea in 1560, at Canterbury in 1561, at Norwich in 1564, with others at Southampton, Glastonbury, and Rye. A Church at Sandtoft, Lincolnshire, dated from 1634; in the Savoy, from 1641; in Dover, from 1646; in Marylebone, 1656; not to mention others.[121] The Dragonnades, in 1681, sent at once a new and unprecedented wave of emigration across the Channel.
FRENCH PROTESTANTS.
Charles II., who did not blush to receive a pension from Louis XIV. for betraying the interests of his country, now came forward in favour of the fugitives—from good nature, or through advice, or in order to please the English Protestants, perhaps from all three motives combined. By an edict, signed at Hampton Court, on the 28th of July, 1681, he declared that he felt obliged by his honour and his conscience, to succour the people who were fleeing into exile. He therefore accorded them letters of naturalization, with all the privileges necessary for the exercise of such trades as would not injure the interests of his kingdom. He engaged that he would ask the next Parliament to naturalize all who should seek refuge in this island, and in the meantime he exempted them from all imposts to which his other subjects were not liable. He authorized them to send their children to the public schools and Universities. He ordered all his officers, both civil and military, to receive them wherever they landed, to give them passports gratuitously, and to furnish such relief as might be necessary for them to travel to their destination. He also instructed the Commissioners of the Treasury, and of the Customs, to let the strangers pass free, with their furniture, their merchandize, and their instruments of trade; and, further, he encouraged charitable persons to assist those who were in want. He also commissioned the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London to receive their requests and present them to him. To this edict there succeeded, before long, an order in Council which granted naturalization to eleven hundred and fifty-four fugitives;[122] and boat after boat arrived freighted with these sufferers. Such sympathy with the persecuted, however just, appears very inconsistent. About a hundred years earlier, the Jesuits had turned the tables on the intolerant Lutherans and Calvinists of the empire, by saying that Catholic sovereigns had as much right to deny religious liberty as Protestant ones;[123] and Louis could have taken sufficient ground for retorting upon Charles after the same fashion. Reports were circulated to the discredit of the refugees—and were met, on the other hand, by friendly certificates from Incumbents and Churchwardens, testifying of them as “sober, harmless, innocent people, such as served God constantly and uniformly, according to the usage and custom of the Church of England.”[124] In 1682, Charles issued briefs to the clergy to make collections for the new comers; and, in this beneficent work, Tillotson, Dean of Canterbury, took part. Beveridge, then a Prebendary in Canterbury Cathedral, from some mistaken scruple—or from coolness towards a foreign Church—objected to reading the brief, as contrary to the rubric. This circumstance brought out Tillotson’s well-known reply, “Doctor, Doctor, charity is above rubrics.”[125]
1682.
The persecutions of these French Protestants, their arrival on our shores, and the kindness with which they were received, are not mentioned here simply because they are incidents of a religious character locally connected with our own country, but for another and more forcible reason. These persecutions had become a staple of conversation in many an English home; and many an English heart had palpitated with deep sympathy, as stories of violence and suffering had fallen on the ear. Each fresh gust of intolerance, as it broke on France, had stirred the feelings of English Puritans, scarcely less than the feelings of French Protestants living on this side Dover Straits. And the revival of oppression, after the death of Mazarin, could not fail to inspire indignation in the breasts of multitudes within our shores when the anti-Popery agitation burst out afresh. The sight of the fugitives, their tales of horrid barbarity, of patient endurance, and of romantic adventure, would reinvigorate the Protestantism of our fathers, and largely contribute to that fixed resolve, which defied the contrivances of Charles and James, and ended in what has been ever since esteemed the Glorious Revolution.[126]
THE CABINET.
It was natural for foreign Protestants to look to England for help in more ways than one. The Archbishop of Canterbury received a letter from Dr. Covel, chaplain at the Hague to the Princess of Orange, urging the formation of a public League in defence of European Protestantism. Sancroft did not possess the courage and heroism to promote such a measure, had it been wise; but he did possess the sagacity and prudence to see that the object desired was not wise; and, in addition to those qualities, he displayed, in the answer to his correspondent, a large measure of Protestant sympathy and devout feeling.[127]
The prospects of Protestantism became darker and darker. The Act for excluding Papists from office was for a while cunningly evaded by Charles, who placed the whole business of the Admiralty in the hands of his brother, the Duke of York, he himself signing all official papers in that department:—at last, this shadowy pretence he cast aside, and boldly invited James to a seat at the Council-table—a step which even one of his Tory supporters acknowledged “became the subject of much talk, and was deemed to be a breach of one of the most solemn and most explicit Acts of Parliament.”[128] Two other persons, at the same time Members of the Council, ought to be noticed. One was Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys, too infamous a character to require anything more than the mention of his name; and Lord Keeper Guilford, who, whilst hating Jeffreys with a bitter hatred, in some respects resembled him. The part which these men took at this time in relation to Papists and Protestant Nonconformists, and the manner of their conducting ecclesiastical business, are illustrated by the following incident.
1684.
It was the fashion to hold Cabinet meetings on Sunday nights. One Sunday morning, the Duke of York asked Guilford to assist him in a business which would that evening be brought before His Majesty. Guilford thought that certain Courtiers just then looked at him with remarkable gravity, as if something important was about to come on the carpet; but he did not discover its nature until after the meeting had commenced. Jeffreys had returned fresh from a Northern tour, and had brought with him reports of large numbers of Papists convicted of being recusants, and, after placing on the table rolls containing their names, he rose from his chair, and proceeded to say:—
CABINET MEETING.
“I have a business to lay before your Majesty, which I took notice of in the North, and which will deserve your Majesty’s royal commiseration. It is the case of numberless numbers of your good subjects, that are imprisoned for recusancy. I have the list of them here, to justify what I say. They are so many that the great gaols cannot hold them without their lying one upon another.” Then, to use the language of Roger North, “he let fly his tropes and figures about rotting and stinking in prisons;” and concluded his speech with a motion that His Majesty be requested to discharge “these poor men,” and restore them to “liberty and air.”[129] Such a motion from such a man will be at once understood. It could have been made only to please his Royal master, and that master’s brother. If selfishness influenced Jeffreys in making the proposal, selfishness influenced Guilford in opposing it; for, on the one hand, any such pardon as that now proposed, must pass the Great Seal of which he was keeper; and by affixing this to such an unpopular instrument, he might bring himself into trouble with his friends. On the other hand, by refusal he might incur a forfeiture of office, and have to give place to his most odious enemy. After the Lord Keeper had sat silent awhile, expecting some of the Lords in the Protestant interest, as Halifax and Rochester, to speak,—he rose and addressed the King, entreating that the Chief Justice might declare, whether all the persons named in these rolls were actually in prison or not. His Lordship replied that he did not imagine any one could suspect that to be his meaning, but that they were under sentence of commitment, and were liable to be taken up by any peevish Sheriff or Magistrate. North then proceeded to attack all Sectaries. They were a turbulent people, he said, and always stirring up sedition; and, if they did so when they were obnoxious to the laws, what would they not do, if His Majesty gave them a discharge at once? Was it not better that his enemies should live under some disadvantages, and be obnoxious to His Majesty’s pleasure, who might, if they were turbulent and troublesome, inflict the penalties of the law upon them? As to the Roman Catholics, if there were any persons to whom the King would extend the favour of a pardon, let it be particular and express. After all, the disadvantage they were under, was but the payment of some fees to officers, which was compensated for by their enjoying exemption from serving in chargeable offices.[130]
1684.
Guilford thought that in this way he outwitted his adversary, and accounted his manœuvre the most memorable act which he had ever performed. The report shows, that from personal inclination, or from a wish to gratify the King, and the Duke of York, he evinced especial hatred to Protestant Nonconformists in general, when he recommended mercy to some Popish recusants in particular; and, whatever might be his motive on the occasion, the speech which he delivered, and his entire relation of this Cabinet secret, discloses to us very plainly the characters of the men who then guided public affairs, and the contemptible feelings which influenced their conduct.
One Nonconformist sufferer at that time demands a passing notice. William Jenkyn, of St. John’s, Cambridge, ejected from the Vicarage of Christ’s Church, London, where he had been exceedingly popular, was, on September the 2nd, 1684, seized by a soldier,—he being at the very time engaged in prayer with his friends. Refusing to take the Oxford Oath, he was committed to prison; and to a petition for release founded on a medical certificate that his health would be endangered by confinement, no answer could be obtained but this,—“Jenkyn shall be a prisoner as long as he lives.” As his end drew near, he said to those around him, “Why weep ye for me? Christ lives; He is my friend, a friend born for adversity, a friend that never dies.” “May it please your Majesty,” remarked a nobleman, when he heard of his death, “Jenkyn has got his liberty.” “Aye,” rejoined Charles, “who gave it him?” “A greater than your Majesty, the King of Kings.” The Confessor was followed to Bunhill Fields, by a procession of a hundred and fifty coaches. Even gay Courtiers looked sad, and the reckless King seemed concerned. “L’Estrange,” in his Observator, “alone set up a howl of savage exultation, laughed at the weak compassion of the Trimmers, proclaimed that the blasphemous old impostor had met with a most righteous punishment, and vowed to wage war not only to the death, but after death, with all the mock saints and martyrs.”[131]
CHARLES’ COURT.
Nor should it be forgotten, that whilst Nonconformists were suffering all kinds of hardships, the King and his Court were indulging in unbridled licentiousness, so that the contrast drawn by the poet of the mysteries of Providence then appeared in our own country as vividly as it ever did in any part of the world:—
“The good man’s share
In life was gall and bitterness of soul;
......While luxury
In palaces lay straining her low thought,
To form unreal wants, and heaven-born truths
And moderation fair, wore the red marks
Of superstition’s scourge.”
Imagination, as we read the history of the later Stuarts, ever and anon places before us side by side the confessor’s dungeon and the voluptuary’s chamber. The scenes which the Count de Grammont depicts, the characters which he draws, and the intrigues which he unravels; the entire want of moral principle, the absence of common shame, the bare-aced profligacy, the devices to excite and gratify the lowest passions, which he, who had lived at Court and shared in its pleasures, so graphically and yet so complacently portrays, make us blush for our race. The reaction from the simple manners and severe virtues of the Commonwealth was tremendous. Courage, or rather an irritable sense of honour, leading the gallant to wreak revenge upon any who offended him, came to be the chief virtue of Cavalier Courtiers. Vices and crimes were treated as petty foibles: beauty, liveliness, and wit alone were counted meritorious; and “the manners of Chesterfield united with the morals of Rochefoucault.” The Count’s book is indeed a reflection of the age—elegant in style, but licentious in character—a veil of embroidered gauze cast over a putrescent corpse.
1685.
In the midst of this depravity death suddenly appeared. Art has portrayed two scenes at Whitehall which point a moral never to be forgotten. The one represents the Sunday night when Evelyn saw inexpressible profaneness, gambling, and dissoluteness—the King sitting and toying with his concubines, the French boy singing love songs, and the Courtiers playing basset with a bank of 2,000 guineas piled up on the table. The other exhibits what was witnessed a few days afterwards in the anterooms of the chamber where the Royal Sybarite awaited the summons of the Almighty; noblemen and ladies, with heartless etiquette, performing their Court attendance; prelates at a distance, hoping for an opportunity to administer to him the last offices of that Church, which had called the dying man its Defender, whilst, as he is in the act of renouncing communion with it, a delicate hand is seen extended from behind a timorously opened door, to receive a glass of water to assist in swallowing the wafer, laid upon the Royal tongue by a disguised priest. These pictures[132] illustrate the mutability of earthly grandeur, and the righteous retribution of God upon a life spent in sin. Charles II. died on the 6th of February, 1685,—within three weeks of William Jenkyn.
DEATH OF CHARLES.
Very confused and contradictory accounts are given of the circumstances connected with this event; but there is enough of what is perfectly credible, to show that Charles died in a state of reconciliation with the Church of Rome. The Duke of York, his brother, who watched him to the last moment, states that two Protestant Bishops read by his bedside the service of the Visitation of the Sick, and that one of them, Ken, Bishop of Bath and Wells, after receiving from the sick man a faint acknowledgment of sorrow for his sins, pronounced absolution, and offered him the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, which was declined. But the Duke makes no mention of the pathetic strain in which that prelate addressed the King, or of the faithful exhortation addressed by the Archbishop of Canterbury.
The Duke further relates that he arranged for the clandestine introduction to the chamber, of a Benedictine Monk, who had aided Charles’ escape after the battle of Worcester; that when the room had been cleared of all, except the Earl of Bath and Lord Feversham, the priest, brought up into a private closet by a back pair of stairs, was taken to the bedside; and that, after confession, he administered the last rites of the Popish Communion—that the expiring man uttered pious ejaculations, lifting up his hands and crying, “Mercy, sweet Jesus, mercy,” till the priest gave him extreme unction—that as the host was presented, he raised himself up, and said “Let me meet my Heavenly Lord in a better posture than lying on my bed.” But the Duke says not a word of Charles’ blessing his natural children, and the rest of the persons present; nor of any one begging the Royal benediction, calling the King the father of them all.
1685.
Yet these circumstances are related by others, as well as the utterance of the words, “Do not let poor Nelly starve;” and Charles’ reply to the Queen’s message asking forgiveness. “She ask my pardon, poor woman?—I ask hers with all my heart.” James, in his Memoirs, is evidently intent upon one thing, to show that Charles died a sincere Papist, which we can well believe from what we know of his previous history.[133]