Ecclesiastical History of England, Volume 5—The Church of the Revolution

by John Stoughton

CHAPTER XI.

The peace of Ryswick, which put an end to the war between William and Louis, and detached the latter from the cause of James, dispelled for awhile the visions which had tantalized and disappointed the nonjuring party; for the treaty, sanctioned by France, Spain, and the United Provinces, recognized the constitution of England, and William as a constitutional King. Some Clergymen, wearied by the bootless resistance of eight long years, now came to terms, and swore allegiance to the reigning Sovereign, adopting at last the principle which they had denounced, that a settled Government, though illegitimate in its origin, is binding in its authority.

PEACE OF RYSWICK.

Immense joy arose on this occasion; it prolonged itself during the month of November. The anniversary of the landing at Torbay of course set in motion peals of bells, lighted up candles in windows, kindled bonfires in market-places, and evoked shouts of glee from assembled multitudes. The 14th of November, the day of Williams return and landing at Margate, became an additional season of joy. On the 16th, which turned out a bright morning, he entered his capital in state, attended by the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, with a measure of the splendour which on past occasions brightened the City’s dark and narrow streets; although some of the spectators of the sight noticed a decline in the splendour of the pageantry.[300] The triumph of the day was complete when the University of Oxford, to the unutterable chagrin of the Nonjurors, struck its colours, and in an adulatory address did homage to the hero. This tide of joy flowed into the following month. The 2nd of December was held as a day of thanksgiving for the peace. The King and Court attended Divine service in the Chapel at Whitehall, where Burnet preached, or, as one who heard him says, “made a florid panegyric,”[301] founded on the words, “Happy are thy men, and happy are these thy servants, which stand continually before thee, and hear thy wisdom. Blessed be the Lord thy God which delighted in thee to set thee on his throne, to be king for the Lord thy God: because thy God loved Israel to establish them for ever, therefore made he thee king over them, to do judgment and justice.” The same day St. Paul’s Cathedral was opened for Divine service, and William would have been there, instead of being in his own Chapel, but for fear lest the multitude, thronging the streets, should render his approach almost impracticable. The Corporation of London appeared in their civic pomp; Compton ascended his throne, just enriched by the carvings of Grinling Gibbons; and he afterwards preached from the appropriate text, “I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go up into the house of the Lord.”[302]

1698.

A new Parliament, of a decidedly High-Church stamp, assembled on the 9th of December, amidst an atmosphere of hypocrisy and intrigue rarely equalled. A sermon preached before the Commons by the Rector of Sutton, in Surrey, upon government originating with the people, and good government alone being the ordinance of God, gave vast offence to the Tories, and occasioned the passing of a curious resolution, that no one should preach before the House unless he was a Dean or a D.D. A Committee of the Lower House formally complained of Dissenters being made Justices of the Peace; whereas it turned out on inquiry that not two of their number were placed on the roll, besides such as had become occasional Conformists. Some zealots went so far as to propose, that an address should be presented to the King, to remove Burnet from the office of Preceptor to the young Duke of Gloucester; but as this was too absurd a proposal to find much support, it had to be withdrawn.[303] Under pretence of patriotism and economy, a strong opposition party carried one measure for a reduction of the army, which compelled William to part with his Dutch Guards, the sorest sacrifice he ever made; and another for the recovery of Irish estates, bestowed by the Monarch on his supporters, a proceeding which ended in the aggrandizement of its inventors.

PARLIAMENT.

The peace of Ryswick had brought “a great swarm of priests”[304] to England, who held up their heads with so much insolence, that some foolish Protestants and some cunning politicians absurdly declared, the articles of peace favoured Popery, and the King was a Papist in disguise. Soon the new Parliament, stirred by a gust of wind which threatened a “No Popery” tempest, set to work upon a Bill obliging every Popish minor succeeding to an estate, immediately to take the oath of allegiance, and, as soon as he attained his majority, to submit to the Test Act,—otherwise his property would devolve on the Protestant next of kin. The Bill also banished Popish priests, and adjudged them to perpetual imprisonment in case they dared to return; the reward for conviction being £100. The Bill is said to have been partly a trick contrived by the Tories to perplex the Whigs, who prided themselves on being the champions of Toleration; but when they saw the Whigs supporting it, they indicated a desire to drop the measure. With a view of provoking defeat, they introduced additionally severe and unreasonable clauses; yet, contrary to their expectations, the Lords, under the influence of an anti-Popish fever, accepted what came up to them, and the Bill, unamended, not only passed the Upper House, but received the Royal assent. Burnet supported it, and endeavoured to defend himself against the charge of injustice and inconsistency. “I had always thought,” he says, “that if a Government found any sect in religion incompatible with its quiet and safety, it might, and sometimes ought, to send away all of that sect, with as little hardship as possible. It is certain that as all Papists must, at all times, be ill subjects to a Protestant prince, so this is much more to be apprehended when there is a pretended Popish heir in the case.” The new law happily proved a nullity. Some of the terms were so vague, and the provisions were so oppressive, that the “Act was not followed, nor executed in any sort.”[305]

1699.

Complaints of growing immorality had been repeatedly made; proclamations to check it had been often issued; and on the 28th of November, Parliament requested the publication of a new one. Upon this, the Archbishop of Canterbury addressed a pastoral letter to each of his Suffragans, requesting them to stir up the Clergy to a more zealous discharge of their duties. The good effects of pastoral diligence had been made apparent in London; now Ministers in general were exhorted to imitate the admirable example. Let them by their consistent lives recommend the doctrines which they preached. The family and the parish were spheres of usefulness, to be filled up by the discharge of the duties included in a Christian walk and conversation; persons in holy orders ought to be pre-eminently holy. Enemies were seeking objections against Christ’s religion, its friends therefore ought to be diligent in its defence, acquainting themselves with the grounds on which it rested, and the modes of sophistry by which it was assailed. Frequent meetings of the Clergy for conference on religious matters might do much good, especially if Churchwardens and others of the laity could be brought to co-operate. Obstinate offenders should be subjected to ecclesiastical censure, and the assistance of the magistrate should be sought when it was likely to be effectual; people were not to shrink from exposing crime and securing its punishment, through fear of being denounced as informers. Finally, since education laid the firmest basis for morality and religion, it became the parochial clergy to be sedulous in the catechizing of children. In this way the Archbishop, through the medium of Diocesans and their Clergy, endeavoured to promote the interests of the Church.[306]

CHURCH PREFERMENTS.

The power vested in the Crown of nominating Bishops and other dignitaries had been exercised during the life of Queen Mary very much according to her discretion. William,—perhaps because he was a foreigner, and also destitute of entire sympathy with Episcopalianism, or because he was so engrossed with foreign affairs,—seems to have been reluctant to take part in the bestowment of ecclesiastical patronage. In the year 1700 he devolved its responsibilities, to a large extent, upon the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, and the Bishops of Salisbury, Worcester, Ely, and Norwich. Whilst he was in the realm they were to signify to him their recommendation of such persons as they thought fit for vacant preferments, which recommendation they were to present through the Secretaries of State. If whilst he was beyond the seas, any Bishoprics, Deaneries, or other specified clerical offices in his gift, above the annual value of £140, should need filling up, the Commissioners were to transmit the names of suitable persons, respecting whom his pleasure would be made known under his sign-manual. At the same time he delegated to them full power at once to appoint to other preferments. Also, he declared, that neither when he was abroad nor when he was at home, should either of his Secretaries address him in reference to any benefices left to the recommendation or disposal of the Commissioners, without first communicating with them, also that no warrant should be presented for the Royal signature until their recommendation had been obtained.[307]

1700.

An affecting bereavement now occurred in the Royal family. William, Duke of Gloucester, a son of Princess Anne and Prince George of Denmark, was heir to the throne, and therefore in him centred the hopes of the nation. He seems to have been a lively child, for in 1695, when only six years old, he ran to meet his uncle with a little musket on his shoulder, and presented arms. “I am learning my drill,” he cried, “that I may help you to beat the French.” Nothing could have better pleased the veteran, who soon afterwards actually created the boy Knight of the Garter. Military tastes continued to guide his childish amusements, and he formed a regiment of lads, chiefly from Kensington, who attended him at Campden House, the residence of his mother, a quaint mansion burnt down a few years ago. The education of the Prince early occupied the thoughts of William, who offered the post of Governor to the Duke of Shrewsbury, now restored to the Royal confidence.[308] Shrewsbury declined, and the office fell into the hands of Marlborough. A story is told to the effect, that the King said to the future hero of Blenheim, “Teach him to be what you are, and my nephew cannot want accomplishments.” The still more important duties of preceptor to the youth were entrusted to Burnet, as already indicated. Windsor then being within the diocese of Salisbury, the Prince was to live there during the summer months, when the Bishop reckoned he would be in his diocese, and therefore in the way of his proper episcopal duties; he satisfied himself with thinking, that all would be right if the King allowed him ten weeks in the year for the other parts of his diocese,—a circumstance which shows how in those days notions of a Bishop’s office were different from what, happily, they are now. “I took to my own province,” says the right reverend preceptor, “the reading and explaining the Scriptures to him, the instructing him in the principles of religion, and the rules of virtue, and the giving him a view of history, geography, politics, and government. I resolved also to look very exactly to all the masters that were appointed to teach him other things.”[309]

DUKE OF GLOUCESTER.

1700.

But a sad fatality brooded over all the offspring of poor Anne. After a few days’ attack of fever, the young Duke died on the 30th of July.

He was buried in Westminster Abbey, and recently, upon the family vault being opened, amongst the ten small coffins of the children of James II., and the eighteen small coffins of the children of his daughter Anne, lay the coffin of the youthful William, resting in remarkable juxtaposition upon that of Elizabeth of Bohemia.[310] Thus one of an unfortunate race, who never attained the crown he inherited, mingled his dust with that of a great aunt, who soon lost the crown she had prompted her husband too eagerly to seize. As the nation unaffectedly mourned the death of the youthful Duke, a gentleman,[311] living at Holland House, a friend of Atterbury’s, lamented the removal of his Royal neighbour in the following lines, which afford a specimen of the affected elegiac strains popular at the period:—

“So by the course of the revolving spheres,

When’er a new discover’d star appears,

Astronomers with pleasure and amaze,

Upon the infant luminary gaze.

They find their heaven’s enlarged, and wait from thence,

Some blest, some more than common influence;

But suddenly, alas! the fleeting light

Retiring, leaves their hopes involved in endless night.”

The Duke of Gloucester was the last Protestant heir to the Crown recognized in the Act of Settlement. His death therefore exposed the Royal succession to new perils, revived the hopes of the Jacobites, and created anxiety in the minds of William and his Ministers. The King at the time had left England nearly a month; and as, amidst the gardens of his retreat at Loo, he saw the shortening of the summer days, he had pondered future contingencies, and laid plans for preserving the work which he had wrought. When, in the following February, 1701, he, bearing evident signs of increasing frailty, met Parliament, he told the Houses that the loss just sustained made it necessary there should be a further provision for a Protestant succession; adding, that the happiness of the nation, and the security of religion, seemed to depend so much upon this, that he could not doubt it would meet with general concurrence. The addresses echoed the same sentiment, and in March the Bill of Succession came under Parliamentary debate. It determined that the Princess Sophia, Duchess-Dowager of Hanover, or her heirs, should succeed upon failure of issue to William and Anne; and it laid down the principle that whosoever wore the Crown should commune with the Church of England, as by law established. Other important resolutions, which it does not come within my province to notice, were incorporated in the Bill; and these gave rise to fierce discussions between the two great political parties, who, throughout the whole of this reign, were teasing William out of his life, provoking the phlegmatic Dutchman to exclaim, that “all the difference he knew between the two parties was, that the Tories would cut his throat in the morning, and the Whigs in the afternoon.”[312] The Act of Settlement at length passed, and received the Royal assent.

THE SUCCESSION.

It is curious to observe with respect to this Act, that Sophia, who was made the protectress of the Reformed faith, and who was to supersede the Stuarts on the throne, was neither a zealous Protestant nor a foe to the exiled family. For when asked what was the religion of her blooming daughter, at the time just thirteen years of age, she replied she had none as yet; “we are waiting to know what prince she is to marry, and whenever that point is determined, she will be duly instructed in the religion of her future husband—whether Protestant or Catholic.” And in a communication, which Lord Chancellor Hardwicke called her Jacobite letter, she bewailed the fate of the poor Prince of Wales, who, if restored, she said, might be easily guided in a right direction.[313]

1701.

A limitation of the heirship, within the pale of any particular Protestant community, which may become less and less national as time rolls on, is open to grave objections; but the limitation of descent within Protestant lines of some kind, appears to rest upon a sound basis. The reasons for it are furnished not by the religious, but by the political character of Romanism. No doctrinal or ecclesiastical opinions ought to exclude a legitimate heir, but a Popish claimant is the subject of another and an ambitious power, which associates temporal with spiritual authority, and exercises assumed prerogatives after an elastic fashion, which can contract or expand them with exquisite cunning, as fear darkens, or as hope brightens the prospect of futurity. A Roman Catholic Sovereign is involved in complications intolerable to a Protestant people, with a history full of warning against foreign interference. It was a true instinct which led Lord William Russell, amidst the aberrations of party zeal, to deprecate as a terrible calamity the accession of a Papist; the same instinct prompted the limitation of the Succession Act. Taught by the story of the past, our ancestors guarded against Romish intermeddling, and it is well for the fortunes of this country, that, acting on this maxim, our fathers did not, in a fit of blind generosity, mistaken for justice, open or keep open a door of mischief which, in some perilous hour, it might be impossible to shut.

JAMES II.

Another important event was now approaching. James II., tired out by a chequered life, desired to die. Whatever may be thought of his principles, and the effect of his reign upon the interests of his country, no one can doubt his religious sincerity, and when the immoralities of his earlier days had been discontinued, confessed, and deplored,[314] he manifested an earnest devoutness, tinged, of course, by the peculiarities of his faith. Dwelling upon the examples of some good men who had longed to be removed from this world, and upon the moral dangers to which others had been exposed, he counted it “a high presumption for a slender reed not to desire to be sheltered from such terrible gusts as had overturned those lofty cedars.” When indulging in such meditations, he was seized with a fit in early spring, from which he partially recovered. Once more, within the Palace at St. Germains, he was seized, in the midst of his devotions at chapel, with another attack on the 2nd of September. Afterwards he sent for his son, who, seeing the bed stained with blood from a violent hæmorrhage, burst into violent weeping. Having calmed the child, his father conjured him to adhere to the Catholic faith; to be obedient to his mother, and grateful to the King of France; to serve God with all his strength, and if he should reign, to remember kings were made not for themselves but the good of their people, and to set a pattern of all manner of virtues.[315]

This was good advice, but it bore an application such as would guide the son in the father’s ways. He exhorted everybody about him to spend pious lives, and urged his few Protestant courtiers and servants to embrace the Catholic faith. It deserves mention that he forgave all who had injured him, mentioning in particular his daughter Anne, and his son-in-law William. But the most important circumstance connected with his dying moments was the visit of the Grand Monarque, who promised James he would take his family under his protection, and acknowledge the Prince of Wales as King of England—an assurance which drew joyful tears from the family and courtiers. On Friday, the 16th of September, 1701, James expired; as if a saint had been taken to heaven, the physicians and surgeons who made a post-mortem examination, kept particles of his body as relics, and the attendants dipped their chaplets and handkerchiefs in his blood.[316]

1701.

William went into mourning. Coaches and liveries were put in black;[317] but tidings of the promise made by Louis soon aroused indignation.

The King was in Holland at this crisis, but Sir Thomas Abney, the Nonconformist Lord Mayor of London, at once caused an address to be voted to His Majesty, expressive of the loyalty of the citizens, and of their determination to oppose France and the Pretender.

After William had returned on his fortunate day, the 5th of November, he on the 11th dissolved Parliament, and then called another: as he was taking this step, loyal addresses poured in from all parts, and amongst them one from the London Nonconformists, presented by John Howe. They said they were grateful to Divine Providence for the settlement of the Protestant succession, and pledged themselves to use their utmost endeavours to maintain His Majesty’s title, and that of his successors, as by law established.[318] An address of the same nature was presented by the Baptists.[319]

The truth is, a new war now threatened Europe, for Louis had torn in pieces the Ryswick Treaty by the bedside of James, and deliberately defied the provisions of the Act of Settlement.

THE SUCCESSION.

When William met his new Parliament on the 31st of December, 1701, he told them that the setting up of the pretended Prince of Wales as King of England was not only the highest indignity to himself and the nation, but it concerned every one who valued the Protestant religion or the welfare of his country. “I have shown,” these were the closing words he used, “and will always show, how desirous I am to be the common father of all my people. Do you, in like manner, lay aside parties and divisions. Let there be no other distinction heard of amongst us for the future, but of those who are for the Protestant religion and the present Establishment, and of those who mean a Popish Prince and a French Government. I will only add this—if you do in good earnest desire to see England hold the balance of Europe, and to be indeed at the head of the Protestant interest, it will appear by your right improving the present opportunity.”[320]

His speech elicited applause. It charmed the Whigs, and many had it ornamentally printed in English, French, and Dutch, and hung up on the walls of their homes. Political animosities were lulled for awhile by circumstances inspiring concern for the Empire, and “the whole nation, split before into an hundred adverse factions, with a King at its head evidently declining to his tomb, the whole nation, Lords, Commons, and people, proceeded as one body, informed by one soul.”[321] Unanimously it was resolved that no peace should be made with France until after reparation for the indignity done to England.

1702.

A mania for oath-taking infected our fathers, and now, in addition to the old law, which had occasioned the nonjuring party, came a new law, which served to revive it. When death had taken away the Sovereign to whom they regarded themselves as pledged while he lived, the Nonjurors began to deliberate about taking the oath, but a new form of abjuration stopped their deliberations.[322] Ken was troubled at the prospect of its universal imposition, and hoped its enforcement would be limited; but a Bill passed requiring not only all civil officers, but also all ecclesiastics, all members of the Universities, and all schoolmasters to acknowledge William as lawful and rightful King, and to deny any title whatever in the pretended Prince of Wales. Sixteen Lords, including Compton, Bishop of London, and Sprat, Bishop of Rochester, protested against the Abjuration Bill;[323] and others reasonably judged that to swear allegiance was one thing, but to swear respecting the nature of a title to the Crown was another—that in the first case people were within the region of fact, that in the second they were brought into the region of theory. Calamy records, with no apparent dissatisfaction, that the oath was thought to be the best means of disappointing such as hoped by the assistance of France to make way for the Pretender, and so accomplish the design of restoring arbitrary power and the Popish religion.[324] The Abjuration Bill received the Royal assent by Commission in the month of March, 1702.

Naturally at this juncture there were Jacobites who felt a flutter of excitement. Looking upon oaths as cobwebs easily brushed away, they hoped the Hanoverian succession might prove an idle dream, and, on the tiptoe of expectation, began eagerly to talk to one another of prospects, which brightened as the declining health of William foreboded his speedy removal. One busy agent forwarded for the use of the Stuarts certain proposals, in which he curiously sketched the political views of religious parties in this country, as they struck his eye.

STATE OF PARTIES.

“As for England, the parties most to be considered are—First, the Episcopal, which, being in possession of the bells, is by far the most numerous, though not the most active; for, being at their ease, and possessing not only the tythes but the magistracy and profitable employments of the nation, they flatter themselves with an opinion that upon any emergency or change of State, they shall be able to give the law to all other interests. And it is not improbable they might, could they find out a way to settle the Crown upon any solid basis. But that not being possible to be done but in the right line, that party rather suffers than approves of what has been done, by adding the House of Hanover to their weak and trembling entail, which, as it was the project only of the Prince of Orange and his Dutch Council, is by many suspected, but despised by more, nor could have passed the House of Commons, but that they were told it was the only way to express a contempt of the power of France; and by that means to make the people believe that they feared nothing thence, and likewise to oblige that Monarch to apprehend their power to be much greater than indeed it is; to stave off a war they more apprehend and dread themselves than he needs to do, notwithstanding all the rabble and trading part of the nation are universally for it.

“The next party requiring consideration is the Presbyterian, which consists of a malicious, sour, and subtle part of men, who are more united in malice than the former, and do, with their demure countenances and outside Pharisaical righteousness, draw from the churches to their meeting-houses the most hypocritical part of the trading people; so that their numbers are wonderfully increased of late years, to the terror of the aspiring part of the episcopal parsons, who dread that Bishops, Deans, and Chapters are tumbling down again, knowing bare competencies too weak supports for their dissolute and scandalous lives.

1702.

“The next party to be considered is the Independent, under which denomination may be included that rabble of divers sects, which by above fifty several whimsical societies engross in the whole a greater number of dissenters to the Prelatical Church than the Presbyterians do, and are mortal enemies to both, including within them that sort of men which are most properly called Republicans or Commonwealth’s-men, a restless, bold, and busy spirit, easiest to be gained to your Majesty’s interest, it being become a maxim amongst the wisest of them, that since it appears impracticable to unite and settle all interests in a Commonwealth, it is absolutely necessary to restore your Majesty and the right line, to keep off the necessity of a perpetual war, which these botching entails apparently threaten the nation with. Nay, in their maxims they go farther, and say that it were better for the kingdom in general, but most for themselves in particular, that the rightful Monarch should be a Catholic rather than of the Episcopal or Presbyterian ways, which will ever in their several turns, when united to the Crown, persecute or at least discountenance them.

“The numerous party of the Quakers cannot be reckoned under the last head, and are not to be disregarded as mad men, as they seem to many to be. For, generally speaking; they are your Majesty’s friends, and in all discourses with their oppugners charge them with their inhuman and unjust dealing with their rightful Prince; an argument that nonplusses all, and converts some to see the wickedness of their ways. Besides, to my certain experience, there are many capable of being agents and negotiators amongst them, as willing, as able, if well directed.

STATE OF PARTIES.

“Lastly, the non-jurant party of the nation may be thought of, though not numerous enough without the Catholics to make any considerable strength or appearance in the field. These, however, are respected as men of honour, that the penitent or discontented may safely open their minds to, and can confide in; so that properly instructed, they are safe agitators dispersed in every corner of the nation, who too, upon occasion, will, to a man, appear in the field for your Majesty’s service.

“As for the Catholics, though I am sorry to say it, they seem the most desponding and least useful party in the kingdom; nay, which is worse, they are the only people who encourage the interested and atheistical to stick to the Prince of Orange, though they both despise and hate him as much as any; for the avowed despair the priests have brought those to is so universally owned, that it discourages the waverers from declaring themselves to be for their duty, and confirms the malicious in their insolence, so that some course must be taken for altering their conduct and conversation, or they will prove the greatest remora to any good design which may be set on foot.”[325]

1702.

We are apt to read History amidst mental illusions. We unconsciously transfer our knowledge of results to those who were living amidst antecedents. Hence, sometimes we credit Englishmen of William’s reign with a sense of security which could only arise from a defeat of plots, which then appeared by no means certain. Indeed, the stability of the Revolution Settlement was not assured until the middle of the next century. Up to that time moments occurred when Government knew it sat upon barrels of gunpowder. William’s throne to the last remained in a shaky condition. The end alone prevents our recognizing the obvious parallel between his reign and that of Louis Philippe in France. A counter-Revolution was imminent throughout; and to our fathers in those days we must not attribute the lordly conviction of permanence which we cherish with so much pride. People in London under William could count on things lasting as then they were, with almost as little confidence as people in Paris during the last forty years. But powerful elements blended with changes in Great Britain such as have not influenced those of our Gallic neighbours. With them Revolutions have been political—with us religious. Puritanism and Anglo-Catholicism—factors both for good and evil—we find at work on this side the channel, not on the other.

As Parliament was framing oaths, and Jacobites were brewing plots, Convocation, being restored to activity, plunged itself into new controversies, the outgrowths of old ones, which require to be recorded with some minuteness, in spite of their being as dry as withered thorns.