His next step was to throw all the power of the Government into the hands of the most unscrupulous Catholics. His brother-in-law, Rochester, the Lord Treasurer, was nominally his Prime Minister, but Sunderland and a knot of Catholics were the really ruling junto. Sunderland, one of the basest men that ever crawled in the dust of a Court's corruption, was the head of this secret cabal. Sunderland, in the last reign, had been a violent Exclusionist. He had intrigued with the Duchess of Portsmouth, through her, if possible, to bring Charles to consent to this measure; but so soon as James was on the throne, he became his most servile tool, declaring that as he had nothing to hope but from the king's clemency and his own efforts to make compensation for the past, James could have no more efficient servant. James, who was a mean soul himself, did not spurn this meanness, but made use of it, and truly Sunderland earned his dirty bread. Avarice was his master vice, and he would have sold two souls for money if he had them. He retained the post of President of the Council, and held with it his old one of Secretary of State; whilst observing the course which James was taking, he did not despair to wrest from the staunch Protestant Rochester his still more lucrative office of Lord Treasurer. He had not the foresight to perceive that the project which James entertained to restore Romanism must bring speedy destruction on them all. This sordid minister was, at the same time, in the pay of Louis, at the rate of six thousand pounds a year, to betray all his master's most secret counsels to him.
With Sunderland were associated in the secret Romish junto—Sunderland himself not being an avowed Catholic, but a private professor—some of those Catholic lords who had been imprisoned on account of the Popish plots—Arundel, Bellasis, and William Herbert, Earl of Powis. To these were added Castlemaine, the man who for a title and revenue had sold his wife to Charles II. He had been imprisoned, too, on account of the Popish plot, and was ready to take vengeance by assisting to destroy his Protestant enemies and their Church together. With him were associated two of the most profligate and characterless men of that profligate age—Jermyn, celebrated for his duels and his licentious intrigues, and lately created by James Lord Dover, and a man familiarly named Dick Talbot—whom James had also for these crimes, which were merits in James's eyes, made Earl of Tyrconnel. These merits were, that Talbot was ready for any service of unmanly villainy that his master could desire. Like another prime favourite and associate of James, Lord Chancellor Jeffreys, Tyrconnel was notorious for his drinking, gambling, lying, swearing, bullying, and debauchery. He was equally ready to lie away a woman's character or to assassinate a better man than himself. In the last reign, when it was desired by the Court to ruin the character of James's wife, Anne Hyde, that she might be got rid of, he joined with Colonel Berkeley in the infamous assertion that they had had the most familiar intrigues with her. When they did not succeed with James, they as readily confessed that the whole was a lie. A man with the least spark of honour in him would have remembered this unpardonable villainy to his now deceased wife, and have banished the wretch from Court. James promoted him, and made him one of his most intimate companions. Tyrconnel offered to murder the Duke of Ormond, and was rewarded for his readiness by being made commander of the forces in Ireland; but his services were chiefly at present demanded at Court.
FOURPENNY PIECE OF JAMES II.
To this precious cabal was added Father Petre, the Jesuit Provincial, brother of Lord Petre, and the organ of the Jesuits at Court. The Pope, too, had his agents at Court, Adda, his nuncio, and a vicar-apostolic; but these advocated cautious measures, for Innocent XI. had a difficult card to play in the Popedom. Louis, the greatest of the Catholic kings, was the most dangerous enemy of the temporal power of the Pope, as of every other temporal power, and the Jesuits were all at variance with him, because he leaned toward the Jansenist party, which at this time was in the ascendency, through the triumphant attacks on the Jesuits by Pascal in his "Lettres Provinciales." The Jesuits, on the contrary, advocated all James's views. These generally subtle men seemed driven, by their falling estimation all over Europe, to clutch at a hope of power in England, and they had at all times been famed for their sly policy of insinuation rather than for their caution and moderation when successful. For their high-handed proceedings they had then, as they have since, been driven again and again from almost every Christian country. They did not display more than their ordinary foresight in the affairs of James.
But we should not possess a complete view of the position and character of James's Court if we did not take in a few other actors—the French king's agents, and the king's mistresses. To Barillon, who had so long been ambassador at the English Court, and the agent of Louis's bribes, the French king had sent over Bonrepaux; and whilst Barillon attached himself to Sunderland and the secret Catholic cabal, Bonrepaux devoted his attentions to Rochester and his section of the ministry, so that Louis learned the minutest movements and opinions of both parties. These parties, in their turn, made use of the king's mistresses; for James, although in disposition the very opposite of Charles, was, with all his morose profession of zealous piety, just as loose in his adulteries.
FIVE-GUINEA PIECE OF JAMES II.
With the aid of the Council of his Catholic cabal, James now began in earnest to put down Protestantism in this kingdom, and restore Romanism. As there was no hope of money from Parliament, he made his peace with the King of France, stooped his shoulder to the burden, and became once more a servant unto tribute. He abandoned all the best interests of England, apologised to Louis for having received the Huguenots, and took measures to defeat the very subscription in their favour which he had commenced and recommended. He arrested John Claude, one of the refugees who had published an account of the persecutions of the Huguenots by Louis, and caused his book to be publicly burnt. In spite of this and his open discouragement, the subscription amounted to forty thousand pounds, but he took good care that the unfortunate Huguenots should never get the money, by ordering every one who applied for it to first take the Sacrament according to the Anglican ritual, which he knew differed so much from their own mode, as to form an effectual bar, which it did. And this was the man who complained of the Test Act as a violation of conscience. He had himself dispensed with this Act in defiance of the law, but he now sought to obtain a sanction from the judges for the breach of the Act. To Parliament he durst not appeal; he therefore called on the twelve judges to declare that he possessed this dispensing power as part of his prerogative. The judges to a man refused; he dismissed them and appointed more pliant ones. But the law officers of the Crown were equally stubborn. Sawyer, the Attorney-General, told the king that he dared not do it, for it was not to abolish a statute, but the whole statute law from the accession of Elizabeth. Sawyer was too useful to be dismissed, but Heneage Finch, the Solicitor-General, was turned out, and Powis, a barrister of no mark, was put in his place. A case was immediately tried in the Court of King's Bench, to obtain the judges' sanction. Sir Edward Hales was formally prosecuted for holding a commission in the army, being a Catholic; but the Lord Chief Justice, Sir Edward Herbert, took the opinion of the new judges upon it, which was, that the king possessed the power to dispense with the Act, and judgment was given accordingly. No sooner was James in possession of this decision of the King's Bench, than he appointed the four Catholic lords of his secret cabal members of the Privy Council—namely, Arundel, Bellasis, Powis, and Dover.
Having perpetrated this daring act in the Council, James hastened to exercise the same power in the Church. Encouraged by the known opinions and intentions of the king, several clergymen who had outwardly conformed to the Church of England and held livings, now threw off the mask and proclaimed themselves of the Catholic Church, and applied to James to authorise them still to hold their livings. These were Obadiah Walker, Master of University College, Oxford; Boyce, Dean, and Bernard, fellows of different colleges; and Edward Sclater, curate of Putney and Esher. The king granted them dispensations to hold their livings, despite their avowed conversion to the doctrines of another Church, on the plea that he would not oppress their consciences. But to support men in holding livings in a Church which they had abandoned was so outrageous a violation of that Church's conscience, that it was impossible long to be submitted to. James, in his very contracted mind, imagined that, because the bishops and ministers had so zealously advocated absolute submission to his will, they would practise it. How little could he have read human nature. Of these sudden converts, Sclater and Walker as suddenly reconverted themselves at the Revolution.