James having now his hand in, went on boldly. He had permitted professed converts to Catholicism to retain their Protestant livings, he next appointed a Catholic to a Church dignity. John Massey, a Fellow of Merton, who had gone over to Rome, was, in violation of every local and national statute, appointed Dean of Christ Church. Massey at once erected an altar and celebrated Mass in the cathedral of Christ Church, and James told the Pope's nuncio that this should soon be the case in Cambridge. It remained now only to fill the sees of the Church with Catholic bishops as they fell vacant; and to enable him to do that, it was necessary, in the first place, to possess himself of a power in the Church like that which he had assumed in the State. He must have a tribunal before which he could summon any refractory clergy, as he could now by his pliant judges control any appeal to the bench. He therefore determined to revive the Court of High Commission, that terrible engine of the Tudors and the Stuarts, which the Long Parliament had put down. This court had power not only to cite any clergyman before it who dared to preach or publish anything reflecting on the views or measures of the king, but "to correct, amend, and alter the statutes of the universities, churches, and schools," or where the statutes were bad to make new ones, and the powers of the Commission were declared to be effectual for these purposes, "notwithstanding any law or statute to the contrary." In fact, all the powers of the High Commission were revived, and the old device and motto were adopted on the seal.

WINDSOR CASTLE, FROM THE BROCAS.

[[See larger version]]

This was a direct and daring declaration of war on the Church. The Act of Supremacy was thus turned against it, and every clergyman, professor, and schoolmaster, from the Primate to the simple curate and tutor, was laid at the mercy of this insane tyrant. The alarm of the whole Court and country when this outstanding fact was made known, was indescribable. The staunchest courtiers trembled at the temerity of the monarch: the French ministers and the Jesuits alone applauded. The new and terrible power of the tribunal was quickly brought into play. The Commission was made known about the middle of July, and seven commissioners were named. At their head stood Jeffreys, who was now to display his truculent spirit in the character of a Grand Inquisitor. The six other commissioners were Archbishop Sancroft, Bishops Crewe of Durham and Sprat of Rochester, Lords Rochester, Sunderland, and the Chief Justice Herbert. Sancroft excused himself from acting on the plea of ill-health, and James in anger immediately ordered him to be omitted in the summons to the Privy Council, saying, if his health were too bad to attend the Commission, it was equally so to attend the Council, and Cartwright, Bishop of Chester, was put on the Commission in his stead. These pliant Churchmen and courtiers were quickly shown what work they had to do. Amongst the clergymen who had ventured to preach against the Roman Church, and to reply to the attacks which the Romish preachers were now emboldened to make on the Anglican Church, beginning at Whitehall itself, Sharp, Dean of Norwich, and one of the royal chaplains, had been honest enough to defend his own faith, and expose the errors of Rome, in a sermon at his own Church of St. Giles's-in-the-Fields. Compton, the Bishop of London, was immediately called upon by Sunderland to suspend him. But Compton, though he had lately fallen under the royal displeasure for opposing James's designs in the House of Lords, and had been dismissed from the Privy Council, and from his post of Dean of the Royal Chapel, replied that he could not suspend Sharp without hearing him in his defence. Thereupon Compton was at once summoned before the new Commissioners. He demurred, declared the Court illegal, that he was a prelate, and amenable only to his peers in the Church, or, as lord of Parliament, to his peers in Parliament. Consenting, however, at length to appear, he was abruptly asked by Jeffreys why he had not suspended Sharp. Compton demanded a copy of the Commission, to see by what right they summoned him. This roused the base blood of Jeffreys, who began to insult the prelate, as he had done many a good man before, declaring that he would take another course with him; but the rest of the Commissioners recalled the brutal bully to a sense of the respect due to the bishop. After the hearing of the case, Rochester, Herbert, and Sprat declared for his acquittal; but James, enraged at his Treasurer, vowed if he did not give his vote against Compton, he would dismiss him from his office. The place-loving minister gave way. Compton was suspended from his spiritual functions, but dared the Court to touch his revenues; and the Chief Justice warned James that did he attempt to seize them, he would be defeated at common law. For awhile, therefore, James was obliged to restrain his proceedings till, as he resolved, he had put the laws more completely under his feet.

But enough had already been done to produce a change such as never had been seen in England since the days of Queen Mary. Encouraged by the king's countenance and proceedings, the Catholics now openly set at nought all the severe laws against them, their chapels, and priests. Though it was still death by the law for any Romish clergyman to appear in England, and all meetings of Catholics for worship were forbidden under the severest penalties, the streets now swarmed with the clergy in full canonicals, and Popish chapels were opened in every part of the kingdom. The Protestant public gazed in astonishment at sights which neither they nor their fathers had beheld in England. The frieze cowls, and girdles of rope, crosses, and rosaries, passed before them as apparitions of an almost fabulous time. James threw open the old chapel at St. James's, where a throng of Benedictine monks located themselves. He built for himself a public chapel at Whitehall, and induced Sandford, an Englishman, but the envoy of the Prince Palatine, to open a third in the City. A brotherhood of Franciscans established themselves in Lincoln's Inn Fields; another of Carmelites appeared in the City; a convent was founded in Clerkenwell, on the site of the ancient cloister of St. John, and a Jesuit church and school were opened in the Savoy, under a rector named Palmer.

The same ominous change appeared all over the country, especially in those districts where Catholics were numerous. But neither in town nor country were the common people disposed to see the whole empire of Popery thus restored. They assembled and attacked the Catholics going into their chapels, insulted them, knocked down their crosses and images, and turned them into the streets. Hence riots ran high and fiercely in London, Worcester, Coventry, and other places. The Lord Mayor ordered the chapel of the Prince Palatine in Lime Street to be closed, but he was severely threatened by the king and Jeffreys. The mob then took the matter into their hands; they attacked the chapel at high Mass, drove out the people and priests, and set the cross on the parish pump. It was in vain that the train bands were ordered out to quell the riot; they refused to fight for Popery.

But this spirit, which would have caused a wiser monarch to pause, only incensed James, and he assembled an army of thirteen thousand men on Hounslow Heath to overawe the City, and conveyed thither twenty-six pieces of artillery, and ample supplies of ammunition from the Tower. But it boded little prospect of support from his army that the people of London immediately fraternised with it, and the camp became the great holiday resort of all classes, resembling, in the strange concourse of strange characters who appeared there, Schiller's description of the camp of Wallenstein. James, however, was proud of his army, and flattered himself that from his having formerly been a general in the French service, he could command it to some purpose. But there were as clever tacticians as himself at work. He allowed Mass to be publicly celebrated in the tent of Lord Dumbarton, the second in command, and this, with the known fact that many officers were Catholics, and the sight of priests and friars strolling about amongst the tents, roused the zeal of Protestant patriots. Foremost amongst these was Dr. Samuel Johnson, who had been chaplain to Lord William Russell, and was a man of liberal ideas of government, and a sturdy champion of Protestantism. In the last reign he had written a severe satire on James, under the title of "Julian the Apostate," in which he drew a vigorous parallel between the Roman apostate and the English one. Julian, according to him, an idolater even when he pretended not to be, was a persecutor when he pretended freedom of conscience, and robbed cities of their municipal charters, which were zealous for the true faith. For this daring philippic he was prosecuted and imprisoned in the King's Bench, but this did not prevent him from still making war on the Popish prince. "Julian" Johnson, as he was called, had found, while imprisoned in the King's Bench, congenial society in the companionship of a fellow-prisoner, whose name was Hugh Speke. This man, Speke, being of a gloomy, seditious temperament, furnished "Julian" Johnson with money to print, and encouraged him by every kind of argument in endeavouring to excite in the Hounslow camp an active spirit of hostility to the Romish schemers. Thereupon Johnson wrote and published a stirring address to the soldiers, which was distributed in thousands amongst the army. There could be no mistake concerning the style of this document, even if the writer and his friend had kept their counsel, as they did not. The publication was speedily traced to Johnson, who was thereupon brought up to the bar of the King's Bench, and, after a long examination, condemned to stand three times in the pillory, to be whipped from Newgate to Tyburn, and to pay a fine of five hundred marks.

Johnson was one of those sturdy, uncompromising reformers—always found, like the petrel, just before the occurrence of a storm—who are regarded with almost more terror and aversion by men of more moderate views or weaker nerves, than by the national offenders whom they attack. When assured by the judge that he might be thankful to the Attorney-General that he had not arraigned him of high treason, he indignantly replied that he thanked him not; that he did not consider himself favoured by being degraded and whipped like a hound, when Popish writers disseminated with impunity what they pleased. This was denied by the Attorney-General and the bench; but Johnson was prepared for them, and pulling a whole mass of such publications from his pocket, which were issued by permission of the royal censor, he read their titles aloud, saying, "There, let Mr. Attorney-General now show whether he will do his duty by them." To spare the priesthood degradation in the person of Johnson, he was cited, at the command of the High Commission, before Crewe and Sprat, the royal Commissioners, accompanied by the Bishops of Rochester and Peterborough, to the chapter-house of St. Paul's, and personally degraded from his order. In having the Bible taken from him in the ceremony, Johnson shed some tears, but said, "You cannot deprive me of its blessed promises." He received two hundred and seventeen lashes in enforcing his punishment, but bore it stoutly, and declared that he could have sung a psalm had he not deemed that it might appear like bravado.