Religious toleration.—The revolution is justly entitled to honour as the era of religious, in a far greater degree than of civil liberty; the privileges of conscience having had no earlier magna charta and petition of right whereto they could appeal against encroachment. Civil, indeed, and religious liberty had appeared, not as twin sisters and co-heirs, but rather in jealous and selfish rivalry; it was in despite of the law, it was through infringement of the constitution, by the court's connivance, by the dispensing prerogative, by the declarations of indulgence under Charles and James, that some respite had been obtained from the tyranny which those who proclaimed their attachment to civil rights had always exercised against one class of separatists, and frequently against another.
At the time when the test law was enacted, chiefly with a view against popery, but seriously affecting the protestant nonconformists, it was the intention of the House of Commons to afford relief to the latter by relaxing in some measure the strictness of the act of uniformity in favour of such ministers as might be induced to conform, by granting an indulgence of worship to those who should persist in their separation. This bill however dropped in that session. Several more attempts at an union were devised by worthy men of both parties in that reign, but with no success. It was the policy of the court to withstand a comprehension of dissenters; nor would the bishops admit of any concession worth the others' acceptance. The high-church party would not endure any mention of indulgence.[257] In the parliament of 1680, a bill to relieve protestant dissenters from the penalties of the 35th of Elizabeth, the most severe act in force against them, having passed both houses, was lost off the table of the House of Lords, at the moment that the king came to give his assent; an artifice by which he evaded the odium of an explicit refusal.[258] Meanwhile the nonconforming ministers, and in many cases their followers, experienced a harassing persecution under the various penal laws that oppressed them; the judges, especially in the latter part of this reign, when some good magistrates were gone, and still more the justices of the peace, among whom a high-church ardour was prevalent, crowding the gaols with the pious confessors of puritanism.[259] Under so rigorous an administration of statute law, it was not unnatural to take the shelter offered by the declaration of indulgence; but the dissenters never departed from their ancient abhorrence of popery and arbitrary power, and embraced the terms of reconciliation and alliance which the church, in its distress, held out to them. A scheme of comprehension was framed under the auspices of Archbishop Sancroft before the revolution. Upon the completion of the new settlement it was determined, with the apparent concurrence of the church, to grant an indulgence to separate conventicles, and at the same time, by enlarging the terms of conformity, to bring back those whose differences were not irreconcilable within the pale of the Anglican communion.
The act of toleration was passed with little difficulty, though not without the murmurs of the bigoted churchmen.[260] It exempts from the penalties of existing statutes against separate conventicles, or absence from the established worship, such as should take the oath of allegiance, and subscribe the declaration against popery, and such ministers of separate congregations as should subscribe the thirty-nine articles of the church of England except three, and part of a fourth. It gives also an indulgence to quakers without this condition. Meeting-houses are required to be registered, and are protected from insult by a penalty. No part of this toleration is extended to papists or to such as deny the Trinity. We may justly deem this act a very scanty measure of religious liberty; yet it proved more effectual through the lenient and liberal policy of the eighteenth century; the subscription to articles of faith, which soon became as obnoxious as that to matters of a more indifferent nature, having been practically dispensed with, though such a genuine toleration as Christianity and philosophy alike demand, had no place in our statute-book before the reign of George III.
It was found more impracticable to overcome the prejudices which stood against any enlargement of the basis of the English church. The bill of comprehension, though nearly such as had been intended by the primate, and conformable to the plans so often in vain devised by the most wise and moderate churchmen, met with a very cold reception. Those among the clergy who disliked the new settlement of the Crown (and they were by far the greater part), played upon the ignorance and apprehensions of the gentry. The king's suggestion in a speech from the throne, that means should be found to render all protestants capable of serving him in Ireland, as it looked towards a repeal or modification of the test act, gave offence to the zealous churchmen.[261] A clause proposed in the bill for changing the oaths of supremacy and allegiance, in order to take away the necessity of receiving the sacrament in the church as a qualification for office, was rejected by a great majority of the Lords, twelve whig peers protesting.[262] Though the bill of comprehension proposed to parliament went no farther than to leave a few scrupled ceremonies at discretion, and to admit presbyterian ministers into the church without pronouncing on the invalidity of their former ordination, it was mutilated in passing through the upper house; and the Commons, after entertaining it for a time, substituted an address to the king, that he would call the house of convocation "to be advised with in ecclesiastical matters."[263] It was, of course, necessary to follow this recommendation. But the lower house of convocation, as might be foreseen, threw every obstacle in the way of the king's enlarged policy. They chose a man as their prolocutor who had been forward in the worst conduct of the university of Oxford. They displayed in everything a factious temper, which held the very names of concession and conciliation in abhorrence. Meanwhile a commission of divines, appointed under the great seal, had made a revision of the liturgy, in order to eradicate everything which could give a plausible ground of offence, as well as to render the service more perfect. Those of the high-church faction had soon seceded from this commission; and its deliberations were doubtless the more honest and rational for their absence. But, as the complacence of parliament towards ecclesiastical authority had shown that no legislative measure could be forced against the resistance of the lower house of convocation, it was not thought expedient to lay before that synod of insolent priests the revised liturgy, which they would have employed as an engine of calumny against the bishops and the Crown. The scheme of comprehension, therefore, fell absolutely and finally to the ground.[264]
Schism of the non-jurors.—A similar relaxation of the terms of conformity would, in the reign of Elizabeth, or even at the time of the Savoy conferences, have brought back so large a majority of dissenters that the separation of the remainder could not have afforded any colour of alarm to the most jealous dignitary. Even now it is said that two-thirds of the nonconformists would have embraced the terms of reunion. But the motives of dissent were already somewhat changed, and had come to turn less on the petty scruples of the elder puritans and on the differences in ecclesiastical discipline, than on a dislike to all subscriptions of faith and compulsory uniformity. The dissenting ministers, accustomed to independence, and finding not unfrequently in the contributions of their disciples a better maintenance than court favour and private patronage have left for diligence and piety in the establishment, do not seem to have much regretted the fate of this measure. None of their friends, in the most favourable times, have ever made an attempt to renew it. There are indeed serious reasons why the boundaries of religious communion should be as widely extended as is consistent with its end and nature; and among these the hardship and detriment of excluding conscientious men from the ministry is not the least. Nor is it less evident that from time to time, according to the progress of knowledge and reason, to remove defects and errors from the public service of the church, even if they have not led to scandal or separation, is the bounden duty of its governors. But none of these considerations press much on the minds of statesmen; and it was not to be expected that any administration should prosecute a religious reform for its own sake, at the hazard of that tranquillity and exterior unity which is in general the sole end for which they would deem such a reform worth attempting. Nor could it be dissembled that, so long as the endowments of a national church are supposed to require a sort of politic organisation within the commonwealth, and a busy spirit of faction for their security, it will be convenient for the governors of the state, whenever they find this spirit adverse to them, as it was at the revolution, to preserve the strength of the dissenting sects as a counterpoise to that dangerous influence which, in protestant churches, as well as that of Rome, has sometimes set up the interest of one order against that of the community. And though the church of England made a high vaunt of her loyalty, yet, as Lord Shrewsbury told William of the tories in general, he must remember that he was not their king; of which indeed he had abundant experience.
A still more material reason against any alteration in the public liturgy and ceremonial religion at that feverish crisis, unless with a much more decided concurrence of the nation than could be obtained, was the risk of nourishing the schism of the non-jurors. These men went off from the church on grounds merely political, or at most on the pretence that the civil power was incompetent to deprive bishops of their ecclesiastical jurisdiction; to which none among the laity, who did not adopt the same political tenets, were likely to pay attention. But the established liturgy was, as it is at present, in the eyes of the great majority, the distinguishing mark of the Anglican church, far more indeed than episcopal government, whereof so little is known by the mass of the people that its abolition would make no perceptible difference in their religion. Any change, though for the better, would offend those prejudices of education and habit, which it requires such a revolutionary commotion of the public mind as the sixteenth century witnessed, to subdue, and might fill the jacobite conventicles with adherents to the old church. It was already the policy of the non-juring clergy to hold themselves up in this respectable light, and to treat the Tillotsons and Burnets as equally schismatic in discipline and unsound in theology. Fortunately, however, they fell into the snare which the established church had avoided; and deviating, at least in their writings, from the received standard of Anglican orthodoxy, into what the people saw with most jealousy, a sort of approximation to the church of Rome, gave their opponents an advantage in controversy, and drew farther from that part of the clergy who did not much dislike their political creed. They were equally injudicious and neglectful of the signs of the times, when they promulgated such extravagant assertions of sacerdotal power as could not stand with the regal supremacy, or any subordination to the state. It was plain, from the writings of Leslie and other leaders of their party, that the mere restoration of the house of Stuart would not content them, without undoing all that had been enacted as to the church from the time of Henry VIII.; and thus the charge of innovation came evidently home to themselves.[265]
The convention parliament would have acted a truly politic, as well as magnanimous, part in extending this boon, or rather this right, of religious liberty to the members of that unfortunate church, for whose sake the late king had lost his throne. It would have displayed to mankind that James had fallen, not as a catholic, nor for seeking to bestow toleration on catholics, but as a violator of the constitution. William, in all things superior to his subjects, knew that temporal, and especially military fidelity, would be in almost every instance proof against the seductions of bigotry. The Dutch armies have always been in a great measure composed of catholics; and many of that profession served under him in the invasion of England. His own judgment for the repeal of the penal laws had been declared even in the reign of James. The danger, if any, was now immensely diminished; and it appears in the highest degree probable that a genuine toleration of their worship, with no condition but the oath of allegiance, would have brought over the majority of that church to the protestant succession, so far at least as to engage in no schemes inimical to it. The wiser catholics would have perceived that, under a king of their own faith, or but suspected of an attachment to it, they must continue the objects of perpetual distrust to a protestant nation. They would have learned that conspiracy and jesuitical intrigue could but keep alive calumnious imputations, and diminish the respect which a generous people would naturally pay to their sincerity and their misfortune. Had the legislators of that age taken a still larger sweep, and abolished at once those tests and disabilities, which, once necessary bulwarks against an insidious court, were no longer demanded in the more republican model of our government, the jacobite cause would have suffered, I believe, a more deadly wound than penal statutes and double taxation were able to inflict. But this was beyond the philosophers, how much beyond the statesmen, of the time!
Laws against Roman catholics.—The tories, in their malignant hatred of our illustrious monarch, turned his connivance at popery into a theme of reproach.[266] It was believed, and probably with truth, that he had made to his catholic allies promises of relaxing the penal laws; and the jacobite intriguers had the mortification to find that William had his party at Rome, as well as her exiled confessor of St. Germains. After the peace of Ryswick many priests came over, and showed themselves with such incautious publicity as alarmed the bigotry of the House of Commons, and produced the disgraceful act of 1700 against the growth of popery.[267] The admitted aim of this statute was to expel the catholic proprietors of land, comprising many very ancient and wealthy families, by rendering it necessary for them to sell their estates. It first offers a reward of £100 to any informer against a priest exercising his functions, and adjudges the penalty of perpetual imprisonment. It requires every person educated in the popish religion, or professing the same, within six months after he shall attain the age of eighteen years, to take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, and subscribe the declaration set down in the act of Charles II. against transubstantiation and the worship of saints; in default of which he is incapacitated, not only to purchase, but to inherit or take lands under any devise or limitation. The next of kin being a protestant shall enjoy such lands during his life.[268] So unjust, so unprovoked a persecution is the disgrace of that parliament. But the spirit of liberty and tolerance was too strong for the tyranny of the law; and this statute was not executed according to its purpose. The catholic land-holders neither renounced their religion, nor abandoned their inheritances. The judges put such constructions upon the clause of forfeiture as eluded its efficacy; and, I believe, there were scarce any instances of a loss of property under this law. It has been said, and I doubt not with justice, that the catholic gentry, during the greater part of the eighteenth century, were as a separated and half proscribed class among their equals, their civil exclusion hanging over them in the intercourse of general society;[269] but their notorious, though not unnatural, disaffection to the reigning family will account for much of this, and their religion was undoubtedly exercised with little disguise or apprehension. The laws were perhaps not much less severe and sanguinary than those which oppressed the protestants of France; but, in their actual administration, what a contrast between the government of George II. and Louis XV., between the gentleness of an English court of king's bench, and the ferocity of the parliaments of Aix and Thoulouse!
Act of settlement.—The immediate settlement of the Crown at the revolution extended only to the descendants of Anne and of William. The former was at that time pregnant, and became in a few months the mother of a son. Nothing therefore urged the convention-parliament to go any farther in limiting the succession. But the king, in order to secure the elector of Hanover to the grand alliance, was desirous to settle the reversion of the Crown on his wife the Princess Sophia and her posterity. A provision to this effect was inserted in the bill of rights by the House of Lords. But the Commons rejected the amendment with little opposition; not, as Burnet idly insinuates through the secret wish of a republican party (which never existed, or had no influence) to let the monarchy die a natural death, but from a just sense that the provision was unnecessary and might become inexpedient.[270] During the life of the young Duke of Gloucester the course of succession appeared clear. But upon his untimely death in 1700, the manifest improbability that the limitations already established could subsist beyond the lives of the king and Princess of Denmark made it highly convenient to preclude intrigue, and cut off the hopes of the jacobites, by a new settlement of the Crown on a protestant line of princes. Though the choice was truly free in the hands of parliament, and no pretext of absolute right could be advanced on any side, there was no question that the Princess Sophia was the fittest object of the nation's preference. She was indeed very far removed from any hereditary title. Besides the pretended Prince of Wales, and his sister, whose legitimacy no one disputed, there stood in her way the Duchess of Savoy, daughter of Henrietta Duchess of Orleans, and several of the Palatine family. These last had abjured the reformed faith, of which their ancestors had been the strenuous assertors; but it seemed not improbable that some one might return to it; and, if all hereditary right of the ancient English royal line, the descendant of Henry VII., had not been extinguished, it would have been necessary to secure the succession of any prince, who should profess the protestant religion at the time when the existing limitations should come to an end. Nor indeed, on the supposition that the next heir had a right to enjoy the Crown, would the act of settlement have been required.[271] According to the tenor and intention of this statute, all prior claims of inheritance, save that of the issue of King William and the Princess Anne, being set aside and annulled, the Princess Sophia became the source of a new royal line. The throne of England and Ireland, by virtue of the paramount will of parliament, stands entailed upon the heirs of her body, being protestants. In them the right is as truly hereditary as it ever was in the Plantagenets or the Tudors. But they derive it not from those ancient families. The blood indeed of Cerdic and of the Conqueror flows in the veins of his present majesty. Our Edwards and Henries illustrate the almost unrivalled splendour and antiquity of the house of Brunswick. But they have transmitted no more right to the allegiance of England than Boniface of Este or Henry the Lion. That rests wholly on the act of settlement, and resolves itself into the sovereignty of the legislature. We have therefore an abundant security that no prince of the house of Brunswick will ever countenance the silly theories of imprescriptible right, which flattery and superstition seem still to render current in other countries. He would brand his own brow with the names of upstart and usurper. For the history of the revolution, and of that change in the succession which ensued upon it, will for ages to come be fresh and familiar as the recollections of yesterday. And if the people's choice be, as surely it is, the primary foundation of magistracy, it is perhaps more honourable to be nearer the source than to deduce a title from some obscure chieftain, through a long roll of tyrants and idiots.
The majority of that House of Commons which passed the bill of settlement consisted of those who having long opposed the administration of William, though with very different principles both as to the succession of the Crown and its prerogative, were now often called by the general name of tories. Some, no doubt, of these were adverse to a measure which precluded the restoration of the house of Stuart, even on the contingency that its heir might embrace the protestant religion. But this party could not show itself very openly; and Harley, the new leader of the tories, zealously supported the entail of the Crown on the Princess Sophia. But it was determined to accompany this settlement with additional securities for the subject's liberty. The bill of rights was reckoned hasty and defective; some matters of great importance had been omitted, and in the twelve years which had since elapsed, new abuses had called for new remedies. Eight articles were therefore inserted in the act of settlement, to take effect only from the commencement of the new limitation to the house of Hanover. Some of them, as will appear, sprung from a natural jealousy of this unknown and foreign line; some should strictly not have been postponed so long; but it is necessary to be content with what it is practicable to obtain. These articles are the following:—