[161] The necessity of excluding men so conscientious, and several of whom had very recently sustained so conspicuously the brunt of the battle against King James, was very painful; and motives of policy, as well as generosity, were not wanting in favour of some indulgence towards them. On the other hand, it was dangerous to admit such a reflection on the new settlement, as would be cast by its enemies, if the clergy, especially the bishops, should be excused from the oath of allegiance. The House of Lords made an amendment in the act requiring this oath, dispensing with it in the case of ecclesiastical persons, unless they should be called upon by the privy-council. This, it was thought, would furnish a security for their peaceable demeanour, without shocking the people and occasioning a dangerous schism. But the Commons resolutely opposed this amendment, as an unfair distinction, and derogatory to the king's title. Parl. Hist. 218; Lords' Journals, 17 April 1689. The clergy, however, had six months more time allowed them, in order to take the oath, than the possessors of lay offices.
Upon the whole, I think the reasons for deprivation greatly preponderated. Public prayers for the king by name form part of our liturgy; and it was surely impossible to dispense with the clergy's reading them, which was as obnoxious as the oath of allegiance. Thus the beneficed priests must have been excluded; and it was hardly required to make an exception for the sake of a few bishops, even if difficulties of the same kind would not have occurred in the exercise of their jurisdiction, which hangs upon, and has a perpetual reference to, the supremacy of the Crown.
The king was empowered to reserve a third part of the value of their benefices to any twelve of the recusant clergy. 1 W. & M. c. 8, s. 16. But this could only be done at the expense of their successors; and the behaviour of the nonjurors, who strained every nerve in favour of the dethroned king, did not recommend them to the government. The deprived bishops, though many of them through their late behaviour were deservedly esteemed, cannot be reckoned among the eminent characters of our church for learning or capacity. Sancroft, the most distinguished of them, had not made any remarkable figure; and none of the rest had any pretensions to literary credit. Those who filled their places were incomparably superior. Among the non-juring clergy a certain number were considerable men; but, upon the whole, the well-affected part of the church, not only at the revolution, but for fifty years afterwards, contained by far its most useful and able members. Yet the effect of this expulsion was highly unfavourable to the new government; and it required all the influence of a latitudinarian school of divinity, led by Locke, which was very strong among the laity under William, to counteract it.
[162] Burnet; Ralph, 174, 179.
[163] The parliamentary debates are full of complaints as to the mismanagement of all things in Ireland. These might be thought hasty or factious; but Marshal Schomberg's letters to the king yield them strong confirmation. Dalrymple, Appendix, 26, etc. William's resolution to take the Irish war on himself saved not only that country but England. Our own constitution was won on the Boyne. The star of the house of Stuart grew pale for ever on that illustrious day, when James displayed again the pusillanimity which had cost him his English crown. Yet the best friends of William dissuaded him from going into Ireland, so imminent did the peril appear at home. Dalrymple, Id. 97. "Things," says Burnet, "were in a very ill disposition towards a fatal turn."
[164] See the debates on this subject in the Parliamentary History, which is a transcript from Anchitel Grey. The whigs, or at least some hot-headed men among them, were certainly too much actuated by a vindictive spirit, and consumed too much time on this necessary bill.
[165] The prominent instance of Sawyer's delinquency, which caused his expulsion, was his refusal of a writ of error to Sir Thomas Armstrong. Parl. Hist. 516. It was notorious that Armstrong suffered by a legal murder; and an attorney-general in such a case could not be reckoned as free from personal responsibility as an ordinary advocate who maintains a cause for his fee. The first resolution had been to give reparation out of the estates of the judges and prosecutors to Armstrong's family; which was, perhaps rightly, abandoned.
The House of Lords, who, having a power to examine upon oath, are supposed to sift the truth in such enquiries better than the Commons, were not remiss in endeavouring to bring the instruments of Stuart tyranny to justice. Besides the committee appointed on the very second day of the convention, 23 Jan. 1689, to investigate the supposed circumstances of suspicion as to the death of Lord Essex (a committee renewed afterwards, and formed of persons by no means likely to have abandoned any path that might lead to the detection of guilt in the late king), another was appointed in the second session of the same parliament (Lords' Journals, 2nd Nov. 1689) "to consider who were the advisers and prosecutors of the murders of Lord Russell, Col. Sidney, Armstrong, Cornish, etc., and who were the advisers of issuing out writs of quo warrantos against corporations, and who were their regulators, and also who were the public assertors of the dispensing power." The examinations taken before this committee are printed in the Lords' Journals, 20th Dec. 1699; and there certainly does not appear any want of zeal to convict the guilty. But neither the law nor the proofs would serve them. They could establish nothing against Dudley North, the tory sheriff of 1683, except that he had named Lord Russell's panel himself; which, though irregular and doubtless ill-designed, had unluckily a precedent in the conduct of the famous whig sheriff, Slingsby Bethell; a man who, like North, though on the opposite side, cared more for his party than for decency and justice. Lord Halifax was a good deal hurt in character by this report; and never made a considerable figure afterwards. Burnet, 34. His mortification led him to engage in an intrigue with the late king, which was discovered; yet, I suspect that, with his usual versatility, he again abandoned that cause before his death. Ralph, 467. The act of grace (2 W. & M. c. 10) contained a small number of exceptions, too many indeed for its name; but probably there would have been difficulty in prevailing on the houses to pass it generally; and no one was ever molested afterwards on account of his conduct before the revolution.
[166] Parl. Hist. 508 et post; Journals, 2nd and 10th Jan. 1689, 1690. Burnet's account is confused and inaccurate, as is very commonly the case: he trusted, I believe, almost entirely to his memory. Ralph and Somerville are scarce ever candid towards the whigs in this reign.
[167] Parl. Hist. 150.