[706] They are so called by Burnet: ‘these angry men, that had raised this flame in the church.’ Own Time, vol. v. p. 17.
[707] Indeed, the high-church party, in their publications, distinctly intimated, that if James were not recalled, he should be reinstated by a foreign army. Somers Tracts, vol. x. pp. 377, 405, 457, 462. Compare Mahon's Hist. of England, vol. ii. p. 138. Burnet (Own Time, vol. iv. pp. 361, 362) says, they were ‘confounded’ when they heard of the peace of 1697; and Calamy (Life of Himself, vol. ii. p. 322) makes the same remark on the death of Louis XIV.: ‘It very much puzzled the counsels of the Jacobites, and spoiled their projects.’
[708] D'Oyly's Life of Sancroft, p. 266; Wordsworth's Eccl. Biog. iv. p. 683.
[709] Sancroft, on his death-bed, in 1693, prayed for the ‘poor suffering church, which, by this revolution, is almost destroyed.’ D'Oyly's Sancroft, p. 311; and Macpherson's Original Papers, vol. i. p. 280. See also Remarks, published in 1693 (Somers Tracts, vol. x. p. 504) where it is said, that William had, ‘as far as possible he could, dissolved the true old Church of England;’ and that, ‘in a moment of time, her face was so altered, as scarce to be known again.’
[710] ‘Ken, though deprived, never admitted in the secular power the right of deprivation; and it is well known that he studiously retained his title.’ Bowles's Life of Ken, vol. ii. p. 225. Thus, too, Lloyd, so late as 1703, signs himself, ‘Wm. Nor.’ (Life of Ken, by a Layman, vol. ii. p. 720); though, having been legally deprived, he was no more bishop of Norwich than he was emperor of China. And Sancroft, in the last of his letters, published by D'Oyly (Life, p. 303), signs ‘W. C.’
[711] The strange document, by which he appointed Dr. Lloyd his vicar-general, is printed in Latin, in D'Oyly's Sancroft, p. 295, and in English, in Life of Ken, by a Layman, vol. ii. p. 640.
[712] Lathbury's Hist. of the Nonjurors, p. 96; Life of Ken, by a Layman, vol. ii. pp. 641, 642.
[713] The struggle between James and William was essentially a struggle between ecclesiastical interests and secular interests; and this was seen as early as 1689, when, as we learn from Burnet, who was much more a politician than a priest, ‘the church was as the word given out by the Jacobite party, under which they might more safely shelter themselves,’ Own Time, vol. iv. p. 57. See also, on this identification of the Jacobites with the church, Birch's Life of Tillotson, p. 222; and the argument of Dodwell, pp. 246, 247, in 1691. Dodwell justly observed, that the successors of the deprived bishops were schismatical, in a spiritual point of view; and that, ‘if they should pretend to lay authority as sufficient, they would overthrow the being of a church as a society.’ The bishops appointed by William were evidently intruders, according to church principles; and as their intrusion could only be justified according to lay principles, it followed that the success of the intrusion was the triumph of lay principles over church ones. Hence it is, that the fundamental idea of the rebellion of 1688, is the elevation of the state above the church; just as the fundamental idea of the rebellion of 1642, is the elevation of the commons above the crown.
[714] According to Dr. D'Oyly (Life of Sancroft, p. 297), Dr. Gordon ‘died in London, November 1779, and is supposed to have been the last nonjuring bishop.’ In Short's Hist. of the Church of England, p. 583, Lond. 1847, it is also stated, that ‘this schism continued till 1779.’ But Mr. Hallam (Const. Hist. vol. ii. p. 404) has pointed out a passage in the State Trials, which proves that another of the bishops, named Cartwright, was still living at Shrewsbury in 1793; and Mr. Lathbury (Hist. of the Nonjurors, Lond. 1845, p. 412) says, that he died in 1799.
[715] Calamy (Own Life, vol. i. pp. 328–330, vol. ii. pp. 338, 357, 358) gives an interesting account of these feuds within the church, consequent upon the revolution. Indeed, their bitterness was such, that it was necessary to coin names for the two parties; and, between 1700 and 1702, we, for the first time, hear the expressions, high-church and low-church. See Burnet's Own Time, vol. iv. p. 447, vol. v. p. 70. Compare Wilson's Life of De Foe, vol. ii. p. 26; Parl. Hist. vol. vi. pp. 162, 498. On the difference between them, as it was understood in the reign of Anne, see Somers Tracts, vol. xii. p. 532, and Macpherson's Orig. Papers, vol. ii. p. 166. On the dawning schism in the church, see the speech of Sir T. Littleton, in 1690, Parl. Hist. vol. v. p. 593. Hence many complained that they could not tell which was the real church. See curious evidence of this perplexity in Somers Tracts, vol. ix. pp. 477–481.