1677.
The Parliament was prorogued on the 22nd of November, for fifteen months; and as soon as it met again, on the 15th of February, 1677, the party in opposition returned to the charge; but now, deserted by the Duke of York, the party was led by the Duke of Buckingham, who delivered a famous speech to prove that Parliament had been virtually dissolved by so long a prorogation. What the Duke said was construed into an insult, for which one of the peers moved that he should be called to the bar, when the motion was resented by the Earl of Salisbury, the Earl of Shaftesbury, and Lord Wharton, all three supporting the Duke of Buckingham. The Lords, who thus led the opposition, were told that what they had done was ill-advised; and they were ordered to beg pardon of the House, and of His Majesty. Upon which, refusing to comply, they were committed to the Tower. Buckingham slipped out of the House, but surrendered himself the next day.[660]
The committal produced a great excitement—in which religious people, especially Nonconformists, largely shared, for they looked up to some of these noblemen as particular friends; and a fugitive sheet written at the time, without date or names, has preserved certain memoranda concerning the prisoners, from which it appears that several Quakers were at that time in communication with the Duke of Buckingham.[661]
In the month of June, Buckingham, Wharton, and Salisbury—wearied out with their confinement, and disappointed of their discharge at the end of the Session, by the adjournment of the Houses, recanted what they had spoken,—professed repentance of their error, and sought pardon of His Majesty. They were liberated accordingly; but the Earl of Shaftesbury, because he refused to make any submission, and applied to the King's Bench for a writ of habeas corpus, was doomed to a longer captivity; yet at last he obtained his liberty in the month of February, 1678, only, however, by kneeling down at the bar of the House, and humbly asking their Lordships' pardon.
PARLIAMENT.
1677.
The power of the party, whose leaders had thus for a while been banished from the House, was by no means crushed. Indeed it was but little diminished, and, therefore, Danby, the Lord Treasurer, at the head of the Ministry, wishing to outbid his rival Shaftesbury in a contest for popularity; and also following his own chosen policy, which had throughout been anti-Papal, now introduced—and that with the concurrence of the Bishops—two measures as additional bulwarks against Papal aggression. The first contemplated the possibility of a Catholic prince occupying the throne: it provided, in case of his refusal of a searching test in the form of a denial of the doctrine of transubstantiation, that the Bishops, upon a vacancy occurring in their number, should name three persons, one of whom the Sovereign was at liberty to select for the empty see; but if he did not make the selection within thirty days, the person first named should take possession—that the two Archbishops should present to all livings in the Royal gift—and that the children of the Monarch, from the age of seven to the age of fourteen, should be under the guardianship of the two Archbishops, with the Bishops of London, Durham, and Winchester. The second measure—under title of an Act for the more effectual conviction and prosecution of Popish recusants,—provided that such Popish recusants as might register themselves should pay a yearly fine of the twentieth part of their incomes to a fund for supporting poor converts to Protestantism, and should, on that condition, be exempt from all other penalties, except ineligibility to hold office, civil or military, or to perform the office of guardians or executors. Lay perverters of Protestants should have the option of abjuring the realm; clergymen who had taken Romish orders might, at His Majesty's pleasure, be imprisoned for life, instead of being made to suffer the higher penalty for treason—and the children of deceased Catholics should be brought up in the Reformed Church.[662] But these measures adopted by the Lords, when submitted to the Lower House, so far from satisfying the members, aroused their most determined opposition. With regard to the first measure they affirmed it to be a Bill for Popery, not a Bill against it. They said its face was covered with spots, and, therefore, it wore a vizard. "It is an ill thing," remarked Andrew Marvell, "and let us be rid of it as soon as we can." He compared it to a private Bill brought into the House, for the ballast-shore at Yarrow Sleake, regarding which some one said, "the shore will narrow the river;" another, "it will widen it;" a third observing, people should not play tricks with navigation. Nor ought they to do so with religion, he added. For, as it was clear, the Bill for the ballast-shore would benefit the Dean and Chapter of Durham, so whether this Bill would or would not prevent Popery, he was sure it would increase the power of the Bishops.[663] The second measure was pronounced to be virtually a toleration of Popery, forasmuch as Papists were to have liberty granted them if they would only pay for it. The object was monstrous. The scheme could not be mended. It would remain "an unsavoury thing, stuck with a primrose." They might as well try to "make a good fan out of a pig's tail." "Is there a man in this house," it was asked, "that dares to open his mouth in support of such a measure?" So signal was the defeat of the attempt that we find in the Journals these words, "Upon the reading of the said Bill, and opening the substance thereof to the House, it appeared to be much different from the title, and thereupon the House, nemine contradicente, rejected the same."[664]
PARLIAMENT.
The Commons the same day read a third time a Bill framed to prevent the growth of Popery, enacting that a refusal to repudiate transubstantiation should be deemed a sufficient proof of recusancy, and should entail all its consequences. This contrivance, said its advocates, is "firm, strong, and good," whilst that of the Lords is "slight, and good for nothing,"—it is like David coming out against Goliath;[665] but the Lords would have nothing to do with the David of the Commons. The Lower House urged attention to the Bill, but in vain; the Upper House did not take the slightest notice of what had been sent to them, and the Bill for suppressing the growth of Popery fell to the ground. It is worth observing that, at the same period, a Bill which passed the House of Lords, described on one day as a Bill for "obliging persons to baptize their children"—on another as "an Act concerning baptism and catechizing"[666]—met with a like fate, and fell into the vast limbo of abortive Parliamentary schemes.
But the two Houses during this Session united in three important Acts, which were passed just before the Easter adjournment.
1677.