CHAPTER IV.
For the credit of humanity, it should be repeated that occasional lulls occurred in the storm of persecution during this infamous reign. Intolerant laws sank into desuetude, and merciful, or rather righteous magistrates, neglected, or tempered their execution. Considerable ingenuity sometimes appears in their methods of evasion. A Justice of the Peace would ask certain informers whether they could swear that, in a certain case, there was “a pretended, colourable, religious exercise, in other manner than according to the liturgy and practice of the Church of England,” and would caution them to consider that, if they swore in the affirmative, they must know exactly what the liturgy and the Church really were. He would also demand whether the informers were present all the time during which the service lasted, for if they were not, how could they be sure the Common Prayer was not used? An instance is not wanting in which such an ingenious Justice dismissed both parties, and sent the case to counsel for opinion, who decided that he had done quite right.[59]
1677–80.
During the year 1677, and for two or three years afterwards, Nonconformists suffered less troubles than they had done before, owing in part to the death of Archbishop Sheldon, in part to the prevalent fear of Popery, and in part to the change of Ministry in 1679, and the ascendancy of Shaftesbury in His Majesty’s Councils.[60]
About the year 1680 the Duke of Buckingham, like Shaftesbury, exceedingly ambitious of popularity, and apt to bid high for the prize by professing great liberality of opinion, made overtures to the Nonconformists to become their advocate. It being signified to John Howe, that this nobleman wished to see him, the Divine took an opportunity of calling at the sumptuous residence of the dissolute peer, and, after some conversation, His Grace hinted that “the Nonconformists were too numerous and powerful to be any longer neglected; that they deserved regard, and that, if they had a friend near the throne, who possessed influence with the Court generally, to give them advice in critical emergencies, and to convey their requests to the Royal ear, they would find it much to their advantage.” There could be no mistake as to the meaning of all this; yet, at the moment of offering himself as the political adviser of the Nonconformists, Buckingham was pursuing that course of flagrant vice which has brought everlasting infamy upon his name. Howe replied, with great simplicity, “that the Nonconformists, being an avowedly religious people, it highly concerned them, should they fix on any one for the purpose mentioned, to choose some one who would not be ashamed of them, and of whom they might have no reason to be ashamed; and that, to find a person in whom there was a concurrence of those two qualifications, was exceedingly difficult.”[61] This answer ended the business.
RENEWED PERSECUTIONS.
But whatever might be the temporary relief then tacitly granted, or the patronage and protection then virtually offered to Dissenters, a manifest change occurred in their circumstances after the Oxford dissolution of 1681. The causes of this change require attention.
Sir William Temple’s Utopian scheme had broken down. However plausible on paper, it had proved a failure in practice. Shaftesbury and Russell could not work with Temple and Halifax; and in the spring of 1681 the three former had disappeared from the Board, so also had Salisbury, Essex, and Sunderland,—the management of affairs being chiefly in the hands of Halifax, of Lord Radnor, of Hyde, created Lord Rochester, and of the Secretaries of State, Jenkins and Conway.
1681.
Halifax is described as a man of great wit, which he often employed upon the subject of religion. “He confessed he could not swallow down everything that Divines imposed on the world; he was a Christian in submission, he believed as much as he could, and he hoped that God would not lay it to his charge if he could not digest iron as an ostrich did, nor take into his belief things that must burst him.” Accustomed to run on in conversation after this fashion, he excited a suspicion of his being an atheist, a charge which he utterly denied; betraying at the same time, in the midst of sickness, some kind and degree of spiritual feeling, whilst at other tunes he would profess a philosophical contempt of the world, and call the titles of rank rattles to please children.[62] The colouring of his mind was better than the drawing. He admired justice and liberty in theory,—he gave them up for places and titles in practice.[63] With little or no principle of any kind, he answered Dryden’s description—