[151] The story told about White’s MS. in Neal, iv. 555, does not appear to me at all probable.
When persecution was at its height, extraordinary cases of escape occurred. Many a wonderful story is told of deliverances vouchsafed to suffering Dissenters, of which the following anecdote is a conspicuous example. Henry Havers, of Catherine Hall, Cambridge, had been ejected from the Rectory of Stambourne in Essex. Receiving friendly warning of an attempt to apprehend him, and finding the pursuers on his track, he sought refuge in a malt-house, and crept into the kiln. Immediately afterwards, he observed a spider fixing the first line of a large and beautiful web, across the narrow entrance. The web being placed directly between him and the light, he was so much struck with the skill of the insect weaver, that, for a while, he forgot his own imminent danger; but, by the time the network had crossed and re-crossed the mouth of the kiln in every direction, the pursuers came to search for their victim. He listened as they approached, and distinctly overheard one of them say, “It’s no use to look in there, the old villain can never be there. Look at that spider’s web, he could never have got in there without breaking it.” Giving up further search, they went to seek him elsewhere, and he escaped out of their hands.
A similar narrative I find related in reference to Du Moulin, the French Protestant. It is impossible, after the lapse of two centuries, to ascertain the exact truth of such accounts. That incidents of the kind occurred I have no doubt; but whether they are attributed to the right persons, and are quite accurate in minute details, may admit of question.
[152] Castlemaine wrote an apology for the Catholics.—Butler’s English Cath., iii. 47.
[153] I must refer to the pages of Macaulay and others, for the politics of the period. Of the theological debates in the presence of the King and the Earl of Rochester, there is a curious account in Patrick’s Autobiography, 107.
[154] Entring Book, 1686, July 17, Morice MSS.
[155] Abridgment, 374.
[156] Entring Book, 1686, June 26, Morice MSS.
[157] Ibid., 1687, Jan. 1.
[158] Compare, as to James’ designs, Fox’s Hist. of James II., 332; Hallam’s Const. Hist. ii. 212; and Mackintosh’s Hist. of Revolution, chap. v.