Charles II., who did not blush to receive a pension from Louis XIV. for betraying the interests of his country, now came forward in favour of the fugitives—from good nature, or through advice, or in order to please the English Protestants, perhaps from all three motives combined. By an edict, signed at Hampton Court, on the 28th of July, 1681, he declared that he felt obliged by his honour and his conscience, to succour the people who were fleeing into exile. He therefore accorded them letters of naturalization, with all the privileges necessary for the exercise of such trades as would not injure the interests of his kingdom. He engaged that he would ask the next Parliament to naturalize all who should seek refuge in this island, and in the meantime he exempted them from all imposts to which his other subjects were not liable. He authorized them to send their children to the public schools and Universities. He ordered all his officers, both civil and military, to receive them wherever they landed, to give them passports gratuitously, and to furnish such relief as might be necessary for them to travel to their destination. He also instructed the Commissioners of the Treasury, and of the Customs, to let the strangers pass free, with their furniture, their merchandize, and their instruments of trade; and, further, he encouraged charitable persons to assist those who were in want. He also commissioned the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London to receive their requests and present them to him. To this edict there succeeded, before long, an order in Council which granted naturalization to eleven hundred and fifty-four fugitives;[122] and boat after boat arrived freighted with these sufferers. Such sympathy with the persecuted, however just, appears very inconsistent. About a hundred years earlier, the Jesuits had turned the tables on the intolerant Lutherans and Calvinists of the empire, by saying that Catholic sovereigns had as much right to deny religious liberty as Protestant ones;[123] and Louis could have taken sufficient ground for retorting upon Charles after the same fashion. Reports were circulated to the discredit of the refugees—and were met, on the other hand, by friendly certificates from Incumbents and Churchwardens, testifying of them as “sober, harmless, innocent people, such as served God constantly and uniformly, according to the usage and custom of the Church of England.”[124] In 1682, Charles issued briefs to the clergy to make collections for the new comers; and, in this beneficent work, Tillotson, Dean of Canterbury, took part. Beveridge, then a Prebendary in Canterbury Cathedral, from some mistaken scruple—or from coolness towards a foreign Church—objected to reading the brief, as contrary to the rubric. This circumstance brought out Tillotson’s well-known reply, “Doctor, Doctor, charity is above rubrics.”[125]
1682.
The persecutions of these French Protestants, their arrival on our shores, and the kindness with which they were received, are not mentioned here simply because they are incidents of a religious character locally connected with our own country, but for another and more forcible reason. These persecutions had become a staple of conversation in many an English home; and many an English heart had palpitated with deep sympathy, as stories of violence and suffering had fallen on the ear. Each fresh gust of intolerance, as it broke on France, had stirred the feelings of English Puritans, scarcely less than the feelings of French Protestants living on this side Dover Straits. And the revival of oppression, after the death of Mazarin, could not fail to inspire indignation in the breasts of multitudes within our shores when the anti-Popery agitation burst out afresh. The sight of the fugitives, their tales of horrid barbarity, of patient endurance, and of romantic adventure, would reinvigorate the Protestantism of our fathers, and largely contribute to that fixed resolve, which defied the contrivances of Charles and James, and ended in what has been ever since esteemed the Glorious Revolution.[126]
THE CABINET.
It was natural for foreign Protestants to look to England for help in more ways than one. The Archbishop of Canterbury received a letter from Dr. Covel, chaplain at the Hague to the Princess of Orange, urging the formation of a public League in defence of European Protestantism. Sancroft did not possess the courage and heroism to promote such a measure, had it been wise; but he did possess the sagacity and prudence to see that the object desired was not wise; and, in addition to those qualities, he displayed, in the answer to his correspondent, a large measure of Protestant sympathy and devout feeling.[127]
The prospects of Protestantism became darker and darker. The Act for excluding Papists from office was for a while cunningly evaded by Charles, who placed the whole business of the Admiralty in the hands of his brother, the Duke of York, he himself signing all official papers in that department:—at last, this shadowy pretence he cast aside, and boldly invited James to a seat at the Council-table—a step which even one of his Tory supporters acknowledged “became the subject of much talk, and was deemed to be a breach of one of the most solemn and most explicit Acts of Parliament.”[128] Two other persons, at the same time Members of the Council, ought to be noticed. One was Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys, too infamous a character to require anything more than the mention of his name; and Lord Keeper Guilford, who, whilst hating Jeffreys with a bitter hatred, in some respects resembled him. The part which these men took at this time in relation to Papists and Protestant Nonconformists, and the manner of their conducting ecclesiastical business, are illustrated by the following incident.
1684.
It was the fashion to hold Cabinet meetings on Sunday nights. One Sunday morning, the Duke of York asked Guilford to assist him in a business which would that evening be brought before His Majesty. Guilford thought that certain Courtiers just then looked at him with remarkable gravity, as if something important was about to come on the carpet; but he did not discover its nature until after the meeting had commenced. Jeffreys had returned fresh from a Northern tour, and had brought with him reports of large numbers of Papists convicted of being recusants, and, after placing on the table rolls containing their names, he rose from his chair, and proceeded to say:—
CABINET MEETING.
“I have a business to lay before your Majesty, which I took notice of in the North, and which will deserve your Majesty’s royal commiseration. It is the case of numberless numbers of your good subjects, that are imprisoned for recusancy. I have the list of them here, to justify what I say. They are so many that the great gaols cannot hold them without their lying one upon another.” Then, to use the language of Roger North, “he let fly his tropes and figures about rotting and stinking in prisons;” and concluded his speech with a motion that His Majesty be requested to discharge “these poor men,” and restore them to “liberty and air.”[129] Such a motion from such a man will be at once understood. It could have been made only to please his Royal master, and that master’s brother. If selfishness influenced Jeffreys in making the proposal, selfishness influenced Guilford in opposing it; for, on the one hand, any such pardon as that now proposed, must pass the Great Seal of which he was keeper; and by affixing this to such an unpopular instrument, he might bring himself into trouble with his friends. On the other hand, by refusal he might incur a forfeiture of office, and have to give place to his most odious enemy. After the Lord Keeper had sat silent awhile, expecting some of the Lords in the Protestant interest, as Halifax and Rochester, to speak,—he rose and addressed the King, entreating that the Chief Justice might declare, whether all the persons named in these rolls were actually in prison or not. His Lordship replied that he did not imagine any one could suspect that to be his meaning, but that they were under sentence of commitment, and were liable to be taken up by any peevish Sheriff or Magistrate. North then proceeded to attack all Sectaries. They were a turbulent people, he said, and always stirring up sedition; and, if they did so when they were obnoxious to the laws, what would they not do, if His Majesty gave them a discharge at once? Was it not better that his enemies should live under some disadvantages, and be obnoxious to His Majesty’s pleasure, who might, if they were turbulent and troublesome, inflict the penalties of the law upon them? As to the Roman Catholics, if there were any persons to whom the King would extend the favour of a pardon, let it be particular and express. After all, the disadvantage they were under, was but the payment of some fees to officers, which was compensated for by their enjoying exemption from serving in chargeable offices.[130]