The Catholics expressed their satisfaction with it; and whilst they gladly availed themselves of the professed benefit, they felt pleasure in seeing liberty extended to all sects without exception, by a prince of their own communion.[176] Politicians, who understood and cared for the liberties of their country, however glad they might be to see different forms of religion tolerated, could not help being alarmed by so daring an exercise of the Royal prerogative, which if conceded, would imperil the Constitution, break down the safeguards of law, and place the destinies of the nation for evil, as well as for good, in the hands of a despotic sovereign. Members of the Church of England, in this hour of its need, said kind things of the Nonconformists, whom they had persecuted before, and spoke of legal securities for freedom of worship; yet they viewed with the utmost alarm this exercise of absolute power, and saw in it only a confirmation of their worst fears, that, under a pretence of general liberty, the Monarch sought to destroy the ascendancy of Protestantism. The selfishness, which blended with their fears, and the compunctions which mingled with their alarm, did not diminish the reasonableness of their apprehension.
DECLARATION OF INDULGENCE.
Some Bishops, however, distinguished themselves by a line of conduct different from that pursued by their brethren. Durham, Rochester, Peterborough, Oxford, and Chester, being invited to meet the Lord Chancellor and the Earl of Sunderland, the latter told them how acceptable to His Majesty would be an address of thanks. Three of them at once signed such an address. Rochester hesitated, but complied; Peterborough decidedly refused. Chester reported that the four who signed altered their first paper, which gave thanks for the Declaration as a whole, into a second, which acknowledged only the King’s promise to protect the Church; and it is further reported that when the Bishop of Durham presented the document to the King, His Majesty said, “I expected this sooner from you of the Church of England, and also now, that it would have come much fuller than what it is. Can you find nothing to give thanks for, but that one clause which relates to yourselves? Have you no sense of that kindness others have received thereby? Methinks you might have given thanks, at least, for that ease and relief your Protestant brethren have received by it.”[177]
Those who prepared such cautious addresses found it difficult to obtain signatures, even when requested to sign, by diocesans favourable to the proceeding. The subject seems to have been most carefully canvassed by the superior as well as by the inferior clergy; for I find in the library of the Cambridge University a long paper, containing the reasons of the Bishops for and against subscription to an Oxford address. Amongst the reasons for subscription, as offered by the Chancellor, are these—that it might continue the King’s favour, whereas the omission might irritate the Treasury to call upon the £500 bonds of first-fruits at full worth; and that it would testify unity with and submission to the Bishops who required the address, and who, perhaps, expected it upon the canonical obedience of the clergy, there being nothing in the document præter licitum et honestum. On the other side, amongst other things, it is alleged that it would be superfluous to thank His Majesty for continuing legal rights; and it is remarked, respecting the Declaration, and the aspect of it upon the Established Episcopal Church, “As to the free exercise of our religion, it necessarily holds us among the various sects, under the Toleration, who for that favour in suspending the laws have led the way to such addresses, depending for protection upon no legal statutes, but entirely upon the sovereign pleasure and indulgence which at pleasure is revocable.”[178]
1687.
The manner in which Nonconformists received the measure requires to be more fully explained.
One class, not so fanatical as to refuse the liberty offered, objected notwithstanding, and that strongly, to the dispensing power; and, after much deliberation, they declined to present to the King any acknowledgment. This class included Richard Baxter and John Howe: Baxter refusing to join in offering thanks; Howe, wavering at first, but at last becoming so decided respecting the matter, as to move and carry a resolution against going to Court upon the occasion.
DECLARATION OF INDULGENCE.
Another class remains, including Vincent Alsop and Stephen Lobb; the former being drawn into “some high flights” of loyal flattery in return for a Royal pardon granted to his son; the latter showing himself contemptibly obsequious in his approaches to the King, and receiving in consequence the appellation of the “Jacobite Independent.” Of the favourable addresses then presented, one from the Anabaptists in and about the City of London came first:[179] One from the Presbyterians in the same neighbourhood came next. This, whilst giving thanks for the Indulgence, expressed a hope that the two Houses of Parliament would concur in the measure.[180] The Quakers said the Declaration did the less surprise them, because it was what some of them had known to be the principle of the King long before he came to the throne.[181] In some of these compositions very eulogistic terms appear. The loyal subjects of the Congregational persuasion in Ipswich, and other towns of Suffolk, displayed a curiously rhetorical style. “The shields of the earth,” said they, “belong unto God, He hath made you a covering cherub to us, under whose refreshing shadow we promise ourselves rest.”[182] The Dissenters of Malden in Essex spoke of the great service God designed to accomplish by His Majesty, “the blossoming whereof is now made visible in your celebrated wisdom, in hapning (sic) upon the most melodious harp to charm all evil spirits, that many other princes had no skill to use.”[183] Some Dissenters, in and about the City of London, exceeded their brethren in extravagance. “Your Majesty,” they declared, “hath distinguished and set the bounds of your own dominion from that of heaven itself. You have given to God and man their due, and yet preserved your own right.”[184] Who were the persons engaged in drawing up these adulatory compositions, by what kind of people, and by how many they were signed, we have no method of ascertaining; but it is more than probable, that Court agents employed the most insinuating arts to secure their production. Addresses to the King were for a twelvemonth all the fashion. They were presented by all sorts of people, who vied with each other in most absurd expressions of loyalty. The Company of Cooks were pre-eminent in their laudations, and praised the Indulgence as resembling the Almighty’s manna, which suited every man’s palate; and they declared “that men’s different gustos might as well be forced, as their different apprehensions about religion.”[185] In some cases the compliments of the subject were matched by the complaisance of the Sovereign; and in answer to a Presbyterian address he professed he had no other design than toleration, and “hoped to see the day when the people should have a Magna Charta for liberty of conscience, as well as for the protection of their property.”
1687.