In 1673 an Act had been passed excluding Roman Catholics from all places of profit and trust; now a Bill was introduced to exclude them from Parliament and from the Councils of the Sovereign.[11] By help of the existing panic, the Bill made its way with ease; and what is remarkable, in this measure the obligation to receive the sacrament is not mentioned—an omission doubtless intended for the benefit of Dissenters, whose sympathy and assistance were just then valued by persons who had been accustomed before to treat them with violence—but a strong declaration to the effect that Romish worship is idolatrous was imposed, together with the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy. When this Bill reached the House of Lords, Gunning, Bishop of Ely, objected to the description and treatment of Romish worship as idolatrous; yet his arguments on this point being met by Barlow, Bishop of Lincoln, Gunning—although he said he could not himself adopt the new declaration—after it became law, followed the example of his brethren.[12]
PARLIAMENT.
The Lords looked with little favour upon a Bill which, by disqualifying Papists from sitting in Parliament, would deprive some of their own order of hereditary rights; notwithstanding goaded by the Commons, and encouraged by the King, they at last without opposition passed the measure, providing in it an exception on behalf of the Duke of York. This exception displeased the Commons, who, above all things, desired to remove a Roman Catholic prince from the government of the country; and, therefore, when the Bill returned to them with its amendments, it had to meet the most strenuous opposition from the Country party. High words were followed not only, as in the Long Parliament, by storms of outcries and by menaces of violence, but by actual blows; and after a singularly angry debate, the proviso passed only by a majority of two, and the Royal assent was given to the whole Bill with very great reluctance.[13]
CHAPTER II.
PROTESTANT OPPOSITION.
The fall of the Earl of Danby is to be attributed to an artful contrivance by the French Court; which, from revenge against him for his real enmity, accomplished his ruin, by pretending that he was a friend. By means of Montague—who laid before the House of Commons despatches, written to him by the Minister, most unwillingly, but at the King’s command—Louis XIV. established against Danby, charges of intrigues with France for obtaining money, quite sufficient to extinguish for ever all the credit which he had ever had with his own countrymen. His plea of unwillingness to enter into his master’s policy with regard to France, although true, proved inadequate to save him from impeachment by the Commons, who acted upon the constitutional principle—that the King’s Ministers are responsible for what they perform in the King’s name. Danby, though made a victim of revenge, and in truth, suffering “not on account of his delinquency, but on account of his merits,” had put himself in such a false position, that Parliament could do no otherwise than demand his removal from office. How far the extreme step of impeachment can be justified is another question; and, at all events, the charge of his being Popishly affected is truly absurd. The accusation of his concealing the Popish plot, of suppressing the evidence, and of discountenancing the witnesses, could not be made even plausible, for though he had been sceptical at first respecting the story told by Oates, as any sensible man might well be, he had afterwards fully committed himself to the proceedings against the accused Papists; yet perhaps there is some truth in an amusing passage written by one who cherished strong prejudices against him:—“The Earl of Danby thought he could serve himself of this plot of Oates, and accordingly endeavoured at it; but it is plain that he had no command of the engine, and instead of his sharing the popularity of nursing it, he found himself so intrigued that it was like a wolf by the ears: he could neither hold it nor let it go, and for certain it bit him at last, just as when a barbarous mastiff attacks a man, he cries ‘poor cur,’ and is pulled down at last.”[14]
The resolution of the Commons on the 19th of December, 1678, to impeach the Lord Treasurer, was followed by a prorogation on the 30th, and a dissolution on the 24th of January, 1679; this Parliament having then sat for the long space of eighteen years.
1679.
The King immediately summoned a new Parliament, to meet at the end of forty days; and again, as in 1661, a general election took place under circumstances of immense excitement. Protestants believed the cause of the Reformation to be in imminent danger from the Popish tendencies of the King, from the avowed Romanism of the Duke of York, from the intrigues of France, and from the want of principle in public men. Therefore, multitudes rushed to the poll with the idea, that only by voting for unmistakable and zealous Protestants, could they save England from being dragged back to the condition in which she was found before the Reformation. Thousands of horsemen rode into cities and county towns to record their names in favour of the Established Church. People had to sleep in market-places, to lie like sheep around market crosses.[15] Candidates were chaired at midnight with the bray of trumpets and a blaze of torches; but with all this Protestant enthusiasm, elections could not be carried without bribery, treating, and corruption. Horses were demanded in proportion to the number of electors; there occurred an enormous consumption of beer, bread, and cakes at Norwich; and as for the Knight of the Shire of Surrey, “they ate and drank him out near to £2,000, by a most abominable custom.”[16] Popular candidates pledged to oppose the Court against Popery succeeded almost everywhere.
Scarcely had the shouts which hailed these returns died away, when a remarkable interview took place between certain dignitaries of the Church and the Popish heir to the throne.