THE CRISIS.
At first the Prince’s affairs wore an unfavourable appearance—people of influence did not join him; but before long the tide turned, “and every man mistaking his neighbour’s courage for his own, all rushed to the camp or to the stations which had been assigned them, with a violence proportioned to their late fears.”[52] A hearty welcome awaited His Highness in many places through which he marched, the Dissenters in particular hailing his approach. One of them, a country gentleman, living at Coaxden Hall, rich in rookeries, between Axminster and Chard, had tables spread with provisions under an avenue of trees leading up to the house. The gentleman was Richard Cogan, whose wife Elizabeth, before her marriage, concealed him under a feather-bed, after the Monmouth rebellion, and so saved his life and won his affections. His mother had been a Royalist; and amongst many stories told of Charles’s adventures after his defeat at Worcester, it is related that this lady covered him with the skirts of her enormously-hooped petticoats.[53] The clergy of Dorset found themselves in an awkward position after William had triumphantly passed through the country. They had received an order of Council, sent by the Bishop, prescribing prayers for the Prince of Wales and the Royal family. But now, although some persevered in using the prayers, others laid them aside. There still exists a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury from the incumbent of Wimborne, asking what he should do under the circumstances.[54]
1688.
When Ken heard that the Dutch were coming to Wells, he immediately left the city, and in obedience to His Majesty’s general commands, took all his coach horses with him, and as many of his saddle horses as he could; seeking shelter in a village near Devizes, intending to wait on James, should he come into that neighbourhood. Ken was awkwardly situated, having been chaplain to the Princess of Orange, and knowing many of the Dutch officers; therefore, to prevent suspicion, he left his diocese, determined to preserve his allegiance to a Monarch who still occupied the throne.[55] William found himself in the neighbourhood where the unfortunate Duke of Monmouth had a few years earlier unfurled his flag, to which certain Nonconformists had been drawn, who paid a terrible penalty for their rashness. Many retained keen recollections of Sedgmoor fight and Taunton Assizes, and could scarcely calculate upon the success of this new attempt; yet they sympathized intensely in William’s designs, as is manifest from some of their Church records containing narratives of the Deliverer’s march through the west of England. The Declaration said little in favour of Nonconformists, and only by implication gave hopes to them of legal security. But the documents received an interpretation from the knowledge that William believed conscience to be God’s province, and that toleration is as politic as it is righteous.
THE CRISIS.
Three days before the landing of the Prince, James admonished his subjects, upon peril of being prosecuted, not to publish the treasonable Proclamations; and on the day after the landing, he denounced the act as aiming at the immediate possession of the Crown. Between those two dates, the Scottish Bishops, whose feudal-like loyalty mastered their patriotism, and placed them in opposition to their Episcopal brethren of the South, sent an address to the falling Monarch, in which they denounced the invasion, and professed unshaken allegiance to be part of their religion; not doubting that God, who had often delivered His Majesty, would now give him the hearts of his subjects and the necks of his enemies.[56] Another Scotch address, breathing the utmost devotion, followed, in significant opposition to the ominous silence maintained by Englishmen. This flash of enthusiasm, however, on the other side the Tweed, did nothing for the salvation of the House of Stuart,—the current of opinion throughout the realm, amongst high and low, having set in the opposite direction.
At this critical moment, amidst the confusion which reigned at Whitehall, and as selfish courtiers were waiting to see how they could promote their own interests, the misguided Sovereign commanded his army to march towards Salisbury. The night before he himself started for that city, a few noblemen and Bishops waited upon him with a proposal to assemble Parliament, and treat with the Prince of Orange; when, according to his own account, he told the Prelates that it would much better become men of their calling to instruct the people in their duty to God and the King, rather than foment a rebellions temper, by presenting such petitions at the very moment the enemy stood at the door. He says he regarded them as making religion a cloak of rebellion, and was at last convinced that the Church’s doctrine of passive obedience formed too sandy a foundation for a Prince’s hope.[57] His answer to the request for a Parliament, according to the report of the Bishop of Rochester, ran in these words: “What you ask of me, I most passionately desire, and I promise you upon the faith of a king, that I will have a Parliament, and such an one as you ask for, as soon as ever the Prince of Orange has quitted this realm. For how is it possible a Parliament should be free in all its circumstances, as you petition for, whilst an enemy is in the kingdom, and can make return of near a hundred voices?”[58]
1688.
James reached Salisbury on the 19th of November, and took up his abode in the Episcopal Palace,—under the shadow of the noble spire which rises so gracefully out of the midst of a pleasant landscape of quaint-looking houses, near the confluence of two rivers, bordered by gardens and orchards, by green meadows and brown fields. There he had reason enough to be alarmed by the progress of events, and to reflect on the instability of worldly greatness; yet he did not despair.
He was wonderfully slow in giving up all hope of help from Bishops. To the last he seemed to cling to that order with the tenacity of a sailor who has seized on a plank from a foundered vessel. From Salisbury he sent for the Bishop of Winchester, who had cautiously remained at his princely castle during these troublous times. The Bishop wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury the following account of this fruitless visit:—