Turner, Bishop of Ely, another of the nonjuring band, whose character has been indicated already, whose Jacobitism is unquestionable, and who supported the Archbishop in his defiant course, wrote to him on Ascension Day, 1689, a letter in which he refers to Ken, and the doubts felt respecting him. “I must needs say, the sooner we meet our brother of Bath the better, for I must no longer in duty conceal from your Grace—though I beseech you to keep it in terms of a secret—that this very good man is, I fear, warping from us, and the true interests of the Church of England, towards a compliance with the new Government.”[175]
NONJURORS.
Frampton, Bishop of Gloucester, coincided with Ken in his moderation; and if the rest had resembled them, possibly a practical adjustment of the controversy might have been reached. He is described as a gentle, amiable man, unfitted for an Episcopal position during a season of political trouble. After his deprivation he pursued a quiet and inoffensive course, without giving any umbrage to the Government.[176] Sancroft, Lloyd, and Turner were men of a different mould.
1689.
During the period of the Bishops’ remaining in suspension, their case excited immense interest—friends loudly expressing sympathy, opponents loudly expressing disapproval. The press was employed. Apologies were published; answers were returned. On the one hand the services of the Seven in the cause of liberty were gratefully rehearsed, their sufferings pitifully depicted, their temper under trials enthusiastically extolled, and the sacredness of oaths, as asserted in their conduct, earnestly enforced. Connected with this vindication and eulogy, were mystical allusions to the perfect number of the Episcopal confessors, the Seven imprisoned being irreverently compared to the burning lamps before the throne of God. On the other hand, this play of fancy met with sarcasm and ridicule; the old arguments for the new oaths came into hackneyed use; the patient temper of the Bishops failed to excite any longer much admiration, and a ridiculous panegyric pronounced upon them for “the holy tears” they wept, like “trees of sovereign balm, to cure the wounds of their Royal enemy,” only aroused mockery, whilst their suffering and services were depreciated by a reference to the story of Alexander the Great. Alexander had coats of armour made for men and horses three times the ordinary size, and left behind on the banks of the River Indus, to make succeeding ages believe that his soldiery were of gigantic bigness. So, it was said, the setting forth a few days’ imprisonment in the Royal palace of the Tower,—under the notion of its being a prison such as confined the primitive Christians,—detracted from the real glory gained by the Bishops, since everybody saw the vast disproportion between the dungeons of Diocletian and the Tower of London.[177]
As the 1st of February approached, a few Clergymen in the archdeaconry of Sudbury applied to their Diocesan, Lloyd, Bishop of Norwich, telling him that though they thought of nothing less than losing all, yet they passionately desired to know whether they should voluntarily leave their respective cures, or wait to be forcibly thrust out; also they wished to know how they were to behave, so as, if possible, to preserve the ancient Church of England. He informed them that in the opinion of eminent lawyers a judicial sentence alone could eject them; and therefore that they might retain possession until they were judicially expelled. Their second question he left unanswered.[178] Whether Lloyd’s notion of law was right or wrong, the Clergy generally did not act upon it, for most of them quietly quitted possession on the 1st of February.[179] Amongst the most distinguished of these Nonjurors were George Hickes, Dean of Worcester; Henry Dodwell, who, though not in orders, was Camden Professor of Ancient History at Oxford; Jeremy Collier, Lecturer at Gray’s Inn; and John Kettlewell, Vicar of Coleshill, in Warwickshire.
NONJURORS.
Hickes was a man of great learning, skilled both in patristic lore and Teutonic tongues. He was brother to the Nonconformist Minister of the name, who suffered death after Monmouth’s rebellion; but, so far from being tainted with his brother’s sentiments, he was an intense opponent of Nonconformity, and an extravagant assertor of passive obedience. He published the last speeches of two Presbyterian Ministers, under the title of The Spirit of Popery, speaking out of the Mouths of Fanatical Protestants; and declared, in his Thebæan Legion, that if King James should imitate the Emperor Maximian, and doom his soldiers to death, for refusing to commit idolatry, it would be their duty to submit with meekness to the Royal decree. He wrote letters to a Popish priest, and an apologetical vindication of the English Church, in answer to those who reproached her with heresy and schism; and he also composed a book, entitled Speculum Beatæ Virginis, a discourse of the due praise and heroism of the Virgin Mary. These works indicate what manner of man he must have been, yet it is affirmed that at first he felt disposed to take the oaths, and came up to London for the purpose, but swerved from it through the influence of his High Church friends; a statement which seems very improbable.[180] Dodwell was still more learned than Hickes, and if in his theories more absurd, he was in practice more reasonable. Some of his speculative ideas upon marriage and music, upon the old serpent and the human soul, were as extraordinary as any that ever entered the human brain; but the fact which more immediately relates to my purpose is, that on the one hand he wrote Discourses against the Romanists, and on the other hand treatises upon Schism and One Priesthood, in such a style, that when Tillotson read the MS. he told him some things in it were so palpably false, he wondered the author did not see their absurdity, and that they were so gross as to grate much upon one’s inward sense. He compared him to Richard Baxter—a man unlike him in most respects, but whom he resembled in pertinacity of purpose and fondness for his own opinion. Collier was described in his own day as a breathing library, and for metaphysical learning and eloquence as bearing the bell from most men.[181]
1689.
NONJURORS.