Sancroft, soon after the Revolution, published what was called Bishop Overall’s Convocation Book, written in the reign of James I., containing certain conclusions respecting Ecclesiastical and Civil Government, one of which, notwithstanding the current tone of the book in favour of non-resistance, is to the effect, that a Government originating in rebellion, when thoroughly settled, should be reverenced and obeyed as “being always God’s authority, and therefore receiving no impeachment by the wickedness of those that have it.” The Convocations of Canterbury and York had endorsed the contents of Overall’s volume; and, by a canon, distinctly condemned the doctrine that a Government begun by rebellion, after being thoroughly settled, is not of God.[194] Sherlock made a good deal out of this, and said he should have continued to stick at the oaths, had he not been relieved by Overall’s book, and had not the venerable authority of a Convocation given him a freedom of thinking, which the apprehensions of novelty and singularity had cramped before.[195] He did not consider, as is sometimes represented, that the Bishop and Convocation settled the matter, and that he was to submit as a child to the authoritative decree; but that a door had been thereby opened to the sons of the Church to look at the matter;[196] and that he, having been thus induced to examine it afresh, had for various reasons, which he assigns—some of which, it must be acknowledged, run counter to his previous publications on the subject[197]—arrived at the conclusion that he could conscientiously take the required vow. A terrible storm assailed him after this. Argument, satire, and abuse, sometimes in vulgar prose, sometimes in doggerel rhyme, descended in torrents upon his devoted head. Nonjurors reviled him on the one side; Revolutionists on the other; and people who did not care for either side joined in the old English cry against turncoats and time-servers. Most people maintained he had changed for the sake of loaves and fishes; and, as Mrs. Sherlock had made herself very notorious, and was said to have had immense influence over her husband, she caught a terrible pelting from a literary mob, who assailed her as Xanthippe, Delilah, and Eve, all in one. Sherlock had to pay the penalty, which men, whose new opinions jump in the same direction as their pecuniary interests, must ever pay; but human motives, whether good or evil, lie so far beneath the surface, that the reading of them by even honest historians may widely differ from the reading of them by the only Omniscient One. Contemporaries were too much involved in party strife to take an unbiassed view of Sherlock’s conduct; and writers since have scarcely been able to free themselves from prejudices handed down by the pamphlets of that day. The grave feature of the case affecting the reputation of the Master and Dean, is to be found, not in the new application of a principle which he had long held; but in the repudiation of his old principles, just at the moment when the Battle of the Boyne had destroyed all prospect of James’ restoration—the chance upon which, as Sherlock’s enemies believed, he had ventured hopes of high preferment, during the time of casting in his lot with the poor Nonjurors.[198]
1690.
The Battle of the Boyne having established the Revolution, and with it the throne of William, the people who had hailed him as their Deliverer became more than ever impatient towards all who remained disaffected towards his Government.
Lloyd, the nonjuring Bishop of Norwich, a friend, adviser, and correspondent of Sancroft, not being one of the illustrious Seven, had never shared in that halo of confessorship which for awhile had played around their sacred heads; but he had long been, and was still more than ever, regarded as an obstinate, violent, and intriguing Churchman, bent upon overthrowing the new Sovereign, and bringing back to Whitehall the exiled King. His politics, not his religion, made him unpopular; and his letters to his archiepiscopal friend, written in the summer of 1690, betray the fact, that whatever might be the dislike of the London populace to nonjuring Bishops in general, a feeling of hatred prevailed against him in particular, and threatened his security in one of the most unaristocratic districts of the Metropolis.
“I was yesterday,” he wrote on the 5th of August, “forced to a sudden flight, being alarmed by the rabble, who began to appear at their Reformation work in Old Street. I had a message from a good friend last Saturday, which assured me that the rabble would be up in a short time. And on Friday, my housekeeper (being among some of her relations in Cripplegate) brought me word, that the fanatics talked bitterly against the Bishops, and would shortly call them to an account.
“About 9 of the clock yesterday, Mr. Edwards, of Eye, and another gentleman, called upon me, and told me they saw about 150 of the mob very busy in pulling down of houses in Old Street. Within a few minutes the hawker which sells pamphlets brought the same tidings, and, in regard the dangerous crew were so near, I sent forthwith one of my men to see how the affair went abroad, and another to fetch me a hackney coach, into which I got with my wife and child, and straightway took sanctuary in the Temple. From thence I sent for further information, and found that the crew in Old Street was dispersed; partly by Justice Parry coming among them and taking their names and threatening them with informations; and chiefly by a company of the train-bands, who in that nick of time passed that way to muster in the fields.
1690.
“About four in the afternoon I returned to my house and found all quiet in the way. If the rabble had continued I would not have failed to send notice to your Grace; and, on the other hand, I resolved not to send a confused uncertain alarm. God be praised, this scarecrow is over, and I hope God will still deliver us from the bloody fangs of cruel saints and scoundrels.”[199]
Six months later the popular fury against men of Lloyd’s order was being fanned afresh, and again he told his sorrows to his old friend:
“Your Grace will see by the enclosed papers how the mob are encouraged to bring some under their discipline: their wrath is cruel, and their malice as keen as razors, but God defend the innocent from their rage.