National patience was exhausted. These indulgences were right enough in principle; but there were two great objections to their being published. First, it was a most unconstitutional and outrageous stretch of royal authority to pretend, “by virtue of our sovereign authority, prerogative royal, and absolute power,” to “suspend, stop, and disable laws and Acts of Parliament,” without parliamentary consent. And, secondly, it was well known that, in publishing these unconstitutional declarations, James was not actuated with the least wish to do justice to Protestant Nonconformists; but chiefly, if not exclusively, desired the toleration of his own sect, the Papists; and hoped that this might be a preparatory step to the triumphant establishment of the Popish Church. James’s conduct in Scotland, where he had hacked to pieces so many Protestants, could not be forgotten, but spoke far more loudly than the hollow-hearted language of his indulgent declarations; besides, the loud denunciations of James’s Lord Chancellor, the bloodthirsty Jeffreys, against all Protestant Dissenters as king-haters, rebels, and republicans, were still ringing in the nation’s ears. The people remembered that, within the last three years, the great and good Richard Baxter, had been committed to the King’s Bench Prison on the charge of printing his paraphrase of the New Testament; and had been brought to trial, before Jeffreys, at Westminster, at the very time that Titus Oates was standing in the pillory in the New Palace Yard; Jeffreys gleefully exclaiming at the moment, “If Baxter stood on the other side of Oates’s pillory, I would say two of the greatest rogues and rascals in the kingdom stood there.” The people remembered that the insulted Baxter, for his alleged offence, had been fined five hundred marks, and had been ordered to lie in prison until the fine was paid; besides being bound to good behaviour for seven years. They were not able to forget, that, in the very year before the first declaration was issued, the Protestant Dissenters had again and again had their private religious meetings, which they had dared to hold, disturbed and broken up, both in town and country, by the myrmidons of King James’s government; and that Sir John Hartop, and some others, at Stoke Newington, had had distresses levied for the payment of a fine of about £700.[[32]] For James to pretend friendship to Protestant Dissenters, in the face of such facts, was a piece of hypocrisy, which none but a royal simpleton, afflicted with a little mind, and blinded by prejudice, would have attempted to impose upon the credulity of intelligent and religious men.
Never, not even under the tyranny of Laud, had the condition of the Dissenters been so deplorable as it was under James. Never had spies been so actively employed in detecting congregations; and never had magistrates, grand-jurors, rectors, and churchwardens been so much on the alert. It was impossible for the sectaries to pray together without precautions such as are employed by coiners and receivers of stolen goods. Places of worship had to be frequently changed. Worship had to be performed, sometimes just before the break of day, and sometimes at dead of night. Round the building where the little flock was gathered together, sentinels were placed to give the alarm if a stranger drew near. The minister, in disguise, was introduced through the garden and the back yard. In some houses, there were trap doors, through which, in case of danger, he might descend. No psalm was sung; and many contrivances were used to prevent the voice of the preacher, in his moments of fervour, from being heard outside. And yet, with all this care, several opulent gentlemen in the suburbs of London were accused of holding conventicles, and distresses were levied to the amount of many thousand pounds. Dissenting ministers, however blameless in life, however eminent for learning and abilities, could not venture to walk the streets for fear of outrages, encouraged by those whose duty it was to preserve the peace. Some divines of great fame were in prison; others, crushed with oppression, had quitted the kingdom; and great numbers, who had been accustomed to frequent conventicles, repaired to the parish church.[[33]]
What was the result? James commanded that the declaration, published on the 27th of April 1688, should be read by all the clergy in their churches, in and about London, on the 20th and 27th of May; and in all the rest of England and Wales on the 3d and 10th of June following. The bishops[[34]] were commanded to be vigilant in enforcing the royal order, and those who refused to read were to be prosecuted by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. The 20th of May arrived; but only seven, out of a hundred clergymen in London read the declaration, and even they read with fear and trembling, being groaned at by their congregations. On the 27th of May the signs of obedience were not more numerous; and a newly-appointed reader at the Chapel Royal was so much agitated that he was not able to read the declaration so as to be heard. On the 3d and 10th of June, the mass of the clergy in the provinces and in Wales, were quite as disobedient as those in the capital. It is said that, at the time, there were more than ten thousand clergy in the kingdom, and yet not more than two hundred complied with the royal will.
And here we must pause, for the purpose of spoiling a very interesting story respecting Samuel Wesley. The Rev. Henry Moore relates that Samuel Wesley was strongly solicited by the friends of King James II. to support the measures of the court in favour of Popery, with a promise of preferment, if he would comply with the king’s desire. But when the time came for reading the king’s declaration, he most firmly refused; and though surrounded by courtiers, soldiers, and informers, he preached a bold and pointed discourse against it from Daniel iii. 17, 18: “If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.” Unfortunately this heroic story is untrue. As we shall see shortly, Samuel Wesley was not ordained a deacon until two months after the declaration was commanded to be read, and therefore, at the time, was not authorised to preach, either from such a text, or from any text at all; nor was he in a position either to read or to refuse to read the king’s declaration.
The story has been repeated by Southey, by Macaulay, by Dr Smith, by Dr Stevens, and by many other of the leading historians of the age; but, as just shown, it is utterly without foundation. Henry Moore’s mistake was a simple and easy one. He attributes to Samuel Wesley a fact which belongs to the Rev. John Berry, A.M., vicar of Watton, in Norfolk, the father-in-law of Samuel Wesley, jun. The latter, in a “poem upon a clergyman lately deceased,” published in 1731, delineates the character of Mr Berry; and the poem, in substance, contains the story, which has so long and so often been improperly applied to Samuel Wesley, sen.:—
“When zealous James, unhappy sought the way,
T’ establish Rome by arbitrary sway,
’Twas then the Christian priest was nobly tried,
When hireling slaves embraced the stronger side,
And saintly sects and sycophants complied.