The transition from the one sovereign to the other was very much like that from James VI. to Charles I. It was in each case from a man of lax principle to one who carried principle to obstinacy. It was also in each case a change from that easy good-nature which gets through difficulties, to a certain severity of temper which does not so much subdue difficulties as it makes them. If James could have kept his religion out of sight, there was enough of loyalty in the nation to have carried him to the end of a prosperous reign; he might have even completed his brother’s designs for rendering the English crown absolute. But he was too earnest a Catholic to give his subjects a pretext for forgetting the fact, or to allow of their winking at his assaults upon their liberties.
The Duke of Monmouth, who had set up some pretensions to the crown as a legitimate son of Charles II., now resided in exile at Brussels. He had ingratiated himself with the dissenters in England, and hoped by their assistance to dethrone the new monarch. He formed a design, in concert with the Earl of Argyle, for an invasion of the island. The latter nobleman set sail in May, and, after touching at the Orkneys, descended upon the west of Scotland, where he was joined by two thousand five hundred of his clan. A boat’s crew whom he sent on shore at Orkney being taken prisoners, gave information of his design, and the bishop of that diocese immediately carried the intelligence to Edinburgh. The militia of the kingdom was called out. The gentlemen of Argyle’s clan were seized and brought to the capital. The earl, finding all his prospects blighted, made a hesitating and timid advance towards Glasgow, where he hoped, but vainly, to be joined by the persecuted people of the west. The government forces advancing on every hand to meet him, his troops melted away; and after pursuing a solitary flight for a little way in disguise, he was taken prisoner at Inchinnan in Renfrewshire, and transported to Edinburgh, where he was immediately executed upon his former sentence (June 30, 1685).
The expedition which Monmouth conducted to the west of England was equally unfortunate, and that nobleman being seized under similar circumstances, was also executed. The exasperations, terrors, and anxieties which the sovereign had endured, first from the endeavours of the Whig party to exclude him from the throne, and latterly from these two rebellions, revenged themselves in severities which have fixed an indelible stigma upon his name. Under the Chief-justice Jeffries, hundreds of Monmouth’s followers, and even some wholly innocent, were summarily condemned and executed. It became a ‘killing time’ with the poor Presbyterians of the west of Scotland, many of whom were seized and shot dead in the fields. Everywhere men were reduced to silence; but at the same time, much of their respect and affection was lost.
From the commencement of his reign, James took no pains to conceal his religion. Encouraged by the suppressed rebellions and the stillness which everywhere prevailed, he now thought he might safely commence a series of measures for restoring the Catholic faith in his dominions. As the law stood, no papist could hold any office in the state. They were excluded, in both kingdoms, by a test oath, abjuring the errors of popery. Early in 1686, James endeavoured to get an act passed in both parliaments for dispensing with this oath, so that he might be enabled to introduce men of his own religion into all places of trust, which he judged to be the best way of proselytising the people at large. But to his surprise, the same parliaments which had already declared his temporal power to be nearly absolute, refused to yield to him on the subject of religion. Neither entreaties nor threats could prevail upon them to pass the necessary acts. In Scotland, the Duke of Queensberry, Sir George Mackenzie, and other statesmen, who had hitherto been the readiest to yield him obedience in all his most unpopular measures, submitted rather to be displaced than to surrender up the religion along with the liberties of the nation.
When he found that the parliaments would not yield to him, he dissolved them, and, pretending that he had only asked their consent out of courtesy, assumed to himself the right of dispensing with the test. This was establishing a power in the crown to subvert any act of parliament, and consequently no law could henceforth stand against the royal pleasure. If it had been assumed upon a temporal point, it is not probable that any resistance would have been made; for the right of the king to do as he pleased, and the illegality of all opposition to his will on the part of the people, were principles now very generally conceded. But it concerned the existence of the Church of England, and the religious prepossessions of the great majority of the people. There was therefore an almost universal spirit of resistance.
In order to give his measures an appearance of fairness and put them on a sufficiently broad ground, he granted a toleration to all kinds of dissenters from the Established Church. Affecting to have long been convinced that ‘conscience ought not to be constrained nor people forced in matters in religion;’ that all attempts of the kind were detrimental to the social economy and the interests of government, leading only to ‘animosities, name-factions, and sometimes to sacrilege and treason;’ he, by proclamations in the first six months of 1687, discharged all existing laws against dissenters in both sections of Britain, with certain moderate reservations, making it practicable for Presbyterians in Scotland to set up chapels for their own worship. This was a most remarkable step for a British sovereign to take. First, it openly assumed a right of the monarch, by his ‘absolute power’—for such was the phrase he used—to overrule the acts of parliament. Next, it gave ‘a degree and amount of toleration, beyond what any class of religionists was quite prepared to sanction. Therefore it was at once unconstitutional and over-liberal. Obvious as the royal motives were, there was a general expression of satisfaction with the measure among the English dissenters, while a considerable meeting of Presbyterian clergy in Scotland sent an address of thanks, with a promise of ‘entire loyalty in doctrine and practice’ for the future. But everywhere, the established clergy and the great bulk of the respectable middle classes, adherents of episcopalian protestantism, were alarmed and alienated, judging the movement to be, as it undoubtedly was, designed as a step towards the return of popery.
In the height of his power, James had deprived the boroughs of both kingdoms of their charters, and granted new ones, in which he was left the power of nominating the magistracies. He took advantage of this liberty to put Catholics into every kind of burgal office. He also attempted to get men of the same religion introduced into the chief seats in the universities.
What rendered these events the more alarming to the nation was the revocation of the Edict of Nantes by the king of France, in consequence of which the Protestants of that kingdom were subjected to a cruel persecution at the hands of their Catholic brethren. The people of Great Britain received about fifty thousand of these innocent persons under their protection; and as they were scattered over the whole country, they everywhere served as living proofs of Romish intolerance and cruelty. The British saw that if the king were not resisted in his endeavours to introduce popery, they would soon be groaning in hopeless subjection to a small dominant party, if not driven, like the French Protestants, far from their homes and native seats of industry, to wander like beggars over the earth.
The king had commanded the clergy to read in their pulpits his edict of universal toleration. Several of the English bishops, after ascertaining that the whole body almost to a man would support them, presented a petition to the king, in which they respectfully excused themselves from obeying his command. For this they were thrown into the Tower, and brought to trial, but, to the great joy of the nation, acquitted.
At this time (June 1688), the birth of a son to the king threw the nation into a state of extreme anxiety for the ultimate interests of the Protestant religion. It is to be observed that, if this prince had not come into the world, the crown would have fallen, in the course of time, to the king’s daughter Mary, who, for some years, had been married to the Prince of Orange. This lady being a Protestant, and the king being now advanced in life, the people had hitherto cherished a prospect of seeing the Protestant faith eventually secured under her sway. But now the Protestant line was excluded, and with it all hope was at an end. To add to the general dissatisfaction, there was some cause to suspect that the child was a spurious one, brought forward for the purpose of keeping up a popish line of succession.