Cornish Characters and Strange Events

by S. Baring-Gould

As Green says: "The Cavaliers who had shouted for the King's return, had shouted also for the return of a free Parliament. The very Chief Justice who asserted at the trial of the Regicides, the general freedom of the King from any responsibility to the Nation, asserted just as strongly that doctrine of ministerial responsibility, against which Charles the First had struggled. It was the desire of every royalist to blot out the very memory of the troubles in which monarchy and freedom had alike disappeared, to take up again, as if it had never been broken, the thread of our political history. But the point at which even royalists took it up was not at the moment of the Tyranny, but at the moment of the Long Parliament's first triumph, when that Tyranny had been utterly undone. In his wish to revive this older claim of the Crown, which the Long Parliament had for ever set aside, the young King found himself alone. His closest adherents, his warmest friends, were constitutional royalists of the temper of Falkland and Culpepper. Partisans of an absolute monarchy, of such a monarchy as his grandfather had dreamed of and his father had for a few years carried into practice, there now were none."

The clergy in advocating passive obedience were actuated by the sense of the miseries through which England had passed during the Great Rebellion—better to submit under protest than to fly to arms again, better certainly to submit even to what was deemed an injustice or inexpedient, when the Crown was hedged about with restrictions, and when the ministers of the Crown were responsible to the nation. There was, however, a noisy and vehement party that went much beyond this, and one Filmer had worked the theory of Divine Right of the Sovereign into a system, that was accepted by the more crazy and immoderate of the old Tory party, mainly among the clergy; and the Oxford declaration went a long way in this direction. Men were beating about for a theory on which to base Government by a King, they had not grasped the truth that the King represents the people, just as does a President in a Republic, but with the superaddition of Divine ratification and imparted grace for the task of ruling, by unction and coronation. That the Kings of England had ever been elected, and that coronation was the confirmation by God, through the Church, of the choice of the people, had been forgotten through the prevalence of feudal ideas in the Middle Ages. Filmer propounded his doctrine that the Divine Right rested in primogeniture, and the rabid Tories, looking out for a theory, snatched at this for want of a better.

On the very day on which Russell was put to death, the University of Oxford adopted by a solemn public act, drawn up by Jane, this strange doctrine, and ordered the political works of Buchanan, Milton, and Baxter to be publicly burned in the court of the schools.

James II, in hopes of winning the Earl of Rochester to join the Papal Church, desired a disputation between some Roman divines and some of the Church of England, making no doubt that the former would be able to confound the latter. The King bade Rochester to choose English divines, excluding two only, Tillotson and Stillingfleet, dreading the latter as a consummate master of all controversial weapons. Rochester selected Simon Patrick and Jane. The conference took place at Whitehall on November 13th, 1686, but no auditor was suffered to be present save the King.

"The subject discussed," says Macaulay, "was the Real Presence. The Roman Catholic divines took on themselves the burden of the proof. Patrick and Jane said little, nor was it necessary that they should say much; for the Earl himself undertook to defend the doctrine of his Church, and, as was his habit, soon warmed with the conflict, lost his temper, and asked with great vehemence whether it was expected that he should change his religion on such frivolous grounds."

In 1685 Jane had been appointed to the deanery of Gloucester. He resigned the archdeaconry of Middlesex in 1686, but retained the canonries of Christ Church and S. Paul's till his death.

In 1688 James II had fled the kingdom, and the English nation and Parliament had accepted William and Mary as King and Queen of England.

The whole fabric of Divine Right had crumbled to the ground. James had reduced the theory to a reductio ad impossibile. This even the lay cavaliers had recognized. "A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still," and it was so with the more fanatical Tories among the clergy. They refused to take the oath of allegiance to William and Mary, and were thrust out of their cathedral thrones and stalls and livings, and joined the sect of the Nonjurors.

But Jane was not one of them. He had the good sense to acknowledge that the theory he had taken up with some ardour was as impracticable as it was absurd. It was cast in his teeth that he changed his opinion because he desired to retain his benefices. One need not take this view of his conduct. He sought William of Orange at Hungerford, and assured him of the adhesion of the University of Oxford. His enemies said that he hinted at the same time his readiness to accept the vacant bishopric in return for his services in securing this sign of devotion. But nothing is more easy than to make such an accusation, and there is no proof that he did this. However, the fact that the framer of the Oxford declaration should have thrown over the principles advocated therein, laid him open to attack, and a shower of epigrams fell on him. His name Jane gave good opportunity to the wits to liken him to Janus, who looked two ways at once. But he showed no further desire to court the favour of William, and he opposed the projects for Comprehension favoured by the latitudinarians, Tillotson and Burnet. In 1689 two Bills had been introduced into Parliament, a Toleration and a Comprehension Bill. The former was to grant facilities of worship to the Puritans and other Dissenters; the other was a Bill for altering the creed and the formulas and ceremonies of the Church, removing from them whatever might be distasteful to the Dissenters, so that all excuse might be taken from them for separating themselves from the Church. Both the King and Tillotson, who all knew was destined by the King to be Archbishop of Canterbury, and Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury, were eager to get both passed. Tillotson was so latitudinarian that his churchmanship was nebulous. Burnet was the son of a Covenanter who had been hanged, had been brought up in Presbyterianism, had found satisfaction in the ministry of Calvanist pastors in Holland, and had not the faintest conception of the principles of the Church or of its true organization.

The Earl of Nottingham advocated the Comprehension Bill and drafted both. The Toleration Bill passed both Houses with little debate. But it was otherwise with the Comprehension Bill. The first clause in this dispensed all the ministers in the Church from the necessity of subscribing the Thirty-nine Articles. Then it was provided that any minister who had been ordained after the Presbyterian fashion might be eligible to any benefice in the Church without ordination by the bishop.