Nor was Jane alone. Compton, Bishop of London, and several other bishops, had appealed to William of Orange to come over and help the people and the Church of England to be free from a tyrannous and subversive despotism. The Earl of Danby, under whose administration, and with his sanction, a law had been proposed, which, if it had passed, would have excluded from Parliament and office all who refused to declare on oath that they thought resistance to the King in every case unlawful—he had seen the mistake as well, and had invited William over.
As Macaulay says: "This theory (of passive obedience) at first presented itself to the Cavalier as the very opposite of slavish. Its tendency was to make him not a slave, but a free man and a master. It exalted him by exalting one whom he regarded as his protector, as his friend, as the head of his beloved party, and of his more beloved Church. When Republicans were dominant the Royalist had endured wrongs and insults which the restoration of the legitimate government had enabled him to retaliate. Rebellion was therefore associated in his imagination with subjection and degradation, and monarchical authority with liberty and ascendancy. It had never crossed his imagination that a time might come when a King, a Stuart, could prosecute the most loyal of the clergy and gentry with more than the animosity of the Rump or the Protector. That time had however arrived. Oppression speedily did what philosophy and eloquence would have failed to do. The system of Filmer might have survived the attacks of Locke; but it never recovered from the death-blow given by James."
Jane changed his opinion indeed, but so did nearly the whole of the Tory party and of the clergy of the Church.
THE PENNINGTONS
About seven years ago I attended the baptism of some bells for a new church at Châteaulin, in Brittany. The ceremony was quaint, archaic, and grotesque. The bells were suspended in the chancel "all of a row," dressed in white frocks with pink sashes round their waists. To each was given god-parents who had to answer for them, and each was actually baptized, after which each was made to speak for itself. The ceremony evidently dates from a period when the bell was regarded as anything but an inanimate object—it had its responsibilities, it did its duties, it spoke in sonorous tones. The very inscriptions on them to the present day prescribe something of this character—invest each bell with a personality, as these:—
I sweetly tolling men do call
To taste of meats to feed the soul.
Also:—
I sound to bid the sick repent,
In hope of life when breath is spent.