13. The Expulsion of the Fellows of Magdalen. 1687.—Scarcely was the Declaration issued when James showed how little he cared for law or custom. There was a vacancy in the President-ship of Magdalen College, Oxford, and James commanded the Fellows to choose one Farmer, a man of bad character, and a Roman Catholic. On April 15 the Fellows, as they had the undoubted right to do, chose Hough. In June they were summoned before the Ecclesiastical Commission, which declared Hough's election to be void, and ordered them to choose Parker, who, though at heart a Roman Catholic, was nominally the Protestant Bishop of Oxford (see p. [638]). They answered simply that, as Hough had been lawfully elected, they had no right to choose another President in his lifetime. Jeffreys bullied them in vain. James insisted on their accepting Parker, and on acknowledging the legality of the proceedings of the Ecclesiastical Commission. All but two, having refused to submit, were turned out of the College and left to beg their bread. When the Commissioners attempted to install Parker in his office not a blacksmith in Oxford would consent to break open the lock of the President's lodgings. The servants of the Commissioners were at last employed to force the door, and it was in this way that Parker took possession of the residence to which Hough alone had a legal claim. The expelled Fellows were not left to starve, as there was scarcely a gentleman in England who would not have been proud to receive one of them into his house.
14. An Attempt to pack a Parliament. 1687.—James was anxious to obtain Parliamentary sanction for his Declaration of Indulgence. He dissolved the existing Parliament, hoping to find a new one more to his taste. As he had packed the Bench of Judges in 1686, he tried to pack a Parliament in 1687. A board of regulators was appointed, with Jeffreys at its head, to remodel the corporations once more, appointing Roman Catholics and Dissenters to sit in them. James expected that these new members would elect tolerationists to the next House of Commons. So strong, however, was public opinion against the king that even the new members chosen expressly to vote for the king's nominees could not be relied on. The design of calling a new Parliament was therefore abandoned for the time.
15. A Second Declaration of Indulgence. 1688.—On April 22, 1688, James issued a second Declaration of Indulgence, which he ordered to be read in all the churches. Most of the clergy objecting to read it, seven bishops signed a petition asking that the clergy might be excused. Six of these bishops—Sancroft, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was the seventh, having been forbidden to appear before the king—presented the petition to James at Whitehall. James was startled when it was placed in his hands. "This," he said, "is a great surprise to me. I did not expect this from your Church, especially from some of you. This is a standard of rebellion." In vain the bishops protested that they hated the very sound of rebellion. James would not listen to their excuses. "This," he persisted in saying, "is rebellion. This is a standard of rebellion. Did ever a good churchman question the dispensing power before? Have not some of you preached for it and written for it? It is a standard of rebellion. I will have my declaration published." One of the bishops replied that they were bound to fear God as well as to honour the king. James only grew more angry and told them, as he sent them away, that he would keep their petition, with the evident intention of taking legal proceedings against them. "God," he said, as he dismissed them, "has given me the dispensing power, and I will maintain it. I tell you there are still seven thousand of your Church who have not bowed the knee to Baal."
Dress of a bishop in the second half of the seventeenth century: from Sandford's Coronation Procession of James II.