 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information and to find out how you can volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recorded by Ian Bartholomew. The history of England from the accession of James II by Thomas Babington Macaulay. Chapter 6 part 8. As each of the two parties at the Court of James had the support of foreign princes, so each had also the support of an ecclesiastical authority to which the king paid great deference. The supreme pontiff was for legal and moderate courses, and his sentiments were expressed by the nancyo and by the vicar apostolic. On the other side was a body of which the weight balanced even the weight of the papacy, the mighty order of Jesus. Thus at this conjuncture these two great spiritual powers, once as it seemed inseparably allied, should have been opposed to each other, is a most important and remarkable circumstance. During a period of little less than a thousand years, the regular clergy had been the chief support of the Holy See. By that See they had been protected from Episcopal interference, and the protection which they had received had been amply repaid. But for their exertions it is probable that the Bishop of Rome would have been merely an honorary president of a vast aristocracy of prelates. It was by the aid of the Benedictines that Gregory VII was enabled to contend at once against the Franconian Caesars, and against the secular priesthood. It was by the aid of the Dominicans and Franciscans that Innocent III crushed the Albigensian sectaries. In the 16th century the pontificate exposed to new dangers more formidable than had ever before threatened it, and was saved by a new religious order which was animated by intense enthusiasm and organised with exquisite skill. When the Jesuits came to the rescue of the papacy, they found it an extreme peril. But from that moment the tide of battle turned. Processantism, which had, during a whole generation, carried all before it, was stopped in its progress and rapidly beaten back from the foot of the Alps to the shores of the Baltic. Before the order had existed a hundred years, it had filled the whole world with memorials of great things done and suffered for the faith. No religious community could produce a list of men so variously distinguished. None had extended its operations over so vast a space, yet in none had there ever been such perfect unity of feeling and action. There was no region of the globe, no walk of speculative or of active life in which Jesuits were not to be found. They guided the councils of kings. They deciphered Latin inscriptions. They observed the motions of Jupiter's satellites. They published whole libraries, controversy, causeustry, history, treatises on optics, alakaic odes, additions of the fathers, madrigals, cachesisans and lampoons. The liberal education of youth passed almost entirely into their hands and was conducted by them with conspicuous ability. They appear to have discovered the precise point to which intellectual culture can be carried without risk of intellectual emaciation. enmity itself was compelled to own that, in the art of managing and forming the tender mind, they had no equals. Meanwhile, they assiduously and successfully cultivated the eloquence of the pulpit. With still greater assiduity and still greater success, they applied themselves to the ministry of the confessional. Throughout Catholic Europe, the secrets of every government and of almost every family of note were in their keeping. They glided from one Protestant country to another under innumerable disguises, as gay cavaliers, as simple rustics, as Puritan preachers. They wandered to countries which neither mercantile avidity nor liberal curiosity had ever impelled any stranger to explore. They were to be found in the garb of mandarins, superintending the observatory at Peking. They were to be found, spayed in hand, teaching the rudiments of agriculture to the savages of Paraguay. Yet whatever might be their residence, whatever might be their employment, their spirit was the same. Entire devotion to the common cause implicit obedience to the central authority. None of them had chosen his dwelling place or his vocation for himself. Whether the Jesuit should live under the arctic circle or under the equator, whether he should pass his life in arranging gems or collecting manuscripts at the Vatican, or in persuading naked barbarians in the southern hemisphere not to eat each other, were matters which he left with profound submission to the decision of others. If he was wanted at Lima, he was on the Atlantic in the next fleet. If he was wanted in Baghdad, he was toiling through the desert with the next caravan. If his ministry was needed in some country where his life was more insecure than that of a wolf, where it was a crime to harbour him, where the heads and quarters of his brethren, fixed in the public places, showed him what he had to expect, he went without remonstrance or hesitation to his doom. Nor is this heroic spirit yet extinct, when, in our own time, a new and terrible pestilence passed round the globe, when in some great cities fear had dissolved all the ties which hold society together, when the secular clergy had deserted their flocks, when medical succour was not to be purchased by gold, when the strongest natural affections had yielded to the love of life. Even then, the Jesuit was found by the pallet which bishop and curate, physician and nurse, father and mother, had deserted, bending over infected lips to catch the faint accents of confession, and holding up to the last, before the expiring penitent, the image of the expiring redeemer. But with the admirable energy, disinterestedness and self-devotion which were characteristic of the society, great vices were mingled. It was alleged, and not without foundation, that the ardent public spirit which made the Jesuit regardless of his ease, of his liberty and of his life, made him also regardless of truth and of mercy. That no means which could promote the interest of his religion, seemed to him unlawful, and that by the interest of his religion, he too often meant the interest of his society. It was alleged that, in the most atrocious plots recorded in history, his agency could be distinctly traced. That, constant only an attachment to the fraternity to which he belonged, he was in some countries the most dangerous enemy of freedom, and in others, the most dangerous enemy of order. The mighty victories which he boasted that he had achieved in the cause of the church were, in the judgment of many illustrious members of that church, rather apparent than real. He had indeed laboured with a wonderful show of success to reduce the world under her laws, but he had done so by relaxing her laws to suit the temper of the world. Instead of toiling to elevate human nature to the noble standard fixed by divine precept and example, he had lowered the standard till it was beneath the average level of human nature. He gloried in multitudes of converts who had been baptised in the remote regions of the East, but it was reported that from some of those converts the facts on which the whole theology of the gospel depends had been cunningly concealed, and that others were permitted to avoid persecution by bowing down before the images of false gods. While internally repeating, paters and eyes. Nor was it only in heathen countries that such arts were said to be practised. It was not strange that people of alt ranks, and especially of the highest ranks, crowded to the confessionals in the Jesuit temples. For from these confessionals, none went discontented away. There the priest was all things to all men. He showed just so much rigor as might not drive those who knelt at his spiritual tribunal to the Dominican or the Franciscan church. If he had to deal with a mind truly devout, he spoke in the saintly tones of the primitive fathers. But with that very large part of mankind who have religion enough to make them uneasy when they do wrong, and not religion enough to keep them from doing wrong, he followed a very different system. Since he could not reclaim them from guilt, it was his business to save them from remorse. He had at his command an immense dispensary of anodynes for wounded consciences. In the books of Causiastry which had been written by his brethren, and printed with the approbation of his superiors, were to be found doctrines consolatory to transgresses of every class. There the bankrupt was taught how he might, without sin, secrete his goods from his creditors. The servant was taught how he might, without sin, run off with his master's plate. The panda was assured that a Christian man might innocently earn his living by carrying letters and messages between married women and their gallants. The high-spirited and punctilious gentlemen of France were gratified by a decision in favour of dueling. The Italians accustomed to darker and baser modes of vengeance were glad to learn that they might, without any crime, shoot at their enemies from behind hedges. To deceit was given a license sufficient to destroy the whole value of human contracts and of human testimony. In truth, if society continued to hold together, if life and property enjoyed any security, it was because common sense and common humanity restrained men from doing what the society of Jesus assured them that they might with a safe conscience do. So strangely were good and evil intermixed in the character of these celebrated brethren, and the intermixture was the secret of their gigantic power. That power could never have belonged to mere hypocrites. It could never have belonged to rigid moralists. It was to be attained only by men sincerely enthusiastic in the pursuit of a great end, and at the same time unscrupulous as to the choice of means. From the first, the Jesuits had been bound by a peculiar allegiance to the Pope. Their mission had been, not less to quell all mutiny within the church, than to repel the hostility of her avowed enemies. Their doctrine was in the highest degree what has been called, on our side of the Alps, ultra-mountain, and differed almost as much from the doctrine of Bospuit, as from that of Luther. They condemned the Galician liberties, the claim of the ecumenical councils to control the Holy See, and the claim of the bishops to an independent commission from heaven. Lenez, in the name of the whole fraternity, proclaimed at Trent, amidst the applause of the creatures of Pius IV, and the murmurs of the French and Spanish prelates, that the government of the faithful had been committed by Christ to the Pope alone, that in the Pope alone all sacrodotal authority was concentrated, and that through the Pope alone priests and bishops derived whatever divine authority they possessed. During many years the union between the supreme pontiffs and the order continued unbroken. Had that union been still unbroken, when James II ascended the English throne, had the influence of the Jesuits, as well as the influence of the Pope, been exerted in favour of a moderate and constitutional policy, it is probable that the Great Revolution, which in a short time changed the whole state of European affairs, would never have taken place. But even before the middle of the 17th century, the society, proud of its services and confident in its strength, had become impatient of the yoke. A generation of Jesuits sprang up, who looked for protection and guidance rather to the court of France than to the court of Rome. And this disposition was not a little strengthened when Innocent XI was raised to the papal throne. The Jesuits were, at that time, engaged in a war to the death against an enemy whom they had at first disdained, but whom they at length had been forced to regard and reflect in fear. Just when their prosperity was at the height, they were braved by a handful of opponents, who had indeed no influence with the rulers of this world, but who were strong in religious faith and intellectual energy. Then followed along a strange, a glorious conflict of genius against power. The Jesuit called cabinets, tribunals, universities to his aid, and they responded to the call. Port Royal appealed, not in vain, to the hearts and to the understandings of millions. The dictators of Christendom found themselves, on a sudden, in the position of culprits. They were arraigned on the charge of having systematically debased the standard of evangelical morality for the purpose of increasing their own influence. And the charge was enforced in a manner which at once arrested the attention of the whole world. For the chief accuser was Blazé Pascal. His intellectual powers were such as have rarely been bestowed on any of the children of men, and the vehemence of the zeal which animated him was but too well proved by the cruel penances and vigils under which his macerated frame sank into an early grave. His spirit was a spirit of Saint Bernard, but the delicacy of his wit, purity, the energy, and the simplicity of his rhetoric had never been equalled except by the great masters of Attic eloquence. All Europe read and admired, laughed and wept. The Jesuits attempted to reply, but their feeble answers were received by the public with shouts of mockery. They wanted, it is true, no talent or accomplishment into which men can be drilled by elaborate discipline. But such discipline, though it may bring out the powers of ordinary minds, has a tendency to suffocate rather than to develop original genius. It was universally acknowledged that, in the literary contest, the Jansenists were completely victorious. To the Jesuits, nothing was left but to oppress the sect which they could not confute. Louis XIV was now their chief support. His conscience had, from boyhood, been in their keeping and he had learned from them to abhor Jansenism quite as much as he abhored Protestantism and very much more than he abhorred atheism. Innocent XI, on the other hand, leaned to the Jansenist opinions. The consequence was that the society found itself in a situation never contemplated by its founder. The Jesuits were estranged from the Supreme Pontiff, and they were closely allied with the Prince who proclaimed himself the champion of the Galician liberties and the enemy of ultra-mountain pretensions. Thus the order became in England an instrument of the designs of Louis and labored with a success which the Roman Catholics afterwards long and bitterly deplored to widen the breach between the King and the Parliament, to thwart the Nanceo, to undermine the power of the Lord Treasurer and to support the most desperate schemes of Tychonal. Thus on one side were the hides and the whole body of Tory Churchmen, Powis and all the most respectable noblemen and gentlemen of the King's own faith, the state's general, the House of Austria and the Pope. On the other side were a few Roman Catholic adventurers of broken fortune and tainted reputation, backed by France and by the Jesuits. The chief representative of the Jesuits at Whitehall was an English brother of the order who had, during some time, acted as vice-provincial who had been long regarded by James with peculiar favour and who had lately been made clerk of the closet. This man, named Edward Peter, was descended from an honourable family. His manners were courtly, his speech was flowing and plausible, but he was weak and vain, covetous and ambitious. Of all the evil counsellors who had access to the royal ear, or perhaps the largest part in the ruin of the House of Stuart. The obstinate and imperious nature of the King gave great advantages to those who advised him to be firm, to yield nothing and to make himself feared. One state maxim had taken possession of his small understanding and was not to be dislodged by reason. To reason, indeed, he was not in the habit of attending. His mode of arguing, if it is to be so called, was one not uncommon among dull and stubborn persons who are accustomed to be surrounded by their inferiors. He asserted a proposition and, as often as wiser people ventured respectfully to show that it was erroneous, he asserted it again. In exactly the same words and conceived that, by doing so, he at once disposed of all objections. I will make no concession, he often repeated. My father made concessions and he was beheaded. If it were true that concession had been fatal to Charles I a man of sense would have known that a single experiment is not sufficient to establish a general rule even in sciences much less complicated than the science of government. That, since the beginning of the world no two political experiments were ever made of which all the conditions were exactly alike and that the only way to learn civil prudence from history is to examine and compare an immense number of cases. But, if the single instance on which the king relied proved anything, it proved that he was in the wrong. There can be little doubt that if Charles had frankly made to the short parliament which met in the spring of 1640 but won half of the concessions which he made a few months later to the long parliament he would have lived and died a powerful king. On the other hand, there can be no doubt whatever that if he had refused to make any concession to the long parliament and had resorted to arms in defence of the ship money and of the star chamber he would have seen in the hostile ranks hide and forkland side by side with Hollis and Hampton. But in truth he would not have been able to resort to arms for nor twenty cavaliers would have joined his standard. It was to his large concessions alone that he owed the support of that great body of nobleman and gentleman who fought so long and so gallantly in his cause but it would have been useless to represent these things to James. Another fatal delusion had taken possession of his mind and was never dispelled till it had ruined him. He firmly believed that do what he might the members of the Church of England would act up to their principles. It had he knew being proclaimed from ten thousand pulpits it had been solemnly declared by the University of Oxford that even tyranny as frightful as that of the most depraved of the Caesars did not justify subjects in resisting the royal authority and hence he was weak enough to conclude that the whole body of Tory gentleman and clergyman would let him plunder, oppress and insult them without lifting an arm against him. It seemed strange that any man should have passed his fiftieth year without discovering that people sometimes do what they think wrong and James had only to look into his own heart for abundant proof that even a strong sense of religious duty will not always prevent frail human beings from indulging their passions in defiance of divine laws and at the risk of awful penalties. He must have been conscious that though he thought adultery sinful he was an adulterer but nothing could convince him that any man who professed to think rebellion sinful would ever in any extremity be a rebel. The Church of England was in his view a passive victim which he might without danger outrage and torture at his pleasure nor did he ever see his error till the universities were preparing to coin their plate for the purpose of supplying the military chest of his enemies until a bishop, long renowned for loyalty had thrown aside his cassock, girt on a sword and taken the command of a regiment of insurgents. In these fatal follies the King was artfully encouraged by a minister who had been an exclusionist and who still called himself a Protestant the Earl of Sunderland. The motives and conduct of this unprincipled politician have often been misrepresented. He was, in his own lifetime, accused by the Jacobites of having even before the beginning of the reign of James determined to bring about a revolution in favour of the Prince of Orange and of having, with that view, recommended a succession of outrages on the civil and ecclesiastical constitution of the realm. This idle story has been repeated down to our own day by ignorant writers. But no well-informed historian, whatever might be his prejudices, has condescended to adopt it, for it rests on no evidence whatever and scarcely any evidence would convince reasonable men that Sunderland deliberately incurred guilt and infamy in order to bring about a change by which it was clear that he could not possibly be a gainer and by which, in fact, he lost immense wealth and influence. Nor is it the smallest reason for resorting to so strange a hypothesis, for the truth lies on the surface, crooked as this man's course was, the law which determined it was simple. His conduct is to be ascribed due to the alternate influence of cupidity and fear on a mind highly susceptible of both these passions and quick-sighted rather than farsighted. He wanted more power and more money, more power he could obtain only at Rochester's expense, and the obvious way to obtain power at Rochester's expense was to encourage the dislike which the king felt for Rochester's moderate councils. Money could be most easily and most largely obtained from the court at Versailles and Sunderland was eager to sell himself to that court. He had no jovial generous vices, he cared little for wine or for beauty, but he desired riches with an ungovernable and insatiable desire. The passion for play raged in him without measure and had not been tamed by ruinous losses. His hereditary fortune was ample. He had long filled lucrative posts and had neglected no art which could make them more lucrative. But his ill luck at the hazy table was such that his estates were daily becoming more and more encumbered. In the hope of extricating himself from his embarrassments he betrayed to barrel on all the schemes averse to France which had been meditated in the English cabinet and hinted that a secretary of state could in such times render services for which it might be wise in Louis to pay largely. The ambassador told his master that six thousand guineas were the smallest gratification that could be offered to so important a minister. Louis consented to go as high as 25,000 crowns equivalent to more than 5,600 pounds sterling. It was agreed that Sunderland should receive this some yearly and that he should, in return, exit all his influence to prevent the reassembling of the parliament. He joined himself therefore to the Jesuitical cabal and made so dexterous in use of the influence of that cabal that he was appointed to succeed Halifax in the high dignity of Lord President without being required to resign from the far more active and lucrative post of secretary. He felt, however, that he could never hope to obtain paramount influence in the court while he was supposed to belong to the established church. All religions were the same to him. In private circles, indeed, he was in the habit of talking with profane contempt of the most sacred things. He therefore determined to let the king have the delight and glory of affecting a conversion. Some management, however, was necessary. No man is utterly without regard for the opinion of his fellow creatures and even Sunderland, though not very sensible to shame, flinched from the infamy of public apostasy. He played his part with rare adroitness to the world he showed himself as a Protestant. In the royal closet, he assumed the character of an earnest inquirer after truth who was almost persuaded to declare himself a Roman Catholic and who, while waiting for fuller illumination, was disposed to render every service in his power to the professors of the old faith. James, who was never very discerning and who, in religious matters, was absolutely blind, suffered himself, notwithstanding all that he had seen of human navery, of the navery of courtiers as a class and of the navery of Sunderland in particular, to be duped into the belief that divine grace had touched the most false and callous of human hearts. During many months, the wily minister continued to be regarded at court as a promising catechumen without exhibiting himself to the public in the character of a renegade. He early suggested to the king the expediency of appointing a secret committee of Roman Catholics to advise on all matters affecting the interests of their religion. This committee met sometimes at Chiffincher's lodgings and sometimes at the official apartments of Sunderland who, though still nominally a Protestant, was admitted to all its deliberations and soon obtained a decided ascendancy over the other members. Every Friday, the Jesuitical Cabal dined with the secretary. The conversation at table was free and the weaknesses of the prince whom the Confederates hoped to manage were not spared. To Peter, Sunderland promised a cardinal's hat to Castle Main, a splendid embassy to Rome, to Dover, a lucrative command in the guards and to Tyconel, high employment in Ireland. Thus bound together by the strongest ties of interest these men addressed themselves to the task of subverting the treasurer's power. There were two Protestant members of the cabinet who took no decided part in the struggle. The frieze was at this time tortured by a cruel internal malady which had been aggravated by intemperance. At a dinner which a wealthy alderman gave to some of the leading members of the government the Lord Treasurer and the Lord Chancellor were so drunk that they stripped themselves almost stark naked and were with difficulty prevented from climbing up a signpost to drink His Majesty's health. The pious treasurer escaped with nothing but the scandal of the debauch but the Chancellor brought on a violent fit of his complaint. His life was for some time thought to be in serious danger. James expressed great uneasiness at the thought of losing a minister who suited him so well and said, with some truth, that the loss of such a man could not be easily repaired. Geoffrey's, when he became convalescent, promised his support to both the contending parties and waited to see which of them would prove victorious. Some curious proofs of his duplicity are still extant. It has been already said that the two French agents who were then residents in London had divided the English court between them. Bon Rapos was constantly with Rochester and Barallon lived with Sunderland. Louis was informed in the same week by Bon Rapos that the Chancellor was entirely with the Treasurer and by Barallon that the Chancellor was in league with the Secretary. Goodolphin, cautious and taciturn, did his best to preserve neutrality. His opinions and wishes were undoubtedly with Rochester but his office made it necessary for him to be in constant attendance on the Queen and he was naturally unwilling to be on bad terms with her. There is indeed reason to believe that he regarded her with an attachment more romantic than often finds place in the hearts of veteran statesmen. And circumstances which is now necessary to relate had thrown her entirely into the hands of the Jesuitical cabal. End of Part 9 Chapter 6 Part 10 Riza De Quereville were among the finest women of their time. James, when young, had surrendered his liberty, descended below his rank and incurred the displeasure of his family for the coarse features of Anne Hyde. He had soon, to the great diversion of the whole court, been drawn away from his plain consort by a plain amistress, Arabella Churchill. His second wife, though 20 years younger than himself and of no unpleasing face or figure, had frequent reason to complain of his inconstancy. But of all his illicit attachments, the strongest was that which bound him to Catherine Sedley. This woman was the daughter of Sir Charles Sedley, one of the most brilliant and profligate wits of the Restoration. The licentiousness of his writings is not redeemed by much grace or vivacity but the charms of his conversation were acknowledged even by sober men who had no esteem for his character. To sit near him at the theatre and to hear his criticisms on a new play was regarded as a privilege. Dryden had done him the honour to make him a principal interlocutor in the dialogue on dramatic poise. The morals of Sedley were such as, even in that age, gave great scandal. He, on one occasion, after a wild revel, exhibited himself without a shred of clothing in the balcony of the tavern near Covent Garden and her argued the people who were passing in language so indecent and profane that he was driven in by a shower of brick bats, was prosecuted for a misdemeanor, was sentenced to a heavy fine and was reprimanded by the court of King's Bench in the most cutting terms. His daughter had inherited his abilities and his impudence. Personal charms she had none, with the exception of two brilliant eyes, the lustre of which, to men of delicate taste, seemed fierce and unfeminine. Her form was lean, her countenance haggard. Charles, though he liked her conversation, laughed at her ugliness and said that the priests must have recommended her to his brother by way of penance. She well knew that she was not handsome and gestured freely on her own homeliness. Yet, with strange inconstancy, she loved to adorn herself magnificently and to draw on herself much keen ridicule by appearing in the theatre and the ring, plastered, painted, plaid in Brussels lace, glittering with diamonds and affecting all the graces of 18. The nature of her influence over James is not easily to be explained. He was no longer young. He was a religious man. At least he was willing to make for his religion exertions and sacrifices from which the great majority of those who are called religious men would shrink. It seemed strange that any attractions should have drawn him into a course of life which he must have regarded as highly criminal. And in this case, none could understand where the attraction lay. Catherine herself was astonished by the violence of his passion. It cannot be my beauty, she said, for he must see that I have none. And it cannot be my wit, for he has not enough to know that I have any. At the moment of the king's accession, a sense of the new responsibility which lay on him made his mind for a time peculiarly open to religious impressions. He formed and announced many good resolutions, spoke in public with great severity of the empires and licentious manners of the age, and in private assured his queen and his confessor that he would see Catherine suddenly no more. He wrote to his mistress in treating her to quit the apartment which she occupied at Whitehall, and to go to a house in St James Square which had been splendidly furnished for her at his expense. Yet at the same time promised to allow her a large pension from his privy purse. Catherine, clever, strong-minded, intrepid, and conscious of her power, refused to stir. In a few months it began to be whispered that the services of Chiffinch were again employed and that the mistress frequently passed and repass through the private door through which Father Huddleston had borne the host to the bedside of Charles. The king's Protestant ministers had, it seemed, conceived a hope that their master's infatuation for this woman might cure him of the more pernicious infatuation which impelled him to attack their religion. She had all the talents which could qualify her to play on his feelings, to make a game of his scruples, to set before him in a strong light the difficulties and dangers into which he was running headlong. Rochester, the champion of the church, exerted himself to strengthen her influence. Ormond, who is popularly regarded as the personification of all that is pure and high-minded in the English Cavalier, encouraged the design. Even Lady Rochester was not ashamed to cooperate, and that in the very worst way. Her office was to direct the jealousy of the injured wife towards a young lady who was perfectly innocent. The whole court took notice of the coldness and rudeness with which the Queen treated the poor girl, on whom suspicion had been thrown. But the cause of Her Majesty's ill humour was a mystery. For a time the intrigue went on prosperously and secretly. Catherine often told the king plainly what the Protestant lords of the council only dared to hint in the most delicate phrases. His crown, she said, was at stake. The old dotard arundle and the blustering tyconel would lead him to his ruin. It is possible that her caresses might have done what the united exhortations of the lords and the commons of the House of Austria and the Holy See had failed to do. But for a strange mishap which changed the whole face of affairs, James, in a fit of fondness, determined to make his mistress Countess of Dorchester in her own right. Catherine saw all the peril of such a step and declined the invidious honour. Her lover was obstinate, and himself forced the patent into her hands. She at last accepted it on one condition, which shows her confidence in her own power and in his weakness. She made him give her a solemn promise, not that he would never quit her. But that, if he did so, he would himself announce his resolution to her and grant her one parting interview. As soon as the news of her elevation got abroad, the whole palace was in an uproar. The warm blood of Italy boiled in the veins of the Queen. Proud of her youth and of her charms, of her high rank and of her stainless chastity. She could not, without agonies of grief and rage, see herself deserted and insulted for such a rival. Rochester, perhaps remembering how patiently, after a short struggle, Catherine of Braganza had consented to treat the mistress of Charles with politeness, had expected that, after a little complaining and pouting, Mary of Moderna would be equally submissive. It was not so. She did not even attempt to conceal from the eyes of the world the violence of her emotions. Day after day, the courtiers who came to see her dine observed that the dishes were removed untasted from the table. She suffered the tears to stream down her cheeks unconcealed in the presence of the whole circle of ministers and envoys. To the King she spoke with wild vehemence. Let me go, she cried. You have made your woman a countess. Make her a queen. Put my crown on her head. Only let me hide myself in some convent where I may never see her more. Then, more soberly, she asked him how he reconciled his conduct with his religious professions. You are ready, she said, to put your kingdom to hazard for the sake of your soul, and yet you are throwing away your soul for the sake of that creature. Father Peter, on bended knees, seconded these remonstrances. It was his duty to do so, and his duty was not the less strenuously performed because it coincided with his interest. The King went on for a time, sinning and repenting. In his hours of remorse, his penances were severe. Mary treasured up to the end of her life and at her death bequeathed to the convent of Shalott, the scourge with which she had vigorously avenged her wrongs upon his shoulders. Nothing but Catherine's absence could put an end to this struggle between an ignoble love and an ignoble superstition. James wrote, imploring and commanding her to depart, he owned that he had promised to bid her farewell in person. But I know too well, he added, the power which you have over me. I have not strength of mind enough to keep my resolution if I see you. He offered her a yacht to convey her with all dignity and comfort to Flanders, and threatened that if she did not go quietly, she would be sent away by force. She at one time worked on his feelings by pretending to be ill. Then she assumed the heirs of a martyr and impudently proclaimed herself a sufferer for the Protestant religion. Then again she adopted the style of John Hampton. She defied the king to remove her. She would try the right with him, while the great charter and the habeas corpus act were the law of the land, she would live where she pleased. And Flanders, she cried, never. I have learned one thing from my friend the Duchess of Mazarin, and that is never to trust myself in a country where there are convents. At length she selected Ireland as the place of her exile, probably because the brother of her patron Rochester was viceroy there. After many delays she departed, leaving the victory to the queen. The history of this extraordinary intrigue would be imperfect if it were not added that there is still extant a religious meditation written by the treasurer with his own hand on the very same day on which the intelligence of his attempt to govern his master by means of a concubine was dispatched by Bon Rapau to Versailles. No composition of ken or leiton breathes a spirit of more fervent and exalted piety than this effusion. Hypocrisy cannot be suspected, for the paper was evidently meant only for the writer's own eye, and was not published till he had been more than a century in his grave. So much is history stranger than fiction, and so true is it that nature has caprices which art dares not imitate. A dramatist would scarcely venture to bring on the stage a grave prince in the decline of life, ready to sacrifice his crown in order to serve the interests of his religion indefatigable and making proselytites and yet deserting and insulting a wife who had youth and beauty for the sake of a profligate paramour who had neither. Still less, if possible, would a dramatist venture to introduce a statesman stooping to the wicked and shameful part of a procurer and calling in his wife to aid him in that dishonourable office, yet in his moments of leisure, retiring to his closet and there secretly pouring out his soul to his god in penitent tears and devout ejaculations. The treasurer soon found that in using scandalous means for the purpose of obtaining a laudable end he had committed not only a crime but a folly. The queen was now his enemy. She effected indeed to listen with civility while the hides excused their recent conduct as well as they could and she occasionally pretended to use her influence in their favour but she must have been more or less than a woman if she had really forgiven the conspiracy which had been formed against her dignity and her domestic happiness by the family of her husband's first wife. The Jesuits strongly represented to the king the danger which he had so narrowly escaped his reputation they said, his peace, his soul had been put in peril by the machinations of his prime minister. The Nuncio who would gladly have counteracted the influence of the violent party and cooperated with the moderate members of the cabinet could not honestly or decently separate himself on this occasion from Father Peter. James himself, when parted by the sea from the charms which so strongly fascinated him could not but regard with resentment and contempt those who had sought to govern him by means of his vices. What had passed must have had the effect of raising his own church in his esteem and of lowering the church of England. The Jesuits whom it was the fashion to represent as the most unsafe of spiritual guides as Sophists who refined away the whole system of evangelical morality as Sacophants who owed their influence chiefly to the indulgence with which they treated the sins of the great had reclaimed him from a life of guilt by rebukes as sharp and bold as those which David had heard from Nathan and Herod from the Baptist. On the other hand, zealous protestants whose favorite theme was the laxity of popish courteous and the wickedness of doing evil that good might come had attempted to obtain advantages for their own church in a way which all Christians regarded as highly criminal. The victory of the cabal of evil councillors was therefore complete. The King looked coldly on Rochester. The courtiers and foreign ministers soon perceived that the Lord Treasurer was Prime Minister only in name. He continued to offer his advice daily and had the mortification to find it daily rejected yet he could not prevail on himself to relinquish the outward show of power and the emoluments which he directly and indirectly derived from his great place. He did his best, therefore, to conceal his vexations from the public eye but his violent passions and his intemperate habits disqualified him from the part of December. His gloomy looks when he came out of the council chamber showed how little pleased he was with what had passed at the board and when the bottle had gone round freely, words escaped him which betrayed his uneasiness. He might indeed well be uneasy. In discreet and unpopular measures followed each other in rapid succession. All thoughts of returning to the policy of the Triple Alliance was abandoned. The King explicitly avowed to his ministers of those continental powers with which he had lately intended to ally himself that all his views had undergone a change and that England was still to be as she had been under his grandfather, his father and his brother of no account in Europe. I am in no condition, he said to the Spanish ambassador, to trouble myself about what passes abroad. It is my resolution to let foreign affairs take their course to establish my authority at home and to do something for my religion. A few days later he announced the same intentions to the state's general. From that time to the close of his ignomonious reign he made no serious effort to escape from vassalage, though to the last he could never hear without transports of rage that men called him a vassal. End of part 10 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information and to find out how you can volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recorded by Ian Bartholomew The History of England from the Excession of James II by Thomas Babington Macaulay Chapter 6 Part 11 The two events which proved to the public that Sunderland and Sunderland's party were victorious were the prorogation of the Parliament from February to May and the departure of Castlemane for Rome with the appointments of an ambassador of the highest rank. Hitherto all the business of the English government at the Papal Court had been transacted by John Carroll. This gentleman was known to his contemporaries as a man of fortune and fashion and as the author of two successful plays a tragedy in rhyme which had been made popular by the action and recitation of Betiton and a comedy which owes all its value to scenes borrowed from Molière. These pieces have long been forgotten but what Carroll could not do for himself has been done for him by a more powerful genius. Half a lion in the rape of the lock has made his name immortal. Carroll, who was, like all the other respectable Roman Catholics an enemy of violent courses, had acquitted himself of his delicate errand at Rome with good sense and good feeling. The business confided to him was well done but he assumed no public character and carefully avoided all display. His mission therefore put the government to scarcely any charge and excited scarcely any murmurs. His place was now most unwisely supplied by a costly and ostentatious embassy offensive in the highest degree to the people of England and by no means welcome to the court of Rome. Castlemane had it in charge to demand a cardinal's hat for his confederate Peter. About the same time the king began to show in an unequivocal manner the feeling which he really entertained towards the banished Huguenots. While he had still hoped to cajole his parliament into submission and to become the head of a European coalition against France he had effected to blame the revocation of the Edict of Nantes and to pity the unhappy men whom persecution had driven from their country. He had caused it to be announced that at every church in the kingdom a collection would be made under his sanction for their benefit. A proclamation on this subject had been drawn up in terms which might have wounded the pride of a sovereign less sensitive and vain glorious than Louis. But all was now changed. The principles of the Treaty of Dover were again the principles of the foreign policy of England. Ample apologies were therefore made for the discurty with which the English government had acted towards France in showing favour to the exiled Frenchmen. The proclamation which had displeased Louis was recalled. The Huguenot ministers were admonished to speak with reverence of their oppressor in their public discourses as they would answer us at their peril. James not only ceased to express commiseration for the sufferers but declared that he believed them to harbour the worst designs and owned that he had been guilty of an error in countenancing them. One of the most eminent of the refugees, John Claude, had published on the continent a small volume in which he described with great force the suffering of his brethren. Berylon demanded that some appropriate mark should be put on his book. James complied and in full counsel declared it to be his pleasure that Claude's libel should be burned by the hangman before the royal exchange. Even Jeffries was startled and ventured to represent that such a proceeding was without example, that the book was written in a foreign tongue, that it had been printed at a foreign press, that it related entirely to transactions which had taken place in a foreign country and that no English government had ever animadverted on such works. James would not suffer the question to be discussed. My resolution, he said, is taken. It has become the fashion to treat kings disrespectfully and they must stand by each other. One king should always take another's part and I have particular reasons for showing disrespect to the king of France. There was silence at the board. The order was forthwith issued and Claude's pamphlet was committed to the flames not without the deep murmurs of many who had always been reputed steady loyalists. The promised collection was long put off under various pretexts. The king would gladly have broken his word but it was pledged so solemnly that he could not for very shame retract. Nothing, however, which could cool the zeal of the congregations was omitted. It had been expected that according to the practice usual on such occasions the people would be exhorted to liberality from the pulpits but James was determined not to tolerate declamations against his religion and his ally. The Archbishop of Canterbury was therefore commanded to inform the clergy that they must merely read the brief and must not presume to preach on the sufferings of the French Protestants. Nevertheless the contributions were so large that after all deductions the sum of £40,000 was paid into the Chamber of London. Perhaps none of the munificent subscriptions of our own age has borne so great a proportion to the means of the nation. The king was bitterly mortified by the large amount of the collection which had been made in obedience to his call. He knew, he said, what all this liberality meant. It was mere wiggish spite to himself and his religion. He had already resolved that the money should be of no use to those whom the donors wished to benefit. He had been during some weeks in close communication with the French Embassy on this subject and had, with the approbation of the Court of Versailles, determined on a course which it is not very easy to reconcile with those principles of toleration to which he afterwards pretended to be attached. The refugees were zealous for the Calvinistic discipline and worship. James therefore gave orders that none should receive a crust of bread or a basket of coals who did not first take the sacrament according to the Anglican ritual. It is strange that this inhospitable rule should have been devised by a prince who affected to consider the Test Act as an outrage on the rites of conscience. For however unjustifiable it may be to establish a sacramental test for the purpose of ascertaining whether men are fit for civil or military office, it is surely much more unjustifiable to establish a sacramental test for the purpose of ascertaining whether, in their extreme distress, they are fit objects of charity. Nor had James the plea which may be urged in extinuation of the guilt of almost all other persecutors, for the religion which he commanded the refugees to profess on pain of being left to starve, was not his own religion. His conduct towards them was therefore less excusable than that of Louis, for Louis oppressed them in the hope of bringing them over from a damnedable heresy to the true church. James oppressed them only for the purpose of forcing them to apostatise from one damnedable heresy to another. Several commissioners, of whom the Chancellor was one, had been appointed to dispense the public arms. When they met for the first time, Jeffries announced the royal pleasure. The refugees, he said, were two generally enemies of monarchy and episcopy. If they wished for relief, they must become members of the Church of England and must take the sacrament from the hands of his chaplain. Many exiles who had come full of gratitude and hope to apply for succour, heard their sentence and went broken-hearted away. End of Part 11 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information and to find out how you can volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, recorded by Ian Bartholomew. The History of England from the Accession of James II by Thomas Babington Macaulay. Chapter 6, Part 12 May was now approaching, and that month had been fixed for the meeting of the Houses. But they were again prorogued to November. It was not strange that the King did not wish to meet them. For he had determined to adopt a policy which he knew to be in the highest degree odious to them. From his predecessors he had inherited two prerogatives, of which the limit had never been defined with strict accuracy, and which, if exerted without any limit, would of themselves have sufficed to overturn the whole polity of state and of the church. These were the dispensing power and the ecclesiastical supremacy. By means of the dispensing power, the King purposed to admit Roman Catholics, not merely to civil and military, but to spiritual offices. By means of the ecclesiastical supremacy, he hoped to make the Anglican clergy his instruments for the destruction of their own religion. This scheme developed itself by degrees. It was not thought safe to begin by granting the whole Roman Catholic body a dispensation from all statutes imposing penalties and tests, for nothing was more fully established than that such dispensation was illegal. The cabal had, in 1672, put forth a general declaration of indulgence. The commons, as soon as they met, had protested against it. Charles II had ordered it to be cancelled in his presence, and had, both by his own mouth and by a written message, assured the houses that the step which had caused so much complaint should never be drawn into precedent. It would have been difficult to find in all the inns of court a barrister of reputation to argue in defence of a prerogative which the sovereign, seated on his throne in full Parliament, had solemnly renounced a few years before. But it was not quite so clear that the King might not, on special grounds, grant exemptions to individuals by name. The first object of James, therefore, was to obtain from the courts of common law an acknowledgement that, to this extent at least, he possessed the dispensing power. But, though his pretensions were moderate when compared with those which he put forth a few months later, he soon found that he had against him almost a whole sense of Westminster Hall. Four of the judges gave him to understand that they could not, on this occasion, serve his purpose. And it is remarkable that all the four were violent Tories, and that among them were men who had accompanied Jeffries on the bloody circuit and who had consented to the death of Cornish and of Elizabeth Gaunt. Jones, the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, a man who had never before shrunk from any drudgery, however cruel or servile, now held in the Royal Closet language which might have become the lips of the purest magistrates in our history. He was plainly told that he must either give up his opinion or his place. For my place, he answered, I care little. I am old and worn out in the service of the crown. But I am mortified to find that your Majesty thinks me capable of giving a judgment which none but an ignorant or a dishonest man could give. I am determined, said the King, to have twelve judges who will be all of my mind as to this matter. Your Majesty, answered Jones, may find twelve judges of your mind, but hardly twelve lawyers. He was dismissed together with Montague, Chief Baron of the Exchequer, and two puny judges, Neville and Charlton. One of the new judges was Christopher Milton, younger brother of the Great Poet. Of Christopher little is known except that, in the time of the Civil War, he had been a royalist and that he now, in his old age, leaned towards popery. It does not appear that he was ever formally reconciled to the Church of Rome, but he certainly had scruples about communicating with the Church of England, and had therefore a strong interest in supporting the dispensing power. The King found his counsel as refractory as his judges. The first barrister who learned that he was expected to defend the dispensing power was the Solicitor General, Hennie Edge Finch. He peremptorily refused and was turned out of office on the following day. The Attorney General, Sawyer, was ordered to draw warrants authorizing members of the Church of Rome to hold benefices belonging to the Church of England. Sawyer had been deeply concerned in some of the harshest and most unjustifiable prosecutions of the age, and the wigs abhorred him as a man stained with the blood of Russell and Sidney, but on this occasion he showed no want of honesty or of resolution. Sir, he said, this is not merely to dispense with a statute, it is to annul the whole statute law from the accession of Elizabeth to this day. I dare not do it, and I implore your Majesty to consider whether such an attack upon the rites of the Church be in accordance with your late gracious promises. Sawyer would have been instantly dismissed as Finch had been, if the government could have found a successor. But this was no easy matter. It was necessary for the protection of the rites of the Crown that one at least of the Crown Lawyers should be a man of learning, ability and experience, and no such man was willing to defend the dispensing power. The Attorney General was therefore permitted to retain his place during some months. Thomas Powess, an insignificant man who had no qualification for high employment, except civility, was appointed Solicitor. The preliminary arrangements were now complete. There was a Solicitor General to argue for the dispensing power, and twelve judges to decide in favour of it. The question was therefore speedily brought to a hearing. Sir Edward Hales, a gentleman of Kent, had been converted to Popery in the days when it was not safe for any man of note openly to declare himself a Papist. He had kept his secret, and when questioned, had affirmed that he was a Protestant, with a solemnity which did little credit to his principles. When James had ascended the throne, disguise was no longer necessary. Sir Edward publicly apostatised, and was rewarded with the command of a regiment of foot. He had held his commission more than three months without taking the sacrament. He was therefore liable to a penalty of five hundred pounds, which an informer might recover by action of debt. A menial servant was employed to bring a suit for this sum in the court of King's Bench. Sir Edward did not dispute the facts alleged against him, but pleaded that he had let his patent authorising him to hold his commission, notwithstanding the Test Act. The plaintiff demurred, that is to say, admitted Sir Edward's plea to be true in fact, but denied that it was a sufficient answer. Thus was raised a simple issue of law to be decided by a court. A barrister, who was notoriously a tool of the government, appeared for the mock plaintiff, and made some feeble objections to the defendant's plea. The new Solicitor-General replied, The Attorney-General took no part in the proceedings. Judgment was given by the Lord Chief Justice Sir Edward Herbert. He announced that he had submitted the question to all the twelve judges, and that, in the opinion of eleven of them, the King might lawfully dispense with penal statutes in particular cases, and for special reasons of grave importance. The single dissident, Baron Street, was not removed from his place. He was a man of morals so bad that his own relations shrank from him, and that the Prince of Orange, at the time of the Revolution, was advised not to see him. The character of Street makes it impossible to believe that he would have been more scrupulous than his brethren. The character of James makes it impossible to believe that a refractory baron of the Exchequer would have been permitted to retain his post. There can be no reasonable doubt that the dissenting judge was, like the plaintiff and the plaintiff's counsel, acting collusively. It was important that there should be a great preponderance of authority in favour of the dispensing power, yet it was important that the bench, which had been carefully packed for the occasion, should appear to be independent. One judge, therefore, the least respectable of the twelve, was permitted, or more probably commanded, to give his voice against the prerogative. The power which the courts of law had thus recognised was not suffered to lie idle. Within a month, after the decision of the King's bench had been pronounced, four Roman Catholic lords were sworn of the privy counsel. Two of these, Powis and Belazy, were of the moderate party, and probably took their seats with reluctance and with many sad forebodings. The other two, Arundel and Dover, had no such misgivings. The dispensing power was, at the same time, employed for the purpose of enabling Roman Catholics to hold ecclesiastical preferment. The new solicitor readily drew the warrants in which Sawyer had refused to be concerned. One of these warrants was in favour of a wretch named Edward Sklater, who had two livings which he was determined to keep at all costs and through all changes. He administered the sacrament to his parishioners according to the rites of the Church of England on Palm Sunday, 1686. On Easter Sunday, only seven days later, he was at Mass. The royal dispensation authorised him to retain the emoluments of his benefices. To the remonstrances of the patrons for whom he had received his preferment, he replied in terms of insolent defiance, and, while the Roman Catholic cause prospered, put forth an absurd treatise on the defence of his apostasy. But a very few weeks after the revolution, a great congregation assembled at St Mary's in the Savoy to see him receive the gain in the bosom of the Church which he had deserted. He read his recantation with tears flowing from his eyes and pronounced a bitter invective against the Popish priests whose arts had seduced him. Scarcely less infamous was the conduct of Obadiah Walker. He was an aged priest of the Church of England and was well known in the University of Oxford as a man of learning. He had in the late reign been suspected of leaning towards Popary, but had outwardly conformed to the established religion and had at length been chosen Master of University College. Soon after the accession of James, Walker determined to throw off the disguise which he had hitherto worn. He absented himself from the public worship of the Church of England and with some fellows and undergraduates whom he had perverted, heard mass daily in his own apartments. One of the first acts performed by the new Solicitor General was to draw up an instrument which authorized Walker and his proselytites to hold their benefices notwithstanding their apostasy. Builders were immediately employed to turn two sets of rooms into an oratory. In a few weeks, the Roman Catholic rites were publicly performed in University College. A Jesuit was quartered there as chaplain. A press was established there under royal licence for the printing of Roman Catholic tracts. During two years and a half, Walker continued to make war on Protestantism with all the ranker of a renegade. But when fortune turned, he showed that he wanted the courage of a martyr. He was brought to the bar of the House of Commons to answer for his conduct and was base enough to protest that he had never changed his religion, that he had never cordially approved of the doctrines of the Church of Rome and that he had never tried to bring any other person within the pale of that church. It was hardly worthwhile to violate the most sacred obligations of law and of plighted faith for the purpose of making such converts as these. In a short time, the king went a step further. Sklater and Walker had only been permitted to keep after they became papists the preferment which had been bestowed on them while they passed for Protestants to confer a high office in the established church on an avowed enemy of that church was a far bolder violation of the laws and of the royal word. But no course was too bold for James. The denary of Christ's church became vacant. That office was, both in dignity and in emolument, one of the highest in the University of Oxford. The dean was charged with the government of a greater number of youths of high connections and of great hopes then could then be found in any other college. He was also the head of a cathedral. In both characters it was necessary that he should be a member of the Church of England. Nevertheless, John Maisie, who was notoriously a member of the Church of Rome and who had not one single recommendation except that he was a member of the Church of Rome, was appointed by virtue of the dispensing power and soon within the walls of Christ's church an altar was decked at which Mass was daily celebrated. To the nuncio, the king said that what had been done at Oxford should very soon be done at Cambridge. End of Part 12. Chapter 6, Part 13. He was encumbered with a wife. I wished, the king said to Ada, to appoint an avowed Catholic, but the time has not come. Parker is well inclined to us. He is one of us in feeling and by degrees he will bring round his clergy. The Bishopric of Chester, vacant by the death of John Pearson, a great name both in philology and in divinity, was bestowed on Thomas Cartwright a still vileer sycophant than Parker. The Archbishopric of York remained several years vacant, as no good reason could be found for leaving so important a place unfilled, meant suspected that the nomination was delayed only till the king could venture to place the miter on the head of an avowed papist. It is indeed highly probable that the Church of England was saved from this outrage by the good sense and good feeling of the Pope. Without special dispensation from Rome, no Jesuit could be a bishop, and innocent could not be induced to grant such a dispensation to Petra. James did not make any secret to the established church all the powers which he possessed as her head. He plainly said that by wise dispensation of providence the act of supremacy would be the means of healing the fatal breach which it had caused. Henry and Elizabeth had usurped a dominion which rightfully belonged to the Holy See. That dominion had, in the course of succession, descended to an orthodox prince and would be held by him in trust of the Holy See. He was authorized by law to repress spiritual abuses which he would repress should be the liberty which the Anglican clergy assumed of defending their own religion and of attacking the doctrines of Rome. But he was met by a great difficulty. The ecclesiastical supremacy which had devolved on him was by no means the same great and terrible prerogative which Elizabeth James I and Charles I had possessed. The enactment which had next to the crown an almost boundless visitatorial authority over the Church though it had never been formally repealed had really lost a great part of its force. The substantive law remained but remained unaccompanied by any formidable sanction or by any efficient system of procedure and was therefore little more than a dead letter. The statute which had restored to Elizabeth the spiritual dominion assumed by her father and resigned by her sister contained a clause authorizing the sovereign to constitute a tribunal which might investigate reform and punish all ecclesiastical delinquencies. Under the authority given by this clause the Court of High Commission was created. That court was during many years the terror of nonconformists and under the harsh administration of law became an object of fear and hatred even to those who most loved the established church. When the long parliament had met the High Commission was generally guarded as the most grievous of many grievances under which the nation labored. An act was therefore somewhat hastily passed which not only took away from the crown the power to appoint visitors to superintend the church but abolished all ecclesiastical courts without distinction. After the restoration the Cavaliers who filled the House of Commons zealous as they were for the prerogative still remembered with bitterness the tyranny of the High Commission and were by no means disposed to revive an institution so odious. They had the same time thought and not without reason that the statute which had swept away all the court's Christian of the realm without providing any substitute to grave objection. They accordingly repealed that statute with the exception of the part which related to the High Commission. Thus the Archdiagonal Courts, the Consistitory Courts, the Court of Arches, the Court of Peculiars and the Court of Delegates were revived but the enactment by which Elizabeth and her successor had been empowered to appoint commissioners with visitatorial authority over the church was not only not revived but was declared with the utmost strength of language to be completely abrogated. It is therefore as clear as any point of constitutional law can be that James II was not competent to appoint a commission with power to visit and govern the church of England. But if this were so, it was to little purpose that the act of supremacy and high sounding words empowered him to amend what was amiss in that church. Nothing but a machinery as stringent as that which the long Parliament had destroyed could force the Anglican clergy to become his agents for the destruction of the Anglican doctrine and discipline. He therefore, as early as the month of April 1686, determined to create a new Court of High Commission. This design was not immediately executed. It encountered the opposition of every minister who was not devoted to France and to the Jesuits. It was regarded by lawyers as an outrageous violation of the law and by churchmen as a direct attack upon the church. Perhaps the contest might have lasted longer but for an event which wounded the pride and inflamed the rage of the king. He had a supreme ordinary put forth directions charging the clergy of the establishment to abstain from touching in their discourses on controverted points of doctrine. Thus while sermons in defense of the Roman Catholic religion were preached on every Sunday and holiday within the precincts of the royal palaces, the church of the state, the church of the great majority of the nation was forbidden to explain and vindicate her own principles. The spirit of the whole clerical order rose against this injustice. William Sherlock, a divine of distinguished abilities who had written with sharpness against wigs and dissenters had been rewarded by the government with the mastership of the temple and with a pension, was one of the first who incurred the royal displeasure. His pension was stopped and he was severely reprimanded. John Sharp, Dean of Norwich and Rector of St. Giles in the fields soon gave still greater offense. He was a man of learning and a fervent piety, a preacher of great fame and an exemplary parish priest. In politics he was like most of his brethren, a Tory and had just been appointed one of the royal chaplains. He received an anonymous letter which purported to come from one of his parishioners who had been staggered by the arguments of the Roman Catholic theologians and who was anxious to be satisfied that the Church of England was a branch of the True Church of Christ. No divine, not utterly lost of all sense of religious duty and of professional honor could refuse to answer such a call. On the following Sunday, Sharp delivered an animated discourse against the high pretensions of the Sea of Rome. Some of his expressions were exaggerated, distorted and carried by tail-bearers to Whitehall. It was falsely said he had spoken with contumely of the theological disquisitions which had been found in the strong box of the late King in which the present King had published. Compton, the Bishop of London, received orders from Sunderland to suspend Sharp till the royal pleasure should be further known. The Bishop was in great perplexity. His recent conduct in the House of Lords had given deep offense to the court. Already his name had been struck off the list of privy counselors. Already he had been dismissed from his office in the royal chapel. He was unwilling to give fresh provocation, but the act which he was directed to perform was a judicial act. He felt that it was unjust and he was assured by the best advisers that it was also illegal to inflict punishment without giving any opportunity for defense. He accordingly, in the humblest terms, represented his difficulties to the King and privately requested Sharp not to appear in the pulpit Reasonable as were Compton's scruples, obsequious as were his apologies, James was greatly incensed. What insolence to plead either natural justice or positive law in opposition to an express command of the sovereign Sharp was forgotten. The Bishop became a mark for the whole vengeance of the government. The King felt more painfully than ever the want of that tremendous engine which had once coerced refractory ecclesiastics. He probably knew that for a few angry words uttered against his father's government, Bishop Williams had been suspended by High Commission from all ecclesiastical dignities and functions. The design of reviving that formidable tribunal was pushed on more eagerly than ever. In July, London was alarmed by the news that the King had in direct defiance of two acts of parliament drawn in the strongest terms entrusted the whole government of the church to seven commissioners. The words in which the jurisdiction of these officers was described were loose and might be stretched to almost any extent. All colleges and grammar schools, even those founded by the liberality of private benefactors, were placed under the authority of the new board. All who depended for bread on situations in the church or in academic institutions, from the primate down to the youngest curate, from the vice chancellors of Oxford and Cambridge down to the humblest pedagogue who taught Cordirius worth the royal mercy. If any one of those many thousands was suspected of doing or saying anything distasteful to the government, the commissioners might cite him before them. In their mode of dealing with him, they were fettered by no rules. They were themselves at once prosecutors and judges. The accused party was furnished with no copy of the charge. He was examined and cross-examined. If his answers did not give satisfaction, he was liable to be suspended from his office, to be ejected from it, or to be pronounced incapable of holding any preferment in future. If he were contumacious, he might be excommunicated, or in other words be deprived of all civil rights and imprisoned for life. He might also, at the direction of the court, be loaded with all costs of the proceeding, by which he had been reduced to beggary. No appeal was given. The commissioners were directed to execute their office notwithstanding any law which might be, or might seem to be, inconsistent with these regulations. Lastly, lest any person should doubt that it was intended to revive that terrible court from which the long parliament had freed the nation, the new tribunal was directed to use a seal bearing the advice and the same superscription with the seal of the old High Commission. This ends Part 13. The Chief Commissioner was the Chancellor. His presence and dissent were necessary to every proceeding. All men knew how unjustly, insolently and barbarously he had acted in courts where he had been, to a certain extent, restrained by the known laws of England. It was, therefore, not difficult to foresee how he would conduct himself in a situation where he was at entire liberty to make forms of procedure and rules of evidence for himself. Of the other six commissioners three were prelates and three laymen. The name of Archbishop Sankroth stood first, but he was fully convinced that the court was illegal, that all its judgments would be null and that by sitting in it he should incur a serious responsibility. He, therefore, determined not to comply with the royal mandate. He did not, however, act on this occasion with that courage and sincerity which he showed when driven to extremity two years later. He begged to be excused on the plea of business and ill health. The other members of the Board, he added, were men of too much ability to need his assistance. These disingenuous apologies ill-became the primate of all England at such a crisis, nor did they avert the royal displeasure. Sankroth's name was not indeed struck out of the list of privy councillors, but to the bitter mortification of the friends of the church he was no longer summoned on council days. If, said the King, he is too sick or too busy to go to the commission, it is a kindness to relieve him from attendance at council. The government found no similar difficulty with Nathaniel Crue, bishop of the great and opulent sea of Durham, a man nobly born, raised so high in his profession that he could scarcely wish to rise higher, but mean, vain, and cowardly. He had been made Dean of the Chapel Royal when the Bishop of London was banished from the palace. The honour of being an ecclesiastical commissioner turned Crue's head. It was to no purpose that some of his friends represented to him the risk which he ran by sitting in an illegal tribunal. He was not ashamed to answer that he could not live out of the royal smile and exultingly expressed his hope that his name would appear in history, a hope which has not altogether been disappointed. Thomas Spratt, Bishop of Rochester, was the third clerical commissioner. He was a man to whose talents posterity is scarcely done justice. Unhappily for his fame it has been usual to print his verses in collections of the British poets and those who judge of him by his verses must consider him as a servile imitator who, without one spark of Cowley's admirable genius mimicked whatever was least commendable in Cowley's manner. But those who are acquainted with Spratt's prose writings will form a very different estimate of his powers. He was indeed a great master of our language and possessed at once the eloquence of the orator, of the controversialist, and of the historian. His moral character might have passed with little censure had he belonged to a less sacred profession. For the worst that can be said of him is that he was indolent, luxurious and worldly. But such failings, though not commonly regarded as very heinous, in men of secular callings, are scandalous in apprelate. The Archbishopric of York was vacant, Spratt hoped to obtain it and therefore accepted a seat at the ecclesiastical board. But he was too good-natured a man to behave harshly and he was too sensible a man not to know that he might at some future time be called to a serious account by a Parliament. He therefore, though he consented to act, tried to do as little mischief and to make as few enemies as possible. The three remaining commissioners were the Lord Treasurer, the Lord President, and the Chief Justice of the King's Bench. Rochester, disapproving and murmuring, consented to serve. Much as he had to endure at the court, he could not bear to quit it. Much as he loved the Church, he could not bring himself to sacrifice for her sake his white staff, his patronage, his salary of £8,000 a year and the far larger indirect emollience of his office. He excused his conduct to others and perhaps to himself by pleading that, as a commissioner, he might be able to prevent much evil and that if he refused to act some person less attached to the Protestant religion would be found to replace him. Sunderland was the representative of the Jesuitical cabal. Herbert's recent decision on the question of dispensing power seemed to prove that he would not flinch from any service which the King might require. As soon as the commission had been opened the Bishop of London was cited before the new tribunal. He appeared. I demand of you, said Jeffries, a direct and positive answer. Why did not you suspend Dr. Sharp? The Bishop requested a copy of the commission in order that he might know by what authority he was thus interrogated. If you mean, said Jeffries, to dispute our authority I shall take another course with you. As to the commission, I do not doubt that you have seen it. At all events you may see it in any coffee-house for a penny. The insolence of the Chancellor's reply appears to have shocked the other commissioners and he was forced to make some awkward apologies. He then returned to the point from which he had started. This, he said, is not a court in which written charges are exhibited. Our proceedings are summary and by word of mouth. The question is a plain one. Why did you not obey the King? With some difficulty Compton obtained a brief delay and the assistance of counsel. When the case had been heard it was evident to all men that the Bishop had done only what he was bound to do. The Treasurer, the Chief Justice and Sprat were for acquittal. The King's wrath was moved. It seemed that his ecclesiastical commission would fail him as his Tory Parliament had failed him. He offered Rochester a simple choice to pronounce the Bishop guilty or to quit the Treasury. Rochester was base enough to yield. Compton was suspended from all spiritual functions and the charge of his great diocese was committed to his judges, Sprat and crew. He continued, however, to reside in his palace and to receive his revenues. For it was known that had any attempt been made to deprive him of his temporalities he would have put himself under the protection of the common law and Herbert himself declared that at common law judgment must be given against the crown. This consideration induced the King to pause. Only a few weeks had elapsed since he had packed the courts of Westminster Hall in order to obtain a decision in favour of his dispensing power. He now found that, unless he packed them again, he should not be able to obtain a decision in favour of the proceedings of his ecclesiastical commission. He determined, therefore, to postpone for a short time the confiscation of the freehold property of refractory clergymen. End of Part 14 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information and to find out how you can volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recorded by Gemma Blythe The History of England from the Accession of James II by Thomas Babington Macaulay Chapter 6 Part 15 The temper of the nation was indeed such as might well make him hesitate during some month's discontent had been steadily and rapidly increasing. The celebration of the Roman Catholic worship had long been prohibited by active parliament. During several generations no Roman Catholic clergyman had dared to exhibit himself in any public place with the badges of his office. Against the regular clergy and against the restless and subtle Jesuits by name had been enacted a succession of rigorous statutes. Every Jesuit who set foot in this country was liable to be hanged, drawn and quartered. A reward was offered for his detection. He was not allowed to take advantage of the general rule that men are not bound to accuse themselves. Whoever was suspected of being a Jesuit might be interrogated and, if he refused to answer, might be sent to prison for life. These laws, though they had not except when there was supposed to be some peculiar danger, been strictly executed and though they had never prevented the Jesuits from resorting to England had made disguise necessary. But all disguise was now thrown off. Injudicious members of the King's Church, encouraged by him, took a pride in defying statutes which were still of undoubted validity and feelings which had a stronger hold of the national mind than at any form of period. Roman Catholic chapels rose all over the country. Cowals, girls of rope and strings of beads constantly appeared in the streets an astonished of population. The oldest of whom had never seen a conventional garb except on the stage. A convent rode at Glefinwell on the site of the ancient cloister of St. John. The Franciscans occupied a mansion in Lincoln's in-fields. The Garmilites were quartered in the city. A society of Benedictine monks were lodged in St. James's Palace. In the Savoy, a spacious house including a church and a school was built for the Jesuits. The skill and care with which those fathers had during several generations conducted the education of youth had drawn forth reluctant praises from the wisest Protestants. Bacon had pronounced the mode of instruction followed in the Jesuit colleges to be the best yet known in the world and had warmly expressed his regret that so admirable a system of intellectual and moral discipline should be subservient to the interests of a corrupt re-diligent. It is not improbable that the New Academy in the Savoy might, under royal patronage, prove a formidable rival to the great foundations of Eden, Westminster and Winchester. Indeed, soon after the school was opened the glasses consisted of four hundred boys, about one-half of whom were Protestants. The Protestant pupils were not required to attend mass, but there could be no doubt that the influence of able preceptors devoted to the Roman Catholic Church and versed in all the arts which win the confidence and affection of youth would make many converts. These things produced great excitement among the populace, which is always more moved by what impresses the senses than by what is addressed to the reason. Thousands of rude and ignorant men to whom the dispensing power and the ecclesiastical commission were words without a meaning saw with dismay and indignation a Jesuit college rising on the banks of the Thames, friars in hoods and gowns walking in the Strand and crowds of devotees pressing in at the doors of temples where homage was paid to graven images. Riots broke out in several parts of the country. At Coventry and Wooster the Roman Catholic worship was violently interrupted. At Bristol the rabble, countenanced it was said by the magistrates, exhibited a profane and indecent pageant in which the Virgin Mary was represented by a buffoon and in which a mock host was carried in procession. The garrison was called out to disperse the mob. The mob then and ever since one of the fiercest in the kingdom resisted. Blows were exchanged and serious hurts inflicted. The agitation was great in the capital and greater in the city, properly so called than at Westminster. For the people of Westminster had been accustomed to see among them the private chapels of Roman Catholic ambassadors. But the city had not within living memory been polluted by any idolatrous exhibition. Now, however, the resident of the Elector Palatine encouraged by the King fitted up a chapel in Lime Street. The heads of the corporation, though men selected for office on account of their known tourism, protested against this proceeding which, as they said, the ablest gentleman of the long robe regarded as illegal. The Lord Mayor was ordered to appear before the Privy Council. Take heed what you do, said the King. Obey me and do not trouble yourself either about gentlemen of the long robe or gentlemen of the short robe. The Chancellor took up the word and reprimanded the unfortunate magistrate with the genuine eloquence of the Old Bailey Bar. The chapel was opened. All the neighbourhood was soon in commotion. Great crowds assembled in Jeepside to attack the new mass house. The priests were insulted. A crucifix was taken out of the building and set up on a parish pump. The Lord Mayor came to quell the tunnel but was received with cries of no wooden guards. The train buns were ordered to disperse the crowd but they shared in the popular feeling and murmurs were heard from the ranks we cannot in conscience fight for popery. The Elector Palatine was, like James, a sincere and zealous Catholic and was, like James, the ruler of the Protestant people. But the two princes resembled each other little in temper and understanding. The Elector had promised to respect the rights of the church which he found established in his dominions. He had strictly kept his word and had not suffered himself to be provoked to any violence by the indiscretion of preachers who, in their antipathy to his faith, occasionally forgot the respect which they owed to this person. He learned with concern the great offence and been given to the people of London by the injudicious act of his representative and, much to his honor, declared that he would forgo the privilege to which, as a sovereign prince, he was entitled rather than in danger the peace of a great city. I too, he wrote to James, have protest in subjects and I know with how much caution and delicacy it is necessary that a Catholic prince so situated should act. James, instead of expressing gratitude for this humane and considered conduct, turned the letter into ridicule before the foreign ministers. It was determined that the elector should have a chapel in the city whether he would or not and that, if the train-bands refused to do their duty, their place should be supplied by the gods. The effect of these disturbances on trade was serious. The Dutch minister informed the state's general that the business of the exchange was at a stand. The commissioners of the customs reported to the king that during the month which followed the opening of Lime Street Chapel the receipt in the port of the Thames had fallen off by some thousands of pounds. Several aldermen who, though zealous, royalists appointed under the new charter were deeply interested in the commercial prosperity of their city and love, neither popery nor martial law tended their resignations. But the king was resolved not to yield. He formed a camp on Owens Low Heath and collected there within a circumference of about two miles and a half fourteen battalions of foot and thirty-two squadrons of horse amounting to thirteen thousand fighting men twenty-six pieces of artillery and many wanes laden with arms and ammunition were dragged from the tower through the city to Owenslow. The Londoners saw this great force assembled in their neighborhood with a tarot which familiarity soon diminished. A visit to Owenslow became their favorite amusement on holidays. The camp presented the appearance of a vast fair mingled with the musketeers and dragoons a multitude of fine gentlemen and ladies from Soho Square sharpers and painted women from white friars invalids and sedans monks in hoods and gowns lackeys in rich liveries peddlers, orange girls mischievous apprentices and gaping clowns was constantly passing and re-passing through the long lanes of tents from some pavilions were the noises of drunken revelry from others the curses of gamblers in truth the place was merely a gay suburb of the capital the king, as was amply proved two years later had greatly miscalculated