 History of England, Chapter 8, Part 8. None of the English nobles enjoyed a larger measure of public favour than Charles Sackville, Earl of Dorset. He was indeed a remarkable man. In his youth he had been one of the most notorious libertines of that wild time which followed the restoration. He had been the terror of the city watch, had passed many nights in the roundhouse, and had at least once occupied a cell in Newgate. His passion for Betty Morris and for Nell Gwyn, who called him her child's the first, had given no small amusement and scandal to the town. Yet in the midst of follies and vices his courageous spirit, his fine understanding, and his natural goodness of heart had been conspicuous. Men said that the excesses in which he indulged were common between him and the whole race of gay young cavaliers, but that his sympathy with human suffering, and the generosity with which he made reparation to those whom his freaks had injured, were all his own. His associates were astonished by the distinction which the public made between him and them. He may do what he chooses, said Wilmot. He is never in the wrong. The judgment of the world became still more favourable to Dorset when he had been sobered by time and marriage. His graceful manners, his brilliant conversation, his soft heart, his open hand, were universally praised. No day past it was said in which some distressed family had not reason to bless his name. And yet, with all his good nature, such was the keenness of his wit that scoffers whose sarcasm all the time feared stood in craven fear of the sarcasm of Dorset. All political parties esteemed and caressed him, but politics were not much to his taste. Had he been driven by necessity to exert himself, he would probably have risen to the highest posts in the state. But he was born to rank so high and wealth so ample that many of the motives which impelled men to engage in public affairs were wanting to him. He took just so much part in parliamentary and diplomatic business as sufficed to show that he wanted nothing but inclination to rival Danby and Sunderland, and turned away to pursuits which pleased him better. Like many other men who, with great natural abilities, are constitutionally and habitually indolent, he became an intellectual voluptuary, and a master of all those pleasing branches of knowledge which can be acquired without severe application. He was allowed to be the best judge of painting, of sculpture, of architecture, of acting that the court could show. On questions of polite learning his decisions were regarded at all the coffee-houses as without appeal. More than one clever play, which had failed on the first representation, was supported by his single authority against the whole clamour of the pit, and came forth successful from the second trial. The delicacy of his taste in French composition was extolled by Saint-Evremond and Lavontaine. Such a patron of letters, England, had never seen. His bounty was bestowed with equal judgment and liberality, and was confined to no sect or faction. Men of genius, estranged from each other by literary jealousy or by deference of political opinion, joined in acknowledging his impartial kindness. Dryden owned that he had been saved from ruin by Dorset's princely generosity. Yet Montague and Pryor, who had keenly satirised Dryden, were introduced by Dorset into public life, and the best comedy of Dryden's mortal enemy, Shadwell, was written at Dorset's country seat. The munificent earl, might, if such had been his wish, have been the rival of those of whom he was content to be the benefactor. For the verses which he occasionally composed, unstudied as they are, exhibit the traces of a genius which, assiduously cultivated, would have produced something great. In the small volume of his works may be found songs which have the easy vigor of suckling, and little satires which sparkle with wit as splendid as that of Butler. Dorset was Lord Lieutenant of Sussex, and to Sussex the Board of Regulators looked with great anxiety, for in no other county Cornwall and Wilcher accepted were there so many small boroughs. He was ordered to repair to his post. No person who knew him expected that he would obey. He gave such an answer as became him, and was informed that his services were no longer needed. The interest with which his many noble and amiable qualities inspired, was heightened when it was known that he had received by the post an anonymous billet telling him that, if he did not promptly comply with the king's wishes, all his wit and popularity would not save him from assassination. A similar warning was sent to Shresbury. Threatening letters were then much more rare than they afterwards became. It is therefore not strange that the people excited as they were should have been disposed to believe that the best and noblest Englishmen were rarely marked out for popish daggers. Just when these letters were the talk of all London, the mutilated corpse of a noted Puritan was found in the streets. It was soon discovered that the murderer had acted from no religious or political motive, but the first suspicions of the populace fell on the papists. The mangled remains were carried in procession to the house of the Jesuits in the Savoy, and during a few hours the fear and rage of the populace was scarcely less violent than on the day when Godfrey was born to his grave. The other dismissions must be more concisely related. The Duke of Somerset, whose regiment had been taken from him some months before, was now turned out of the Lord left tenancy of the East Riding of Yorkshire. The North Riding was taken from Vaikhaun Fokkenberg, Shropshire from Vaikhaun Newport, and Lancashire from the Earl of Derby, grandson of that gallant cavalier who had faced death so bravely, both on the field of battle and on the scaffold for the House of Steward. The Earl of Pembroke, who had recently served the crown with fidelity and spirit against mummoth, was displaced in Wiltshire, the Earl of Husband in Nestershire, the Earl of Bridgewater in Buckinghamshire, the Earl of Thannett in Cumberland, the Earl of Northampton in Warwickshire, the Earl of Abidna in Oxfordshire, and the Earl of Skarsdale in Derbyshire. Skarsdale was also deprived of a regiment of cavalry and of an office in the household of the Princess of Denmark. She made a struggle to retain his services and yielded only to a peremptory command of her father. The Earl of Gainesborough was also rejected, not only from the left hand at sea of Hampshire, but also from the Government of Portsmouth and the Rangership of the New Forest, two places for which he had, only a few months before, given five thousand pounds. The King could not find Lords of Great Note, or indeed Protestant Lords of any sort, who would accept the vacant offices. It was necessary to assign two shires to Jeffries, a new man whose landed property was small, and two to Preston, who was not even an English peer. The other counties which had been left without Governors were entrusted with solely an exception to known Roman Catholics, or to courtiers who had secretly promised the King to declare themselves Roman Catholics as soon as they could do so with prudence. At length the new machinery was put into action, and soon from every corner of the realm arrived the news of complete and hopeless failure. The catechism by which the Lords left Hennet had been directed to test the sentiments of the country gentlemen consisted of three questions. Every magistrate and deputy left Hennet was to be asked first whether, if he should be chosen to serve in Parliament, he would vote for a Bill, framed on the principles of the Declaration of Indulgence, secondly whether as an elector he would support candidates who would engage to vote for such a Bill, and thirdly whether in his private capacity he would aid the King's benevolent designs by living in friendship with people of all religious persuasions. As soon as the questions got abroad a form of answer drawn up with admirable skill was circulated all over the kingdom and was generally adopted. It was to the following effect. As a member of the House of Commons, should I have the honour of a seat there, I shall think it my duty carefully to weigh such reasons as may be adduced in debate for and against a Bill of Indulgence, and then vote according to my conscientious conviction. As an elector I shall give my support to candidates whose notions of the duty of a representative agree with my own. As a private man it is my wish to live in peace and charity with everybody. This answer far more provoking than a direct refusal because slightly tinge with the sober and decorous irony which could not well be resented was all that the emissaries of the court could extract from most of the country gentlemen. Arguments, promises, threats tried in vain. The Duke of Norfolk, though a Protestant and though dissatisfied with the proceedings of the government, had consented to become its agent in two counties. He went first to Surrey where he soon found that nothing could be done. He then repaired to Norfolk and returned to inform the king that of seventy gentlemen of note who bore office in that great province only six had held out hopes that they should support the policy of the court. The Duke of Beaufort whose authority extended over four English shires and over the whole principality of Wales came up to White Hall with an account not less discouraging. Rochester was Lord Lieutenant of Hertfordshire. All his little stock of virtue had been expanded in his struggle against the strong temptation to sell his religion for Luca. He was still bound to the court by a pension of four thousand pines a year, and in return for this pension he was willing to perform any service, however illegal or degrading, provided only that he was not required to go through the forms of a reconciliation with Rome. He had readily undertaken to manage his county, and he exerted himself, as usual, with indiscreet heat and violence. But his anger was thrown away on the sturdy squires to whom he addressed himself. They told him with one voice that they would send no man to Parliament who would vote for taking away the safeguards of the Protestant religion. The same answer was given to the Chancellor in Buckinghamshire. The gentry of Shropshire, assembled at Ludlow, unanimously refused to fettle themselves by the pledge which the king demanded of them. The Earl of Yarmouth reported from Wiltshire that of sixty magistrates and deputy lieutenants with whom he had conferred, only seven had given him favourable answers, and that even those seven could not be trusted. The renegade Peterborough made no progress in Northamptonshire. His brother renegade Dover was equally unsuccessful in Cambridgeshire. Preston bought cold news from Cumberland and Westmoreland. Dorseture and Huntingdonshire were animated by the same spirit. The Earl of Bath, after a long canvas returned from the west with gloomy tidings, had been authorised to make the most tempting offers to the inhabitants of that region. In particular he had promised that if proper respect were shown to the royal wishes, the trade in tin should be freed from the oppressive restrictions under which it lay, but this lure which had another time would have proved irresistible was now slighted. All the justices and deputy lieutenants of Devonshire and Cornwall, without a single dissenting voice, declared that they would put life and property in jeopardy for the king, but that the Protestant religion was dearer to them than either life or property. And, sir, said Bath, if your Majesty should dismiss all these gentlemen, their successors would give exactly the same answer. If there was any district in which the government might have hoped for success, that district was Lancashire. Considerable doubts had been felt as to the result of what was passing there. In no part of the realm had so many opulent and honourable families adhered to the old religion. The heads of many of those families had already, by virtue of the dispensing power, been made justices of the peace and entrusted with commands in the militia. Yet from Lancashire the new Lord Lieutenant himself for Roman Catholic reported that two-thirds of his deputies and of the magistrates were opposed to the court. But the proceedings in Hampshire wounded the king's pride still more deeply. Arabella Churchill had more than twenty years before born him a son, widely renowned at a later period as one of the most skillful captains of Europe. The youth, named James Fitz James, had as yet given no promise of the eminence which he afterwards attained, but his manners were so gentle and inoffensive that he had no enemy except Mary of Modena, who had long hated the child of the concubine with the bitter hatred of a childless wife. A small part of the Jesuitical faction had, before the pregnancy of the queen was announced, seriously thought of setting him up as a competitor of the Princess of Orange. When it is remembered how signally Monmouth, though believed by the populace to be legitimate, and though the champion of the national religion had failed in a similar competition, it must seem extraordinary that any man should have been so much blinded by fanaticism as to think of placing on the throne one who was universally known to be a popish bastard. It does not appear that this absurd design was ever countenance by the king. The boy, however, was acknowledged, and whatever distinctions subject, not of the royal blood, could hope to attain, were bestowed on him. He had been created Duke of Berwick, and he was now loaded with honorable and lucrative employments taken from those noblemen who had refused to comply with the royal commands. He succeeded the Earl of Oxford as Colonel of the Blues, and the Earl of Gainsborough as Lord Lieutenant of Hampshire, a Ranger of the New Forest, and Governor of Portsmouth. On the frontier of Hampshire Berwick expected to have been met, according to custom, by a long cavalcade of baronets, knights, and squires, but not a single person of note appeared to welcome him. He sent out letters commanding the attendants of the Gentry, but only five or six paid the smallest attention to his summons. The rest did not wait to be dismissed. They declared that they would take no part in the civil or military government of their county, while the king was represented there by a papist, and voluntarily laid down their commissions. Sunderland, who had been named Lord Lieutenant of Warwickshire in the room of the Earl of Northampton, found some excuse for not going down to face the indignation and contempt of the Gentry of that shire, and his plea was the more readily admitted because the king had, by that time, begun to feel that the spirit of the rustic Gentry was not to be bent. It is to be observed that those who displayed this spirit were not the old enemies of the House of Steward. The commissions of peace and leftanancy had long been carefully purged of all republican names, the persons from whom the court had in vain attempted to extract any promise of support were, with scarcely an exception, Tories. The elder among them could still show scars given by the swords of round heads, and receipts for plate sent to Charles the first in his distress. The younger had adhered firmly to James against Shaftesbury and Monmouth. Such were the men who were now turned out of office in a mass by the very prince to whom they had given such signal-proofs of fidelity. A dismission, however, only made them more resolute. It had become a sacred point of honour among them to stand stoutly by one another in this crisis. There could be no doubt that if the suffrage of the free-holders were fairly taken, not a single night of the shower favourable to the policy of the government would be returned. Men therefore asked one another, with no small anxiety, whether the suffrages were likely to be fairly taken. The list of the sheriffs for the new year was impatiently expected. It appeared, while the Lord's lieutenant was still engaged in their canvas, and was received with a general cry of alarm and indignation. Most of the functionaries who were to preside at the county elections were either Roman Catholics or Protestant dissenters who had expressed their approbation of the indulgence. For a time the most gloomy apprehensions prevailed, but soon they began to subside. There was good reason to believe that there was a point beyond which the king could not reckon on the support even of those sheriffs who were members of his own church. Between the Roman Catholic courtier and the Roman Catholic country gentleman there was very little sympathy. That cabal which domineered at White Hall consisted partly of fanatics who were ready to break through all rules of morality and throw the world into confusion for the purpose of propagating their religion, and partly of hypocrites who, of all Lucca, had apostatised from the faith in which they had been brought up, and who now overacted the zeal characteristic of neophytes. Both the fanatical and the hypocritical courtiers were generally destitute of all English feeling. In some of them devotion to their church had extinguished every national sentiment. Some were Irishmen whose patriotism consisted in mortal hatred of the Saxon conquerors of Ireland. Some, again, were traitors, who received regular hire from a foreign power. Some had passed a great part of their lives abroad, and either were mere cosmopolites or felt a positive distaste for the manners and institutions of the country which was now subjected to their rule. Between such men and the Lord of a Cheshire or Staffordshire manor who adhered to the old church there was scarcely nothing in common. He was neither a fanatic nor a hypocrite. He was a Roman Catholic because his father and grandfather had been so, and he held his hereditary faith as men generally hold hereditary faith sincerely, but with little enthusiasm. In all other points he was a mere English squire, and if he differed from the neighbouring squires differed from them by being somewhat more simple and clownish than they. The disabilities under which he lay had prevented his mind from expanding to the standard, moderate as that standard was, which the minds of Protestant country-gentlemen then ordinarily attained. Excluded when a boy from Aetern and Westminster, when a youth from Oxford and Cambridge, when a man from Parliament and from the bench of justice, he generally vegetated as quietly as the elms of the avenue which led to his ancestral grange, his corn fields, his dairy and his cider-press, his greyhounds, his fishing-rod and his gun, his ale and his tobacco occupied almost all his thoughts. With his neighbours, in spite of his religion, he was generally on good terms. They knew him to be unambitious and inoffensive. He was almost always of a good old family. He was always a cavalier. His peculiar notions were not obtruded and caused no annoyance. He did not, like a Puritan, torment himself and others with scruples about everything that was pleasant. On the contrary, he was as keen a sportsman and as jolly a boon companion as any man who had taken the oath of supremacy and the declaration against transubstantiation. He met his brother-squires at the cover, was in with them at the death, and, when the sport was over, took them home with him to a venison pasty and to October four years in bottle. The oppressions which he had undergone had not been such as to impel him to any desperate resolution, even when his church was barbarously persecuted, his life and property were in little danger. The most impudent false witnesses could hardly venture to shock the common sense of mankind by accusing him of being a conspirator. The papists whom Oates selected for attack were peers, prelates, Jesuits, Benedictines, a busy political agent, a lawyer in high practice, a court physician. The Roman Catholic country gentleman, protected by his obscurity, by his peaceable demeanour and by the goodwill of those amongst whom he lived, carted his hay or filled his bag with game unmolested, while Coleman and Langhorn, Whitbread and Pickering, Archbishop Plunkett and Lord Stafford died by the halter or the axe. An attempt was indeed made by a knot of villains to bring home a charge of treason to Sir Thomas Gascon and aged Roman Catholic Baronette of Yorkshire, but twelve of the best gentlemen of the West Riding, who knew his way of life, could not be convinced that their honest old acquaintance had hired cutthroats to murder the king, and in spite of charges which did very little honour to the bench, found a verdict of not guilty. Sometimes, indeed, the head of an old and respectable provincial family might reflect with bitterness that he was excluded on account of his religion from places of honour and authority which men of humbler descent and less ample estate were thought competent to fill, but he was little disposed to risk land and life in a struggle against overwhelming odds, and his honest English spirit would have shrunk with horror from means such as were contemplated by the Peters and the Tyreconels. Indeed, he would have been as ready as any of his Protestant neighbours to gird on his sword and put pistols in his holsters for the defence of his native land against an invasion of French or Irish papists. Such was the general character of the men to whom James now looked as to his most trustworthy instruments for the conduct of county elections. He soon found that they were not inclined to throw away the esteem of their neighbours, and to endanger their beds and their estates by rendering him an infamous and criminal service. Several of them refused to be sheriffs. Of those who accepted the shrevelty, many declared that they would discharge their duty as fairly as if they were members of the established church, and would return no candidate who had not a real majority. End of Part 8. CHAPTER VIII. PART IX. If the king could place little confidence even in his Roman Catholic sheriffs, still less could he rely on the Puritans. Since the publication of the declaration several months had elapsed. Months crowded with important events. Months of unintermitted controversy. Discussion had opened the eyes of many dissenters. But the acts of the government, and especially the severity with which Magdalene College had been treated, had done more than even the pen of Halifax to alarm and to unite all the classes of Protestants. Most of these sectaries, who had been induced to express their gratitude for the indulgence, were now ashamed of their error, and were desirous of making atonement by casting in their lot with the great body of their countrymen. The consequence of this change in the feeling of the nonconformists was that the government found almost as great difficulty in the towns as in the counties. When the regulators began their work, they had taken it for granted that every dissenter who had been induced to express gratitude for the indulgence would be favourable to the king's policy. They were therefore confident that they should be able to fill all the municipal offices in the kingdom with staunch friends. In the new charters a power had been reserved to the crown of dismissing magistrates at pleasure. This power was now exercised without limit. It was by no means equally clear that James had the power of appointing new magistrates, but whether it belonged to him or not, he determined to assume it. Everywhere, from the tweed to the land's end, toy functionaries were ejected, and the vacant places were filled with presbyterians, independence, and baptists. In the new charter of the city of London, the crown had reserved the power of displacing the masters, wardens, and assistants of all the companies. Accordingly, more than 800 citizens of the first consideration, all of the members of that party, which had opposed the exclusion bill, were turned out of office by a single edict. In a short time appeared a supplement to this long list. But scarcely had the new office bearers been sworn in, when it was discovered that they were as unmanageable as their predecessors. At Newcastle on Tyne, the regulators appointed a Roman Catholic mayor and Puritan alderman. No doubt was entertained that the municipal body, thus remodeled, would vote an address promising to support the king's measures. The address, however, was negative. The mayor went up to London in a fury, and told the king that the dissenters were all naves and rebels, and that in the whole corporation the government could not reckon on more than four votes. At Reading, twenty-four Tory aldermen were dismissed. Twenty-four new aldermen were appointed. Twenty-three of these immediately declared against the indulgence, and were dismissed in their turn. In the course of a few days the borough of Yarmouth was governed by three different sets of magistrates, all equally hostile to the court. These are mere examples of what was passing all over the kingdom. The Dutch ambassador informed the states that in many towns the public functionaries had, within one month, been changed twice, and even thrice, and yet changed in vain. From the records of the Privy Council it appears that a number of regulations, as they were called, exceeded two hundred. The regulators indeed found that, in not a few places, the change had been for the worse. The discontented Tories, even while murmuring against the king's policy, had constantly expressed respect for his person in his office, and had disclaimed all thoughts of resistance. Very different was the language of some of the new members of corporations. It was said that old soldiers of the Commonwealth, who to their own establishment and to that of the public, had been made aldermen, gave the agents of the court very distinctly to understand that blood should flow before papery, and arbitrary power were established in England. The regulators found that little or nothing had been gained by what had as yet been done. There was one way, and only one way, in which they could hope to affect their object. The charters of the borasms be resumed, and other charters must be granted, confining the elective franchise to very small constituent bodies appointed by the sovereign. But how was this planned to be carried into effect? In a few of the new charters, indeed a rite of revocation had been reserved to the crown. But the rest James could get into his hands only by voluntary surrender on the part of the corporations, or by judgment of the king's bench. Few corporations were now disposed to surrender their charters voluntarily, and such judgements, as would suit the purpose of the government, were hardly to be expected, even from such a slave as right. The rites of Quoarento, which had been bought a few years before for the purpose of crushing the wig-party, had been condemned by every impartial man. Yet these rites had at least the semblance of justice, for they were brought against ancient municipal bodies, and there were few ancient municipal bodies in which some abuse, sufficient to afford a pretext for a penal proceeding, had not grown up in the course of ages. But the corporations now to be attacked was still in the innocence of infancy. The oldest among them had not completed its fifth year. It was impossible that many of them should have committed offences meriting disfranchisement. The judges themselves were uneasy. They represented that what they were required to do was in direct opposition to the plainest principles of law and justice, but all remonstrance was in vain. The boroughs were commanded to surrender their charters. Few complied, and the course which the king took with those few did not encourage others to trust him. In several towns the rite of voting was taken away from the commonality, and given to a very small numbers of persons, who were required to bind themselves by oath to support the candidates recommended by the government. At Tweaksby, for example, the franchise was confined to 13 persons, yet even this number was too large. Hatred and fear had spread so widely through the community that it was scarcely possible to bring together in any town by any process of packing, 13 men on whom the court could absolutely depend. It was rumoured that the majority of the new constituent body of Tweaksby was animated by the same sentiment, which was general throughout the nation, and would, when the decisive day should arrive, send true protestance to Parliament. The regulators in great wrath threatened to reduce the number of electors to three. Meanwhile the great majority of the boroughs firmly refused to give up their privileges. Barnstable, Winchester and Buckingham distinguished themselves by the boldness of their opposition. At Oxford, the motion that the city should resign its franchise to the king was negative by eighty votes to two. The Temple and Westminster Hall were in affirmant with the sudden rush of business from all corners of the kingdom. Every lawyer in high practice was overwhelmed with a breeze from corporations. Ordinary litigants complained that their business was neglected. It was evident that a considerable time must elapse before judgment could be given in so great a number of important cases. Tyranny could ill-brook this delay. Nothing was omitted which could terrify the refractionary boroughs into submission. At Buckingham, some of the municipal officers, had spoken of Jeffries in languages which was not lawdatory. They were prosecuted and were given to understand that no mercy should be shown to them unless they would ransom themselves by surrounding their charter. At Winchester, still more violent measures were adopted. A large body of troops was marched into the town, for the sole purpose of burdening and harassing the inhabitants. The town continued resolute, and the public voice loudly accused the king of imitating the worst crimes of his brother of France. The Dragon AIDS, it was said, had begun. There was indeed reason for alarm. It had occurred to James that he could not more effectively break the spirit of an obstinent town than by quartering soldiers on the inhabitants. He must have known that this practice had sixty years before excited for middle discontents, and had been solemnly pronounced illegal by the petition of right—a statute scarcely less venerated by Englishmen than the Great Charter. But he hoped to obtain from the courts of law a declaration that even the petition of right could not control the prerogative. He actually consulted the chief of justice of the king's bench on the subject, but to the result of the consultation remained secret. And in a very few weeks the aspect of affairs became such, that a fear stronger than even the fear of the royalties pleasures, began to impose some restraint even on a man so servile as right. While the lord's lieutenants were questioning the justices of the peace, while the regulators were remodeling the boroughs, all the public departments were subjected to a strict inquisition. The palace was first purified. Every battered old cavalier, who in return for blood and lands lost in the royal cause, had obtained some small place under the keep of the wardrobe, or the master of the Harriers, was called upon to choose between the king and the church. The commissioners of customs and excise were ordered to attend his majesty at the treasury. There he demanded from them a promise to support his policy, and directed them to require a similar promise from all their subordinates. One custom house officer notified his submission to the royal will, in a way which excited both merriment and compassion. "'I have,' he said, fourteen reasons for obeying his majesty's commands, a wife and thirteen young children. Such reasons were indeed cognant, yet there were not a few instances in which, even against such reasons, religious and patriotic feelings prevailed. There is reason to believe that the government at this time seriously meditated a blow which would have reduced many thousands of families to beggary. And would have disturbed the whole social system of every part of the country. No wine, beer or coffee could be sold without a licence. It was rumoured that every person holding such a licence would shortly be required to enter into the same engagements which had been imposed on public functionaries, or to relinquish his trade. It seems certain, that if such a step had been taken, the houses of entertainment and of public resort all over the kingdom, would have been at once shut up by hundreds. What effect such an interference with the comfortable ranks would have produced must be left to conjecture. The resentment produced by grievances is not always proportioned to their dignity. And it is by no means improbable that the resumption of licences might have done what the resumption of charters had failed to do. Men of fashion would have missed the chocolate house in St James's street, and men of business the coffee-pot, round which they were accustomed to smoke and talk politics in change alley. Half the clubs would have been wandering in search of shelter. The traveller at nightfall would have found the in-way expected to sup, and lodge deserted. The clown would have regretted the hedge ale-house, where he had been accustomed to take his pot on the bench before the door in summer, and at the chimney-corner in winter. The nation might, perhaps under such provocation, have risen in general rebellion without waiting for the help of foreign allies. History of England from the Accession of James II by Thomas Babington Macaulay Chapter 8 Part X It was not to be expected that a prince who required all the humblest servants of the government to support his policy on pain of dished mission would continue to employ an attorney general whose aversion to that policy was no secret. Sawyer had been suffered to retain his situation more than a year and a half after he had declared against the dispensing power. This extraordinary indulgence he owed to the extreme difficulty which the government found in supplying his place. It was necessary, for the protection of the pecuniary interests of the crown, that at least one of the two chief law officers should be a man of ability and knowledge, and it was by no means easy to induce any barrister of ability and knowledge to put himself in peril by committing every day acts which the next parliament would probably treat as high crimes and misdemeanours. It had been impossible to procure a better solicitor general than Powis, a man who indeed stuck at nothing, but who was incompetent to perform the ordinary duties of his post. In these circumstances it was thought desirable that there should be a division of labour. An attorney, the value of whose professional talents was much diminished by his conscientious scruples, was coupled with a solicitor whose want of scruples made some amends for his want of talent. When the government wished to enforce the law, recourse was had to Sawyer. When the government wished to break the law, recourse was had to Powis. This arrangement lasted till the king obtained the services of an advocate who was at once baser than Powis and abler than Sawyer. No barrister living had opposed the court with more virulence than William Williams. He had distinguished himself in the late reign as a wig and an exclusionist. When faction was at the height he had been chosen speaker of the House of Commons. After the prorogation of the Oxford Parliament he had commonly been counsel for the most noisy demagogues who had been accused of sedition. He was allowed to possess considerable quickness and knowledge. His chief faults were supposed to be rashness and party spirit. It was not yet suspected that he had faults compared with which rashness and party spirit might well pass for virtues. The government sought occasion against him and easily found it. He had published, by the order of the House of Commons, a narrative which Dangerfield had written. This narrative, if published by a private man, would undoubtedly have been a seditious libel. A criminal information was filed in the king's bench against Williams. He pleaded the privileges of Parliament in vain. He was convicted and sentenced to a fine of ten thousand pounds. A large part of this sum he actually paid, for the rest he gave a bond. The Earl of Peterborough, who had been injuriously mentioned in Dangerfield's narrative, was encouraged by the success of the criminal information to bring a civil action and to demand large damages. Williams was driven to extremity. At this juncture a way of escape presented itself. It was indeed a way which, to a man of strong principles or high spirit, would have been more dreadful than beggary, imprisonment, or death. He might sell himself to that government of which he had been the enemy and the victim. He might offer to go on the forlorn hope in every assault on those liberties and on that religion for which he had professed an inordinate zeal. He might expiate his wiggism by performing services from which bigoted Tories, stained with the blood of Russell and Sidney, shrink in horror. The bargain was struck. The debt still due to the crown was remitted. Peterborough was induced by royal mediation to compromise his action. Sawyer was dismissed. Powis became Attorney General, Williams was made solicitor, received the honour of knighthood, and was soon a favourite. Though in rank he was only the second law officer of the crown, his abilities, learning, and energy were such that he completely threw his superior into the shade. Williams had not been long in office when he was required to bear a chief part in the most memorable state trial recorded in the British annals. On the 27th of April 1688 the King put forth a second declaration of indulgence. In this paper he recited at length the declaration of the preceding April. His past life he said ought to have convinced his people that he was not a person who could easily be induced to depart from any resolution which he had formed. But as designing men had attempted to persuade the world that he might be prevailed on to give way in this matter, he thought it necessary to proclaim that his purpose was immutably fixed, that he was resolved to employ those only who were prepared to concur in his design, and that he had in pursuance of that resolution dismissed many of his disobedient servants from civil and military employments. He announced that he meant to hold a parliament in November at the latest, and he exhorted his subjects to choose representatives who would assist him in the great work which he had undertaken. This declaration at first produced little sensation. It contained nothing new, and men wondered that the King should think it worthwhile to publish a solemn manifesto merely for the purpose of telling them that he had not changed his mind. Perhaps James was netdled by the indifference with which the announcement of his fixed resolution was received by the public, and thought that his dignity and authority would suffer unless he without delay did something novel and striking. On the Fourth of May, accordingly, he made an order in council that his declaration of the preceding week should be read on two successive Sundays at the time of divine service by the officiating ministers of all the churches and chapels of the kingdom. In London and in the suburbs the reading was to take place on the 20th and 27th of May in other parts of England on the 3rd and 10th of June. The bishops were directed to distribute copies of the declaration throughout their respective dioceses. When it is considered that the clergy of the established church, with scarcely an exception regarded the indulgence as a violation of the laws of the realm, as a breach of the plighted faith of the King, and as a fatal blow leveled at the interest and dignity of their own profession, it will scarcely admit of doubt that the order in council was intended to be felt by them as a cruel affront. It was popularly believed that Peter had avowed this intention in a coarse metaphor borrowed from the rhetoric of the East. He would, he said, make them eat dirt, the vilest and most loathsome of all dirt. But tyrannical and malignant as the mandate was, would the Anglican priesthood refuse to obey? The King's temper was arbitrary and severe. The proceedings of the ecclesiastical commission were as summery as those of a court-martial. Whoever ventured to resist might in a week be ejected from his parsonage, deprived of his own income, pronounced incapable of holding any other spiritual preferment, and left to beg from door to door. If indeed the whole body offered a united opposition to the royal will, it was probable that even James would scarcely venture to punish ten thousand delinquents at once. But there was not time to form an extensive combination. The Order and Council was gazetted on the 7th of May. On the 20th the declaration was to be read in all the pulpits of London and the neighborhood. By no exertion was it possible in that age to ascertain within a fortnight the intentions of one-tenth part of the parochial ministers who were scattered over the kingdom. It was not easy to collect in so short a time the sense even of the episcopal order. It might also well be apprehended that if the clergy refused to read the declaration, the Protestant dissenters would misinterpret the refusal, would despair of obtaining any toleration from the members of the Church of England, and would throw their whole weight into the scale of the court. The clergy therefore hesitated, and this hesitation may well be excused, for some eminent laymen who possessed a large share of the public confidence were disposed to recommend submission. They thought that a general opposition could hardly be expected, and that a partial opposition would be ruinous to individuals and of little advantage to the Church and to the nation. Such was the opinion given at this time by Halifax and Nottingham. The day grew near, and still there was no concert and no formed resolution. At this juncture the Protestant dissenters of London won for themselves a title to the lasting gratitude of their country. They had hitherto been reckoned by the Government as part of its strength. A few of their most active and noisy preachers, corrupted by the favours of the court, had got up addresses in favour of the King's policy. Others, estranged by the recollection of many cruel wrongs both from the Church of England and from the House of Stuart, had seen with resentful pleasure the tyrannical prince and the tyrannical hierarchy separated by a bitter enmity and bidding against each other for the help of sects lately persecuted and despised. But this feeling, however natural, had been indulged long enough. The time had come when it was necessary to make a choice, and the nonconformists of the city, with a noble spirit, arrayed themselves side by side with the members of the Church in defence of the fundamental laws of their realm. Baxter, Bates, and Howe distinguished themselves by their efforts to bring about this coalition, but the generous enthusiasm which pervaded the whole Puritan body made the task easy. The zeal of the flocks outran that of the pastors. Those Presbyterian and independent teachers who showed an inclination to take part with the King against the ecclesiastical establishment received distinct notice that, unless they changed their conduct, their congregations would neither hear them nor pay them. Alsop, who had flattered himself that he should be able to bring over a great body of his disciples to the royal side, found himself on a sudden an object of contempt and abhorrence to those who had lately revered him as their spiritual guide, sank into a deep melancholy and hid himself from the public eye. Deputations waited on several of the London clergy, imploring them not to judge of the dissenting body from the servile adulation which had lately filled the London Gazette, and exhorting them, placed as they were in the van of this great fight, to play the men for the liberties of England and for the faith delivered to the Saints. These assurances were received with joy and gratitude, yet there was still much anxiety and much difference of opinion among those who had to decide whether, on Sunday the 20th, they would or would not obey the King's command. The London clergy, then universally acknowledged to be the flower of their profession, held a meeting. Fifteen doctors of divinity were present. Tillotson, Dean of Canterbury, the most celebrated preacher of the age, came dither from a sick bed. Sherlock, master of the temple, Patrick, Dean of Peterborough, and rector of the most important parish of St. Paul's Covent Garden and the Stilling Fleet, Archdeacon of London and Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral, attended. The general feeling of the Assembly seemed to be that it was, on the whole, advisable to obey the order and counsel. The dispute began to wax warm, and might have produced fatal consequences if it had not been brought to a close by the firmness and wisdom of Dr. Edward Fowler, vicar of St. Giles's Cripplegate, one of a small but remarkable class of divines who united that love of civil liberty which belonged to the School of Calvin, with the theology of the School of Arminius. Standing up, Fowler spoke thus, I must be plain. The question is so simple that argument can throw no new light on it and can only be get heat. Let every man say yes or no, but I cannot consent to be bound by the vote of the majority. I shall be sorry to cause a breach of unity, but this declaration I cannot in conscience read. Tillotson, Patrick, Sherlock, and Stillingfleet declared that they were of the same mind. The majority yielded to the authority of a minority so respectable. A resolution by which all present pledged themselves to one another not to read the declaration was then drawn up. Patrick was the first who set his hand to it. Fowler was the second. The paper was sent round the city, and was speedily subscribed by eighty-five incumbents. Meanwhile several of the bishops were anxiously deliberating as to the course which they should take. On the twelfth of May a grave and learned company was assembled round the table of the primate at Lambeth. Compton, Bishop of London, Turner, Bishop of Eli, White, Bishop of Peterborough, and Tennyson Rector of St. Martin's Parish were among the guests. The Earl of Clarendon, a zealous and uncompromising friend of the Church, had been invited. Cartwright, Bishop of Chester, intruded himself on the meeting probably as a spy. While he remained no confidential communication could take place, but after his departure the great question of which all minds were full was propounded and discussed. The general opinion was that the declaration ought not to be read. Letters were forthwith written to several of the most respectable prelates of the province of Canterbury, in treating them to come up without delay to London, and to strengthen the hands of their metropolitan at this conjuncture, as there was little doubt that these letters would be opened if they passed through the office in Lombard Street, they were sent by horsemen to the nearest country post towns on the different roads. The Bishop of Winchester, whose loyalty had been so signally proven at Sedgemore, though suffering from indisposition, resolved to set out in obedience to the summons, but found himself unable to bear the motion of a coach. The letter addressed to William Lloyd, Bishop of Norwich, was, in spite of all precautions, detained by a postmaster, and that prelate, inferior to none of his brethren, encouraged and zeal for the common cause of his order, did not reach London in time. His namesake, William Lloyd, Bishop of St. Asaf, a pious, honest and learned man, but of slender judgment and half-crazed by his persevering endeavours to extract from Daniel and the revelations some information about the Pope and the King of France, hastened to the capital and arrived on the sixteenth. On the following day came the excellent Ken, Bishop of Bath and Wells, Lake, Bishop of Chichester, and Sir John Trelawney, Bishop of Bristol, a baronet of an old and honourable Cornish family. On the eighteenth, a meeting of prelates and of other eminent divines was held at Lambeth. Tillitson, Tennyson, Stilling Fleet, Patrick, and Sherlock were present. Prayers were solemnly read before the consultation began. After long deliberation, a petition embodying the general sense was written up by the arch bishop with his own hand. It was not drawn up with much felicity of style. Indeed, the cumbersome and inelegant structure of the sentences brought on Sancroft some railery, which he bore with less patience than he showed under much heavier trials. But in substance, nothing could be more skillfully framed than this memorable document. All disloyalty, all intolerance, was earnestly disclaimed. The King was assured that the Church still was, as she had ever been, faithful to the throne. He was assured also that the bishops would, in proper place and time, as Lords of Parliament and members of the Upper House of Convocation, show that they by no means wanted tenderness for the conscientious scruples of dissenters. But Parliament had, both in the late and in the present reign, pronounced that the sovereign was not constitutionally competent to dispense with statutes in matters ecclesiastical. The declaration was therefore illegal, and the petitioners could not, in prudence, honour or conscience, be parties to the solemn publication of an illegal declaration in the House of God and during the time of divine service. This paper was signed by the Archbishop and by six of his suffragans, Lloyd of St. Asaf, Turner of Eli, Lake of Chichester, Ken of Bath and Wells, White of Peterborough, and Trelawney of Bristol. The Bishop of London, being under suspension, did not sign. It was now late on Friday evening, and on Sunday morning, the declaration was to be read in the Churches of London. It was necessary to put the paper into the King's hands without delay. The six bishops set off for Whitehall. The Archbishop, who had long been forbidden the court, did not accompany them. Lloyd, leaving his five brethren at the House of Lord Darmuth in the vicinity of the palace, went to Sunderland and begged that minister to read the petition and to ascertain when the King would be willing to receive it. Sunderland, afraid of compromising himself, refused to look at the paper, but went immediately to the royal closet. James directed that the bishops should be admitted. He had heard from his tool-cartwright that they were disposed to obey the royal mandate, but that they wished for some little modifications in form, and that they meant to present a humble request to that effect. His Majesty was therefore in very good humour. When they knelt before him, he graciously told them to rise, took the paper from Lloyd, and said, This is my Lord of Canterbury's hand. Yes, sir, his own hand was the answer. James read the petition. He folded it up, and his countenance grew dark. 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. The bishops broke out into passionate professions of loyalty, but the King, as usual, repeated the same words over and over. I tell you this is a standard of rebellion. Rebellion cried Trelawney, falling on his knees. For God's sake, sir, do not say so hard a thing of us. No Trelawney can be a rebel. Remember that my family has fought for the crown. Remember how I served your Majesty when Monmouth was in the West. We put down the last rebellion, said Lake. We shall not raise another. We rebel, exclaimed Turner. We are ready to die at your Majesty's feet. Sir, said Ken, in a more manly tone, I hope that you will grant to us that liberty of conscience which you grant to all mankind. Still, James went on. This 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. We have two duties to perform, answered Ken. Our duty to God and our duty to your Majesty. We honor you, but we fear God. Have I deserved this, said the King, more and more angry? I, who have been such a friend to your church. I did not expect this from some of you. I will be obeyed. My declaration shall be published. You are trumpeters of sedition. What do you do here? Go to your diocese and see that I am obeyed. I will keep this paper. I will not part with it. I will remember that you have signed it. God's will be done, said Ken. God has given me the dispensing power, said the King, and I will maintain it. I tell you that there are still seven thousand of your church who have not bowed the knee to bail. The bishops respectfully retired. That very evening the document which they had put into the hands of the King appeared word for word in print, was laid on the tables of all the coffee-houses, and was cried about the streets. Everywhere the people rose from their beds and came out to stop the hawkers. It was said that the printer cleared a thousand pounds in a few hours by this penny broadside. This is probably an exaggeration, but it is an exaggeration which proves that the sale was enormous. How the petition got abroad is still a mystery. Sankroth declared that he had taken every precaution against publication, and that he knew of no copy except that which he had himself written, and which James had taken out of Lorde's hand. The veracity of the archbishop is beyond all suspicion. It is, however, by no means improbable that some of the divines who assisted in framing the petition may have remembered so short a composition accurately, and may have sent it to the press. The prevailing opinion, however, was that some person about the King had been indiscreet or treacherous. Scarcely less sensation was produced by a short letter which was written with great power of argument and language, printed secretly and largely circulated on the same day by the post and by the common carriers. A copy was sent out to every clergyman in the kingdom. The writer did not attempt to disguise the danger which those who disobeyed the royal mandate would incur, but he set forth, in a lively manner, the still greater danger of submission. If we read the declaration, said he, we fall to rise no more. We fall unpittied and despised. We fall amidst the curses of a nation whom our compliance will have ruined. Some thought that this paper came from Holland. Others attributed it to Sherlock. But Pradoe, dean of Norwich, who was to be a principal agent in distributing it, believed to be the work of Halifax. The conduct of the prelates was rapturously extolled by the general voice, but some murmurs were heard. It was said that such grave men, if they thought themselves bound in conscience to remonstrate with the King, ought to have remonstrated earlier. Was it fair to him to leave him in the dark till within thirty-six hours of the time fixed for the reading of the declaration? Even if he wished to revoke the order in council, it was too late to do so. The inference seemed to be that the petition was intended, not to move the royal mind, but merely to inflame the discontent of the people. These complaints were utterly groundless. The King had laid on the bishops a command new, surprising, and embarrassing. It was their duty to communicate with each other, and to ascertain as far as possible the sense of the profession of which they were the heads before they took any steps. They were dispersed over the whole kingdom. Some of them were distant from others a full week's journey. James allowed them only a fortnight to inform themselves, to meet, to deliberate, and to decide, and he surely had no right to think himself aggrieved because that fortnight was drawing to a close before he learned their decision, nor is it true that they did not leave him time to revoke his order if he had been wise enough to do so. He might have called together his council on Saturday morning, and before night it might have been known throughout London and the suburbs that he had yielded to the entreaties of the Fathers of the Church. The Saturday, however, passed over without any sign of relenting on the part of the Government, and the Sunday arrived, a day long remembered. In the city and liberties of London were about a hundred parish churches. In only four of these was the order and council obeyed. At St. Gregory's the declaration was read by a divine of the name of Martin. As soon as he uttered the first words, the whole congregation rose and withdrew. At St. Matthew's, in Friday Street, a wretch named Timothy Hall, who had disgraced his gown by acting as broker for the Duchess of Portsmouth in the sale of pardons, and who now had hopes of obtaining the vacant bishopric of Oxford, was in like manner left alone in his church. At Sargent's Inn, in Chansery Lane, the clerk pretended that he had forgotten to bring a copy, and the Chief Justice of the King's Bench, who had attended in order to see that the royal mandate was obeyed, was forced to content himself with this excuse. Samuel Wesley, the father of John and Charles Wesley, a curate in London, took for his text that day the noble answer of the three Jews to the Chaldean tyrant, be it known unto the Oak King that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou has set up. Even in the chapel of St. James's palace the officiating minister had the courage to disobey the order. The Westminster boys long remembered what took place that day in the abbey. Spratt, Bishop of Rochester, officiated there as dean. As soon as he began to read the declaration murmurs and the noise of people crowding out of the choir drowned his voice. He trembled so violently that men saw the paper shake in his hand. Long before he had finished, the place was deserted by all but those whose situation made it necessary for them to remain. Never had the church been so dear to the nation as on the afternoon of that day. The spirit of descent seemed to be extinct. Baxter, from his pulpit, pronounced a eulogium on the bishops and parochial clergy. The Dutch minister, a few hours later, wrote to inform the state's general that the Anglican priesthood had risen in the estimation of the public to an incredible degree. The universal cry of the non-conformists, he said, was that they would rather continue to lie under the penal statutes than separate their cause from that of the prelates. Another week of anxiety and agitation passed away. Sunday came again. Again the churches of the capital were thronged by hundreds of thousands. The declaration was read nowhere, except at the very few places where it had been read the week before. The minister who had officiated at the chapel in St. James's Palace had been turned out of his situation and a more obsequious divine appeared with the paper in his hand, but his agitation was so great that he could not articulate. In truth the feeling of the whole nation had now become such as none but the very best and noblest or the very worst and basest of mankind could without much discomposure encounter. Even the king stood aghast for a moment at the violence of the tempest which he had raised. What step was he next to take? He must either advance or recede, and it was impossible to advance without peril or to recede without humiliation. At one moment he determined to put forth a second order in joining the clergy in high and angry terms to publish his declaration and menacing everyone who should be refractory with instant suspension. This order was drawn up and sent to the press, then recalled, then a second time sent to the press, then recalled a second time. A different plan was suggested by some of those who were for rigorous measures. The prelates who had signed the petition might be cited before the ecclesiastical commission and deprived of their seas, but to this course strong objections were urged in the council. It had been announced that the houses would be convoked before the end of the year. The lords would assuredly treat the sentence of deprivation as a nullity, would insist that Sankroth and his fellow petitioners should be summoned to Parliament, and would refuse to acknowledge a new archbishop of Canterbury or a new bishop of Bath and Wells. Thus the session which at best was likely to be sufficiently stormy would commence with a deadly quarrel between the crown and the piers. If therefore it were thought necessary to punish the bishops, the punishment ought to be inflicted according to the known course of English law. Sunderland had from the beginning objected as far as he dared to order in council. He now suggested a course which, though not free from inconvenience, was the most prudent and the most dignified that a series of errors had left open to the government. The kingbite with grace and majesty announced to the world that he was deeply hurt by the undutiful conduct of the Church of England, but that he could not forget all the services rendered by that Church in trying times to his father, to his brother, and to himself. That as a friend to the liberty of conscience he was unwilling to deal severely by men who conscience ill-informed indeed and unreasonably scrupulous might have prevented from obeying his commands, and that he would therefore leave the offenders to that punishment which their own reflections would inflict wherever they should calmly compare their recent acts with the loyal doctrines of which they had so loudly boasted. Not only Powess and Bellicise, who had always been for moderate councils, but even Dover and Arendelle, leaned towards this proposition. Jeffries, on the other hand, maintained that the government would be disgraced if such transgressors as the seven bishops were suffered to escape with a mere reprimand. He did not, however, wish them to be cited before the ecclesiastical commission, in which he sat his chief, or rather, a sult judge, for the load of public hatred under which he already lay was too much even for his shameless forehead and obdurate heart, and he shrank from the responsibility which he would have incurred by pronouncing an illegal sentence on the rulers of the church and the favorites of the nation. He therefore recommended a criminal information. It was accordingly resolved that the archbishop and the six other petitioners should be brought before the court of Kingsbench on a charge of seditious libel, that they would be convicted. It was scarcely possible to doubt. The judges and their officers were tools of the court, since the old charter of the City of London had been forfeited, scarcely one prisoner whom the government was bent on bringing to punishment had been absolved by a jury. The refractory prelates would probably be condemned to ruinous fines and to long imprisonment, and would be glad to ransom themselves by serving both in and out of Parliament the designs of the sovereign. CHAPTER VIII. PART XI. On the 27th of May it was notified to the bishops that on the 8th of June they must appear before the King in Council. Why so long an interval was allowed we are not informed. Perhaps James hoped that some of the offenders, terrified by his displeasure, might submit before the day fixed for the reading of the declaration in their diocese, and might, in order to make their peace with him, persuade their clergy to obey his order. If such was his hope it was signally disappointed. Sunday the 3rd of June came, and all parts of England followed the example of the capital. Already the bishops of Norwich, Gloucester, Salisbury, Winchester, and Exeter had signed copies of the petition in token of their approbation. The Bishop of Worcester had refused to distribute the declaration among his clergy. The Bishop of Hereford had distributed it, but it was generally understood that he was overwhelmed by remorse and shame for having done so. Not one parish priest in fifty complied with the order in Council. In the great diocese of Chester, including the county of Lancaster, only three clergymen could be prevailed on by Cartwright to obey the King. In the diocese of Norwich are many hundreds of parishes. In only four of these was the declaration read. The courtly Bishop of Rochester could not overcome the scruples of the Minister of the Ordinary of Chatham, who depended on the government for bread. There is still extant a pathetic letter which this honest priest sent to the Secretary of the Admiralty. I cannot, he wrote, reasonably expect your honour's protection. Gods will be done. I must choose suffering rather than sin. On the evening of the eighth of June the seven prelates furnished by the ablest lawyers in England with full advice repaired to the palace and were called into the Council Chamber. Their petition was lying on the table. The Chancellor took the paper up, showed it to the Archbishop, and said, Is this the paper which your grace wrote, and which the six bishops present delivered to his Majesty? Samcroft looked at the paper, turned to the King, and spoke thus. Sir, I stand here a culprit. I never was so before. Once I little thought that I ever should be so. Least of all could I think that I should be charged with any offence against my King. But, since I am so unhappy as to be in this situation, your Majesty will not be offended if I avail myself of my lawful right to decline saying anything which may discriminate me. This is mere chicainery, said the King. I hope that your grace will not do so ill a thing as to deny your own hand. Sir, said Lloyd, whose studies had been much amongst the casuists. All divines agree that a person situated as we are may refuse to answer such a question. The King, as slow of understanding as quick of temper could not comprehend what the prelates meant, he persisted, and was evidently becoming very angry. Sir, said the Archbishop, I am not bound to accuse myself. Nevertheless, if your Majesty positively commands me to answer, I will do so, in the confidence that a just and generous Prince will not suffer what I say in obedience to his orders to be brought in evidence against me. You must not capitulate with your sovereign, said the Chancellor. No, said the King, I will not give any such command. If you choose to deny your own hands, I have nothing more to say to you. The bishops were repeatedly sent out into the antechamber and repeatedly called back into the council room. At length James positively commanded them to answer the question. He did not expressly engage that their confession should not be used against them. But they, not unnaturally, supposed that, after what had passed, such an engagement was implied in his command. Sandcroft acknowledged his handwriting, and his brethren followed his example. They were then interrogated about the meaning of some words in the petition, and about the letter which had been circulated with so much effect all over the kingdom. But their language was so guarded that nothing was gained by the examination. The Chancellor then told them that criminal information would be exhibited against them in the court of King's Bench and called upon them to enter into recognizances. They refused. They were peers of the realm, they said. They were advised by the best lawyers in Westminster Hall that no peer could be required to enter into a recognizance in the case of libel, and they should not think themselves justified in relinquishing the privilege of their order. The King was so absurd as to think himself personally affronted because they chose on a legal question to be guided by legal advice. You believe everybody, he said, rather than me. He was indeed mortified and alarmed, for he had gone so far that, if they persisted, he had no choice left but to send them to prison. And though he by no means foresaw all the consequences of such a step, he foresaw probably enough to disturb him. They were resolute. A warrant was therefore made out directing the lieutenant of the tower to keep them in safe custody, and a barge was manned to convey them down the river. It was known, all over London, that the bishops were before the council. The public anxiety was intense. A great multitude filled the courts of Whitehall and all the neighbouring streets. Many people were in the habit of running away from the court. Many people were in the habit of refreshing themselves at the close of a summer day with cool air of the Thames. But on this evening the whole river was alive with worries. When the seven came forth under a guard, the emotions of the people broke through all restraint. Thousands fell on their knees and prayed aloud for the men who had, with the Christian courage of Redley and Latimer, confronted a tyrant inflamed by all the bigotry of Mary. Many dashed into the stream, and up to their wastes in ooze and water cried to the Holy Fathers to bless them. All down the river, from Whitehall to London Bridge, the royal barge passed between lines of boats, from which arose a shout of, God bless your Lordships! The king in great alarm gave orders that the garrison of the tower should be doubled, that the guards should be held ready for action, and that two companies should be detached from every regiment in the kingdom, and sent up instantly to London. But the force on which he relied, as the means of coercing the people, shared all the feelings of the people. The very sentinels who were under arms at the Trater's Gate reverently asked for a blessing from the martyrs whom they were to guard. Sir Edward Hales was lieutenant of the tower. He was little inclined to treat his prisoners with kindness, for he was an apostate from that church for which they suffered, and he held several lucrative posts by virtue of that dispensing power against which they had protested. He learned with indignation that his soldiers were drinking the health of the bishops. He ordered his officers to see that it was done no more, but the officers came back with a report that the thing could not be prevented, and that no other health was drunk in the garrison. Nor was it only by coercing that the troops showed their reverence for the fathers of the church. There was such a show of devotion throughout the tower that pious divines thanked God for bringing good out of evil, and for making the persecution of his faithful servants the means of saving many souls. All day the coaches and liveries of the first nobles of England were seen round the prison gates. Thousands of humbler spectators constantly covered Tar Hill. But among the marks of public respect and sympathy which the prelates received, there was one which more than all the rest enraged and alarmed the king. He learned that a deputation of ten non-conformist ministers had visited the tower. He sent for four of these persons and himself upbraided them. They courageously answered that they thought it their duty to forget past quarrels and to stand by the men who stood by the Protestant religion. Scarcely had the gates of the tower been closed on the prisoners when an event took place which increased the public excitement. It had been announced that the queen did not expect to be delivered till July. But on the day after the bishops had appeared before the council, it was observed that the king seemed to be anxious about her state. In the evening, however, she sat playing cards at Whitehall till near midnight. Then she was carried in a sedan to St. James's Palace, where apartments had been very hastily fitted up for her reception. Soon messengers were running about in all directions to summon physicians and priests, lords of the council and ladies of the bed-chamber. In a few hours many public functionaries and women of rank were assembled in the queen's room. There, on the morning of Sunday the 10th of June, a day long kept sacred by the too faithful adherents of a bad cause, was born the most unfortunate of princes, destined to seventy-seven years of exile and wandering, of vain projects, of honours more galling than insults, and of hopes such as make the heart sick. The calamities of the poor child had begun before his birth. The nation over which, according to the ordinary course of succession he would have reigned, was fully persuaded that his mother was not really pregnant. By whatever evidence the fact of his birth had been proved, a considerable number of people would probably have persisted in maintaining that the Jesuits had practised some skillful slate of hand, and the evidence, partly from accident, partly from grace mismanagement, was open to some objections. Many persons of both sexes were in the royal bed-chamber when the child first saw the light, but none of them enjoyed any large measure of public confidence. Of the privy consulers present, half were Roman Catholics, and those who called themselves Protestants were generally regarded as traitors to their country and their God. Many of the women in attendance were French, Italian and Portuguese. Of the English ladies, some were papists, and some were the wives of papists. Some persons who were peculiarly entitled to be present, and whose testimony would have satisfied all minds accessible to reason, were absent, and for their absence the king was held responsible. The Princess Anne was, of all the inhabitants of the island, the most deeply interested in the event. Her sex and her experience qualified her to act as the guardian of her sister's birthright and her own. She had conceived strong suspicions which were daily confirmed by circumstances trifling, or imaginary. She fancied that the queen carefully shunned her scrutiny, and ascribed to guilt a reserve which was perhaps the effect of delicacy. In this temper Anne had determined to be present and vigilant when the critical day should arrive. But she had not thought it necessary to be at her post a month before that day, and had, in compliance it was said with her father's advice, gone to drink the bath-waters. Sandcroft, whose great place made it his duty to attend, and on whose probity the nation placed entire reliance, had a few hours before been sent to the tower by James. The hides were the proper protectors of the rites of the two princesses. The Duchamp Lasseter might be regarded as the representative of William, who, as first prince of the blood and consort of the king's eldest daughter, had a deep interest in what was passing. James never thought of summoning any member, male or female, of the family of Hyde, nor was the Dutch ambassador invited to be present. Posterity has fully acquitted the king of the fraud which his people imputed to him, but it is impossible to acquit him of a folly and perverseness such as explained and excused the error of his contemporaries. He was perfectly aware of the suspicions which were abroad. He ought to have known that those suspicions would not be dispelled by the evidence of members of the Church of Rome, or of persons who, though they might call themselves members of the Church of England, had shown themselves ready to sacrifice the interests of the Church of England in order to obtain his favour. That, he was taken by surprise, is true, but he had twelve hours to make his arrangements. He found no difficulty in crowding St. James's palace with bigots and sycophants, on whose word the nation placed no reliance. It would have been quite as easy to procure the attendance of some eminent persons, whose attachment to the princesses and to the established religion was unquestionable. At a later period when he had paid dearly for his foolhardy contempt of public opinion, it was the fashion at Saint-Germain who excused him by throwing the blame on others. Some Jacobites charged Anne with having purposely kept out of the way. Nay, they were not ashamed to say that Sancroft had provoked the king to send him to the tower, in order that the evidence which was to confound the calamities of the malcontents might be defective. The absurdity of these imputations is palpable. Could Anne or Sancroft possibly have foreseen that the Queen's calculations would turn out to be erroneous by a whole month? Had those calculations been correct, Anne would have been back from Bath, Sancroft would have been out of the tower in ample time for the birth. At all events the maternal uncles of the King's daughters were neither at a distance, nor in a prison. The same messenger who summoned the whole bevy of renegades, Dover, Peterborough, Murray, Sunderland and Mulgrave could just as easily have summoned Clarendon. If they were privy councillors, so was he. His house was in German Street, not two hundred yards from the Chamber of the Queen, yet he was left to learn at St James's Church from the agitation and whispers of the congregation that his niece had ceased to be heiress presumptive of the crown. Was it a disqualification that he was the near kinsman of the princesses of Orange and Denmark, or was it a disqualification that he was unalterably attached to the Church of England? The cry of the whole nation was that an imposture had been practised. The papists had, during some months, been predicting both from the Fulpit and through the press, in prose and verse, in English and Latin, that a prince of Wales would be given to the prayers of the Church, and they had now accomplished their own prophecy. Every witness who could not be corrupted or deceived had been studiously excluded, Anne had been tricked into visiting Bath. The primate had, on the very day preceding that which had been fixed for the villainy, been sent to prison in defiance of the rules of law and the privileges of peerage. Not a single man or woman who had the smallest interest in detecting the fraud had been suffered to be present. The Queen had been removed suddenly and dead of night to St. James's Palace, because that building, less commodious for honest purposes than White Hall, had some rooms and passages well suited for the purpose of the Jesuits. There, amidst a circle of zealots who thought nothing a crime that tended to promote the interests of their church, and of courteous who thought nothing a crime that tended to enrich and aggrandise themselves, a new-born child had been introduced into the royal bed, and then handed round in triumph as heir of the three kingdoms. Heated by such suspicions, suspicions unjust it is true, but not altogether unnatural, men thronged more eagerly than ever to pay their homage to the saintly victims of the tyrant who, having long foully injured his people, had now filled up the measure of his iniquities by more foully injuring his children. The Prince of Orange, not himself suspecting any trick and not aware of the state of public feeling in England, ordered prayers to be said under his own roof for his little brother-in-law, and sent Zulstein to London with a formal message of congratulation. Zulstein, to his amazement, found all the people whom he met open-mouthed about the infamous fraud just committed by the Jesuits, and saw every hour some fresh pasquinade on the pregnancy and the delivery. He soon wrote to the Hague that not one person in ten believed the child to have been born of the Queen. The demeanour of the seven prelates meanwhile strengthened the interest which their situation excited. On the evening of the Black Friday, as it was called, on which they were committed, they reached their prison just at the hour of divine service. They instantly hastened to the chapel. It charmed that in the second lesson were these words. In all things approving ourselves as the ministers of God, in much patience, in afflictions, in distresses, in stripes, in imprisonments. All zealous churchmen were delighted by this coincidence, and remembered how much comfort a similar coincidence had given near forty years before, to Charles I at the time of his death. On the evening of the next day, Saturday the ninth, a letter came from Sunderland and joining the Chaplain of the Tower to read the declaration during divine service on the following morning. As the time fixed by the order in council for the reading in London had long expired, this proceeding of the government could be considered only as a personal insult of the meanest and most childish kind to the venerable prisoners. The Chaplain refused to comply. He was dismissed from his situation, and the chapel was shut up. The bishops edified all who approached them by the firmness and cheerfulness with which they endured confinement, by the modesty and meekness with which they received the applause and blessings of the whole nation, and by the loyal attachment which they professed for the persecutor who sought their destruction. They remained only a week in custody. On Friday the fifteenth of June, the first day of term, they were brought before the king's bench, and immense throng awaited their coming. From the landing-place to the court of requests, they passed through a lane of spectators who blessed and applauded them. Friends, said the prisoners as they passed, honour the king, and remember us in your prayers. These humble and pious expressions moved the hearers even to tears. When at length the procession had made its way through the crowd into the presence of the judges, the Attorney General exhibited the information which he had been commanded to prepare, and moved that the defendants might be ordered to plead. The council on the other side objected that the bishops had been unlawfully committed, and were therefore not regularly before the court. The question whether a peer could be required to enter into recognisances on a charge of libel was argued at great length, and decided by a majority of judges in favour of the crown. The prisoners then pleaded not guilty. That day fortnight the 29th of June was fixed for their trial. In the meantime they were allowed to be at large on their own recognisances. The crown lawyers acted prudently in not requiring surities. For Halifax had arranged that twenty-one temporal peers of the highest consideration should be ready to put in bail, three for each defendant, and such a manifestation of the feeling of the nobility would have been no slight blow to the government. It was also known that one of the most opulent dissenters of the city had begged that he might have the honour of giving security for Ken. The bishops were now permitted to depart to their own homes. The common people who did not understand the nature of the legal proceedings which had taken place in the King's bench, and who saw that their favourites had been brought to Westminster Hall in custody, and were suffered to go away in freedom, imagined that the good cause was prospering. Loud acclamations were raised. The steeples of the churches sent forth joyous peals. Spratt was amazed to hear the bells of his own abbey ringing merrily. He promptly silenced them, but his interference caused much angry muttering. The bishops found it difficult to escape from the impotent cry of their well-wishers. Lloyd was detained in Palace Yard by admirers who struggled to touch his hands, and to kiss the skirt of his robe till Clarendon, with some difficulty, rescued him, and conveyed him home by a bypass. Cartwright, it is said, was so unwise as to mingle with the crowd. Some person who saw his episcopal habit asked and received his blessing. A bystander cried out, Do you know who blessed you? Surely, said he who had just been honoured by the benediction, it was one of the seven. No, said the other, it is the Popish Bishop of Chester. Popish dog, cried the enraged Protestant, Take your blessing back again! Such was the concourse, and such the agitation that the Dutch ambassador was surprised to see the day close without an insurrection. The king had been by no means at ease. In order that he might be ready to suppress any disturbance, he had passed the morning in reviewing several battalions of infantry in Hyde Park. It is, however, by no means certain that his troops would have stood by him if he had needed their services. When Sandcraft reached Lambeth in the afternoon, he found the Grenadier Guards, who were quartered in that suburb, assembled before the gate of his palace. They formed in two lines on his right and left, and asked his benedictions as he went through them. He, with difficulty, prevented them from lighting a bonfire in honour of his return to his dwelling. There were, however, many bonfires that evening in the city. Two Roman Catholics, who were so indiscreet as to beat some boys for joining in these rejoicings, were seized by the mob, stripped naked, and ignominiously branded. End of Part 11 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to find out how you can volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. History of England from the Accession of James II by Thomas Babington Macaulay Chapter 8 Part 12 Sir Edward Hales now came to demand fees from those who had lately been his prisoners. They refused to pay anything for the detention which they regarded as illegal to an officer whose commission was, on their principles, annulity. The Lieutenant hinted very intelligibly that, if they came into his hands again, they shall be put into heavy irons and should lie on bare stones. We are under our King's displeasure, was the answer, and most deeply do we feel it, but a fellow subject who threatens us does but lose his breath. It is easy to imagine with what indignation the people, excited as they were, must have learned that a renegade from the Protestant faith, who held a command in defiance of the fundamental laws of England, had dared to menace divines of venerable age and dignity with all the barbarities of Lollard's Tower. Before the day of trial the agitation had spread to the furthest corners of the island. From Scotland the bishops received letters assuring them of the sympathy of the Presbyterians of that country so long and so bitterly hostile to prelacy. The people of Cornwall, a fierce, bold and athletic race, among whom there was a stronger provincial feeling than in any other part of the realm, were greatly moved by the danger of Trelawney, whom they reverenced less as a ruler of the church, than as the head of an honourable house, and the heir through twenty descents of ancestors who had been of great note before the Normans had set foot on English ground. All over the county the peasants chanted a ballad of which the burden is still remembered. And shall Trelawney die, and shall Trelawney die, then thirty thousand Cornish boys will know the reasons why. The miners from their cabins re-echoed the song with a variation. Then twenty thousand underground will know the reason why. The rustics in many parts of the country loudly expressed a strange hope which had never ceased to live in their hearts. Their Protestant duke, their beloved Monmouth, would suddenly appear, would lead them to victory, and would tread down the king and the Jesuits under his feet. The ministers were appalled. Even Jefferies would gladly have retraced his steps. He charged Clarendon with friendly messages to the bishops, and threw on others the blame of the prosecution which he himself had recommended. Sunderland, again, ventured to recommend concession. The late or suspicious berth, he said, had furnished the king with an excellent opportunity of withdrawing from a position full of danger and inconvenience without incurring the reproach of timidity or of caprice. On such happy occasions it had been usual for sovereigns to make the hearts of subjects glad by acts of clemency, and nothing could be more advantageous to the Prince of Wales than that he should, while still in his cradle be the peacemaker between his father and the agitated nation. But the king's resolution was fixed. I will go on, he said. I have been only too indulgent. Indulgence ruined my father. The artful minister found that his advice had been formally taken only because it had been shaped to suit the royal temper, and that, from the moment at which he began to counsel well, he began to counsel in vain. He had shown some signs of slackness in the proceeding against Mordland College. He had recently attempted to convince the king that Tircanel's scheme of confiscating the property of the English colonists in Ireland was full of danger, and had, with the help of Powys and Bellasise so far succeeded, that the execution of the design had been postponed for another year. But this timidity and scrupulosity had excited disgust and suspicion in the royal mind. The day of retribution had arrived. Sunderland was in the same situation, in which his rival Rochester had been some months before. Each of the two statesmen in turn experienced the misery of clutching, with an agonizing grasp, power which was perceptively slipping away. Each, in turn, saw his suggestions scornfully rejected. Both endured the pain of reading displeasure and distrust in the countenance and demeanour of their master, yet both were, by their country, held responsible for those crimes and errors from which they had vainly endeavoured to dissuade him. While he suspected them of trying to win popularity at the expense of his authority and dignity, the public voice loudly accused them of trying to win his favour at the expense of their own honour and of the general wheel. Yet, in spite of modifications and humiliations, they both clung to office with the grip of drowning men. Both attempted to propitiate the king by affecting a willingness to be reconciled to his church. But there was a point at which Rochester was determined to stop. He went to the verge of apostasy, but there he recoiled. And the world, in consideration of the firmness with which he refused to take the final step, granted him a liberal amnesty for all former compliances. Sunderland, less scrupulous and less sensible of shame, resolved to atone for his late moderation and to recover the royal confidence by an act which, to a mind impressed with the importance of religious truth, must have appeared to be one of the most flagitious of crimes. And which even men of the world regard as the last excess of baseness. About a week before the day fixed for the great trial, it was publicly announced that he was a papist. The king talked with delight of this triumph of divine grace. Courtiers and envoys kept their countenances as well as they could, while the renegade protested that he had been long convinced of the impossibility of finding salvation out of the Communion of Rome, and that his conscience would not let him rest till he had renounced the heresies in which he had been brought up. The news spread fast. At all the coffee-houses it was told how the Prime Minister of England, his feet bare and a taper in his hand, had repaired to the royal chapel and knocked humbly for admittance. How a priestly voice from within had demanded who was there! How Sunderland had made answer that a poor sinner who had long wandered from the true Church implored her to receive and to absolve him. How the doors were opened, and how the neophyte partook of the holy mysteries. This scandalous apostasy could not but heighten the interest with which the nation looked forward to the day, when the fate of the seven brave confessors of the English Church was to be decided. To pack a jury was now the great object of the king. The crown lawyers were ordered to make strict inquiry as to the sentiments of the persons who were registered in the Free Holder's book. Sir Samuel Astry, Clarke of the Crown, whose duty it was in cases of this description to select the names, was summoned to the palace and had an interview with James in the presence of the Chancellor. Sir Samuel seems to have done his best, for among the forty-eight persons whom he nominated were said to be several servants of the King and several Roman Catholics. But as the Council for the Bishops had a right to strike off twelve, these persons were removed. The crown lawyers also struck off twelve. The list was thus reduced to twenty-four. The first twelve who answered to their names were to try the issue. On the twenty-ninth of June, Westminster Hall, Old and New Palace Yard, and all the neighbouring streets to a great distance were thronged with people. Such an auditory had never before and has never since been assembled in the Court of King's Bench. Thirty-five temporal peers of the realm were counted in the crowd. All the four judges of the Court were on the bench. Wright, who presided, had been raised to his high place over the heads of many abler and more learned men solely on account of his unscrupulous civility. Allibone was a papist and owed his situation to that dispensing power, the legality of which was now in question. Holloway had he the two been a serviceable tool of the Government. Even Powell, whose character for honesty stood high, had borne apart in some proceedings which it is impossible to defend. He had, in the great case of Sir Edward Hales, with some hesitation at his true and after some delay, concurred with the majority of the bench, and had thus brought on his character a stain which his honourable conduct on this day completely effaced. The Council were by no means fairly matched. The Government had required from its law officers services so odious and disgraceful that all the ablest jurists and advocates of the Tory Party had, one after another, refused to comply, and had been dismissed from their employments. Sir Thomas Powys, the Attorney General, was scarcely of the third rank of his profession. Sir William Williams, the Solicitor General, had quick parts and dauntless courage, but he wanted discretion. He loved wrangling. He had no command over his temper, and he was hated and despised by all political parties. The most conspicuous assistants of the Attorney and Solicitor were Sergeant Trindor, a Roman Catholic, and Sir Bartholomew Schauer, Recorder of London, who had some legal learning, but whose fulsome apologies and endless repetitions were the jest of Westminster Hall. The Government had wished to secure the services of Maynard, but he had plainly declared he could not, in conscience, do what was asked of him. On the other side were arrayed almost all the eminent forensic talents of the age. Soyer and Fitch, who, at the time of the succession of James, had been Attorney and Solicitor General, and who, during the persecution of the Whigs in the late reign, had served the crown with but too much vehemence and success, were of counsel for the defendants. With them were joined two persons who, since age had diminished the activity of Maynard, were reputed the two best lawyers that could be found in the Inns of Court. Pemberton, who had, in the time of Charles II, been Chief Justice of the King's Bench, who had been removed from his high place on account of his humanity and moderation, and who had resumed his practice at the bar, and Polluxven, who had long been at the head of the Western Circuit, and who, though he had incurred much unpopularity by holding briefs for the crown at the bloodier sizes, and particularly by appearing against Alice Lyle, was known to be at heart a Whig, if not a Republican. Sir Cresswell Levins was also there, a man of great knowledge and experience, but of singularly timid nature. He had been removed from the bench some years before, because he was afraid to serve the purposes of the government. He was now afraid to appear as the advocate of the bishops, and had at first refused to receive their retainer, but it had been intimated to him by the whole body of attorneys who employed him that, if he declined this brief, he should never have another. Sir George Trebe, an able and zealous Whig who had been recorder of London under the old Charter, was on the same side. Sir John Holt, a still more eminent Whig lawyer, was not retained for the defense. In consequence it should seem of some prejudice conceived against him by Sancroft, but was privately consulted on the case by the Bishop of London. The Junior Council for the Bishops was a young barrister named John Summers. He had no advantages of birth or fortune, nor had he yet had any opportunity of distinguishing himself before the eyes of the public, but his genius, his industry, his great and various accomplishments were well known to a small circle of friends, and in spite of his Whig opinions, his pertinent and lucid mode of arguing, and the constant propriety of his demeanour, had already secured to him the ear of the Court of King's Bench. The importance of obtaining his services had been strongly represented to the Bishops by Johnston, and Pollock's fan, it is said, had declared that no man in Westminster Hall was so well qualified to treat a historical and constitutional question as Summers. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to find out how you can volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. History of England from the Accession of James II by Thomas Bavington Macaulay Chapter 8 Part XIII The jury was sworn. It consisted of persons of highly respectable station. The foreman was Sir Roger Langley, a baronet of old and honourable family. With him were joined a night, and ten esquires, several of whom are known to have been men of large possessions. There were some nonconformists in the number, for the Bishops had wisely resolved not to show any distrust of the Protestant dissenters. One name excited considerable alarm, that of Michael Arnold. He was brewer to the palace, and it was apprehended that the Government counted on his voice. The story goes that he complained bitterly of the position in which he found himself. Whatever I do, he said, I am sure to be half-ruined. If I say not guilty, I shall brew no more for the king, and if I say guilty, I shall brew no more for anybody else. The trial then commenced. A trial which, even when cullly perused after the lapse of more than a century and a half, has all the interest of a drama. The advocates contended on both sides with far more than professional keenness and vehemence. The audience listened with as much anxiety as if the fate of every one of them was to be decided by the verdict, and the turns of fortune was so sudden and amazing that the multitude repeatedly passed in a single minute from anxiety to exhortation and back again from exhortation to still deeper anxiety. The information charged the bishops with having written or published in the county of Middlesex a false, malicious, and seditious libel. The attorney and solicitor first tried to prove the writing. For this purpose several persons were called to speak to the hands of the bishops, but the witnesses were so unwilling that hardly a single plain answer could be extracted from any of them. Pemberton, Pollux Fenn, and Levince contended that there was no evidence to go to the jury. Two of the judges, Holloway and Powell, declared themselves with the same opinion, and the hopes of the spectators rose high. All at once the crown lawyers announced their intention to take another line. Powis, with shame and reluctance which he could not dissemble, put into the witness box Blathwaite, a clerk of the Privy Council, who had been present when the king interrogated the bishops. Blathwaite swore that he had heard them own their signatures. His testimony was decisive. Why, said Judge Holloway to the attorney, when you had such evidence did you not produce it at first without all this waste of time? It soon appeared why the Council for the Crown had been unwilling, without absolute necessity, to resort to this mode of proof. Pemberton stopped Blathwaite, subjected him to a searching cross-examination, and insisted upon having all that had passed between the king and the defendants fully related. This is a pretty thing indeed, cried Williams. Do you think, said Powis, that you are at liberty to ask our witnesses any impertinent question that comes into your heads? The advocates of the bishops were not meant to be so put down. He is sworn, said Polluxven to tell the truth and the whole truth, and an answer we must and will have. The witness shuffled, equivocated, pretended to have misunderstood the questions, implored the protection of the court. But he was in hands from which it was not easy to escape. At length the attorney again interposed. If, he said, you persist in asking such a question, tell us at least what you assume mean to make of it. Pemberton, who through the whole trial did his duty manfully and ably, replied without hesitation. My lords, I will answer, Mr. Attorney. I will deal plainly with the court. If the bishops owned this paper under a promise from his Majesty that their confession should not be used against them, I hope no unfair advantage will be taken of them. You put on his Majesty what I dare hardly name, said Williams. Since you will be so pressing, I demand for the King that the question may be recorded. What do you mean, Mr. Solicitor, said Sawyer, interposing? I know what I mean, said the apostate. I desire that the question may be recorded in court. Record what you will. I am not afraid of you, Mr. Solicitor, said Pemberton. Then came a loud and fierce altercation which the Chief Justice could with difficulty quiet. In other circumstances he would probably have ordered the question to be recorded and Pemberton to be committed, but on this great day he was overawed. He often cast aside glance towards the thick rows of earls and barons by whom he was watched and who in the next Parliament might be his judges. He looked, bystander said, as if all the peers present had halters in their pockets. At length Blathwaite was forced to give a full account of what had happened. It appeared that the King had entered into no express covenant with the bishops, but it appeared also that the bishops might not unreasonably think that there was an implied engagement. Indeed, from the unwillingness of the crown lawyers to put the clerk of the council into the witness-box, and from the vehemence with which they objected to Pemberton's cross-examination, it is plain that they were themselves of this opinion. However, the handwriting was now proved. But a new and serious objection was raised. It was not sufficient to prove that the bishops had written the alleged libel. It was necessary to prove also that they had written it in the county of Middlesex. And not only was it out of the power of the attorney and solicitor to prove this, but it was in the power of thefendants to prove the contrary. For it so happened that Zancroft had never once left the palace, at Lambeth, from the time when the order in council appeared till after the petition was in the King's hands. The whole case for the prosecution had therefore completely broken down, and the audience with great glee expected a speedy acquittal. The crown-lawyers then changed their ground again, abandoned altogether the charge of writing a libel, and undertook to prove that the bishops had published a libel in the county of Middlesex. The difficulties were great. The delivery of the petition to the King was undoubtedly in the eye of the law of publication. But how is this delivery to be proved? No person had been present at the audience in the royal closet except the King and the defendants. The King could not well be sworn. It was therefore only by the admissions of the defendants that the fact of publication could be established. Blathwaite was again examined, but in vain. He well remembered he said that the bishops owned their hands, but he did not remember that they owned the paper which lay on the table of the Privy Council, to be the same paper which they had delivered to the King, or that they were even interrogated on that point. Several other official men who had been in attendance on the council were called, and among them Samuel Peab, Secretary of the Admiralty. But none of them could remember that anything was said about the delivery. It was to no purpose that Williams put leading questions till the council on the other side declared that such twisting, such withdrawing, was never seen in a court of justice, until Wright himself was forced to admit that the solicitor's mode of examination was contrary to all rule. As witness after witness answered in the negative, roars of laughter and shouts of triumph, which the judges did not even attempt to silence, shook the hall. End of Part 13