 History of England, Chapter 11, Part 7 In a short time it was found that Hampton Court was too far from the houses of lords and commons, and from the public offices, to be the ordinary abode of the sovereign. Instead, however, of returning to Whitehall, William determined to have another dwelling near enough to his capital for the transaction of business, but not near enough to be within that atmosphere in which he could not pass a night without risk of suffocation. At one time he thought of Holland House, the villa of the noble family of Rich, and he actually resided there some weeks. But at length he fixed his choice on Kensington House, the suburban residence of the Earl of Nottingham. The purchase was made for eighteen thousand guineas, and was followed by more building, more planting, more expense, and more discontent. At present Kensington House is considered as a part of London. It was then a rural mansion, and could not in those days of high women and scours, of roads deep in mire and nights without lamps, be the rallying point of fashionable society. It was well known that the king, who treated the English nobility and gentry so ungraciously, could in a small circle of his own countrymen be easy, friendly, even jovial, could pour out his feelings garulously, could fill his glass perhaps too often, and this was in the view of our forefathers an aggravation of his evences. And our forefathers should have had the sense and justice to acknowledge that the patriotism which they considered as a virtue in themselves could not be a fault in him. It was unjust to blame him for not at once transferring to our island the love which he bore to the country of his birth. If in essentials he did his duty toward England, he might well be suffered to feel at heart an affectionate preference for Holland. Or is it a reproach to him that he did not in this season of his greatness discard companions who had played with him in his childhood, who had stood by him firmly through all the vicitudes of his youth and manhood, who had, in defence of the most loathsome and deadly forms of infection, kept watch by his sick bed, who had in the thickest of the battle thrust themselves between him and the French swords, and whose attachment was not to the stad holder or to the king, but to plain William of Nassau. It may be added that his old friends could not but rise to his estimation by comparison with his new courtiers. To the end of his life all his Dutch comrades, without exception, continued to deserve his confidence. They could be out of humour with him, it is true, and when out of humour they could be sullen and rude. But never did they, even when most angry and unreasonable, fail to keep his secrets and to watch over his interests with gentlemanlike and soldierlike fidelity. Among his English counsellors such fidelity was rare. It is painful, but it is no more than just, to acknowledge that he had but too good reason for thinking meanly of our national character. That character was indeed, in essentials, what it has always been. Veracity, uprightness, and manly boldness were then, as now, qualities eminently English. But those qualities, though widely diffused among the great body of the people, were seldom to be found in the class with which William was best acquainted. The standard of honour and virtue among our public men was, during his reign, at the very lowest point. His predecessors had bequeathed to him a court fowl with all the vices of the restoration, a court swarming with sycophants who were ready, on the first turn of fortune, to abandon him as they had abandoned his uncle. Here and there, lost in that ignoble crowd, was to be found a man of true integrity and public spirit. Yet even such a man could not live long in such a society without much risk that the strictness of his principles would be relaxed, and the delicacy of his sense of right and wrong impaired. It was unjust to blame a prince surrounded by flatterers and traitors for wishing to keep near him four or five servants, whom he knew by proof to be faithful even to death. Here was this the only instance by which our ancestors were unjust to him. They had expected that, as soon as so distinguished a soldier in statesmen was placed at the head of affairs, he would give some signal proof, they scarcely knew what, of genius and vigour. Unhappily during the first months of his reign almost everything went wrong. His subjects bitterly disappointed through the blame on him and began to doubt whether he merited that reputation, which he had won at his first entrance into public life, and which the splendid success of his last great enterprise had raised to the highest point. Had they been in a temper to judge fairly, they would have perceived that for the maladministration of which they with good reason complained he was not responsible. He could as yet work only with the machinery which he had found, and the machinery which he had found was all rust and rottenness. From the time of the restoration to the time of the revolution, neglect and fraud had been almost constantly impairing the efficiency of every department of the government. Honors and public trusts, peerages, baronetsies, regiments, frigates, embassies, governments, commissionerships, leases of crowned lands, contracts for clothing, for provisions, for ammunition, pardons for murder, for robbery, for arson, were sold at Whitehall scarcely less openly than asparagus at Covent Garden or herrings at Billingsgate. Brokers had been incessantly plying for custom in the Parleuse of the Court. And of these brokers the most successful had been in the days of Charles the Harlots, and in the days of James the Priests. From the palace, which was the chief seat of this pestilence, the taint had diffused itself through every office and through every rank in every office, and had everywhere produced feebleness and disorganization. So rapid was the progress of the decay that, within eight years after the time when Oliver had been the umpire of Europe, the roar of the guns of DeRuder was heard in the Tower of London. The vices which had brought that great humiliation on the country had ever since been rooting themselves deeper and spreading themselves wider. James had, to do him justice, corrected a few of the gross abuses which disgraced the naval administration. Yet the naval administration, in spite of his attempts to reform it, moved the contempt of men who were acquainted with the dockyards of France and Holland. The military administration was still worse. The courtiers took bribes from the colonels, the colonels cheated the soldiers, the commissionaries sent in long bills for what had never been furnished, the keepers of the arsenals sold the public's doors and pocketed the price. But these evils, though they had sprung into existence and grown to maturity under the government of Charles and James, first made themselves severely felt under the government of William. For Charles and James were content to be the vassals and pensioners of a powerful and ambitious neighbor. They submitted to his ascendancy, they shunned with pusillanimous caution whatever could give him offense, and thus at the cost of the independence and dignity of that ancient and glorious crown which they unworthily wore, they avoided a conflict which would instantly have shown how helpless, under their misrule, their once formidable kingdom had become. Their ignomious policy it was neither in William's power nor in his nature to follow. It was only by arms that the liberty and religion of England could be protected against the most formidable enemy that had threatened our island since the Hebrides were strung with the wrecks of the armada. The body politic, which, while it remained in repose, had presented a superficial appearance of health and vigor, was now under the necessity of straining every nerve in a wrestle for life or death, and was immediately found to be unequal to the exertion. The first effort showed an utter relaxation of fiber and utter want of training. Those efforts were, with scarcely an exception, failures, and every failure was popularly imputed, not to the rulers whose mismanagement had produced the infirmities of the State, but to the ruler in whose time the infirmities of the State became visible. William might indeed, if he had been as absolute as Lewis, have used such sharp remedies as would speedily have restored to the English administration that firm tone which had been wanting since the death of Oliver. But the instantaneous reform of invenerate abuses was a task far beyond the powers of a prince strictly restrained by law, and restrained still more strictly by the difficulties of his situation. Some of the most serious difficulties of his situation were caused by the conduct of the ministers on whom, new as he was to the details of English affairs, he was forced to rely for information about men and doings. There was indeed no want of ability among his chief councillors, but one half of their ability was employed in counteracting the other half. Between the Lord President and the Lord Privy Seal there was an inveterate enmity. It had begun twelve years before when Danby was Lord High Treasurer, a persecutor of nonconformists, an uncompromising defender of prerogative, and when Halifax was rising to distinction as one of the most eloquent leaders of the country party. In the reign of James the two statesmen had found themselves in opposition together, and their common hostility to France and to Rome to the High Commission and to the dispensing power had produced an apparent reconciliation. But as soon as they were in office together the old antipathy revived. The hatred which the Whig party felt towards them both ought it should seem to have produced a close alliance between them. But in fact each of them saw with complacency the danger which threatened the other. He exerted himself to rally round him a strong phalanx of Tories. Under the plea of ill health he withdrew from court, seldom came to council, over which it was his duty to preside, passed much time in the country and took scarcely any part in public affairs except by grumbling and sneering at all the acts of the government, and by doing jobs and getting places for his personal retainers. In consequence of this defection Halifax became prime minister, as far any minister could in that reign be called prime minister. An immense load of business fell on him, and that load he was unable to sustain. In wit and eloquence, in amplitude of comprehension and subtlety of disquisition, he had no equal among the statesmen of his time. But that very fertility, that very acuteness which gave a singular charm to his conversation, to his oratory and to his writings, unfitted him for the work of promptly deciding practical questions. He was slow from very quickness, for he saw so many arguments for and against every possible course that he was longer in making up his mind than a dull man would have been. Instead of acquiescing in his first thoughts he replied on himself, rejoined on himself, and surra joined on himself. Those who heard him talk owned that he talked like an angel, but too often when he had exhausted all that could be said and come to act the time for action was over. Meanwhile the two secretaries of state were constantly laboring to draw their master in diametrically opposite directions. Every scheme, every person, recommended by one of them, was reprobated by the other. Nottingham was never weary of repeating that the old round-head party, the party which had taken the life of Charles I and plotted against the life of Charles II, was in principle Republican, and that the Tories were the only true friends of monarchy. Shrewsbury replied that the Tories might be friends of monarchy, but that they regarded James as their monarch. Nottingham was always bringing to the closet intelligence of the wild daydreams in which a few old eaters of calf's head, the remains of the once formidable party of Bradshaw and Eretton, still indulged at taverns in the cities. Shrewsbury produced ferocious lampoons in which the Jacobites dropped every day in the coffee-houses. Every wig, said the Tory secretary, is an enemy of your Majesty's prerogative. Every Tory, said the wig secretary, is an enemy of your Majesty's title. At the Treasury there was a complication of jealousies and quarrels. Both the First Commissioner, Mordent, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Delamere, were zealous wigs. But though they held the same political creed, their tempers differed wildly. Delamere was volatile, dissipated, and generous. The wits of that time laughed at the way in which he flew about, from Hampton Court to the Royal Exchange, and from the Royal Exchange back to Hampton Court. How he found time for dress, politics, love-making, and ballad-making was a wonder. Delamere was gloomy and acrimonious, austere in his private morals and punctual in his devotions, but greedy of ignoble gain. The two principal ministers of finance, therefore, became enemies, and agreed only in hating their colleague, Godolphin. What business had he at Whitehall in these days of Protestant ascendancy, he who had sate at the same board with papists, he who had never scrupled to attend Mary of Modena to the idolatrous worship of the Mass? The most provoking circumstance was that Godolphin, though his name stood only third in the Commission, was really First Lord. For in financial knowledge and in habits of business Mordant and Delamere were mere children when compared with him. And this William soon discovered. Similar feuds raged at the other great boards and through all the subordinate ranks of public functionaries. In every custom house, in every arsenal, were a Shrewsbury and anoddingham, a Delamere and a Godolphin. The wigs complained that there was no department in which creatures of the Fallen tyranny were not to be found. It was idle to allege that these men were versed in the details of business, that they were the depositaries of official traditions, and that the friends of liberty, having been during many years excluded from public employment, must necessarily be incompetent to take on themselves at once the whole management of affairs. Experienced doubtless had its value, but surely the first of all the qualifications of a servant was fidelity, and no Tory could really be a faithful servant of the new government. If King William were wise, he would rather trust novices zealous for his interests and honor than veterans who might indeed possess ability and knowledge, but who would use that ability and knowledge to affect his ruin. The Tories, on the other hand, complained that their sheriff power bore no proportion to their number and their weight in the country, and that everywhere old and useful public servants were for the crime of being friends to monarchy and to the church, turned out of their posts to make way for wrigh-house plotters and haunters of conventacles. These upstarts, adepts in the art of factious agitation but ignorant of all that belonged to their new calling, would be just beginning to learn their business when they had undone the nation by their blunders. To be a rebel and a schismatic was surely not all that ought to be required of a man in high employment. What would become of the finances, what of the marine if wigs who could not understand the plainest balance sheet were to manage the revenue, and wigs who had never walked over a dock-yard to fit out the fleet? The truth is that the charges which the two parties brought against each other were, to a great extent, well-founded, but that the blame which both threw on William was unjust. Official experience was to be found almost exclusively among the Tories. Hardy attachment to the new settlement was almost exclusively among the wigs. It was not the fault of the King that the knowledge and the zeal which combined make a valuable servant of the State must at that time be had separately or not at all. If he employed men of one party there was great risk of mistakes. If he employed men of the other party there was great risk of treachery. If he employed men of both parties there was still some risk of mistakes, there was still some risk of treachery, and to those risks was added the certainty of dissension. He might join wigs and Tories, but it was beyond his power to mix them. In the same office at the same desk they were still enemies, and agreed only in murmuring at the Prince who tried to mediate between them. It was inevitable that, in such circumstances the administration, fiscal, military, naval, should be feeble and unsteady, that nothing should be done in quite the right way or at quite the right time, that the distractions from which scarcely any public official was exempt should produce disasters, and that every disaster should increase the distractions from which it had sprung. There was indeed one department of which the business was well conducted, and that was the Department of Foreign Affairs. There William directed everything, and on important occasions neither asked the advice nor employed the agency of any English politician. One invaluable assistant he had, Anthony Hinesias, who a few weeks after the revolution had been accomplished, became pensionary of Holland. Hinesias had entered public life as a member of that party which was jealous of the power of the House of Orange, and desirous to be on friendly terms with France. But he had been sent, in 1681, on a diplomatic mission to Versailles, and a short residence there had produced a complete change in his views. On a near acquaintance he was alarmed by the power and provoked by the insolence of that court which, while he contemplated it only at a distance, he had formed a favorable opinion. He found that his country was despised. He saw his religion persecuted. His official character did not save him from some personal affronts which, to the latest day of his long career he never forgot. He went home a devoted adherent of William and a mortal enemy of Louis. CHAPTER 11 PART 8 The office of pensionary, always important, was peculiarly important when the stockholder was absent from the Hague. Had the politics of Hinesias been still what they once were, all the great designs of William might have been frustrated. But happily there was, between these two eminent men, a perfect friendship which, till death dissolved it, appears never to have been interrupted for one moment by suspicion or ill humor. On all large questions of European policy they cordially agreed. They corresponded assiduously and most unreservedly. For though William was slow to give his confidence, yet when he gave it he gave it entire. The correspondence is still extant and is most honorable to both. The king's letters would alone suffice to prove that he was one of the greatest statesmen whom Europe has produced. While he lived, the pensionary was content to be the most obedient, the most trusty, and the most discreet of servants. But after the death of the master, the servant proved himself capable of supplying with eminent ability the master's place, and was renowned throughout Europe as one of the great triumvirate which humbled the pride of Louis XIV. The foreign policy of England, directed immediately by William in close concert with Hinesias, was at this time eminently skillful and successful. But in every other part of the administration, the evils arising from the mutual animosity of factions were but too plainly discernible. Nor was this all. To the evils arising from the mutual animosity of factions were added other evils arising from the mutual animosity of sects. The year 1689 is a not less important epoch in the ecclesiastical than in the civil history of England. In that year was granted the first legal indulgence to dissenters. In that year was made the last serious attempt to bring the Presbyterians within the pale of the Church of England. From that year dates a new schism made in defiance of ancient precedents by men who had always professed to regard schism with peculiar abhorrence and ancient precedents with peculiar veneration. In that year began the long struggle between two great parties of conformists. Those parties indeed had under various forms existed within the Anglican Communion ever since the Reformation. But till after the revolution they did not appear marshaled in a regular and permanent order of battle against each other, and were therefore not known by established names. Some time after the accession of William they began to be called the High Church Party and the Low Church Party. And long before the end of his reign these appellations were in common use. In the summer of 1688 the breaches which had long divided the great body of English Protestants had seemed to be almost closed. Disputes about bishops and synods, written prayers and extemporaneous prayers, white gowns and black gowns, sprinkling and dipping, kneeling and sitting, had been for a short space intermitted. The serried array which was then drawn up against potpourri measured the whole of the vast interval which separated sandcraft from bunion. The serried array which was recently conspicuous as persecutors now declared themselves friends of religious liberty and exhorted their clergy to live in a constant interchange of hospitality and of kind offices with the separatists. Separatists on the other hand, who had recently considered miters and lawn sleeves as the livery of antichrist, were putting candles in windows and throwing faggots on bonfires in honor of the prelates. These feelings continued to grow till they attained their memorable day on which the common oppressor finally quitted Whitehall, and on which an innumerable altitude tripped out in orange ribbons welcomed to the common deliverer to St. James's. When the clergy of London came, headed by Compton, to express their gratitude to him by whose instrumentality God had wrought salvation for the church in the state, the procession was swollen by some eminent non-conformist divines. It was delightful to many good men to learn that pious and learned Presbyterian ministers had walked in the train of a bishop, had been greeted by him with fraternal kindness, and had been announced by him in the present chamber as his dear and respected friends, separated from him indeed by some differences of opinion on minor points, but united to him by Christian charity and by common zeal for the essentials of the reformed faith. There had never before been such a day in England, and there has never since been such a day. The tide of feeling was already on the turn, and the ebb was even more rapid than the flow had been. In a very few hours the high churchman began to feel tenderness for the enemy whose tyranny was now no longer feared, and dislike of the allies whose services were now no longer needed. It was easy to gratify both feelings by imputing to the dissenters the misgovernment of the exiled king. His majesty, such was now the language of too many Anglican divines, would have been an excellent sovereign had he not been too confiding, too forgiving. He had put his trust in a class of men who hated his office, his family, his person, with implacable hatred. He had ruined himself in the vain attempt to conciliate them. He had relieved them in defiance of law and of the unanimous sense of the old royalist party from the pressure of the penal code, had allowed them to worship God publicly after their own mean and tasteless fashion, had admitted them to the bench of justice and to the privy council, had gratified them with fur robes, gold chains, salaries, and pensions. In return for his liberality these people, once so uncouth and demeanor, once so savage in opposition even to legitimate authority, had become the most abject of flatterers. They had continued to applaud and encourage him when the most devoted friends of his family had retired in shame and sorrow from his palace. Who had more foully sold the religion and liberty of his country than Titus? Who had been more zealous for the dispensing power than Alsop? Who had urged on the persecution of the seven bishops more fiercely than lob? What chaplain, impatient for a denary, had ever, even when preaching in the royal presence on the thirtieth of January, or the twenty-ninth of May, uttered adulation more gross than might easily be found in those addresses by which dissenting congregations had testified their gratitude for the illegal declaration of indulgence? Was it strange that a prince who had never studied law books should have believed that he was only exercising his rightful prerogative when he was thus encouraged by a faction which had always ostentatiously professed hatred of arbitrary power? Misled by such guidance he had gone further and further in the wrong path. He had at length estranged from him hearts which would once have poured forth their best blood in his defence. He had left himself no supporters except his old foes. And when the day of peril came he had found that the feeling of his old foes towards him was still what it had been when they had attempted to rob him of his inheritance and when they had plotted against his life. Every man of sense had long known that the sectaries bore no love to monarchy. It had now been found that they bore as little love to freedom. To trust them with power would be an error not less fatal to the nation than to the throne. If in order to redeem pledges somewhat rashly given it should be thought necessary to grant them relief, every concession ought to be accompanied by limitations and precautions. Of all, no man who was an enemy to the ecclesiastical constitution of the realm ought to be permitted to bear any part in the civil government. Between the nonconformists and the rigid conformists stood the Low Church Party. That party contained, as it still contains, two very different elements, a Puritan element and a Latitudinarian element. On almost every question, however, relating either to ecclesiastical polity or to the ceremonial of public worship, the Puritan Low Churchman and the Latitudinarian Low Churchman were perfectly agreed. They saw in the existing polity and in the existing ceremonial no defect, no blemish, which could make it their duty to become dissenters. Nevertheless, they held that both the polity and the ceremonial were means and not ends, and that the essential spirit of Christianity might exist without episcopal orders and without a book of common prayer. They had, while James was on the throne, been mainly instrumental in forming the great Protestant coalition against Popory and tyranny. And they continued in 1689 to hold the same conciliatory language which they had held in 1688. They gently blamed the scruples of the nonconformists. It was undoubtedly a great weakness to imagine that there could be any sin in wearing a white robe, in tracing a cross, in kneeling at the rails of an altar. But the highest authority had given the plainest directions as to the manner in which such weakness was to be treated. The weak brother was not to be judged. He was not to be despised. Believers who had stronger minds were commanded to soothe him by large compliances and carefully to remove out of his path every stumbling block which could cause him to offend. An apostle had declared that, though he had himself no misgivings about the use of animal food or of wine, he would eat herbs and drink water rather than give scandal to the feeblest of his flock. What would he have thought of ecclesiastical rulers who, for the sake of a vestment, a gesture, a posture, had not only torn the church asunder, but had filled all the jails of England with men of orthodox faith and saintly life? The reflections thrown by the high churchmen on the recent conduct of the dissenting body, the low churchmen pronounced to be grossly unjust, the wonder was not that a few nonconformists should have accepted with thanks and indulgence which, illegal as it was, had opened the doors of their prisons and given security to their hearts, but that the nonconformists generally should have been true to the cause of constitution from the benefits of which they had been long excluded. It was most unfair to impute to a great party the faults of a few individuals. Even among the bishops of the established church James had found tools and sycophants. The conduct of Cartwright and Parker had been much more inexcusable than that of Alsop and Lobb. Yet those who held the dissenters answerable for the errors of Alsop and Lobb would doubtless think it most unreasonable to hold the church answerable for the far deeper guilt of Cartwright and Parker. The low church clergymen were a minority and not a large minority of their profession, but their weight was much more than proportioned to their numbers, for they mustered strong in the capital, they had great influence there, and the average of intellect and knowledge was higher among them than among their order generally. We should probably overrate their numerical strength if we were to estimate them at a tenth part of the priesthood. Yet it will scarcely be denied that there were among them as many men of distinguished eloquence and learning as could be found in the other nine tenths. Among the laity who conformed to the established religion the parties were not unevenly balanced. Indeed the line which separated them deviated very little from the line which separated the wigs and the tories. In the House of Commons, which had been elected when the wigs were triumphant, the low church party greatly preponderated. In the lords there was an almost exact equipoise, and very slight circumstances suffice to turn the scale. The head of the low church party was the king. He had been bred a Presbyterian, he was, from rational conviction, a Latitudinarian, and personal ambition, as well as higher motives, prompted him to act as mediator among Protestant sects. He was bent on affecting three great reforms in the laws touching ecclesiastical matters. His first object was to obtain for dissenters permission to celebrate their worship in freedom and security. His second object was to make such changes in the Anglican ritual and polity as, without offending those to whom that ritual and polity were dear, might conciliate the moderate nonconformists. His third object was to throw open civil offices to Protestants without distinction of sect. All his three objects were good, but the first only was at that time attainable. He came too late for the second, and too early for the third. A few days after his accession, he took a step which indicated in a manner not to be mistaken his sentiments touching ecclesiastical polity and public worship. He found only one sea unprovided with a bishop. Seth Ward, who had during many years had charge of the diocese of Salisbury, and who had been honorably distinguished as one of the founders of the royal society, having long survived his faculties, died while the country was agitated by the elections for the convention, without knowing that great events of which not the least important had passed under his own roof had saved his church and his country from ruin. The choice of a successor was no light matter. That choice would inevitably be considered by the country as a prognostic of the highest import. The king too might well be perplexed by the number of divines whose erudition, eloquence, courage, and uprightness had been conspicuously displayed during the contentions of the last three years. The preference was given to Burnett. His claims were doubtless great, yet William might have had a more tranquil reign if he had postponed for a time the well-earned promotion of his chaplain, and had bestowed the first great spiritual preferment which, after the revolution, fell to the disposal of the crown on some eminent theologian attached to the new settlement, yet not generally hated by the clergy. Unhappily, the name of Burnett was odious to the great majority of the Anglican priesthood. Though, as respected doctrine, he by no means belonged to the extreme section of the Latitudinarian party, he was popularly regarded as the personification of the Latitudinarian spirit. This distinction he owed to the prominent place which he held in literature and politics, to the readiness of his tongue and of his pert, and above all to the frankness and boldness of his nature, frankness which could keep no secret, and boldness which flinched from no danger. He had formed but a low estimate of the character of his clerical brethren considered as a body, and with his usual indiscretion he frequently suffered his opinion to escape him. They hated him in return, with a hatred which has descended to their successors, and which, after the lapse of a century and a half, does not appear to languish. As soon as the king's decision was known, the question was everywhere asked, What will the Archbishop do? Sancroft had absented himself from the convention. He had refused to sit in the privy council. He had ceased to confirm, to ordain, and to institute, and he was seldom seen out of the walls of his palace at Lambeth. He on all occasions professed to thin himself still bound by his old oath of allegiance. Burnett he regarded as a scandal to the priesthood, a presbyterian in a surplus. The prelate who should lay hands on that unworthy head would commit more than one great sin. He would, in a sacred place and before a great congregation of the faithful, at once acknowledge a new surfer as a king and confer on a schismatic the character of a bishop. During some time Sancroft positively declared that he would not obey the precept of William. Lloyd of St. Asif, who was the common friend of the Archbishop and of the bishop-elect, entreated and expostulated in vain. Nottingham, who, of all the laymen connected with a new government, stood best with the clergy, tried his influence, but to no better purpose. The Jacobites said everywhere that they were sure of the good old primate, that he had the spirit of a martyr, that he was determined to brave in the cause of the monarchy and of the church, the utmost rigor of those laws with which the obsequious parliaments of the sixteenth century had fenced the royal supremacy. He did, in truth, hold out long. But at the last moment his heart failed him, and he looked round him for some mode of escape. Fortunately, as childish scruples often disturbed his conscience, childish expedience often quieted it. A more childish expedient than that to which he now resorted is not to be found in all the tones of the casualists. He would not himself bear a part in the service. He would not publicly pray for the prince and princess as king and queen. He would not call for their mandate, order it to be read, and then proceed to obey it. But he issued a commission, empowering any three of his suffragettes to commit in his name and as his delegates, the sins which he did not choose to commit in person. Their approaches of all parties soon made him ashamed of himself. He then tried to suppress the evidence of his fault by means more discreditable than the fault itself. He abstracted from among the public records of which he was the guardian, the instrument by which he had authorized his brethren to act for him, and was with difficulty induced to give it up. Burnett, however, had, under the authority of this instrument, been consecrated. When he next waited on Mary, she reminded him of the conversations which they had held at the Hague about the high duties and grave responsibility of bishops. I hope, she said, that you will put your notions in practice. Her hope was not disappointed. Whatever may be thought of Burnett's opinions touching civil and ecclesiastical polity, or of the temper and judgment which he showed in defending those opinions, the utmost malevolence of faction could not venture to deny that he tended his flock with a zeal, diligence, and disinterestedness worthy of the purest ages of the church. His jurisdiction extended over Wiltshire and Berkshire. These counties he divided into districts which he seduously visited. About two months of every summer he passed in preaching, catechizing, and confirming daily from church to church. When he died, there was no corner of his diocese in which the people had not had seven or eight opportunities of receiving his instructions and of asking his advice. The worst weather, the worst roads, did not prevent him from discharging these duties. On one occasion, when the floods were out, he exposed his life to imminent risk rather than disappoint a rural congregation which was an expectation of a discourse from the bishop. The poverty of the inferior clergy was a constant cause of uneasiness to his kind and generous heart. He was indefatigable and at length successful in his attempts to obtain for them from the crown that grant which is known by the name of Queen Anne's Bounty. He was especially careful when he traveled through his diocese to lay no burden on them. Instead of requiring them to entertain him, he entertained them. He always fixed his headquarters at a market town, kept a table there, and by his decent hospitality and munificent charities, tried to conciliate those who were prejudiced against his doctrines. When he bestowed a poor benefit and he had many such to bestow, his practice was to add out of his own purse twenty pounds a year to the income. Ten promising young men, to each of whom he allowed thirty pounds a year, studied divinity under his own eye in the clothes of Salisbury. He had several children, but he did not think himself justified in hoarding for them. Their mother had brought him a good fortune. With that fortune, he always said, they must be content. He would not, for their sakes, be guilty of the crime of raising an estate out of revenue's sacred apiety and charity. Such merits as these will, in the judgment of wise and candid men, appear fully to atone for every offense which can be justly imputed to him. When he took his seat in the House of Lords, he found that assembly busy in ecclesiastical legislation. A statesman who was well known to be devoted to the church had undertaken to plead the cause of the dissenters. No subject in the realm occupied so important and commanding a position with referenced religious parties as Nottingham. To the influence derived from rank, from wealth, and from office, he added the higher influence which belongs to knowledge, to eloquence, and to integrity. The orthodoxy of his creed, the regularity of his devotions, and the purity of his morals gave a peculiar weight to his opinions on questions in which the interests of Christianity were concerned. Of all the ministers of the new sovereigns, he had the largest share of the confidence of the clergy. Shrewsbury was certainly a wig, and probably a freethinker. He had lost one religion, and it did not very clearly appear that he had found another. Halifax had been, during many years, accused of skepticism, deism, atheism. Danby's attachment to episcopacy and the liturgy was rather political than religious. But Nottingham was such a son as the church was proud to own. Propositions, therefore, which, if made by his colleagues, would infallibly produce a violent panic among the clergy, might, if made by him, find a favorable reception, even in universities and chapter houses. The friends of religious liberty were, with good reason, desirous to obtain his cooperation, and, up to a certain point, he was not unwilling to cooperate with them. He was decidedly for a toleration. He was even for what was then called a comprehension. That is to say, he was desirous to make some alterations in the Anglican discipline and ritual for the purpose of removing the scruples of the moderate Presbyterians. But he was not prepared to give up the Test Act. The only fault which he found with that act was that it was not sufficiently stringent, and that it left loopholes through which schismatics sometimes crept into civil employments. In truth, it was because he was not disposed to part with the Test that he was willing to consent to some changes in the liturgy. He conceived that, if the entrants of the church were but a very little widened, great numbers who had hitherto lingered near the threshold would press in. Those who still remained without would then not be sufficiently numerous or powerful to extort any further concession, and would be glad to compound for a bare toleration. The opinion of the low churchmen concerning the Test Act differed widely from his. But many of them thought that it was of the highest importance to have his support on the great questions of toleration and comprehension. From the scattered fragments of information which have come down to us, it appears that a compromise was made. It is quite certain that Nottingham undertook to bring in a toleration bill and a comprehension bill, and to use his best endeavours to carry both bills through the House of Lords. It is highly probable that, in return for this great service, some of the leading wigs consented to let the Test Act remain for the present unaltered. End of Chapter 11, Part 8. History of England, Chapter 11, Part 9. 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 11, Part 9. There was no difficulty in framing either the toleration bill or the comprehension bill. The situation of the dissenters had been much discussed nine or ten years before when the Kingdom was distracted by the fear of a Popish plot and when there was, among Protestants, a general disposition to unite against the common enemy. The government had then been willing to make large concessions to the Whig Party on condition that the crown should be suffered to descend according to the regular course. A draft of a law authorizing the public worship of the nonconformists at a draft of a law making some alterations in the public worship of the established church had been prepared and would probably have been passed by both houses without difficulty had not Shaftesbury and his co-agitors refused to listen to any terms and, by grasping at what was beyond their reach, missed advantages which might easily have been secured. In the framing of these drafts, Nunningham, then an active member of the House of Commons, had borne a considerable part. He now brought them forth from the obscurity in which they had remained since the dissolution of the Oxford Parliament and relayed them with some slight alterations on the table of the lords. The toleration bill passed both houses with little debate. This celebrated statute, long considered as the great charter of religious liberty, has since been extensively modified and is hardly known to the present generation except by name. The name, however, is still pronounced with respect by many who will perhaps learn with surprise and disappointment the real nature of the law which they have been accustomed to hold in honour. Several statutes which had been passed between the accession of Queen Elizabeth and the Revolution required all people under severe penalties to attend the services of the Church of England and to abstain from attending Conventicles. The Toleration Act did not repeal any of these statutes, but merely provided that they should not be construed to extend to any person who should testify his loyalty by taking the oaths of allegiance and supremacy and his Protestantism by subscribing the Declaration against Transubstantiation. The relief thus granted was common between the dissenting laity and the dissenting clergy. But the dissenting clergy had some peculiar grievances. The Act of Uniformity had laid a mulch of a hundred pounds on every person who, not having received Episcopal ordination, should presume to administer the Eucharist. The Five Mile Act had driven many pious and learned ministers from their houses and their friends to live among rustics in obscure villages of which the name was not to be seen on the map. The Conventicle Act had imposed heavy fines on divines who should preach in any meeting of separatists and in direct opposition to the humane spirit of our common law. The courts were enjoined to construe this act largely and beneficially for the suppressing of dissent and for the encouraging of informers. These severe statutes were not repealed but were with many conditions and precautions relaxed. It was provided that every dissenting minister should, before he exercised his function, profess under his hand his belief in the Articles of the Church of England with a few exceptions. The propositions to which he was not required to assent were these, that the Church has power to regulate ceremonies, that the doctrines set forth in the Book of Homilies are sound, and that there is nothing superstitious and idolatrous in the Ordination Service. If he declared himself a Baptist he was also excused from affirming that the baptism of infants is a laudable practice. But, unless his conscience suffered him to subscribe thirty-four of the thirty-nine Articles and the greater part of two other Articles, he could not preach without incurring all the punishments which the Cavaliers in the day of their power and their vengeance had devised for the tormenting and ruining of schismatical teachers. The situation of the Quaker differed from that of other dissenters and differed for the worse. The Presbyterian, the Independent, and the Baptist had no scruple about the oath of supremacy. But the Quaker refused to take it, not because he objected to the proposition that foreign sovereigns and prelates have no jurisdiction in England, but because his conscience would not suffer him to swear to any proposition whatever. He was therefore exposed to the severity of part of that penal code which, long before Quakerism existed, had been enacted against Roman Catholics by the Parliaments of Elizabeth. Soon after the restoration, a severe law, distinct from the general law which applied to all conventicles, had been passed against meetings of Quakers. The Toleration Act permitted the members of this harmless sect to hold their assemblies in peace, on condition of signing three documents, a declaration against transubstantiation, a promise of fidelity to the government, and a confession of Christian belief. The objections which the Quaker had to the Athanasian phraseology had brought on him the imputation of Sosinianism, and the strong language in which he sometimes asserted that he derived his knowledge of spiritual things directly from above, had raised a suspicion that he thought lightly of the authority of Scripture. He was therefore required to profess his faith in the divinity of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, and in the inspiration of the Old and New Testaments. Such were the terms on which the Protestant dissenters of England were, for the first time, permitted by law to worship God according to their own conscience. They were very properly forbidden to assemble with barred doors, but were protected against hostile intrusion by a clause which made it penal to enter a meeting-house for the purpose of molesting the congregation. As if the numerous limitations and precautions which have been mentioned were insufficient, it was emphatically declared that the legislature did not intend to grant the smallest indulgence to any papest, or to any person who denied the doctrine of the Trinity as that doctrine is set forth in the formularies of the Church of England. Of all the acts that have ever been passed by Parliament, the Toleration Act is perhaps that which most strikingly illustrates the peculiar vices and the peculiar excellences of English legislation. The science of politics bears in one respect a close analogy to the science of mechanics. The mathematician can easily demonstrate that a certain power applied by means of a certain lever or of a certain system of pulleys was suffice to raise a certain weight. But his demonstration proceeds on the supposition that the machinery is such as no load will bend or break. If the engineer, who has to lift a great mass of real granite by the instrumentality of real timber and real hemp, should absolutely rely on the propositions which he finds in treatises on dynamics, and should make no allowances for the imperfection of his materials, his whole apparatus of beams, wheels, and ropes would soon come down in ruin, and with all his geometrical skill he would be found a far inferior builder to those painted barbarians who, though they never heard of a parallelogram of forces, managed to pile up stonehenge. What the engineer is to the mathematician, the active statesman, is to the contemplative statesman. It is indeed most important that legislators and administrators should be versed in the philosophy of as it is most important that the architect, who has to fix an obelisk on its pedestal or to hang a tubular bridge over an estuary, should be versed in the philosophy of equilibrium and motion. But as he who has actually to build must bear in mind many things never noticed by Dallenbert and Euler, so must he who has actually to govern be perpetually guided by considerations to which no illusion can be found in the writings of Adam Smith or Jeremy Bentham. The perfect law giver is a just temper between the mere man of theory who could see nothing but general principles and the mere man of business who can see nothing but particular circumstances. Of law givers in whom the speculative element has prevailed to the exclusion of the practical, the world has, during the last eighty years, been singularly fruitful. To their wisdom Europe and America have owed scores of abortive constitutions, scores of constitutions which have lived just long enough to make a miserable noise and have then gone off in convulsions. But in the English legislature the practical element has always predominated and not seldom unduly predominated over the speculative. To think nothing of symmetry and much of convenience, are to remove an anomaly merely because it is an anomaly. Never to innovate except when some grievance is felt. Never to lay down any proposition of wider extent than the particular case for which it is necessary to provide. These are the rules which have, from the age of John to the age of Victoria, generally guided the deliberations of our two hundred and fifty parliaments. Our national distaste for whatever is abstract and political science amounts undoubtedly to a fault, but it is perhaps a fault on the right side. That we have been far too slow to improve our laws must be admitted, but though in other countries there may have occasionally been more rapid progress, it would not be easy to name any other country in which there has been so little retrogression. The Toleration Act approaches very near to the idea of a great English law. To a jurist, versed in the theory of legislation, but not intimately acquainted with the temper of the sects and parties into which the nation was divided at the time of the revolution, that act would seem to be a mere chaos of absurdities and contradictions. It will not bear to be tried by sound general principles. Nay, it will not bear to be tried by any principle sound or unsound. The sound principle undoubtedly is that mere theological air ought not to be punished by the civil magistrate. This principle, the Toleration Act not only does not recognize, but positively disclaims. Not a single one of the cruel laws enacted against nonconformists by the tutors or the stewards is repealed. Persecution continues to be the general rule. Toleration is the exception, nor is this all. The freedom, which is given to conscience, is given in the most capricious manner. A Quaker, by making a declaration of faith in general terms, obtains the full benefit of the act without signing one of the 39 articles. An independent minister, who is perfectly willing to make the declaration required from the Quaker, but who has doubts about six or seven of the articles, remains still subject to the penal laws. How is liable to punishment if he preaches before he has solemnly declared his assent to the Anglican doctrine touching the Eucharist? Pen, who altogether rejects the Eucharist, is at perfect liberty to preach without making any declaration whatever on the subject. These are some of the obvious faults which must strike every person who examines the Toleration Act by that standard of just reason, which is the same in all countries and in all ages. But these very faults may perhaps appear to be merits when we take into consideration the passions and prejudices of those for whom the Toleration Act was framed. This law, abounding with contradictions which every smatterer in political philosophy can detect, did what a law framed by the utmost skill of the greatest masters of political philosophy might have failed to do. That the provisions which have been recapitulated are cumbrous, pure, inconsistent with each other, inconsistent with the true theory of religious liberty, must be acknowledged. All that can be said in their defense is this, that they removed a vast mass of evil without shocking a vast mass of prejudice, that they put an end at once and forever without one division in either House of Parliament, without one riot in the streets with scarcely one audible murmur even from the classes most deeply tainted with bigotry, to a persecution which had raged during four generations, which had broken innumerable hearts, which had made innumerable firesides desolate, which had filled the prisons with men of whom the world was not worthy, which had driven thousands of those honest, diligent, and God-fearing yeoman and artisans who are the true strength of a nation to seek a refuge beyond the ocean among the wigwams of red Indians and the lairs of panthers. Such a defense, however weak it may appear to some shallow speculators, will probably be thought complete by statesmen. The English, in 1689, were by no means disposed to admit the doctrine that religious error ought to be left unpunished. That doctrine was just then more unpopular than it had ever been, for it had, only a few months before, been hypocritically put forward as a pretext for persecuting the established Church, for trampling on the fundamental laws of the realm, for confiscating freeholds, for treating as a crime the modest exercise of the right of petition. If a bill had then been drawn up granting entire freedom of conscience to all Protestants, it may be confidently affirmed that noddingham would never have introduced such a bill, that all the bishops, Burnett included, would have voted against it, that it would have been denounced Sunday after Sunday from ten thousand pulpits as an insult to God and to all Christian men, and as a license to the worst heretics and blasphemers, that it would have been condemned almost as vehemently by Bates and Baxter as by Ken and Sherlock, that it would have been burned by the mob in half the marketplaces of England, that it would never have become the law of the land, and that it would have made the very name of toleration odious during many years to the majority of the people. And yet, if such a bill had been passed, what would it have affected beyond what was affected by the Toleration Act? It is true that the Toleration Act recognized persecution as the rule and granted liberty of conscience only as the exception. But it is equally true that the rule remained in force only against a few hundreds of Protestant dissenters, and that the benefit of the exceptions extended to hundreds of thousands. It is true that it was in theory absurd to make Howe sign 34 or 35 of the Anglican articles before he could preach, and to let Penn preach without signing one of those articles. But it is equally true that, under this arrangement, both Howe and Penn got his entire liberty to preach as they could have had under the most philosophical code that Baccaria or Jefferson could have framed. The progress of the bill was easy. Only one amendment of grave importance was proposed. Some zealous churchmen in the Common suggested that it might be desirable to grant the Toleration only for a term of seven years, and thus to bind over the nonconformists to good behavior. But the suggestion was so unfavorably received that those who made it did not venture to divide the House. The King gave his consent with hearty satisfaction. The bill became law, and the Puritan divines thronged to the quarter-sessions of every county to swear and sign. Many of them probably professed their assent to the articles with some tacit reservations, but the tender conscience of Baxter would not suffer him to qualify till he had put on record an explanation of the sense in which he understood every proposition which seemed to him to admit of misconstruction. The instrument delivered by him to the court before which he took the oaths is still extant, and contains two passages of peculiar interest. He declared that his approbation of the Athanasian Creed was confined to that part which was properly a creed, and that he did not mean to express any assent to the damnatory clauses. He also declared that he did not, by signing the article which anathematizes all who maintain that there is any other salvation than through Christ, mean to condemn those who entertain a hope that sincere and virtuous unbelievers may be admitted to partake in the benefits of redemption. Many of the dissenting clergy of London express their concurrence in these charitable sentiments. The History of the Comprehension Bill presents a remarkable contrast to the history of the Toleration Bill. The two bills had a common origin, and, to a great extent, a common object. They were framed at the same time, and laid aside at the same time. They sank together into oblivion, and they were, after the lapse of several years, again brought together before the world. Both were laid by the same peer on the table of the upper house, and both were referred to the same select committee. But it soon began to appear that they would have widely different fates. The Comprehension Bill was indeed a neater specimen of legislative workmanship than the Toleration Bill, but was not, like the Toleration Bill, adapted to the wants, the feelings, and the prejudices of the existing generation. Accordingly, while the Toleration Bill found support in all quarters, the Comprehension Bill was attacked from all quarters, and was at last coldly and languidly defended even by those who had introduced it. About the same time at which the Toleration Bill became law with the general concurrence of public men, the Comprehension Bill was, with a concurrence not less general, suffered to drop. The Toleration Bill still ranks among those great statutes, which are epochs in our constitutional history. The Comprehension Bill is forgotten. No collector of antiquities has thought it worth preserving. A single copy, the same which Nottingham presented to the peers, is still among our parliamentary records, but has been seen by only two or three persons now living. It is a fortunate circumstance that, in this copy, almost the whole history of the Bill can be read. In spite of cancellations and inter-lineations, the original words can easily be distinguished from those which were inserted in the committee or on the report. The first clause, as it stood when the Bill was introduced, dispensed all the ministers of the established church from the necessity of subscribing the thirty-nine articles. For the articles was substituted a declaration which ran thus. I do approve of the doctrine and worship and government of the Church of England by law established, as containing all things necessary to salvation, and I promise, in the exercise of my ministry, to preach and practice according their unto. Another clause granted similar indulgence to the members of the two universities. Then it was provided that any minister who had been ordained after the Presbyterian fashion might, without reordination, acquire all the privileges of a priest of the established church. He must, however, be admitted to his new functions by the imposition of the hands of a bishop, who was to pronounce the following form of words. Take thou authority to preach the word of God, and administer the sacraments, and to perform all other ministerial offices in the Church of England. The person thus admitted was to be capable of holding any rectory or vicarage in the kingdom. Then followed clauses providing that a clergyman might, except in a few churches of peculiar dignity, wear the surplus, or not, as he thought fit, that the sign of the cross might be omitted in baptism, that children might be christened, if such were the wish of their parents, without Godfathers or Godmothers, and that persons who had a scruple about receiving the Eucharist kneeling might receive it sinning. The concluding clause was drawn in the form of a petition. It was proposed that the two houses should request the king and queen to issue a commission empowering thirty divines of the established Church, to revise the liturgy, the canons, and the constitution of the ecclesiastical courts, and to recommend such alterations as might on inquiry appear to be desirable. The bill went smoothly through the first stages. Compton, who since Sandcroft had shut himself up at Lambeth, as virtually primate, supported Nottingham with Arder. In the committee, however, it appeared that there was a strong body of churchmen who were determined not to give up a single word or form, to whom it seemed that the prayers were no prayers without the surplus, the babe no Christian if not marked with the cross, the bread and wine no memorials of redemption or vehicles of grace if not received on bended knee. Why, these persons asked, was the docile and affectionate son of the Church to be disgusted by seeing the irreverent practices of a conventicle introduced into her majestic choirs? Why should his feelings, his prejudices, if prejudices they were, be less considered than the whims of schismatics? If as Burnett and men like Burnett were never weary of repeating, indulgence was due to a weak brother, was it less due to the brother whose weakness consisted in the excess of his love for an ancient, a decent, a beautiful ritual, associated in his imagination from childhood, with all that is most sublime and endearing, than to him whose morose and litigious mind was always devising frivolous objections to innocent and salutary usages? But in truth the scrupulosity of the Puritan was not that sort of scrupulosity which the apostle had commanded believers to respect. It sprang not from morbid tenderness of conscience, but from sensoriousness and spiritual pride. And none who had studied the New Testament could have failed to observe that, while we are charged carefully to avoid whatever may give scandal to the feeble, we are taught by divine precept an example to make no concession to the supercilious and uncharitable Pharisee. Was everything which was not of the essence of religion to be given up as soon as it became unpleasing to a knot of zealots, whose heads had been turned by conceit and the love of novelty? Painted glass, music, holidays, fast days, were not of the essence of religion. Were the windows of King's College chapel to be broken at the demand of one set of fanatics? Was the organ of Exeter to be silenced to please another? Were all the village bells to be mute because tribulation wholesome and deacon Ananias thought them profane? Was Christmas no longer to be a day of rejoicing? Was Passion Week no longer to be a season of humiliation? These changes, it is true, were not yet proposed. But if, so the high churchmen reasoned, we once admit that what is harmless and edifying is to be given up because it offends some narrow understandings and some gloomy tempers, where are we to stop? And is it not probable that, by thus attempting to heal one schism, we may cause another? All those things which the Puritans regard as the blemishes of the church are by a large part of the population reckoned among her attractions. May she not, in ceasing to give scandal to a few sour precisions, cease also to influence the hearts of many who now delight in her ordinances? Is it not to be apprehended that, for every proselyte whom she allures from the meeting-house, ten of her old disciples may turn away from her maimed rites and dismantled temples, and that these new separatists may either form themselves into a sect far more formidable than the sect which we are now seeking to conciliate, or may in the violence of their disgust at a cold and ignoble worship be tempted to join in the solemn and gorgeous idolatry of Rome? It is remarkable that those who held this language were by no means disposed to contend for the doctrinal articles of the church. The truth is that, from the time of James I, that great party which has been peculiarly zealous for the Anglican polity and the Anglican ritual, has always leaned strongly towards Arminianism, and has therefore never been much attached to a confession of faith framed by reformers who, on questions of metaphysical divinity, generally agreed with Calvin. One of the characteristic marks of that party is the disposition which it has always shown to appeal on points of dogmatic theology rather to the liturgy, which was derived from Rome, than to the articles and homilies which were derived from Geneva. The Calvinistic members of the church, on the other hand, have always maintained that her deliberate judgment on such points is much more likely to be found in an article or a homily than in an ejaculation of penitence or a hymn of thanksgiving. It does not appear that, in the debates on the Comprehension Bill, a single high churchman raised his voice against the clause which relieved the clergy from the necessity of subscribing the articles, and of declaring the doctrine contained in the homilies to be sound. Nay, the declaration which, in the original draft, was substituted for the articles, was much softened down on the report. As the clause finally stood, the ministers of the church were required to declare, not that they approved of her constitution, but merely that they submitted to it. Had the bill become law, the only people in the kingdom who would have been under the necessity of signing the articles would have been the dissenting preachers. The easy manner in which the zealous friends of the church gave up her confession of faith presents a striking contrast to the spirit with which they struggled for her polity and her ritual. The clause which admitted Presbyterian ministers to hold benefices without Episcopal ordination was rejected. The clause which permitted scrupulous persons to communicate sitting very narrowly escaped the same fate. In the committee it was struck out, and, on the report, was with great difficulty restored. The majority of peers in the house was against the proposed indulgence, and the scale was but just turned by the proxies. But by this time it began to appear that the bill which the high churchmen were so keenly assailing was menaced by dangers from a very different quarter. The same considerations which had induced Nottingham to support a comprehension made comprehension an object of dread and aversion to a large body of dissenters. The truth is that the time for such a scheme had gone by. If a hundred years earlier, when the division in the Protestant body was recent, Elizabeth had been so wise as to abstain from requiring the observance of a few forms which a large part of her subjects considered as popish, she might perhaps have averted those fearful calamities which, forty years after her death, afflicted the church. But the general tendency of schism is to widen. Had Leo X, when the exactions and impostures of the partners first roused the indignation of Saxony, corrected those evil practices with a vigorous hand, it is not improbable that Luther would have died in the bosom of the Church of Rome. But the opportunity was suffered to escape. And when a few years later the Vatican would gladly have purchased peace by yielding the original subject of quarrel, the original subject of quarrel was almost forgotten. The inquiring spirit which had been roused by a single abuse had discovered or imagined a thousand. Controversies and gendered controversies. Every attempt that was made to accommodate one dispute ended by producing another. And at length the general counsel, which, during the earlier stages of the distemper, had been supposed to be an infallible remedy, made the case utterly hopeless. In this respect, as in many others, the history of Puritanism in England bears a close analogy to the history of Protestantism in Europe. The Parliament of 1689 could no more put an end to non-conformity by tolerating a garb or a posture than the doctors of Trent could have reconciled the Teutonic nations to the papacy by regulating the sale of indulgences. In the 16th century Quakerism was unknown, and there was not in the whole realm a single congregation of independents or Baptists. At the time of the Revolution the independents, Baptists, and Quakers were a majority of the dissenting body. And these sects could not be gained over on any terms which the lowest of low churchmen would have been willing to offer. The Independent held that a national church, governed by any central authority whatever, Pope, Patriarch, King, Bishop, or Synod, was an unscriptural institution, and that every congregation of believers was, under Christ, a sovereign society. The Baptist was even more irreclaimable than the Independent, and the Quaker even more irreclaimable than the Baptist. Which would once have extinguished nonconformity would not now satisfy even one half of the nonconformists. And it was the obvious interest of every nonconformist, whom no concession would satisfy, that none of his brethren should be satisfied. The more liberal the terms of comprehension, the greater was the alarm of every separatist, who knew that he could, in no case, be comprehended. There was but slender hope that the dissenters, unbroken and acting as one man, would be able to obtain from the legislature full admission to civil privileges. And all hope of obtaining such admission must be relinquished, if Nottingham should, by the help of some well-meaning but short-sighted friends of religious liberty, be enabled to accomplish his design. If his bill passed, there would doubtless be a considerable defection from the dissenting body. And every defection must be severely felt by a class already outnumbered, depressed, and struggling against powerful enemies. Every proselyte, too, must be reckoned twice over, as a loss to the party which was even now too weak, and as a gain to the party which was even now too strong. The church was but too well able to hold her own against all the sects in the kingdom. And if those sects were to be thinned by a large desertion, and the church strengthened by a large reinforcement, it was plain that all chance of obtaining any relaxation of the test act would be at an end. And it was but too probable that the Toleration Act might not long remain unrepealed. Even those Presbyterian ministers whose scruples the comprehension bill was expressly intended to remove were by no means unanimous in wishing it to pass. The ablest and most eloquent preachers among them had, since the declaration of indulgence had appeared, been very agreeably settled in the capital, and in other large towns, and were now about to enjoy, under the sure guarantee of an act of parliament, that Toleration which, under the declaration of indulgence, had been illicit and precarious. The situation of these men was such as the great majority of the divines of the established church might well envy. Few indeed of the parochial clergy were so abundantly supplied with comforts as the favorite orator of a great assembly of nonconformists in the city. The voluntary contributions of his wealthy hearers, alderman and deputies, West India merchants and turkey merchants, wardens of the company of fishmongers and wardens of the company of goldsmiths, enabled him to become a landowner or a mortgagee. The best broad cloth from Blackwell Hall, and the best poultry from Ledden Hall Market, were frequently left at his door. His influence over his flock was immense. Only any member of a congregation of separatists entered into a partnership, married a daughter, put a son out as apprentice, or gave his vote at an election without consulting his spiritual guide. On all political and literary questions the minister was the oracle of his own circle. It was popularly remarked, during many years, that an eminent dissenting minister had only to make his son an attorney or a physician, that the attorney was sure to have clients and the physician to have patients. While a waiting woman was generally considered as a help-meat for a chaplain in holy orders of the established church, the widows and daughters of opulent citizens were supposed to belong in a peculiar manner to nonconformist pastors. One of the great Presbyterian rabbis, therefore, might well doubt whether, in a worldly view, he should be benefited by a comprehension. He might indeed hold a rectory or a vicarage when he could get one. But in the meantime he would be destitute. His meeting-house would be closed. His congregation would be dispersed among the parish churches. If a benefit were bestowed on him it would probably be a very slender compensation for the income which he had lost. Nor could he hope to have, as a minister of the Anglican church, the authority and dignity which he had hitherto enjoyed. He would always, by a large portion of the members of that church, be regarded as a deserter. He might therefore, on the whole, very naturally wish to be left where he was. There was consequently a division in the Whig Party. One section of that party was for relieving the dissenters from the Test Act and giving up the Comprehension Bill. Another section was for pushing forward the Comprehension Bill and postponing to a more convenient time the consideration of the Test Act. The effect of this division among the friends of religious liberty was that the high churchmen, though a minority in the House of Commons, and not a majority in the House of Lords, were able to oppose with success both the reforms which they dreaded. The Comprehension Bill was not passed, and the Test Act was not repealed. End of Chapter 11, Part 10. History of England, Chapter 11, 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 11, Part 11. Just at the moment when the question of the Test and the question of the Comprehension became complicated together in a manner which might well perplex and enlightened and honest politician, both questions became complicated with a third question of grave importance. The ancient oaths of allegiance and supremacy contained some expressions which had always been disliked by the Whigs, and other expressions which Tories, honestly attached to the new settlement, thought inapplicable to princes who had not the hereditary right. The convention had, therefore, while the throne was still vacant, framed those oaths of allegiance and supremacy by which we still testify our loyalty to our sovereign. By the act which turned the convention into a parliament, the members of both houses were required to take the new oaths. As to other persons in public trust, it was hard to say how the law stood. One form of words was enjoined by statutes. Regularly passed, and not yet regularly abrogated. A different form was enjoined by the Declaration of Right. An instrument which was indeed revolutionary and irregular, but which might well be thought equal in authority to any statute. The practice was in as much confusion as the law. It was, therefore, felt to be necessary that the legislature should, without delay, pass an act abolishing the old oaths, and determining when and by whom the new oaths should be taken. The bill which settled this important question originated in the upper house. As to most of the provisions, there was little room for dispute. It was unanimously agreed that no person should, at any future time, be admitted to any office, civil, military, ecclesiastical, or academical, without taking the oaths to William and Mary. It was also unanimously agreed that every person who already held any civil or military office should be ejected from it, unless he took the oaths on or before 1 August 1689. But the strongest passions of both parties were excited by the question whether persons who already possessed ecclesiastical or academical offices should be required to swear fealty to the king and queen on pain of deprivation. None could say what might be the effect of a law in joining all the members of a great, a powerful, a sacred profession to make, under the most solemn sanction of religion, a declaration which might be plausibly represented as a formal recantation of all that they had been writing and preaching during many years. The primate and some of the most eminent bishops had already absented themselves from Parliament, and would doubtless relinquish their palaces and revenues rather than acknowledge the new sovereigns. The example of these great prelates might perhaps be followed by a multitude of divines of humbler rank, by hundreds of canons, crebendaries, and fellows of colleges, by thousands of parish priests. To such an event no Tory, however clear his own conviction that he might lawfully swear allegiance to the king who was in possession, could look forward without the most painful emotions of compassion for the sufferers and of anxiety for the church. There were some persons who went so far as to deny that the Parliament was competent to pass a law requiring a bishop to swear on pain of deprivation. No earthly power, they said, could break the tie which bound the successor of the apostles to his diocese. What God had joined no man could sunder. Dings and senates might scrawl words on parchment or impress figures on wax, but those words and figures could no more change the course of the spiritual than the course of the physical world. As the author of the universe had appointed a certain order, according to which it was his pleasure to send winter and summer, seed time and harvest, so he had appointed a certain order, according to which he communicated his grace to his Catholic Church. And the latter order was, like the former, independent of the powers and principalities of the world. A legislature might alter the flames of the months, might call June, December, and December, June. But in spite of the legislature, the snow would fall when the sun was in Capricorn, and the flowers would bloom when he was in cancer. And so the legislature might enact that Ferguson, or Muggleton, should live in the palace at Lambeth, should sit on the throne of Augustine, should be called your grace, and should walk in processions before the Premier Duke. But in spite of the legislature, Sandcroft would, while Sandcroft lived, be the only true archbishop of Canterbury. And the person who should presume to usurp the archipiscopal functions would be a schismatic. This doctrine was proved by reasons drawn from the budding of Aaron's rod, and from a certain plate which St. James the Less, according to a legend of the fourth century, used to wear on his forehead. A Greek manuscript relating to the deprivation of bishops was discovered about this time in the Bodleian Library, and became the subject of a furious controversy. One party held that God had wonderfully brought this precious volume to light for the guidance of his church at a most critical moment. The other party wondered that any importance could be attached to the nonsense of a nameless scribbler of the thirteenth century. Which was written about the deprivations of Chrysostom and Fodius, of Nicholas Mysticus, and Cosmus Atticus. But the case of Abbeyathar, whom Solomon put out of the sacerdotal office for treason, was discussed with peculiar eagerness. No small quantity of learning and ingenuity was expended in the attempt to prove that Abbeyathar, though he wore the effod and answered by Urum, was not really high priest, that he ministered only when his superior Zadok was incapacitated by sickness or by some ceremonial pollution, and that therefore the act of Solomon was not a precedent which would warrant King William in deposing a real bishop. But such reasoning as this, though backed by copious citations from the Mizna and Maimonides, was not generally satisfactory, even to zealous churchmen. For it admitted of one answer, short but perfectly intelligible to a plain man who knew nothing about Greek fathers or Levitical genealogies. There might be some doubt whether King Solomon had ejected a high priest, but there could be no doubt at all that Queen Elizabeth had ejected the bishops of more than half the seas in England. It was notorious that fourteen prelates had, without any proceeding in any spiritual court, been deprived by active parliament for refusing to acknowledge her supremacy. Had that deprivation been null? Had Bonner continued to be, to the end of his life, the only true bishop of London? Had his successor been a usurper? Had Parker and Jewel been schismatics? Had the convocation of 1562, that convocation which had finally settled the doctrine of the Church of England, been itself out of the pale of the Church of Christ? Nothing could be more ludicrous than the distress of those controversialists who had to invent a plea for Elizabeth which should not be also a plea for William. Some zealots, indeed, gave up the vain attempt to distinguish between two cases which every man of common sense perceived to be undistinguishable, and frankly owned that the deprivations of 1559 could not be justified. But no person, it was said, ought to be troubled in mind on that account. For though the Church of England might once have been schismatical, she had become Catholic when the bishops deprived by Elizabeth had ceased to live. The Tories, however, were not generally disposed to admit that the religious society to which they were fondly attached had originated in an unlawful breach of unity. They therefore took ground, lower, and more tenable. They argued the question as a question of humanity and of expediency. They spoke much of the debt of gratitude which the nation owed to the priesthood. Of the courage and fidelity with which the order, from the primate down to the youngest deacon, had recently defended the civil and ecclesiastical constitution of the realm. Of the memorable Sunday when, in all the hundred churches of the capital, scarcely one slave could be found to read the declaration of indulgence. Of the Black Friday when, amidst the blessings and the loud weeping of a mighty population, the barge of the seven prelates passed through the water gate of the tower. The firmness with which the clergy had lately, in defiance of menace and of seduction, done what they conscientiously believed to be right, had saved the liberty and religion of England. Was no indulgence to be granted to them if they now refused to do what they conscientiously apprehended to be wrong? And where it was said is the danger of treating them with tenderness. Nobody is so absurd as to propose that they shall be permitted to plot against the government, or to stir up the multitude to insurrection. They are amenable to the law, like other men. If they are guilty of treason, let them be hanged. If they are guilty of sedition, let them be find and imprisoned. If they omit in their public ministrations to pray for King William, for Queen Mary, and for the Parliament assembled under those most religious sovereigns, let the penal clauses of the act of uniformity be put in force. If this be not enough, let his majesty be empowered to tender the oaths to any clergyman, and if the oaths so tendered are refused, let deprivation follow. In this way, any non-juring bishop or rector who may be suspected, though he cannot be legally convicted, of intriguing, of writing, of talking, against the present settlement, may be at once removed from his office. But why insist on ejecting a pious and laborious minister of religion who never lifts a finger or utters a word against the government, and who, as often as he performs morning and evening service, prays from his heart for a blessing on the rulers set over him by providence, but who will not take an oath which seems to him to imply a right in the people to depose a sovereign? Surely we do all that is necessary if we leave men of this sort to the mercy of the very prince to whom they refuse to swear fidelity. If he is willing to bear with their scrupulosity, if he considers them, notwithstanding their prejudices, as innocent and useful members of society, who else can be entitled to complain? The wigs were vehement on the other side. They scrutinized with ingenuity sharpened by hatred, the claims of the clergy to the public gratitude, and sometimes went so far as altogether to deny that the order had in the preceding year deserved well of the nation. It was true that bishops and priests had stood up against the tyranny of the late king. But it was equally true that, but for the obstinacy with which they had opposed the exclusion bill, he never would have been king, and that but for their adulation and their doctrine of passive obedience he would never have ventured to be guilty of such tyranny. Their chief business, during a quarter of a century, had been to teach the people to cringe and the prince to domineer. They were guilty of the blood of Russell, of Sidney, of every brave and honest Englishman who had been put to death for attempting to save the realm from popery and despotism. Never had they breathed a whisper against arbitrary power till arbitrary power began to menace their own property and dignity. Then no doubt forgetting all their old common places about submitting to Nero, they had made haste to save themselves. Grant, such was the cry of these eager disputants, grant that in saving themselves they saved the Constitution. Are we therefore to forget that they had previously endangered it? And are we to reward them by now permitting them to destroy it? Here is a class of men closely connected with the state. A large part of the produce of the soil has been assigned to them for their maintenance. Their chiefs have seats in the legislature, wide domains, stately palaces. By this privileged body the great mass of the population is lectured every week from the chair of authority. To this privileged body has been committed the supreme direction of liberal education. Oxford and Cambridge, Westminster, Winchester, and Eaton are under priestly government. By the priesthood will, to a great extent, be formed the character of the nobility and gentry of the next generation. Of the higher clergy some have in their gift numerous and valuable benefits. Others have the privilege of appointing judges who decide grave questions affecting the liberty, the property, the reputation of their majesty's subjects, and is in order thus favored by the state to give no guarantee to the state? On what principle can it be contended that it is unnecessary to ask from an archbishop of Canterbury, or from a bishop of Durham, that promise of fidelity to the government, which all allow that it is necessary to demand from every layman who serves the crown in the humblest office? Every ex-Eisman, every collector of the customs, who refuses to swear, is to be deprived of his bread. For these humble martyrs of passive obedience and hereditary right, nobody has a word to say. Yet an ecclesiastical magnet who refuses to swear is to be suffered to retain emoluments, patronage, power, equal to those of a great minister of state. It is said that it is superfluous to impose the oaths on a clergyman, because he may be punished if he breaks the laws. Why is not the same argument urged in favor of the layman? And why, if the clergyman really means to observe the laws, does he scruple to take the oaths? The law commands him to designate William and Mary as king and queen, to do this in the most sacred place, to do this in the administration of the most solemn of all the rights of religion. The law commands him to pray that the illustrious pair may be defended by a special providence, that they may be victorious over every enemy, and that their parliament may by divine guidance be led to take such a course as may promote their safety, honor, and welfare. Can we believe that his conscience will suffer him to do all this, and yet will not suffer him to promise that he will be a faithful subject to them? To the proposition that the non-juring clergy should be left to the mercy of the king, the wigs with some justice replied that no scheme could be devised more unjust to his majesty. The matter, they said, is one of public concern, one in which every Englishman who is unwilling to be the slave of France and of Rome has a deep interest. In such a case it would be unworthy of the estates of the realm to shrink from the responsibility of providing for the common safety, to try to obtain for themselves the praise of tenderness and liberality, and to leave to the sovereign the odious task of prescription. A law requiring all public functionaries, civil, military, ecclesiastical, without distinction of persons, to take the oaths is at least equal. It excludes all suspicion of partiality, of personal malignity, of secret shying and tail-bearing. But if an arbitrary discretion is left to the government, if one non-juring priest is suffered to keep a lucrative benefit while another is turned with his wife and children into the street, every ejection will be considered as an act of cruelty, and will be imputed as a crime to the sovereign and his ministers. Thus the parliament had to decide, at the same moment, what quantity of relief should be granted to the consciences of dissenters, and what quantity of pressure should be applied to the consciences of the clergy of the established church. The king conceived a hope that it might be in his power to effect a compromise agreeable to all parties. He flattered himself that the Tories might be induced to make some concession to the dissenters on condition that the wigs would be lenient to the Jacobites. He determined to try what his personal intervention would effect. It chanced that, a few hours after the lords had read the comprehension bill a second time, and the bill touching the oaths a first time, he had occasion to go down to parliament for the purpose of giving his assent to a law. From the throne he addressed both houses, and expressed an earnest wish that they would consent to modify the existing laws in such a manner that all Protestants might be admitted to public employment. It was well understood that he was willing, if the legislature would comply with his request, to let clergymen who were already benefaced continue to hold their benefices without swearing allegiance to him. His conduct on this occasion deserves undoubtedly the praise of disinterestedness. It is honorable to him that he attempted to purchase liberty of conscience for his subjects by giving up the safeguard of his own crown. But it must be acknowledged that he showed less wisdom than virtue. The only Englishman in his privy council whom he had consulted, if Burnett was correctly informed, was Richard Hampton. And Richard Hampton, though a highly respectable man, was so far from being able to answer for the wig-party that he could not answer even for his own son John, whose temper, naturally vindictive, had been exasperated into ferocity by the stings of remorse and shame. The king soon found that there was in the hatred of the two great factions an energy which was wanting to their love. The wigs, though they were almost unanimous in thinking that the sacramental test ought to be abolished, were by no means unanimous in thinking that moment well chosen for the abolition. And even those wigs who were most desirous to see the nonconformists relieved without delay from civil disabilities were fully determined not to forego the opportunity of humbling and punishing the class to whose instrumentality chiefly was to be ascribed that tremendous reflux of public feeling which had followed the dissolution of the Oxford Parliament. To put the Jains, the Souths, the Sherlocks into such a situation that they must either starve or recant publicly, and with the gospel at their lips, all the ostentatious professions of many years was a revenge too delicious to be relinquished. The Tory, on the other hand, sincerely respected and pitted those clergymen who felt scruples about the oaths. But the test was, in his view, essential to the safety of the established religion, and must not be surrendered for the purpose of saving any man, however eminent, from any hardship, however serious. It would be a sad day doubtless for the Church when the Episcopal bench, the chapter houses of cathedrals, halls of colleges, would miss some men renowned for piety and learning. But it would be a still Saturday for the Church when an independent should bear the white staff or a Baptist sit on the woolsack. Each party tried to serve those for whom it was interested, but neither party would consent to grant favourable terms to its enemies. The result was that the nonconformists remained excluded from office in the State, and the non-jurors were ejected from office in the Church. In the House of Commons no member thought it expedient to propose the repeal of the Test Act. But leave was given to bring in a bill repealing the Corporation Act, which had been passed by the Cavalier Parliament soon after the Restoration, and which contained a clause requiring all municipal magistrates to receive the sacrament according to the forms of the Church of England. When this bill was about to be committed, it was moved by the Tories that the committee should be instructed to make no alteration in the law touching the sacrament. Those wigs who were zealous for the comprehension must have been placed by this motion in an embarrassing position. To vote for the instruction would have been inconsistent with their principles. To vote against it would have been to break with Nottingham. A middle course was found. The adjournment of the debate was moved and carried by 116 votes to 114, and the subject was not revived. In the House of Lords a motion was made for the abolition of the sacramental Test, but was rejected by a large majority. Many of those who thought the motion right in principle thought it ill-timed. A protest was entered, but it was signed only by a few peers of no great authority. It is a remarkable fact that two great chiefs of the Whig Party, who were in general very attentive to their parliamentary duty, Devon Shear and Shrewsbury, absented themselves on this occasion. The debate on the Test in the Upper House was speedily followed by a debate on the last clause of the Comprehension Bill. By that clause it was provided that thirty bishops and priests should be commissioned to revise the liturgy and canons and to suggest amendments. On this subject the Whig peers were almost all of one mind. They mustered strong and spoke warmly. Why, they asked, were none but members of the sacerdotal order to be entrusted with this duty. Were the laity no part of the Church of England? When the commission should have made its report, laymen would have to decide on the recommendations contained in that report. Not a line of the Book of Common Prayer could be altered but by the authority of king, lords, and commons. The king was a layman. Five sixths of the lords were laymen. All the members of the House of Commons were laymen. Was it not absurd to say that laymen were incompetent to examine into a matter which it was acknowledged that laymen must in the last resort determine? And could anything be more opposite to the whole spirit of Protestantism than the notion that a certain preternatural power of judging and spiritual cases was vouchsafe to a particular caste and to that caste alone? That such men as Seldon, as Hale, as Boyle, were less competent to give an opinion on a collect or a creed than the youngest and silliest chaplain who, in a remote manor house, passed his life in drinking ale and playing at shovel-board? What God had instituted no earthly power, lay or clerical, could consider? And of things instituted by human beings a layman was surely as competent as a clergyman to judge. That the Anglican liturgy and cannons were of purely human institution the Parliament acknowledged by referring them to a commission for revision and correction. How could it then be maintained that in such a commission the laity so vast a majority of the population, the laity whose edification was the main end of all ecclesiastical regulations, and whose innocent tastes ought to be carefully consulted in the framing of the public services of religion, ought not to have a single representative? Precedent was directly opposed to this odious distinction. Repeatedly since the light of reformation had dawned on England, commissioners had been empowered by law to revise the cannons. And on every one of those occasions some of the commissioners had been laymen. In the present case the proposed arrangement was peculiarly objectionable. For the object of issuing the commission was the conciliating of dissenters, and it was therefore most desirable that the commissioners should be men in whose fairness and moderation dissenters could confide. Would thirty such men be easily found in the higher ranks of the clerical profession? The duty of the legislature was to arbitrate between two contending parties, the nonconformist divines and the Anglican divines, and it would be the grossest injustice to commit one of those parties at the office of umpire. On these grounds the Whigs proposed an amendment to the effect that laymen should be joined with clergymen in the commission. The contest was sharp. Burnett, who had just taken his seat among the peers, and who seems to have been bent on winning at almost any price the goodwill of his brethren, argued with all his constitutional warmth for the clause as it stood. The numbers on the division proved to be exactly equal. The consequence was that, according to the rules of the house, the amendment was lost.