the present reign, declared that the sovereign was not constitutionally competent to dispense with statutes in matters ecclesiastical. The declaration was therefore illegal; and the petitioners could not, in prudence, honor, or conscience, be parties to the solemn publication of an illegal declaration in the house of God, and during the time of divine service.

This paper was signed by the archbishop and by six of his suffragans, Lloyd of St. Asaph, Turner of Ely, Lake of Chichester, Ken of Bath and Wells, White of Peterborough, and Trelawney of Bristol. The Bishop of London, being under suspension, did not sign.

It was now late on Friday evening; and on Sunday morning the declaration was to be read in the churches of London. It was necessary to put the paper into the king's hands without delay. The six bishops set off for Whitehall. The archbishop, who had long been forbidden the court, did not accompany them. Lloyd, leaving his five brethren at the house of Lord Dartmouth, in the vicinity of the palace, went to Sunderland, and begged that minister to read the petition, and to ascertain when the king would be willing to receive it. Sunderland, afraid of compromising himself, refused to look at the paper, but went immediately to the royal closet. James directed that the bishops should be admitted. He had heard from his tool Cartwright that they were disposed to obey the royal mandate, but that they wished for some little modifications in form, and that they meant to present a humble request to that effect. His majesty was therefore in very good humor. When they knelt before him, he gra ciously told them to rise, took the paper from Lloyd, and said, "This is my Lord of Canterbury's hand." "Yes, sir, his own hand," was the answer. James read the petition; he folded it up; and his countenance grew dark. "This," he said, "is a great surprise to me. I did not expect this from your Church, especially from some of you. This is a standard of rebellion." The bishops broke out into passionate professions of loyalty; but the king, as usual, repeated the same words over and over. "I tell

you, this is a standard of rebellion."
Trelawney, falling on his knees.
do not say so hard a thing of us.
a rebel.

"Rebellion!" cried "For God's sake, sir,

No Trelawney can be

Remember that my family has fought for the crown. Remember how I served your majesty when Monmouth was in the west." "We put down the last rebellion," said Lake. "We rebel!" exclaimed your majesty's feet." "Sir," said Ken, in a more manly tone, "I hope that you will grant to us that liberty of conscience which you grant to all mankind." Still James went on. "This is rebellion. This is a standard of rebellion. Did ever a good Churchman question the dispensing power before? Have not some of you preached for it and written for it? It is a standard of rebellion. I will have my declaration published." "We have two duties to perform," answered Ken; "our duty to God, and our duty to your majesty. We honor you, but we fear God." "Have I deserved this?" said the king, more and more angry; "I, who have been such a friend to your Church! I did not expect this from some of you. I will be obeyed. My declaration shall be published. You are trumpeters of sedition. What do you do here? Go to your dioceses, and see that I am obeyed. I will keep this paper. I will not part with it. I will remember you that have signed it." "God's will be done," said Ken. "God has given me the dispensing power,' said the king, "and I will maintain it. I tell you that there are still seven thousand of your Church who have not bowed the knee to Baal." The bishops respectfully retired.* That very evening the document which they had put into the hands of the king appeared word for word in print, was laid on the tables of all the coffeehouses, and was cried about the streets. Every where the people rose from their beds, and came out to stop the hawkers. It was said that the printer cleared a thousand

"We shall not raise another." Turner; "we are ready to die at

* Sancroft's Narrative printed from the Tanner MS.; Citters,

May 22 1688

June I'

This is

pounds in a few hours by this penny broadside. probably an exaggeration, but it is an exaggeration which proves that the sale was enormous. How the petition got abroad is still a mystery. Sancroft declared that he had taken every precaution against publication, and that he knew of no copy except that which he had himself written, and which James had taken out of Lloyd's hand. The veracity of the archbishop is beyond all suspicion. It is, however, by no means improbable that some of the divines who assisted in framing the petition may have remembered so short a composition accurately, and may have sent it to the press. The prevailing opinion, however, was, that some person about the king had been indiscreet or treacherous.* Scarcely less sensation was produced by a short letter which was written with great power of argument and language, printed secretly, and largely circulated on the same day by the post and by the common carriers. A copy was sent to every clergyman in the kingdom. The writer did not attempt to disguise the danger which those who disobeyed the royal mandate would incur, but he set forth in a lively manner the still greater danger of submission. "If we read the declaration," said he, "we fall to rise no more. We fall unpitied and despised. We fall amid the curses of a nation whom our compliance will have ruined." Some thought that this paper came from Holland. Others attributed it to Sherlock. But Prideaux, dean of Norwich, who was a principal agent in distributing it, believed it to be the work of Halifax.

The conduct of the prelates was rapturously extolled by the general voice; but some murmurs were heard. It was said that such grave men, if they thought themselves bound in conscience to remonstrate with the king, ought to have remonstrated earlier. Was it fair to him to leave him in the dark till within thirty-six hours of the time fixed for the reading of the declaration? Even if he wished to revoke the order in council, it was too late * Burnet, i., 741; Revolution Politics; Higgins's Short View.

to do so. The inference seemed to be that the petition was intended, not to move the royal mind, but merely to inflame the discontents of the people.* These complaints were utterly groundless. The king had laid on the bishops a command new, surprising, and embarrassing. It was their duty to communicate with each other, and to ascer tain, as far as possible, the sense of the profession of which they were the heads before they took any step. They were dispersed over the whole kingdom. Some of them were distant from others a full week's journey. James allowed them only a fortnight to inform themselves, to meet, to deliberate, and to decide; and he surely had no right to think himself aggrieved because that fortnight was drawing to a close before he learned their decision. Nor is it true that they did not leave him time to revoke his order if he had been wise enough to do so. He might have called together his council on Saturday morning, and before night it might have been known throughout London and the suburbs that he had yielded to the entreaties of the fathers of the Church. The Saturday, however, passed over without any sign of relenting on the part of the government; and the Sunday arrived, a day long remembered.

In the city and liberties of London were about a hundred parish churches. In only four of these was the order in council obeyed. At Saint Gregory's the declaration was read by a divine of the name of Martin. As soon as he uttered the first words, the whole congregation rose and withdrew. At Saint Matthew's, in Friday Street, a wretch named Timothy Hall, who had disgraced his gown by acting as broker for the Duchess of Portsmouth in the sale of pardons, and who now had hopes of obtaining the vacant bishopric of Oxford, was in like manner left alone in his church. At Sergeant's Inn, in Chancery Lane, the clerk pretended that he had forgotten to bring a copy; and the chief justice of the King's Bench, who had attended in order to see that the royal mandate was obeyed,

Clarke's Life of James the Second, ii., 155.

was forced to content himself with this excuse. Samuel Wesley, the father of John and Charles Wesley, a curate in London, took for his text that day the noble answer of the three Jews to the Chaldean tyrant, "Be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up." Even in the chapel of Saint James's Palace the officiating miister had the courage to disobey the order. The Westminster boys long remembered what took place that day in the Abbey. Sprat, bishop of Rochester, officiated there as dean. As soon as he began to read the declaration, murmurs and the noise of people crowding out of the choir drowned his voice. He trembled so violently that men saw the paper shake in his hand. Long before he had finished, the place was deserted by all but those whose situation made it necessary for them to remain.*

Never had the Church been so dear to the nation as on the afternoon of that day. The spirit of dissent seemed to be extinct. Baxter from his pulpit pronounced a eulogium on the bishops and parochial clergy. The Dutch minister, a few hours later, wrote to inform the StatesGeneral that the Anglican priesthood had risen in the estimation of the public to an incredible degree. The universal cry of the Nonconformists, he said, was, that they would rather continue to be under the penal statutes than separate their cause from that of the prelates.†

Another week of anxiety and agitation passed away. Sunday came again. Again the churches of the capital were thronged by hundreds of thousands; the declaration was read nowhere except at the very few places where it had been read the week before. The minister who had officiated at the chapel in Saint James's Palace had been turned out of his situation, and a more obsequious divine appeared with the paper in his hand; but his agitation was so great that he could not articulate. In truth, the feeling of the whole nation had now become such as none * Citters, 1688; Burnet, i., 740; and Lord Dartmouth's note; Southey's Life of Wesley.