Our new thing to us to be reviled and falsely accused. consciences acquit us; your majesty acquits us; and we are satisfied." "Yes," said the king; "but a declaration from you is necessary to my service." He then produced a copy of the prince's manifesto. "See," he said, "how you are mentioned here." "Sir," answered one of the bishops, "not one person in five hundred believes this manifesto to be genuine." "No!" cried the king, fiercely; "then those five hundred would bring the Prince of Orange to cut my throat." "God forbid," exclaimed the prelates, in concert. But the king's understanding, never very clear, was now quite bewildered. One of his peculiarities was that, whenever his opinion was not adopted, he fancied that his veracity was questioned. "This paper not genuine!" he exclaimed, turning over the leaves with his hands; "am I not worthy to be believed? Is my word not to be taken ?" "At all events, sir," said one of the bishops, "this is not an ecclesiastical matter. It lies within the sphere of the civil power. God has intrusted your majesty with the sword; and it is not for us to invade your functions." Then the archbishop, with that gentle and temperate malice which inflicts the deepest wounds, said that he must be excused from setting his hand to any political document. "I and my brethren, sir," he said, "have already smarted severely for meddling with affairs of state, and we shall be very cautious how we do so again. We once subscribed a petition of the most harmless kind; we presented it in the most respectful manner; and we found that we had committed a high offense. We were saved from ruin only by the merciful protection of God. And, sir, the ground then taken by your majesty's attorney and solicitor was that, out of Parliament, we were private men, and that it was criminal presumption in private men to meddle with pol itics. They attacked us so fiercely that for my part I gave myself over for lost." "I thank you for that, my Lord of Canterbury," said the king; "I should have hoped that you would not have thought yourself lost by falling into my hands." Such a speech might have become the mouth of a merciful sovereign, but it came with a bad grace from a prince who had gazed with pleasure on the contortions of wretches fainting in the boots, from a prince who had burned a woman alive for harboring one of his flying enemies, from a prince round whose knees his own nephew had clung in vain agonies of supplication. The archbishop was not to be so silenced. He resumed his story, and recounted the insults which the creatures of the court had offered to the Church of England, among which some ridicule thrown on his own style occupied a conspicuous place. The king had nothing to say but that there was no use in repeating old grievances, and that he had hoped that these things had been quite forgotten. He who never forgot the smallest injury that he had suffered, could not understand how others should remember for a few weeks the most deadly injuries that he had inflicted. At length the conversation came back to the point from which it had wandered. The king insisted on having from the bishops a paper declaring their abhorrence of the prince's enterprise. They, with many professions of the most submissive loyalty, pertinaciously refused. The prince, they said, asserted that he had been invited by temporal as well as by spiritual peers. The imputation was common. Why should not the purgation be common also? "I see how it is," said the king. "Some of the temporal peers have been with you, and have persuaded you to cross me in this matter." The bishops solemnly averred that it was not so. But it would, they said, seem strange that, on a question involving grave political and military considerations, the temporal peers should be entirely passed over, and the prelates alone should be required to take a prominent part. "But this," said James, "is my method. I am your king. It is for me to judge what is best. will go my own way; and I call on you to assist me." The bishops assured him that they would assist him in their proper department, as Christian ministers with their prayers, and as peers of the I realm with their advice in his Parliament. James, who wanted neither the prayers of heretics nor the advice of Parliament, was bitterly disappointed. After a long altercation, "I have done," he said; "I will urge you no further. Since you will not assist me, I must trust to myself and to my own arms."* The bishops had hardly left the royal presence when a courier arrived with the news that on the preceding day the Prince of Orange had landed in Devonshire. During the following week London was violently agitated. On Sunday, the eleventh of November, a rumor was circulated that knives, gridirons, and caldrons, intended for the torturing of heretics, were concealed in the monastery which had been established under the king's protection at Clerkenwell. Great multitudes assembled round the building, and were about to demolish it, when a military force arrived. The crowd was dispersed, and several of the rioters slain. An inquest sat on the bodies, and came to a decision which strongly indicated the temper of the public mind. The jury found that certain loyal and welldisposed persons, who had gone to put down the meetings of traitors and public enemies at a mass house, had been willfully murdered by the soldiers; and this strange verdict was signed by all the jurors. The ecclesiastics at Clerkenwell, naturally alarmed by these symptoms of popular feeling, were desirous to place their property in safety. They succeeded in removing most of their furniture before any report of their intentions got abroad. But at length the suspicions of the rabble were excited. The two last carts were stopped in Holborn, and all that they contained was publicly burned in the middle of the street. So great was the alarm among the Catholics, that all their places of worship were closed except those which belonged to the royal family and to foreign embassadors.† * Clarke's Life of James, ii., 210, Orig. Mem.; Sprat's Narrative; Citters, Luttrell's Diary; News-letter in the Mackintosh Collection; Adda, On the whole, however, things as yet looked not unfavorably for James. The invaders had been more than a week on English ground; yet no man of note had joined them. No rebellion had broken out in the north or the east. No servant of the crown appeared to have betrayed The royal army was assembling fast at Salisbury, and, though inferior in discipline to that of William, was superior in numbers. his trust. The prince was undoubtedly surprised and mortified by the slackness of those who had invited him to England. By the common people of Devonshire, indeed, he had been received with every sign of good will; but no nobleman, no gentleman of high consideration, had yet repaired to his quarters. The explanation of this singular fact is probably to be found in the circumstance that he had landed in a part of the island where he had not been expected. His friends in the north had made their arrangements for a rising, on the supposition that he would be among them with an army. His friends in the west had made no arrangements at all, and were naturally disconcerted at finding themselves suddenly called upon to take the lead in a movement so important and perilous. They had also fresh in their recollection, and, indeed, full in their sight, the disastrous consequences of rebellion, gibbets, heads, mangled quarters, families still in deep mourning for brave sufferers who had loved their country well but not wisely. After a warning so terrible and so recent, some hesitation was natural. It was equally natural, however, that William, who, trusting to promises from England, had put to hazard, not only his own fame and fortunes, but also the prosperity and independence of his native land, should feel deeply mortified. He was, indeed, so indignant, that he talked of falling back to Torbay, re-embarking his troops, returning to Holland, and leaving those who had betrayed him to the fate which they deserved. At length, on Monday, the twelfth of November, a gentleman named Burrington, who resided in the neighborhood of Crediton, joined the prince's stand ard, and his example was followed by several of his neighbors. Men of higher consequence had already set out from for action had now arrived. Lovelace, with seventy fol- * Johnstone, Feb. 27, 1688; Citters of the same date. Lysons, Magna Britannia, Berkshire. |