honesty was guilty of an unpardonable offence. The violence and audacity which the apostate Williams had exhibited throughout the trial of the Bishops had made him hateful to the whole nation.* He was recompensed with a baronetcy. Holloway and Powell had raised their character by declaring that, in their judgment, the petition was no libel. They were dismissed from their situations. The fate of Wright seems to have been, during some time, in suspense. He had indeed summed up against the Bishops: but he had suffered their counsel to question the dispensing power. He had pronounced the petition a libel: but he had carefully abstained from pronouncing the Declaration legal; and, through the whole proceeding, his tone had been that of a man who remembered that a day of reckoning might come. He had indeed strong claims to indulgence: for it was hardly to be expected that any human impudence would hold out without flagging through such a task, in the presence of such a bar and of such an auditory. The members of the Jesuitical cabal, however, blamed his want of spirit: the Chancellor pronounced him a beast; and it was generally believed that a new Chief Justice would be appointed. But no change was made. It would indeed have been no easy matter to supply Wright's place. The many lawyers who were far superior to him in parts and learning were, with scarcely an exception, hostile to the designs of the government and the very few lawyers who surpassed him in turpitude and effrontery were, with scarcely an exception, to be found only in the lowest *In one of the numerous ballads of that time are the following lines: "Both our Britons are fooled, And next parliament each will be pla guily schooled." The two Britons are Jeffreys and Williams, who were both natives of Wales. † London Gazette, July 9. 1688. Ellis Correspondence, July 10. 1688; Clarendon's Diary, Aug. 3. 1688. ranks of the profession, and would have been incompetent to conduct the ordinary business of the Court of King's Bench. Williams, it is true, united all the qualities which James required in a magistrate. But the services of Williams were needed at the bar; and, had he been removed thence, the crown would have been left without the help of any advocate even of the third rate. Nothing had amazed or mortified the King more than the enthusiasm which the Dissenters had shown in the cause of the Bishops. Penn, who, though he had himself sacrificed wealth and honours to his conscientious scruples, seems to have imagined that nobody but himself had a conscience, imputed the discontent of the Puritans to envy and dissatisfied ambition. They had not had their share of the benefits promised by the Declaration of Indulgence: none of them had been admitted to any high and honourable post; and therefore it was not strange that they were jealous of the Roman Catholics. Accordingly, within a week after the great verdict had been pronounced in Westminster Hall, Silas Titus, a noted Presbyterian, a vehement Exclusionist, and a manager of Stafford's impeachment, was invited to occupy a seat in the Privy Council. He was one of the persons on whom the opposition had most confidently reckoned. But the honour now offered to him, and the hope of obtaining a large sum due to him from the crown, overcame his virtue, and, to the great disgust of all classes of Protestants, he was sworn in.* The vindictive designs of the King against the Church were not accomplished. Almost all the Archdeacons and diocesan Chancellors refused to furnish the information which was required. The * London Gazette, July 9. 1688; Adda, July 3.; Evelyn's Diary, July 12.; Johnstone, Dec. 1687, Feb. f. 1688. day on which it had been intended that the whole body of the priesthood should be summoned to answer for the crime of disobedience arrived. The High Commission met. It appeared that scarcely one ecclesiastical officer had sent up a return. At the same time a paper of Proceedings of the High Commission. Sprat resigns his seat. grave import was delivered to the board. It came from Sprat, Bishop of Rochester. During two years, supported by the hope of an Archbishopric, he had been content to bear the reproach of persecuting that Church which he was bound by every obligation of conscience and honour to defend. But his hope had been disappointed. He saw that, unless he abjured his religion, he had no chance of sitting on the metropolitan throne of York. He was too goodnatured to find any pleasure in tyranny, and too discerning not to see the signs of the coming retribution. He therefore determined to resign his odious functions; and he communicated his determination to his colleagues in a letter written, like all his prose compositions, with great propriety and dignity of style. It was impossible, he said, that he could any longer continue to be a member of the Commission. He had himself, in obedience to the royal command, read the Declaration: but he could not presume to condemn thousands of pious and loyal divines who had taken a different view of their duty; and, since it was resolved to punish them for acting according to their conscience, he must declare that he would rather suffer with them than be accessary to their sufferings. The Commissioners read and stood aghast. The very faults of their colleague, the known laxity of his principles, the known meanness of his spirit, made his defection peculiarly alarming. A government must be indeed in danger when men like Sprat address it in the language of Hampden. The tribunal, lately so insolent, became on a sudden strangely tame. The ecclesiastical functionaries who had defied its authority were not even reprimanded. It was not thought safe to hint any suspicion that their disobedience had been intentional. They were merely enjoined to have their reports ready in four months. The Commission then broke up in confusion. It had received a death blow.* the clergy. Transactions at While the High Commission shrank from a conflict with the Church, the Church, con- Discontent of scious of its strength, and animated by a new enthusiasm, invited, by a series of defiances, the attack of the High Commission. Soon after the acquittal of the Bishops, the venerable Ormond, the most illustrious of the Cavaliers of the great civil war, sank under his infirmities. The intelligence of his death was conveyed with speed to Oxford. Instantly the University, of which Oxford, he had long been Chancellor, met to name a successor. One party was for the eloquent and accomplished Halifax, another for the grave and orthodox Nottingham. Some mentioned the Earl of Abingdon, who resided near them, and had recently been turned out of the lieutenancy of the county for refusing to join with the King against the established religion. But the majority, consisting of a hundred and eighty graduates, voted for the young Duke of Ormond, grandson of their late head, and son of the gallant Ossory. The speed with which they came to this. resolution was caused by their apprehension that, if there were a delay even of a day, the King would attempt to force on them some chief who would betray their rights. The apprehension was reasonable: for, only two hours after they had separated, came a mandate from Whitehall requiring them to choose Jeffreys. Happily the election of young Ormond *Sprat's Letters to the Earl of Dorset; London Gazette, Aug. was already complete and irrevocable.* A few weeks later the infamous Timothy Hall, who had distinguished himself among the clergy of London by reading the Declaration, was rewarded with the Bishopric of Oxford, which had been vacant since the death of the not less infamous Parker. Hall came down to his see but the Canons of his Cathedral refused to attend his installation: the University refused to create him a Doctor: not a single one of the academic youth applied to him for holy orders: no cap was touched to him; and, in his palace, he found himself alone.† Soon afterwards a living which was in the gift of Magdalene College, Oxford, became vacant. Hough and his ejected brethren assembled and presented a clerk; and the Bishop of Gloucester, in whose diocese the living lay, instituted their presentee without hesitation.‡ Discontent of the gentry. The gentry were not less refractory than the clergy. The assizes of that summer wore all over the country an aspect never before known. The Judges, before they set out on their circuits, had been summoned into the King's presence, and had been directed by him to impress on the grand jurors and magistrates, throughout the kingdom, the duty of electing such members of Parliament as would support his policy. They obeyed his commands, harangued vehemently against the clergy, reviled the seven Bishops, called the memorable petition a factious libel, criticised with great asperity Sancroft's style, which was indeed open to criticism, and pronounced that His Grace ought to be whipped by Doc *London Gazette, July 26. Newsletter July 27. 1688; Adda, ug. 6. in the Mackintosh Collection, July 25.; Ellis Correspondence, July 28. 31.; Wood's Fasti Ox onienses. † Wood's Athenæ Oxonienses; Luttrell's Diary, Aug. 23. 1688. Ronquillo, Sept. 17. 1688; Luttrell's Diary, Sept. 6. |