mouth, were now wandering on the Continent, or toiling among the sugar-canes of Barbadoes. He affected even to sympathize with the kindness which the English Puritans felt for their foreign brethren. A second and a third proclamation were published at Edinburgh, which greatly extended the nugatory toleration granted to the Presbyterians by the edict of February.* The banished Huguenots, on whom the king had frowned during many months, and whom he had defrauded of the alms contributed by the nation, were now relieved and caressed. An order of council was issued, appealing again in their behalf to the public liberality. The rule which required them to qualify themselves for the receipt of charity, by conforming to the Anglican worship, seems to have been at this time silently abrogated; and the defenders of the king's policy had the effrontery to affirm that this rule, which, as we know from the best evidence, was really devised by himself in concert with Barillon, had been adopted at the instance of the prelates of the Established Church.† While the king was thus courting his old adversaries, the friends of the Church were not less active. Of the acrimony and scorn with which prelates and priests had, since the Restoration, been in the habit of treating the sectaries, scarcely a trace was discernible. Those who had lately been designated as schismatics and fanatics were now dear fellow-Protestants, weak brethren it might be, but still brethren, whose scruples were entitled to tender regard. If they would but be true at this crisis to the cause of the English Constitution and of the Reformed religion, their generosity should be speedily and largely rewarded. They should have, instead of an indulgence which was of no legal validity, a real indulgence, secured by act of Parliament. Nay, many Churchmen, who had hitherto been distinguished by their inflexible attachment to every gesture and every word prescribed in the Book * Wodrow, Appendix, vol. ii., Nos. 132, 134. + London Gazette, April 21, 1687; Animadversions on a late paper entitled A Letter to a Dissenter, by H. C. (Henry Care), 1687. of Common Prayer, now declared themselves favorable, not only to toleration, but even to comprehension. The dispute, they said, about surplices and attitudes had too long divided those who were agreed as to the essentials of religion. When the struggle for life and death against the common enemy was over, it would be found that the Anglican clergy would be ready to make every fair concession. If the Dissenters would demand only what was reasonable, not only civil, but ecclesiastical dignities would be open to them; and Baxter and Howe would be able, without any stain on their honor or their conscience, to sit on the episcopal bench. Of the numerous pamphlets in which the cause of the court and the cause of the Church were at this time eagerly and anxiously pleaded before the Puritan, now, by a strange turn of fortune, the arbiter of the fate of his persecutors, one only is still remembered, the Letter to a Dissenter. In this masterly little tract, all the arguments which could convince a Nonconformist that it was his duty and his interest to prefer an alliance with the Church to an alliance with the court, were condensed into the smallest compass, arranged in the most perspicuous order, illustrated with lively wit, and enforced by an eloquence earnest indeed, yet never in its utmost vehemence transgressing the limits of exact good sense and good breeding. The effect of this paper was immense; for, as it was only a single sheet, more than twenty thousand copies were circulated by the post; and there was no corner of the kingdom in which the effect was not felt. Twentyfour answers were published, but the town pronounced that they were all bad, and that Lestrange's was the worst of the twenty-four.* The government was greatly irritated, and spared no pains to discover the author of the letter; but it was found impossible to procure legal evidence against him. Some imagined that they recognized * Lestrange's Answer to a Letter to a Dissenter; Care's Animadversions on a Letter to a Dissenter; Dialogue between Harry and Roger; that is to say. Harry Care and Roger Lestrange. the sentiments and diction of Temple. But, in truth, that amplitude and acuteness of intellect, that vivacity of fancy, that terse and energetic style, that placid dignity, half courtly, half philosophical, which the utmost excitement of conflict could not for a moment derange, belonged to Halifax, and to Halifax alone. The Dissenters wavered; nor is it any reproach to them that they did so. They were suffering, and the king had given them relief. Some eminent pastors had emerged from confinement; others had ventured to return from exile. Congregations which had hitherto met only by stealth and in darkness, now assembled at noon-day, and sang psalms aloud in the hearing of magistrates, churchwardens, and constables. Modest buildings for the worship of God after the Puritan fashion began to arise all over England. An observant traveler will still remark the date of 1687 on some of the oldest meeting-houses. Nevertheless, the offers of the Church were, to a prudent Dissenter, far more attractive than those of the king. The Declaration was, in the eye of the law, a nullity. It suspended the penal statutes against nonconformity only for so long a time as the fundamental principles of the Constitution and the rightful authority of the Legislature should remain suspended. What was the value of privileges which must be held by a tenure at once so ignominious and so insecure? There might soon be a demise of the crown. A sovereign attached to the established religion might sit on the throne. A Parliament composed of churchmen might be assembled. How deplorable would then be the situation of Dissenters who had been in league with Jesuits against the Constitution! The Church offered an indulgence very different from that granted by James, an indulgence as valid and as sacred as the Great Charter. Both the contending parties promised religious liberty to the separatist; but one party required him to * The letter was signed T. W. Care says, in his Animadversions, “This Sir Politic T. W, or W. T.; for some critics think that the truer read purchase it by sacrificing civil liberty, the other party invited him to enjoy civil and religious liberty together. For these reasons, even if it could be believed that the court was sincere, a Dissenter might reasonably have determined to cast in his lot with the Church. But what guarantee was there for the sincerity of the court? All men knew what the conduct of James had been up to that very time. It was not impossible, indeed, that a persecutor might be convinced by argument and by experience of the advantages of toleration. But James did not pretend to have been recently convinced. On the contrary, he omitted no opportunity of protesting that he had, during many years, been, on principle, adverse to all intolerance. Yet, within a few months, he had persecuted men, women, young girls, to the death for their religion. Had he been acting against light and against the convictions of his conscience then? Or was he uttering a deliberate falsehood now? From this dilemma there was no escape; and either of the two suppositions was fatal to the king's character for honesty. It was notorious, also, that he had been completely subjugated by the Jesuits. Only a few days before the publication of the Indulgence, that order had been honored, in spite of the well-known wishes of the Holy See, with a new mark of his confidence and approbation. His confessor, Father Mansuete, a Franciscan, whose mild temper and irreproachable life commanded general respect, but who had long been hated by Tyrconnel and Petre, had been discarded. The vacant place had been filled by an Englishman named Warner, who had apostatized from the religion of his country, and had turned Jesuit. To the moderate Roman Catholics and to the nuncio this change was far from agreeable. By every Protestant it was regarded as a proof that the dominion of the Jesuits over the royal mind was absolute.* Whatever praises those fathers might justly claim, flat* Ellis Correspondence, March 15, July 27, 1686. Barillon, , March, 1687; Ronquillo, March, 1687, in the Mackintosh Collec Feb. 28 March tion. tery itself could not ascribe to them either wide liberality or strict veracity. That they had never scrupled, when the interest of their faith or of their order was at stake, to call in the aid of the civil sword, or to violate the laws of truth and of good faith, had been proclaimed to the world, not only by Protestant accusers, but by men whose virtue and genius were the glory of the Church of Rome. It was incredible that a devoted disciple of the Jesuits should be on principle zealous for freedom of conscience; but it was neither incredible nor improbable that he might think himself justified in disguising his real sentiments, in order to render a service to his religion. It was cer tain that the king at heart preferred the churchmen to the Puritans. It was certain that, while he had any hope of gaining the churchmen, he had never shown the smallest kindness to the Puritans. Could it then be doubted that, if the churchmen would even now comply with his wishes, he would willingly sacrifice the Puritans? His word, repeatedly pledged, had not restrained him from invading the legal rights of that clergy which had given such signal proofs of affection and fidelity to his house. What security, then, could his word afford to sects divided from him by the recollection of a thousand inexpiable wounds inflicted and endured? When the first agitation produced by the publication of the Indulgence had subsided, it appeared that a breach had taken place in the Puritan party. The minority, headed by a few busy men whose judgment was defective or was biased by interest, supported the king. Henry Care, who had long been the bitterest and most active pamphleteer among the Nonconformists, and who had, in the days of the Popish Plot, assailed James with the utmost fury in a weekly journal entitled the Packet of Advice from Rome, was now as loud in adulation as he had formerly been in calumny and insult.* The chief agent who was employed * Wood's Athenæ Oxonienses; Observator; Heraclitus Ridens, passim. But Care's own writings furnish the best materials for an estimate of his char acter. |