narrative which Dangerfield had written. This narrative, if published by a private man, would undoubtedly have been a seditious libel. A criminal information was filed in the King's Bench against Williams: he pleaded the privileges of Parliament in vain; he was convicted and sentenced to a fine of ten thousand pounds. A large part of this sum he actually paid; for the rest, he gave a bond. The Earl of Peterborough, who had been injuriously mentioned in Dangerfield's narrative, was encouraged, by the success of the criminal information, to bring a civil action, and to demand large damages. Williams was driven to extremity. At this juncture a way of escape presented itself. It was, indeed, a way which, to a man of strong principles or high spirit, would have been more dreadful than beggary, imprisonment, or death. He might sell himself to that government of which he had been the enemy and the victim. He might offer to go on the forlorn hope in every assault on those liberties and on that religion for which he had professed an inordinate zeal. He might expiate his Whiggism by performing services from which bigoted Tories, stained with the blood of Russell and Sidney, shrank in horror. The bargain was struck. The debt still due to the crown was remitted. borough was induced, by royal mediation, to compromise his action. Sawyer was dismissed. Powis became attorney general. Williams was made solicitor, received the honor of knighthood, and was soon a favorite. Though in rank he was only the second law officer of the crown, his abilities, learning, and energy were such that he completely threw his superior into the shade.*

Peter

Williams had not been long in office when he was required to bear a chief part in the most memorable state trial recorded in the British annals.

* London Gazette, Dec. 15, 1687. in the Collection of State Trials.

See the proceedings against Williams "Ha hecho," says Ronquillo, "grande

susto el haber nombrado el abogado Williams, que fue el orador y el mas arrabiado de toda la casa des comunes en los ultimos terribles parlamentos del Rey difunto."

Nov. 27

1687.

Dec. 7'

On the twenty-seventh of April, 1688, the king put forth a second Declaration of Indulgence. In this paper he recited at length the declaration of the preceding April. His past life, he said, ought to have convinced his people that he was not a man who could easily be induced to depart from any resolution which he had formed; but, as designing men had attempted to persuade the world that he might be prevailed on to give way in this matter, he thought it necessary to proclaim that his purpose was immutably fixed, that he was resolved to employ those only who were prepared to concur in his design, and that he had, in pursuance of that resolution, dismissed many persons from civil and military employments. He announced that he meant to hold a Parliament in November, at the latest; and he exhorted his subjects to choose representatives who would assist him in the great work which he had undertaken.*

This declaration at first produced little sensation. It contained nothing new; and men wondered that the king should think it worth while to publish a solemn manifesto merely for the purpose of telling them that he had not changed his mind.† Perhaps James was nettled by the indifference with which the announcement of his fixed resolution was received by the public, and thought that his dignity and authority would suffer unless he without delay did something novel and striking. On the fourth of May, accordingly, he made an order in council that his declaration of the preceding week should be read, on two successive Sundays, at the time of divine service, by the officiating ministers of all the churches and chapels of the kingdom. In London and in the suburbs the reading was to take place on the twentieth and twenty-seventh of May, in other parts of England on the third and tenth of June. The bishops were directed to distribute copies of the declaration through their respective dioceses.

London Gazette, April 30, 1688; Barillon,

April 26

May 6

Citters, May

1688.

London Gazette, May 7, 1688.

When it is considered that the clergy of the Established Church, with scarcely an exception, regarded the Indulgence as a violation of the laws of the realm, as a breach of the plighted faith of the king, and as a fatal blow leveled at the interest and dignity of their own profession, it will scarcely admit of doubt that the order in council was intended to be felt by them as a cruel affront. It was popularly believed that Petre had avowed this intention in a coarse metaphor borrowed from the rhetoric of the East. He would, he said, make them eat dirt, the vilest and most loathsome of all dirt. But, tyrannical and malignant as the mandate was, would the Anglican priesthood refuse to obey? The king's temper was arbitrary and severe. The proceedings of the Ecclesiastical Commission were as summary as those of a court martial. Whoever ventured to resist might in a week be ejected from his parsonage, deprived of his whole income, pronounced incapable of holding any other spiritual preferment, and left to beg from door to door. If, indeed, the whole body offered a united opposition to the royal will, it was probable that even James would scarcely venture to punish ten thousand delinquents at once. But there was not time to form an extensive combination. The order in council was gazetted on the seventh of May. On the twentieth the declaration was to be read in all the pulpits of London and the neighborhood. By no exertion was it possible in that age to ascertain within a fortnight the intentions of one tenth part of the parochial ministers who were scattered over the kingdom. It was not easy to collect in so short a time the sense even of the whole episcopal order. It might also well be apprehended that, if the clergy refused to read the declaration, the Protestant Dissenters would misinterpret the refusal, would despair of obtaining any toleration from the members of the Church of England, and would throw their whole weight into the scale of the court.

The clergy therefore hesitated; and this hesitation may well be excused; for some eminent laymen, who pos

sessed a large share of the public confidence, were disposed to recommend submission. They thought that a general opposition could hardly be expected, and that a partial opposition would be ruinous to individuals, and of little advantage to the Church and to the nation. Such was the opinion given at this time by Halifax and Nottingham. The day drew near, and still there was no concert and no formed resolution.*

At this conjuncture the Protestant Dissenters of London won for themselves a title to the lasting gratitude of their country. They had hitherto been reckoned by the government as part of its strength. A few of their most active and noisy preachers, corrupted by the favors of the court, had got up addresses in favor of the king's measures. Others, estranged by the recollection of many cruel wrongs both from the Church of England and from the house of Stuart, had seen with resentful pleasure the tyrannical prince and the tyrannical hierarchy separated by a bitter enmity, and bidding against each other for the help of sects lately persecuted and despised. But this feeling, however natural, had been indulged long enough. The time had come when it was necessary to make a choice; and the Dissenters, with a noble spirit, arrayed themselves side by side with the members of the Church in defense of the fundamental laws of the realm. Baxter, Bates, and Howe distinguished themselves by their efforts to bring about this coalition; but the generous enthusiasm which pervaded the whole Puritan body made the task easy. The zeal of the flocks outran that of the pastors. Those Presbyterian and Independent teachers who showed an inclination to take part with the king against the ecclesiastical establishment received distinct notice that, unless they changed their conduct, their congregations would neither hear them nor pay them. Alsop, who had flattered himself that he should be able to bring over a great body of Nonconformists to the royal side, found himself, on a sudden, an object of contempt * Johnstone, May 27, 1688.

and abhorrence to those who had lately revered him as their spiritual guide, sank into a deep melancholy, and hid himself from the public eye. Deputations waited on several of the London clergy imploring them not to judge of the dissenting body from the abject addresses which had appeared in the London Gazette, and exhorting them, placed, as they were, in the van of this great fight, to play the men for the liberties of England and for the faith delivered to the saints. These assurances were received with joy and gratitude. Yet there was still much anxiety and much difference of opinion among those who had to decide whether on Sunday, the twentieth, they would or would not obey the king's command. The London clergy, then universally acknowledged to be the flower of their profession, held a meeting. Fifteen doctors of divinity were present. Tillotson, dean of Canterbury, the most celebrated preacher of the age, came thither from a sick bed. Sherlock, master of the Temple, Patrick, dean of Peterborough and rector of the important parish of St. Paul's, Covent Garden, and Stillingfleet, archdeacon of London and dean of St. Paul's Cathedral, attended. The general feeling of the assembly seemed to be that it was, on the whole, advisable to obey the order in council. The dispute began to wax warm, and might have produced fatal consequences, if it had not been brought to a close by the firmness and wisdom of Doctor Edward Fowler, vicar of St. Giles's, Cripplegate, one of a small but remarkable class of divines who united that love of civil liberty which belonged to the school of Calvin with the theology of the school of Arminius.* Standing up, Fowler spoke thus: "I must be plain. The question is so simple that argument can throw no

* That very remarkable man, the late Alexander Knox, whose eloquent conversation and elaborate letters had a great influence on the minds of his cotemporaries, learned, I suspect, much of his theological system from Fowler's writings. Fowler's book on the Design of Christianity was assailed by John Bunyan with a ferocity which nothing can justify, but which the birth and breeding of the honest tinker in some degree excuse.