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 ascertain, 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 minister 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.

May 22
June 1'

+ Citters,

May 22 1688. June L'

sees.

but the very best and noblest, or the very worst and basest, of mankind could without much discomposure encounter.* Even the king stood aghast for a moment at the violence of the tempest which he had raised. What step was he next to take? He must either advance or recede; and it was impossible to advance without peril, or to recede without humiliation. At one moment he determined to put forth a second order, enjoining the clergy, in high and angry terms, to publish his declaration, and menacing every one who should be refractory with instant suspension. This order was drawn up and sent to the press, then recalled, then a second time sent to the press, then recalled a second time.† A different plan was suggested by some of those who were for rigorous measures. The prelates who had signed the petition might be cited before the Ecclesiastical Commission and deprived of their But to this course strong objections were urged in council. It had been announced that the houses would be convoked before the end of the year. The Lords would assuredly treat the sentence of deprivation as a nullity, would insist that Sancroft and his fellow-petitioners should be summoned to Parliament, and would refuse to acknowledge a new Archbishop of Canterbury or a new Bishop of Bath and Wells. Thus the session, which at best was likely to be sufficiently stormy, would commence with a deadly quarrel between the crown and the peers. If, therefore, it were thought necessary to punish the bishops, the punishment ought to be inflicted according to the known course of English law. Sunderland had from the beginning objected, as far as he durst, to the order in council. He now suggested a course which, though not free from inconveniences, was the most prudent and the most dignified that a series of errors had left open to the government. The king might with grace and majesty announce to the world that he was deeply hurt by the undutiful conduct of the Church of England, but that he could not forget all the services rendered by that Church, in trying

* Citters,

May 29
June 8 "

1688.

+ Ibid.

times, to his father, to his brother, and to himself; that, as a friend to the liberty of conscience, he was unwilling to deal severely by men whom conscience, ill informed indeed, and unreasonably scrupulous, might have prevented from obeying his commands; and that he would therefore leave the offenders to that punishment which their own reflections would inflict whenever they should calmly compare their recent acts with the loyal doctrines of which they had so loudly boasted. Not only Powis and Bellasyse, who had always been for moderate counsels, but Dover and Arundell, leaned toward this proposition. Jeffreys, on the other hand, maintained that the government would be disgraced if such transgressors as the seven bishops were suffered to escape with a mere reprimand. He did not, however, wish them to be cited before the Ecclesiastical Commission, in which he sat as chief, or, rather, as sole judge; for the load of public hatred under which he already lay was too much even for his shameless forehead and obdurate heart, and he shrank from the responsibility which he would have incurred by pronouncing an illegal sentence on the rulers of the Church and the favorites of the nation. He therefore recommended a crim

inal information. It was accordingly resolved that the archbishop and the six other petitioners should be brought before the Court of King's Bench on a charge of seditious libel. That they would be convicted it was scarcely possible to doubt. The judges and their officers were tools of the court. Since the old charter of the city of London had been forfeited, scarcely one prisoner whom the gov ernment was bent on bringing to punishment had been absolved by a jury. The refractory prelates would probably be condemned to ruinous fines and to long imprisonment, and would be glad to ransom themselves by serving, both in and out of Parliament, the designs of the sovereign.*

On the twenty-seventh of May it was notified to the Barillon, 1688; Citters, July; Adda, Clarke's Life of James the Second, ii., 158.

*

May 24 May 31
June 3 June 10'

May 30
June 9

June

bishops that on the eighth of June they must appear before the king in council. Why so long an interval was allowed we are not informed. Perhaps James hoped that some of the offenders, terrified by his displeasure, might submit before the day fixed for the reading of the declaration in their dioceses, and might, in order to make their peace with him, persuade their clergy to obey his order. If such was his hope, it was signally disappointed. Sunday, the third of June, came, and all parts of England followed the example of the capital. Already the Bishops of Norwich, Gloucester, Salisbury, Winchester, and Exeter had signed copies of the petition in token of their approbation. The Bishop of Worcester had refused to distribute the declaration among his clergy. The Bishop of Hereford had distributed it, but it was generally understood that he was overwhelmed by remorse and shame for having done so. Not one parish priest in fifty complied with the order in council. In the great diocese of Chester, including the county of Lancaster, only three clergymen could be prevailed on by Cartwright to obey the king. In the diocese of Norwich are many hundreds of parishes. In only four of these was the declaration read. The courtly Bishop of Rochester could not overcome the scruples of the minister of the ordinary of Chatham, who depended on the government for bread. There is still extant a pathetic letter which this honest priest sent to the secretary of the Admiralty. "I can not," he wrote, "reasonably expect your honor's protection. God's will be done. I must choose suffering rather than sin.”*

On the evening of the eighth of June, the seven prelates, furnished by the ablest lawyers in England with full advice, repaired to the palace, and were called into the council chamber. Their petition was lying on the table. The chancellor took the paper up, showed it to the archbishop, and said, "Is this the paper which your grace wrote, and which the six bishops present delivered to his

22'

* Burnet, i., 740; Life of Prideaux; Citters, June 13, 1, 1688; Tanner MS.; Life and Correspondence of Pepys.