deviate but for one moment into courage and honesty, was guilty of an unpardonable offense. 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 ranks of the profession, and would have been incompetent to conduct the ordinary business of the

* In one of the numerous ballads of that time are the following lines: "Both our Britons are fooled,

Who the laws overruled,

And next Parliament each will be plaguily 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.

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 moved 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 honors 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 honorable 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 honor now offered to him, and the hope of obtaining a large sum due 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 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 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

* London Gazette, July 9, 1688; Adda, July 13; Evelyn's Diary, July 12; Johnstone, Dec., 1687, Feb., 1688.

had been content to bear the reproach of persecuting that Church which he was bound by every obligation of con science and honor 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 good-natured 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 compositions, with great propriety and dignity of style. It was impossible, he said, that he could 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.*

While the High Commission shrank from a conflict with the Church, the Church, conscious 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

* Sprat's Letters to the Earl of Dorset; London Gazette, Aug. 23, 1688.

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 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 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 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 afterward, a living which was in the gift of Magdalene College, Oxford, became vacant. Hough and his ejected brethren assembled and presented a clerk; and

July 27

Aug. 6

* London Gazette, July 26, 1688; Adda,' ; News-letter in the Mackintosh Collection, July 25; Ellis Correspondence, July 28, 31; Wood's Fasti Oxonienses.

Wood's Athenæ Oxonienses; Luttrell's Diary, Aug. 23, 1688.

the Bishop of Gloucester, in whose diocese the living lay, instituted their presentee without hesitation.*

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 Doctor Busby for writing bad English. But the only effect of these indecent declamations was to increase the public discontent. All the marks of public respect which had usually been shown to the judicial office and to the royal commission were withdrawn. The old custom was that men of good birth and estate should ride in the train of the sheriff when he escorted the judges to the county town; but such a procession could now with difficulty be formed in any part of the kingdom. The successors of Powell and Holloway, in particular, were treated with marked indignity. The Oxford circuit had been allotted to them, and they had expected to be greeted in every shire by a cavalcade of the loyal gentry; but as they approached Wallingford, where they were to open their commission for Berkshire, the sheriff alone came forth to meet them. As they approached Oxford, the eminently loyal capital of an eminently loyal province, they were again welcomed by the sheriff alone.†

The army was scarcely less disaffected than the clergy or the gentry. The garrison of the Tower had drunk the health of the imprisoned bishops. The grenadiers sta

Ronquillo, Sept. 17, 1688; Luttrell's Diary, Sept. 6.

Ellis Correspondence, Aug. 4, 7, 1688; Bishop Sprat's relation of the Conference of Nov. 6, 1688.