The decisive moment approached; and the agitation of the public mind rose to the height. Knots of politicians were every where whispering and consulting. The coffeehouses were in a ferment. The presses of the capital never rested. Of the pamphlets which appeared at that time, enough may still be collected to form several volumes; and from those pamphlets it is not difficult to gather a correct notion of the state of parties.

There was a very small faction which wished to recall James without stipulations. There was also a very small faction which wished to set up a commonwealth, and to intrust the administration to a council of state under the presidency of the Prince of Orange. But these extreme opinions were generally held in abhorrence. The overwhelming majority of the nation consisted of persons in whom love of hereditary monarchy and love of constitutional freedom were combined, though in different proportions, and who were equally opposed to the total abolition of the kingly office and to the unconditional restoration of the king.

But, in the wide interval which separated the bigots who still clung to the doctrines of Filmer from the enthu siasts who still dreamed the dreams of Harrington, there was room for many shades of opinion. If we neglect minute subdivisions, we shall find that the great body of the nation and of the Convention was divided into four bodies. Three of these bodies consisted of Tories. The Whig party formed the fourth.

The amity of the Whigs and Tories had not survived the peril which had produced it. On several occasions, during the prince's march from the west, dissension had appeared among his followers. While the event of his enterprise was doubtful, that dissension had, by his skillful management, been easily quieted. But, from the day on which he entered Saint James's in triumph, such management could no longer be practiced. His victory, by relieving the nation from the strong dread of popish tyranny, had deprived him of half his influence. Old antip

The

athies, which had slept when bishops were in the Tower, when Jesuits were at the council board, when loyal clergymen were deprived of their bread by scores, when loyal gentlemen were put out of the commission of the peace by hundreds, were again strong and active. The Royal ist shuddered at the thought that he was allied with all that from his youth up he had most hated, with old parliamentary captains who had stormed his country house, with old parliamentary commissioners who had sequestrated his estate, with men who had plotted the Rye House butchery and headed the western rebellion. That beloved Church, too, for whose sake he had, after a painful struggle, broken through his allegiance to the throne, was she really in safety? Or had he rescued her from one enemy only that she might be exposed to another? popish priests, indeed, were in exile, in hiding, or in prison. No Jesuit or Benedictine who valued his life now dared to show himself in the habit of his order. But the Presbyterian and Independent teachers went in long procession to salute the chief of the government, and were as graciously received as the true successors of the apostles. Some schismatics avowed the hope that every fence which excluded them from ecclesiastical preferment would soon be leveled; that the articles would be softened down; that the Liturgy would be garbled; that Christmas would cease to be a feast; that Good Friday would cease to be a fast; that canons on whom no bishop had ever laid his hand would, without the sacred vestment of white linen, distribute, in the choirs of cathedrals, the eucharistic bread and wine to communicants lolling on benches. The prince, indeed, was not a fanatical Presbyterian, but he was, at best, a Latitudinarian. He had no scruple about communicating himself in the Anglican form, but he cared not in what form other people communicated. His wife, it was to be feared, had imbibed too much of his spirit. Her conscience was under the direction of Burnet. She heard preachers of different Protestant sects. She had recently said that she saw no essential difference between

the Church of England and the other Reformed Churches.* It was necessary, therefore, that the Cavaliers should, at this conjuncture, follow the example set by their fathers in 1641; should draw off from Roundheads and sectaries; and should, in spite of all the faults of the hereditary monarch, uphold the cause of hereditary monarchy.

The body which was animated by these sentiments was large and respectable. It included about one half of the House of Lords, about one third of the House of Commons, a majority of the country gentlemen, and at least nine tenths of the clergy; but it was torn by dissensions, and beset on every side by difficulties.

One section of this great party—a section which was especially strong among divines, and of which Sherlock was the chief organ-wished that a negotiation should be opened with James, and that he should be invited to return to Whitehall on such conditions as might fully secure the civil and ecclesiastical constitution of the realm.† It is evident that this plan, though strenuously supported by the clergy, was altogether inconsistent with the doctrines which the clergy had been teaching during many years. It was, in truth, an attempt to make a middle way where there was no room for a middle way, to effect a compromise between two things which do not admit of compromise, resistance and non-resistance. The Tories had formerly taken their stand on the principle of non-resistance; but that ground most of them had now abandoned, and were not disposed again to occupy. The Cavaliers of England had, as a class, been so deeply concerned, directly or indirectly, in the late rising against the king, that they could not, for very shame, talk at that moment about the sacred duty of obeying Nero; nor, indeed, were they disposed to recall the prince under whose misgovernment they had suffered so much, without exacting from him terms which might make it impossible for him again

Albeville, Nov., 1688.

See the pamphlet entitled Letters to a Member of the Convention, and the answer, 1689; Burnet, i., 809.

to abuse his power. They were, therefore, in a false position. Their old theory, sound or unsound, was at least complete and coherent. If that theory were sound, the king ought to be immediately invited back, and permitted, if such were his pleasure, to put Seymour and Danby, the Bishop of London and the Bishop of Bristol, to death for high treason, to re-establish the Ecclesiastical Commission, to fill the Church with popish dignitaries, and to place the army under the command of popish officers; but if, as the Tories themselves now seemed to confess, that theory was unsound, why treat with the king? If it was admitted that he might lawfully be excluded till he gave satisfactory guarantees for the security of the constitution in Church and State, it was not easy to deny that he might lawfully be excluded forever. For what satisfactory guarantee could he give? How was it possible to draw up a statute in language clearer than the language of the statutes which required that the dean of Christ Church should be a Protestant? How was it possible to put any promise into words stronger than those in which James had repeatedly declared that he would strictly respect the legal rights of the Anglican clergy? If law or honor could have bound him, he would never have been forced to fly from his kingdom. If neither law nor honor could bind him, could he safely be permit ted to return?

It is probable, however, that, in spite of these arguments, a motion for opening a negotiation with James would have been made in the Convention, and would have been supported by the great body of Tories, had he not been on this, as on every other occasion, his own worst enemy. Every post which arrived from Saint Germain's brought intelligence which damped the ardor of his adherents. He did not think it worth his while to simulate regret for his past errors, or to promise amendment. He put forth a manifesto, telling his people that it had been his constant care to govern them with justice and moderation, and that they had been cheated into ruin by

imaginary grievances. The effect of his folly and obstinacy was, that those who were most desirous to see him restored to his throne on fair conditions felt that, by proposing at that moment to treat with him, they should injure the cause which they wished to serve. They therefore determined to coalesce with another body of Tories of whom Sancroft was the chief. Sancroft fancied that

he had found out a device by which provision might be made for the government of the country without recalling James, and yet without despoiling him of his crown. This device was a regency. The most uncompromising of those divines who had inculcated the doctrine of passive obedience had never maintained that such obedience was due to a babe or to a madman. It was universally acknowledged that, when the rightful sovereign was intellectually incapable of performing his office, a deputy might be appointed to act in his stead, and that any person who should resist the deputy, and should plead as an excuse for doing so the command of a prince who was in the cradle, or who was raving, would justly incur the penalties of rebellion. Stupidity, perverseness, and superstition-such was the reasoning of the primate-had made James as unfit to rule his dominions as any child in swaddling clothes, or as any maniac who was grinning and chattering in the straw of Bedlam. That course must therefore be taken which had been taken when Henry the Sixth was an infant, and again when he became lethargic. James could not be king in effect, but he must still continue to be king in semblance. Writs must still run in his name. His image and superscription must still appear on the coin and on the great seal. Acts of Parliament must still be called from the years of his reign; but the administration must be taken from him, and confided to a regent named by the estates of the realm. In this way, Sancroft gravely maintained, the people would remain true to their allegiance; the oaths of fealty which

* Letter to the Lords of the Council, Jan., 1688; Clarendon's Diary, Jan. 1.