not wanting to him in this great emergency of their common fate. The oath of allegiance was refused not only by the Archbishop of Canterbury, but also by the Bishop of Bath and Wells, by the Bishop of Chester, by the Bishop of Chichester, by the Bishop of Ely, by the Bishop of Gloucester, by the Bishop of Norwich, by the Bishop of Peterborough, and by the Bishop of Worcester.159 As to the inferior clergy, our information is less precise; but it is said that about six hundred of them imitated their superiors in declining to recognize for their king him whom the country had elected.160 The other members of this turbulent faction were unwilling, by so bold a measure, to incur that deprivation of their livings with which William would probably have visited them. They, therefore, preferred a safer and more inglorious op"position, by which they could embarrass the government without injuring themselves, and could gain the reputation of orthodoxy without incurring the pains of martyrdom.

The effect which all this produced on the temper of the nation, may be easily imagined. The question was now narrowed to an issue which every plain man could at once understand. On the one side, there was an overwhelming majority of the clergy.161 On the other side, there was all the intellect of England, and all her dearest interests. The mere fact that such an opposition could exist without kindling a civil war, showed how the growing intelligence of the people had weakened the authority of the ecclesiastical profession. Besides this, the opposition was not only futile, but it was also injurious to the class that made it.162 For it was now seen that the clergy only cared

159

Lathbury's Hist. of the Nonjurors, p. 45; D'Oyly's Sancroft, p. 260.

160 Nairne's Papers mention, in 1693, "six hundred ministers who have not taken the oaths." Macpherson's Orig. Papers, vol. i. p. 459.

161 The only friends William possessed among the clergy, were the low-churchmen, as they were afterwards called; and it is supposed that they formed barely a tenth of the entire body in 1689: "We should probably overrate their numerical strength, if we were to estimate them at a tenth part of the priesthood." Macaulay's Hist. of England, vol. iii. p. 74.

182 The earliest allusion I have seen to the injury the clergy were inflicting on the church, by their conduct after the arrival of William, is in Evelyn's Diary, vol. iii. p. 273,-a curious passage, gently hinting at the "wonder of many," at the behaviour of "the Archbishop of Canterbury, and some of the rest." With Evelyn, who loved the church, this was an unpleasant subject; but others were less scrupu lous; and in parliament, in particular, men did not refrain from expressing what must have been the sentiments of every impartial observer. In the celebrated debate, in January, 1688-9, when the throne was declared vacant, Pollexfen said: "Some of the clergy are for one thing, some for another; I think they scarce know what they would have." Parl. Hist. vol. v. p. 55. In February, Maynard, one of the most influential members, indignantly said: "I think the clergy are out of their wits; and I believe, if the clergy should have their wills, few or none of us should be here again." Ibid. vol. v. p. 129. The clergy were themselves bitterly sensible of the general hostility; and one of them writes, in 1694: "The people of England, who were so excessively enamoured of us when the bishops were in the Tower, that they hardly forbore to worship us, are now, I wish I could say but cool

for the people, as long as the people cared for them. The violence with which these angry men163 set themselves against the interests of the nation, clearly proved the selfishness of that zeal against James, of which they had formerly made so great a merit. They continued to hope for his return, to intrigue for him, and in some instances to correspond with him; although they well knew that his presence would cause a civil war, and that he was so generally hated, that he dared not show his face in England unless protected by the troops of a foreign and hostile power.164

But this was not the whole of the damage which, in those anxious times, the church inflicted upon herself. When the bishops refused to take the oaths to the new government, measures were adopted to remove them from their sees; and William did not hesitate to eject by force of law the Archbishop of Canterbury and five of his brethren. 165 The prelates, smarting under the insult, were goaded into measures of unusual activity. They loudly proclaimed that the powers of the church, which had long been waning, were now extinct.166 They denied the right of the legislature to pass a law against them. They denied the right of the sovereign to put that law into execution. 167 They not only continued to give themselves the title of bishops, but they made arrangements to perpetuate the schism which their own violence had created. The Archbishop of Canterbury, as he insisted upon being called, made a formal renunciation of his imaginary right into the hands of Lloyd,168 who still supposed himself to be

and very indifferent towards us." Somers Tracts, vol. ix. p. 525. The growing indignation against the clergy, caused by their obvious desire to sacrifice the country to the interests of the church, is strikingly displayed in a letter from Sir Roland Gwyne, written in 1710, and printed in Macpherson's Orig. Papers, vol. ii. p. 207. They are so called by Burnet: "these angry men, that had raised this flame in the church." Own Time, vol. v. p. 17.

163

18 Indeed, the high-church party, in their publications, distinctly intimated, that if James were not recalled, he should be reinstated by a foreign army. Somers Tracts, vol. x. pp. 377, 405, 457, 462. Compare Mahon's Hist. of England, vol. ii. p. 138. Burnet (Own Time, vol. iv. pp. 361, 362) says, they were "confounded" when they heard of the peace of 1697; and Calamy (Life of Himself, vol. ii. p. 322) makes the same remark on the death of Louis XIV.: "It very much puzzled the counsels of the Jacobites, and spoiled their projects."

165 D'Oyly's Life of Sancroft, p. 266; Wordsworth's Eccl. Biog. iv. p. 683.

166

Sancroft, on his deathbed, in 1693, prayed for the "poor suffering church, which, by this revolution, is almost destroyed." D'Oyly's Sancroft, p. 311; and Macpherson's Original Papers, vol. i. p. 280. See also Remarks, published in 1693 (Somers Tracts, vol. x. p. 504), where it is said, that William had, "as far as possible he could, dissolved the true old Church of England;" and that, "in a moment of time, her face was so altered, as scarce to be known again."

167 66

Ken, though deprived, never admitted in the secular power the right of deprivation; and it is well known that he studiously retained his title." Bowles's Life of Ken, vol. ii. p. 225. Thus too, Lloyd, so late as 1703, signs himself, "Wm. Nor." (Life of Ken, by a Layman, vol. ii. p. 720); though, having been legally deprived, he was no more bishop of Norwich than he was emperor of China. And Sancroft, in the last of his letters, published by D'Oyly (Life, p. 303), signs "W. C." les The strange document, by which he appointed Dr. Lloyd his vicar-general,

Bishop of Norwich, although William had recently expelled him from his see. The scheme of these turbulent priests was then communicated to James, who willingly supported their plan for establishing a permanent feud in the English church.169 The result of this conspiracy between the rebellious prelates and the pretended king, was the appointment of a series of men who gave themselves out as forming the real episcopacy, and who received the homage of every one who preferred the claims of the church to the authority of the state.170 This mock succession of imaginary bishops continued for more than a century ; and, by dividing the allegiance of churchmen, lessened the power of the church.172 In several instances, the unseemly spectacle was exhibited, of two bishops for the same place; one nominated by the spiritual power, the other nominated by the temporal power. Those who considered the church as superior to the state, of course attached themselves to the spurious bishops; while the

171

is printed in Latin, in D'Oyly's Sancroft, p. 295, and in English, in Life of Ken, by a Layman, vol. ii. p. 640.

169

Lathbury's Hist. of the Nonjurors, p. 96; Life of Ken, by a Layman, vol. ii.

pp. 641, 642.

170 The struggle between James and William was essentially a struggle between ecclesiastical interests and secular interests; and this was seen as early as 1689, when, as we learn from Burnet, who was much more a politician than a priest, "the church was as the word given out by the Jacobite party, under which they might more safely shelter themselves." Own Time, vol. iv. p. 57. See also, on this identification of the Jacobites with the church, Birch's Life of Tillotson, p. 222; and the argument of Dodwell, pp. 246, 247, in 1691. Dodwell justly observed, that the successors of the deprived bishops were schismatical, in a spiritual point of view; and that, "if they should pretend to lay authority as sufficient, they would overthrow the being of a church as a society." The bishops appointed by William were evidently intruders, according to church principles; and as their intrusion could only be justified according to lay principles, it followed that the success of the intrusion was the triumph of lay principles over church ones. Hence it is, that the fundamental idea of the rebellion of 1688, is the elevation of the state above the church; just as the fundamental idea of the rebellion of 1642, is the elevation of the commons above the crown.

174

According to Dr. D'Oyly (Life of Sancroft, p. 297), Dr. Gordon "died in London, November, 1779, and is supposed to have been the last nonjuring bishop." In Short's History of the Church of England, p. 583, Lond. 1847, it is also stated, that this schism continued till 1779." But Mr. Hallam (Const. Hist. vol. ii. p. 404) has pointed out a passage, in the State Trials, which proves that another of the bishops, named Cartwright, was still living at Shrewsbury in 1793; and Mr. Lathbury (Hist. of the Nonjurors, Lond. 1845, p. 412) says, that he died in 1799.

172 Calamy (Own Life, vol. i. pp. 328-330, vol. ii. pp. 338, 357, 358) gives an interesting account of these feuds within the church, consequent upon the revolution. Indeed, their bitterness was such, that it was necessary to coin names for the two parties; and between 1700 and 1702, we, for the first time, hear the expressions, high-church and low-church. See Burnet's Own Time, vol. iv. p. 447, vol. v. p. 70. Compare Wilson's Life of De Foe, vol. ii. p. 26; Parl. Hist. vol. vi. pp. 162, 498. On the difference between them, as it was understood in the reign of Anne, see Somers Tracts, vol. xii. p. 532, and Macpherson's Orig. Papers, vol. ii. p. 166. On the dawning schism in the church, see the speech of Sir T. Littleton, in 1690, Parl. Hist. vol. v. p. 593. Hence many complained that they could not tell which was the real church. See curious evidence of this perplexity in Somers Tracts, vol. ix. pp. 477-481.

appointments of William were acknowledged by that rapidly-increasing party, who preferred secular advantages to ecclesiastical theories,173

174

Such were some of the events which, at the end of the seventeenth century, widened the breach that had long existed between the interests of the nation and the interests of the clergy. There was also another circumstance which considerably increased this alienation. Many of the English clergy, though they retained their affection for James, did not choose to brave the anger of the government, or risk the loss of their livings. To avoid this, and to reconcile their conscience with their interest, they availed themselves of a supposed distinction between a king by right and a king in possession. 175 The consequence was, that while with their lips they took an oath of allegiance to William, they in their hearts paid homage to James; and, while they prayed for one king in their churches, they were bound to pray for another in their closets. 176 By this wretched subterfuge, a large body of the clergy were at once turned into concealed rebels; and we have it on the authority of a contempo

173 The alternative is fairly stated in a letter written in 1691 ( Life of Ken, by a Layman, vol. ii. p. 599): “If the deprived bishop be the only lawful bishop, then the people and clergy of his diocese are bound to own him, and no other; then all the bishops who own the authority of a new archbishop, and live in communion with him, are schismatics; and the clergy who live in communion with schismatical bishops are schismatics themselves; and the whole Church of England now estab. lished by law is schismatical."

4 Lord Mahon (Hist. of England, vol. ii. p. 245) notices what he terms the "unnatural alienation between the church and state," consequent upon the Revolution of 1688; and on the diminished power of the church caused by the same event, see Phillimore's Mem. of Lyttleton, vol. i. p. 352.

"The old absurdity of de facto and de jure; as if any man could retain a right to a throne which the people would not allow him to occupy!

176 In 1715, Leslie, by far the ablest of them, thus states their position: "You are now driven to this dilemma,-swear, or swear not: if you swear, you kill the soul; and if you swear not, you kill the body, in the loss of your bread." Somers Tracts, vol. xiii. p. 686. The result of the dilemma was what might have been expected; and a high-church writer, in the reign of William III., boasts (Somers Tracts, vol. x. p. 344) that the oaths taken by the clergy were no protection to the government: "not that the government receives any security from oaths." Whiston, too, says, in his Memoirs, p. 30: "Yet do I too well remember that the far greatest part of those of the university and clergy that then took the oaths to the government, seemed to me to take them with a doubtful conscience, if not against its dictates." This was in 1693; and, in 1710, we find: "There are now circumstances to make us believe that the Jacobite clergy have the like instructions to take any oaths, to get possession of a pulpit for the service of the cause, to bellow out the hereditary right, the pretended title of the Pretender." Somers Tracts, vol. xii. p. 641. A knowledge of this fact, or at all events, a belief of it, was soon dif fused; and, eight years later, the celebrated Lord Cowper, then lord chancellor, said, in the House of Lords, "that his majesty had also the best part of the landed, and all the trading interest; that, as to the clergy, he would say nothing, but that it was notorious that the majority of the populace had been poisoned, and that the poison was not yet quite expelled." Parl. Hist. vol. vii. p. 541'; also given, but not quite verbatim, in Campbell's Chancellors, vol. iv. p. 365.

rary bishop, that the prevarication of which these men were notoriously guilty, was a still further aid to that scepticism, the progress of which he bitterly deplores.177

As the eighteenth century advanced, the great movement of liberation rapidly proceeded. One of the most important of the ecclesiastical resources had formerly been Convocation; in which the clergy, by meeting in a body, were able to discountenance in an imposing manner whatever might be hostile to the church; and had, moreover, an opportunity, which they sedulously employed, of devising schemes favourable to the spiritual authority.178 But, in the progress of the age, this weapon also was taken from them. Within a very few years after the Revolution, Convocation fell into general contempt;179 and, in 1717, this celebrated assembly was finally prorogued by an act of the crown, it being justly considered that the country had no further occasion for its services.180 Since that period, this great council of the English church has never been allowed to meet for the purpose of deliberating on its own affairs, until a few years ago, when, by the connivance of a feeble government, it was permitted to reassemble. So marked, however, has been the change in the temper of the nation, that this once formidable body does not now retain even a semblance of its ancient influence; its resolutions are no longer feared, its discussions are no longer studied; and the business of the country continues to be conducted without regard to those interests, which, only a few gen

177"The prevarication of too many in so sacred a matter contributed not a little to fortify the growing atheism of the present age." Burnet's Own Time, vol. iii. p. 381. See also, to the same effect, vol. iv. pp. 176, 177; and a remarkable passage in Somers Tracts, vol. xii. p. 573. I need hardly add, that it was then usual to confuse scepticism with atheism; though the two things are not only different, but incompatible. In regard to the quibble respecting de facto and de jure, and the use made of it by the clergy, the reader should compare Wilson's Mem. of De Foe, vol. i. pp. 171, 172; Somers Tracts, vol. ix. p. 531; Campbell's Chancellors, vol. iv. p. 409; and a letter from the Rev. Francis Jessop, written in 1717, in Nichols's Lit. Illustrations, vol. iv. pp. 120-123.

178

Among which must be particularly mentioned the practice of censuring all books that encouraged free inquiry. In this respect, the clergy were extremely mischievous. See Lathbury's Hist. of Convocation, pp. 124, 286, 338, 351; and Wilson's Life of De Foe, vol. ii. p. 170.

179 In 1704, Burnet (Own Time, vol v. p. 138) says of Convocation, "but little opposition was made to them, as very little regard was had to them." In 1700, there was a squabble between the upper and lower house of Convocation for Canterbury; which, no doubt, aided these feelings. See Life of Archbishop Sharp, edited by Newcome, vol. i. p. 348, where this wretched feud is related with great gravity. 180 Charles Butler (Reminiscences, vol. ii. p. 95) says that the final prorogation was in 1720; but, according to all the other authorities I have met with, it was in 1717; See Hallam's Const. Hist. vol. ii. p. 395; Lathbury's Hist. of Convocation, p. 385; Mahon's Hist. of England, vol. i. p. 302; Monk's Life of Bentley, vol. ii. p.

350.