76

PERSECUTION OF THE SCOTCH COVENANTERS.

*

On a wild coast; how destitute! did they
Feel not that Conscience never can betray,"
That peace of mind is Virtue's sure effect.
Their altars they forego, their homes they quit,
Fields which they love, and paths they daily trod,
And cast the future upon Providence ;

As men the dictate of whose inward sense

Outweighs the world; whom self-deceiving wit
Lures not from what they deem the cause of God.

VII.

PERSECUTION OF THE SCOTTISH COVENANTERS.

Pub. 1827.

WHEN Alpine Vales threw forth a suppliant cry,

The majesty of England interposed †

And the sword stopped; the bleeding wounds were closed;

And Faith preserved her ancient purity.

How little boots that precedent of good,

Scorned or forgotten, Thou canst testify,

For England's shame, O Sister Realm! from wood,

Mountain, and moor, and crowded street, where lie
The headless martyrs of the Covenant,

Slain by Compatriot-protestants that draw

From councils senseless as intolerant

Their warrant. Bodies fall by wild sword-law;

But who would force the Soul, tilts with a straw

Against a Champion cased in adamant.

* The first two words of this line might, with advantage, be transposed. -ED.

+ See Milton's Sonnet xviii., On the recent massacre in Piedmont, beginning

'Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints."

This was in 1655. In the following year Cromwell, to whom the persecuted Vaudois subjects of the Duke of Savoy had appealed, interposed in their behalf. Nearly £40,000 were collected in England for their relief.-ED. Compare The Excursion, Book I., 1. 176-7. (Vol. V., p. 31.)-ED.

ACQUITTAL OF THE BISHOPS.

77

VIII.

ACQUITTAL OF THE BISHOPS.*

A VOICE, from long-expecting1 thousands sent
Shatters the air, and troubles tower and spire;
For Justice hath absolved the innocent,
And Tyranny is balked of her desire:
Up, down, the busy Thames-rapid as fire
Coursing a train of gunpowder-it went,
And transport finds in every street a vent,
Till the whole City rings like one vast quire.

The Fathers urge the People to be still,

With outstretched hands and earnest speech 2-in vain!
Yea, many, happily wont to entertain

Small reverence for the mitre's offices,
And to Religion's self no friendly will,

A Prelate's blessing ask on bended knees.

...

* The Bishops who protested against James II.'s Declaration of Indulgence, and refused to read it. He ordered the Ecclesiastical Commissioners to deprive them of their Sees, and the Bishops were sent to the Tower. "They passed to their prison amidst the shouts of a great multitude, the sentinels knelt for their blessing as they entered the gates, and the soldiers of the garrison drank their healths. The Bishops appeared as criminals at the bar of the King's Bench. The jury had been packed, the judges were mere tools of the Crown, but judges and jury were alike overawed by the indignation of the people at large. No sooner had the foreman of the jury uttered the words 'Not guilty,' than a roar of applause burst from the crowd, and horsemen spurred along every road to carry over the country the news of the acquittal."—(Green.) See Wordworth's note to the eleventh sonnet in Part I. (p. 11.)—Ed.

78

OBLIGATIONS OF CIVIL TO RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.

IX.

WILLIAM THE THIRD.

CALM as an under-current, strong to draw
Millions of waves into itself, and run,
From sea to sea, impervious to the sun
And ploughing storm, the spirit of Nassau *
Swerves not (how blest if by religious awe1
Swayed, and thereby enabled to contend
With the wide world's commotions) from its end
Swerves not-diverted by a casual law.
Had mortal action e'er a nobler scope?

The hero comes to liberate, not defy;

And, while he marches on with stedfast hope,2
Conqueror beloved! expected anxiously!

The vacillating Bondman of the Pope t
Shrinks from the verdict of his stedfast eye.

X.

OBLIGATIONS OF CIVIL TO RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.

UNGRATEFUL Country, if thou e'er forget

The sons who for thy civil rights have bled!
How, like a Roman, Sidney bowed his head,‡

and

* William III. of Nassau, Prince of Orange, was invited over to England by the nobles and commons who were disaffected towards James II., landed at Torbay in Nov. 1688.-ED.

+ King James II., who fled to France in Dec. 1688.-ED. Algernon Sidney, second son of the Earl of Leicester, equally opposed to the tyranny of Charles and of Cromwell, was implicated in the Rye

SACHEVEREL.

And Russel's milder blood the scaffold wet;
But these had fallen for profitless regret

Had not thy holy Church her champions bred,
And claims from other worlds inspirited

The star of Liberty to rise.

Nor yet

79

(Grave this within thy heart!) if spiritual things

Be lost, through apathy, or scorn, or fear,

Shalt thou thy humbler franchises support,

However hardly won or justly dear:

What came from heaven to heaven by nature clings,
And, if dissevered thence, its course is short.

XI.

SACHEVEREL.†

Pub. 1827.

A SUDDEN conflict rises from the swell

Of a proud slavery met by tenets strained

In Liberty's behalf. Fears, true or feigned,
Spread through all ranks; and lo! the Sentinel
Who loudest rang his pulpit 'larum bell

House Plot, arraigned before the chief-justice Jeffries, condemned illegally, and executed at Tower Hill in Dec. 1683.—ED.

* Lord William Russell, third son of the Duke of Bedford, member of the House of Commons like Sidney, and like him implicated in the Rye House Plot, condemned at the Old Bailey, and beheaded at Lincolns'-InnFields in July 1683.-ED.

+ Henry Sacheverel, a high-church clergyman, preached two sermons in 1709, one at Derby, and the other in St Paul's London, in which he attacked the principles of the Revolution Settlement, taught the doctrine of non-resistance, and decried the Act of Toleration. He was impeached by the Commons, and tried before the House of Lords in 1710, was found guilty, and suspended from office for three years. This made him for the time the most popular man in England; and the general election which followed was fatal to the Government which condemned him. He was a weak and a vain man, who attained to notoriety without fame.-ED.

80

DOWN A SWIFT STREAM, THUS FAR.

Stands at the Bar, absolved by female eyes
Mingling their glances with grave flatteries1
Lavished on him-that England may rebel
Against her ancient virtue. HIGH and Low,
Watch-words of Party, on all tongues are rife;
As if a Church, though sprung from heaven, must owe
To opposites and fierce extremes her life,-
Not to the golden mean, and quiet flow
Of truths that soften hatred, temper strife.

XII.*

Pub. 1827.

Down a swift Stream, thus far, a bold design
Have we pursued, with livelier stir of heart
Than his who sees, borne forward by the Rhine,
The living landscapes greet him, and depart;
Sees spires fast sinking-up again to start!
And strives the towers to number, that recline
O'er the dark steeps, or on the horizon line
Striding with shattered crests his eye athwart.
So have we hurried on with troubled pleasure:
Henceforth, as on the bosom of a stream
That slackens, and spreads wide a watery gleam,
We, nothing loth a lingering course to measure,
May gather up our thoughts, and mark at leisure
How widely spread the interests of our theme.3

*Compare the extract from Mrs and Miss Wordsworth's Journal in the Memorials of a Tour in the Continent, (Vol. VI., p. 209).—ED.