lic lords council; and others non-con sion was constituted, four catholic lords 1 were sworn of the four cathoprivy council in order to strengthen the royal hands against sworn of those tory councillors who opposed the repeal of the Test the privy Act, which they regarded as the bulwark of the state church as then constituted. At the head of that formidable opposition stood Laurence, earl of Rochester, the king's brother-in- Rochester law, and lord treasurer, who was dismissed from office early in dismissed January, 1687, as evidence of the fact that no one opposed to from office, January, the king's ecclesiastical policy could hope to participate in the 1687; administration of government. Thus bereft of the support of tory churchmen, James was driven as his brother had been James' appeal to prodriven before him to seek popular support by an appeal to pro- testant testant non-conformists, whom he hoped to placate by grant-formists; ing to them a freedom of worship which could at the same time be extended to his catholic brethren. With that twofold purpose in view, a declaration of indulgence was issued on Declaration the 4th of April, in which the king contented himself for the moment "with suspending the execution of all penal laws for sued April 4. religious offences, and with forbidding the imposition of religious oaths or tests as qualifications for office," at the same time clearly intimating the belief that both measures would at the next meeting of parliament meet with its approval.2 To obtain such a compliant parliament as would lend itself to the execution of his designs now became the primary object of James' policy, and encouraged as he was by the outburst of gratitude which came from the independents, the presbyterians, the quakers, the anabaptists, and the catholics, for the boon of religious liberty, regardless of the means by which it had been obtained, he dissolved the refractory body then in parliament existence in the hope that new elections would vindicate his and new boast that by his liberality he had made his subjects a united elections people. of Indul gence is dissolved ordered. tack upon Two months prior to the Declaration of Indulgence the king James' at had attempted to strengthen the catholic cause by seizing upon the univer the universities, the strongholds held by the clergy of the sities; establishment as training-schools for the youths of the higher classes destined to control in church and state. The first step 1 Powis, Arundel, Belasyse, and Dover. 465; Ellis Correspondence, pp. 260, 2 Gazette, 2231. ter sent to Cambridge; its vice chancellor a royal let- in that direction was taken by the sending of a royal letter to the vice-chancellor of the University of Cambridge, commanding him to admit to the degree of master of arts without exacting from him the usual oaths, Francis, a Benedictine monk and catholic missionary who lived in that neighborhood. When the vice-chancellor refused to obey, unless Francis would deprived of qualify according to law, he was summoned to appear before office by the the high commissioners, who deprived him of his office upon high commissioners; the ground that a literary body could not be permitted to dispute the dispensing power which had been solemnly confirmed by the judges.1 While that dispute was still pending, a more attack upon serious attack was made upon the University of Oxford, where Oxford; the death of Dr. Clarke had made vacant the presidency of Magdalen College, one of the richest foundations in Europe. mandatory When mandatory letters were sent to the Fellows recommendto Magda ing them to choose Anthony Farmer, who was said to have len College; conformed to the Church of Rome, they replied that apart from his bad moral character, he was not even qualified by statute for the office. After presenting these facts to the king and asking for another nomination, the Fellows, before such nomination was received, met and elected Mr. Hough, one of their controversy number, president. The claims of the opposing parties were letters sent submitted to high commission - its finding; action of then submitted by royal order to the ecclesiastical commission, who held that Hough's election was void, because a mandate to choose one person prohibited by implication the right to choose any other. When the king next ordered the Fellows to elect Dr. Parker, the bishop of Oxford, who is said to have been a catholic at heart and the meanest of his courtiers, they resisted upon the ground that there was no vacancy in the office, of which Hough was in actual possession. To settle the controversy a special commission of visitors was sent to Oxford, the special who commission pronounced Hough an intruder and installed Parker in sent to Ox- his place by force; and the Fellows who resisted were not only deprived of their fellowships, but declared incapable of holding ecclesiastical preferments, or, if laymen, of being admitted to holy orders.2 Upon the death of Parker, which quickly followed his installation, James by mandatory letters ordered the James, vol. ii. pp. 119, 124; Burnet, vol. iii. pp. 143, 150; State Trials, vol. xii. pp. I, 112. ford; 1 Hist. of Eccl. Commis., p. 25; State Trials, vol. xi. pp. 1315-1340; James, vol. ii. pp. 125-127. 2 Hist. of Eccl. Commis., pp. 30, 32; placed in presidency to be given to Dr. Clifford, a catholic bishop in partibus; and thus Magdalen College, the majority of whose Magdalen Fellows were already catholics, was taken from protestant hands finally and placed under the control of those who professed the king's catholic faith. The bitterness which arose out of these proceedings was intensified as they advanced by the introduction of Father Father Petre into the council, and by the public reception at Windsor Petreadof the papal nuncio, despite a statute expressly forbidding all the council. diplomatic relations with the court of Rome. hands; mitted to progress influence tions; tors" di corpora lord-lieuten counties; The dogged opposition which met every attempt to set aside A royal the Test Act by means of the dispensing power convinced made in James that the only effective way of removing that obstacle August to to his designs was through its repeal by parliament, and with the elec that end in view he began in August, 1687, a royal progress, in the hope of convincing by argument those who opposed his political views.1 As an adjunct to that design he at the same time appointed a board called "regulators," who, under the "regulapretext of reforming the corporations, were directed to so rected to remould those bodies as to bring them in harmony with the manage the court, and orders were likewise given to the lord-lieutenants tions, the to so manipulate the political machinery of their counties as ants the to produce the same result. And in order to apply pressure to every individual, the three following questions were asked: Will you vote for the repeal of the Test Act and the penal laws if you are chosen to the next parliament? Will you promise to aid those candidates who pledge themselves to such repeal? Are you willing to live peacefully with men of different religious principles under the liberty of conscience which the crown has already proclaimed? But all such attempts failure of utterly failed. The refusal of half of the lord-lieutenants and the scheme many of the justices to comply was followed by a wholesale sals from dismissal of both, while despite the "regulations" it was found impossible to bend the corporations to the royal will. Under such discouraging conditions it was found necessary to adjourn the elections that had been fixed for February, 1688, until a further effort could be made to win popular support. With that end in view a fresh appeal was made to the nation in 1 James, Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 134. 2 Life of James, p. 139; Ralph, p. 965 et seq. 8 For all details, see Lingard, vol. x. p. 264; Green, Hist. of the Eng. People, vol. iv. p. 22. and dismis office; tion of De clergy ordered to read it in the churches; signed by republica April by a republication of the Declaration of Indulgence, to claration of which was now added the statement that as merit and not Indulgence, oaths should henceforth be the one qualification for office, all April, 1688; subjects of the crown would be secured "freedom of conscience forever." A new parliament was then promised for the following November, and all were exhorted to vote for representatives who would carry out therein the good work so happily begun.1 And in order to give the greatest publicity and solemnity to the document, the clergy of the established church, embittered as they were by jealousy and resentment, were commanded by an order in council to read it during divine service on two successive Sundays.2 The almost universal refusal of the clergy to perform what they regarded as protest an act of humiliation was sanctioned by Archbishop Sancroft, archbishop who, together with six of his suffragans, ventured to present a and seven respectful petition to the king, in which they asked that the clergy might be excused from reading the Declaration, not from any lack of reverence for the sovereign or of tenderness for dissenters, but because it was founded on the dispensing power, "often declared illegal in parliament, and particularly in the years 1662 and 1672, and the beginning of your majesty's reign." Despite the respectful form of the petition, its substance was accepted as "a standard of rebellion," and the high com- first answer to its prayer was an order to the "high commissioners" commanding them to deprive the seven subscribing bishops of their sees. In the presence of that proposal even Jeffreys faltered, and by his advice a prosecution was begun for seditious libel, upon which the seven, after their refusal to give bail, were committed to the Tower on the 8th of June. In the course of the trial, which began in Westminster Hall on the 29th of that month in the presence of a vast and exbegan June cited auditory, the counsel for the bishops contended (1) that they had simply exercised the right of petition touching an suffragans; missioners commanded to deprive them of their sees; trial of bishops for sedi tious libel 29. 1 Wilkins, Conc., vol. iv. p. 616. 8 State Trials, vol. xii. p. 183. The tion of the bishops presented on May 18, are all printed in full in the case of the Seven Bishops, in Broom's Const. Law, Denman's ed., pp. 406-519. As to this important trial, see also Burnet, vol. iii. pp. 222-226; Macpherson, vol i. p. 266; Hist. of Eccl. Commis, pp. 53-60; Macaulay, vol. i. pp. 499, 500, 504, 513-517, 518. tions sub ecclesiastical question with which they were specially charged; (2) that the dispensing power which the petition challenged had no legal existence. After argument the judges held that only two questions remained for the jury; the first involving the two ques fact of the publication of the petition, the second, the char- mitted to acter of its contents. Upon the last point two of the judges, the jury; Wright and Allybone, instructed the jury that the petition was libellous, while the other two, Holloway and Powell, declared that it was not. After a night passed in stormy debate the jury rendered a verdict of not guilty, which was received with verdict of not guilty. an enthusiastic shout, that swelled through the capital and adjoining hamlets until it reached the king himself at Hounslow Heath, where in the midst of his standing army he thus received the first warning of the mighty change that was soon to come.1 4. Two days after the bishops were committed to the Tower, Birth of a male heir an event occurred which precipitated the Revolution. From to James the time of James' conversion to catholicism the nation had precipitated the been pacified by the assurance that, although temporary evils Revolution; might flow from his accession, the crown at his death would pass first to Mary and then to Anne, the two surviving children of his first marriage with Anne Hyde, the daughter of Clarendon. In order to strengthen that hope, Mary as presumptive heir was confirmed a protestant by royal order in 1674; and to make assurance doubly sure she was married on November 4, 1677, to her cousin, the great protestant prince, William of Orange. When the first Exclusion Bill was read in the commons on the 5th of November, 1680, Mary was still until then her father's presumptive heir,2 and thus it was that William Mary the came to be looked upon, not only by the protestant chiefs but tive heir; by James himself, as a person to be reckoned with in every crisis which involved the future of the succession. Thus it was that, when in May, 1687, the month following the Declaration of Indulgence, the king appealed to William and Mary to declare in favor of the abolition of the penal laws and of the Test, many of the great nobles, together with the bishop of 1 Barillon, in his letter to Louis (July 12), said: La joie et les acclamations ont été fort grandes à Westminster, quand on a su la décision. Il y a eu des boites tirées sur la rivière. On fit des feux de joie. La populace 2 Bailey, Succession to the English presump |