Those who had suffered the sequestrations and other losses of a vanquished party could not endure to abandon what they reckoned a just reparation. But Clarendon adhered with equal integrity and prudence to this fundamental principle of the Restoration; and after a strong message from the king on the subject, the Commons were content to let the bill pass with no new exceptions. They gave, indeed, some relief to the ruined cavaliers by voting £60,000 to be distributed among that class; but so inadequate a compensation did not assuage their discontent. . . .

No time was lost, as might be expected from the temper of the Commons, in replacing the throne on its constitutional basis after the rude encroachments of the Long Parliament. They declared that there was no legislative power in either or both houses without the king; that the league and covenant was unlawfully imposed; that the sole supreme command of the militia, and of all forces by sea and land, had ever been by the laws of England the undoubted right of the crown; that neither house of parliament could pretend to it, nor could lawfully levy any war offensive or defensive against his Majesty. These last words appeared to go to a dangerous length, and to sanction the suicidal doctrine of absolute nonresistance. They made the law of high-treason more strict during the king's life in pursuance of a precedent in the reign of Elizabeth. They restored the bishops to their seats in the House of Lords — a step which the last Parliament would never have been induced to take, but which met with little opposition from the present. The violence that had attended their exclusion seemed a sufficient motive for rescinding a statute so improperly obtained, even if the policy of maintaining the spiritual peers were somewhat doubtful. The remembrance of those tumultuous assemblages which had overawed their predecessors in the winter of 1641, and at other times, produced a law against disorderly petitions. This statute provides that no petition or address shall be presented to the king or either house of Parliament by more than ten persons; nor shall any one procure above twenty persons to consent or set their hands to any petition for alteration of matters established by law in Church or State, unless with the previous order of three justices of the county, or the major part of the grand jury.

Thus far the new Parliament might be said to have acted chiefly on a principle of repairing the breaches recently made in our constitution, and of reestablishing the just boundaries of the executive power; nor would much objection have been offered to their measures had they gone no farther in the same course. The act

for regulating corporations is much more questionable, and displayed a determination to exclude a considerable portion of the community from their civil rights. It enjoined all magistrates and persons bearing offices of trust in corporations to swear that they believed it unlawful, on any pretence whatever, to take arms against the king, and that they abhorred the traitorous position of bearing arms by his authority against his person, or against those that are commissioned by him. They were also to renounce all obligation arising out of the oath called the solemn league and covenant; in case of refusal to be immediately removed from office. Those elected in future were, in addition to the same oaths, to have received the sacrament within one year before their election according to the rights of the English Church. These provisions struck at the heart of the Presbyterian party whose strength lay in the little oligarchies of corporate towns, which directly or indirectly returned to Parliament a very large proportion of its members. Yet it rarely happens that a political faction is crushed by the terrors of an oath. Many of the more rigid Presbyterians refused the conditions imposed by this act; but the majority found pretexts for qualifying themselves..

A determination having been taken to admit of no extensive comprehension in religious matters, it was debated by the government whether to make a few alterations in the Liturgy, or to restore the ancient service in every particular. The former advice prevailed, though with no desire or expectation of conciliating any scrupulous persons by the amendments introduced. These were by no means numerous, and in some instances rather chosen in order to irritate and mock the opposite party than from any compliance with their prejudices. It is indeed very probable from the temper of the new Parliament that they would not have come into more tolerant and healing measures. When the Act of Uniformity was brought into the House of Lords, it was found not only to restore all the ceremonies and other matters to which objection had been taken, but to contain fresh clauses more intolerable than the rest to the Presbyterian clergy. One of these enacted that not only every beneficed minister, but fellow of a college, or even schoolmaster, should declare his unfeigned assent and consent to all and everything contained in the Book of Common Prayer. These words, however capable of being eluded and explained away, as such subscriptions always are, seemed to amount, in common use of language, to a complete approbation of an entire volume, such as a man of sense hardly gives to any

book, and which, at a time when scrupulous persons were with great difficulty endeavoring to reconcile themselves to submission, placed a new stumbling-block in their way, which, without abandoning their integrity, they found it impossible to surmount.

87. Expulsion of Non-conforming Parsons

The new Act of Uniformity succeeded to the utmost wishes of its promoters. It provided that every minister should, before the feast of St. Bartholomew, 1662, publicly declare his assent and consent to everything contained in the Book of Common Prayer, on pain of being ipso facto deprived of his benefice. When the day of St. Bartholomew came, about two thousand persons resigned their preferments rather than stain their consciences by compliance an act to which the more liberal Anglicans, after the bitterness of immediate passions had passed away, have accorded that praise which is due to heroic virtue in an enemy. It may justly be said that the Episcopal clergy had set an example of similar magnanimity in refusing to take the covenant. Yet, as that was partly of a political nature, and those who were ejected for not taking it might hope to be restored through the success of the king's arms, I do not know that it was altogether so eminent an act of selfdevotion as the Presbyterian clergy displayed on St. Bartholomew's day. Both of them afford striking contrasts to the pliancy of the English Church in the greater question of the preceding century, and bear witness to a remarkable integrity and consistency of principle.

Some had believed, among whom Clarendon seems to have been, that all scruples of tender conscience in the Presbyterian clergy being faction and hypocrisy, they would submit very quietly to the law, when they found all their clamor unavailing to obtain a dispensation from it. The resignation of two thousand beneficed ministers at once, instead of extorting praise, rather inflamed the resentment of their bigoted enemies, especially when they perceived that a public and perpetual toleration of separate worship was favored by part of the court. Rumors of conspiracies and insurrections, sometimes false, but gaining credit from the notorious discontent both of the old Commonwealth's party, and of many who had never been on that side, were sedulously propagated, in order to keep up the animosity of Parliament against the ejected clergy; and these are recited as the pretext of an act passed in 1664 for suppressing seditious conventicles (the epithet being in this place wantonly

and unjustly insulting), which inflicted on all persons above the age of sixteen, present at any religious meeting in any other manner than is allowed by the practice of the Church of England, where five or more persons besides the household should be present, a penalty of three months' imprisonment for the first offence, of six for the second, and of seven years' transportation for the third, on conviction before a single justice of the peace. This act, says Clarendon, if it had been vigorously executed, would no doubt have produced a thorough reformation. Such is ever the language of the supporters of tyranny; when oppression does not succeed, it is because there has been too little of it. But those who suffered under this statute report very differently as to its vigorous execution. The jails were filled not only with ministers who had borne the brunt of former persecutions, but with the laity who attended them; and the hardship was the more grievous that, the act being ambiguously worded, its construction was left to a single magistrate, generally very adverse to the accused.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Ranke, History of England, Vol. III, pp. 311 ff. Masson, Life of Milton, Vol. VI. Burnet, My Own Time, a charming work by a contemporary. Abbott, The Long Parliament of Charles II, in the English Historical Review, January and April, 1906. For the important documents, Robertson, Select Statutes, Cases, and Documents.

CHAPTER VIII

JAMES II AND THE CATHOLIC REACTION

CHARLES II, though Catholic at heart and a firm believer in absolutism, as far as he was capable of any convictions, was determined not to lose his throne as his father had done. James II, however, did not possess the qualities of indifference and compromise which characterized his brother. He was not only Catholic, but he wanted to see the English nation converted to his faith. He was determined to allow no obstacle to prevent the realization of his cherished plans. He therefore took advantage of many points on which the royal power was not explicitly defined, and resorted to measures which really violated the spirit if not the letter of the law and custom of the constitution. The result was the awakening of an opposition which expelled him from his throne. The most brilliant account of this Revolution of 1688 is by the great Whig historian Macaulay, whose sympathies with the cause of the Revolution gave him a remarkable insight into the views of the leaders, but prevented his doing justice to both parties.

§1. Undefined Royal Prerogatives1

From his predecessors James had inherited two prerogatives, of which the limits had never been defined with strict accuracy, and which, if exerted without any limit, would of themselves have sufficed to overturn the whole polity of the State and of the Church. These were the dispensing power and the ecclesiastical supremacy. By means of the dispensing power, the king purposed to admit Roman Catholics, not merely to civil and military, but to spiritual, offices. By means of the ecclesiastical supremacy he hoped to make the Anglican clergy his instruments for the destruction of their own religion.

'Macaulay, History of England, chaps. vi-viii.