Chapter XIV: The Reign of James II (1)

The great question that has been brought forward at the end of the last chapter, concerning the right and usage of election in boroughs, was perhaps of less practical importance in the reign of Charles the Second than we might at first imagine, or than it might become in the present age. Whoever might be the legal electors, it is undoubted that a great preponderance was virtually lodged in the select body of corporations. It was the knowledge of this that produced the corporation act soon after the restoration, to exclude the presbyterians, and the more violent measures of quo warranto at the end of Charles's reign. If by placing creatures of the court in municipal offices, or by intimidating the former corporators through apprehensions of forfeiting their common property and lucrative privileges, what was called a loyal parliament could be procured, the business of government, both as to supply and enactment or repeal of laws, would be carried on far more smoothly, and with less scandal than by their entire disuse. Few of those who assumed the name of tories were prepared to sacrifice the ancient fundamental forms of the constitution. They thought it equally necessary that a parliament should exist, and that it should have no will of its own, or none at least, except for the preservation of that ascendancy of the established religion which even their loyalty would not consent to surrender.

_Designs of the king._--It is not easy to determine whether James II. had resolved to complete his schemes of arbitrary government by setting aside even the nominal concurrence of the two houses of parliament in legislative enactments, and especially in levying money on his subjects. Lord Halifax had given him much offence towards the close of the late reign, and was considered from thenceforth as a man unfit to be employed, because in the cabinet, on a question whether the people of New England should be ruled in future by an assembly or by the absolute pleasure of the Crown, he had spoken very freely against unlimited monarchy.[75] James indeed could hardly avoid perceiving that the constant acquiescence of an English House of Commons in the measures proposed to it, a respectful abstinence from all intermeddling with the administration of affairs, could never be relied upon or obtained at all, without much of that dexterous management and influence which he thought it both unworthy and impolitic to exert. It seems clearly that he had determined on trying their obedience merely as an experiment, and by no means to put his authority in any manner within their control. Hence he took the bold step of issuing a proclamation for the payment of customs, which by law expired at the late king's death;[76] and Barillon mentions several times, that he was resolved to continue in the possession of the revenue, whether the parliament should grant it or no. He was equally decided not to accept it for a limited time. This, as his principal ministers told the ambassador, would be to establish the necessity of convoking parliament from time to time, and thus to change the form of government by rendering the king dependent upon it; rather than which it would be better to come at once to the extremity of a dissolution, and maintain the possession of the late king's revenues by open force.[77] But the extraordinary conduct of this House of Commons, so unlike any that had met in England for the last century, rendered any exertion of violence on this score quite unnecessary.

_Parliament of 1685._--The behaviour of that unhonoured parliament, which held its two short sessions in 1685, though in a great measure owing to the fickleness of the public mind and rapid ascendancy of tory principles during the late years, as well as to a knowledge of the king's severe and vindictive temper, seems to confirm the assertion strongly made at the time within its walls, that many of the members had been unduly returned.[78] The notorious facts indeed, as to the forfeiture of corporations throughout the kingdom, and their regrant under such restrictions as might serve the purpose of the Crown, stand in need of no confirmation. Those who look at the debates and votes of this assembly, their large grant of a permanent revenue to the annual amount of two millions, rendering a frugal prince, in time of peace, entirely out of all dependence on his people, their timid departure from a resolution taken to address the king on the only matter for which they were really solicitous, the enforcement of the penal laws, on a suggestion of his displeasure,[79] their bill entitled, for the preservation of his majesty's person, full of dangerous innovations in the law of treason, especially one most unconstitutional clause, that any one moving in either house of parliament to change the descent of the Crown should incur the penalties of that offence,[80] their supply of £700,000, after the suppression of Monmouth's rebellion, for the support of a standing army,[81] will be inclined to believe that, had James been as zealous for the church of England as his father, he would have succeeded in establishing a power so nearly despotic that neither the privileges of parliament, nor much less those of private men, would have stood in his way. The prejudice which the two last Stuarts had acquired in favour of the Roman religion, so often deplored by thoughtless or insidious writers as one of the worst consequences of their father's ill fortune, is to be accounted rather among the most signal links in the chain of causes through which a gracious Providence has favoured the consolidation of our liberties and welfare. Nothing less than a motive more universally operating than the interests of civil freedom would have stayed the compliant spirit of this unworthy parliament, or rallied, for a time at least, the supporters of indefinite prerogative under a banner they abhorred.

_King's intention to repeal the test act._--We know that the king's intention was to obtain the repeal of the habeas corpus act, a law which he reckoned as destructive of monarchy as the test was of the catholic religion.[82] And I see no reason to suppose that he would have failed of this, had he not given alarm to his high-church parliament, by a premature manifestation of his design to fill the civil and military employments with the professors of his own mode of faith.

It has been doubted by Mr. Fox whether James had, in this part of his reign, conceived the projects commonly imputed to him, of overthrowing, or injuring by any direct acts of power, the protestant establishment of this kingdom. Neither the copious extracts from Barillon's correspondence with his own court, published by Sir John Dalrymple and himself, nor the king's own memoirs, seem, in his opinion, to warrant a conclusion that anything farther was intended than to emancipate the Roman catholics from the severe restrictions of the penal laws, securing the public exercise of their worship from molestation, and to replace them upon an equality as to civil offices, by abrogating the test act of the late reign.[83] We find nevertheless a remarkable conversation of the king himself with the French ambassador, which leaves an impression on the mind that his projects were already irreconcilable with that pledge of support he had rather unadvisedly given to the Anglican church at his accession. This interpretation of his language is confirmed by the expressions used at the same time by Sunderland, which are more unequivocal and point at the complete establishment of the catholic religion.[84] The particular care displayed by James in this conversation, and indeed in so many notorious instances, to place the army, as far as possible, in the command of catholic officers, has very much the appearance of his looking towards the employment of force in overthrowing the protestant church, as well as the civil privileges of his subjects. Yet he probably entertained confident hopes, in the outset of his reign, that he might not be driven to this necessity, or at least should only have occasion to restrain a fanatical populace. He would rely on the intrinsic excellence of his own religion, and still more on the temptations that his favour would hold out. For the repeal of the test would not have placed the two religions on a fair level. Catholics, however little qualified, would have filled, as in fact they did under the dispensing power, most of the principal stations in the court, law, and army. The king told Barillon, he was well enough acquainted with England to be assured, that the admissibility to office would make more catholics than the right of saying mass publicly. There was, on the one hand, a prevailing laxity of principle in the higher ranks, and a corrupt devotedness to power for the sake of the emoluments it could dispense, which encouraged the expectation of such a nominal change in religion as had happened in the sixteenth century. And, on the other, much was hoped by the king from the church itself. He had separated from her communion in consequence of the arguments which her own divines had furnished; he had conversed with men bred in the school of Laud; and was slow to believe that the conclusions which he had, not perhaps unreasonably, derived from the semi-protestant theology of his father's reign, would not appear equally irresistible to all minds, when free from the danger and obloquy that had attended them. Thus by a voluntary return of the clergy and nation to the bosom of the catholic church, he might both obtain an immortal renown, and secure his prerogative against that religious jealousy which had always been the aliment of political factions.[85] Till this revolution however could be brought about, he determined to court the church of England, whose boast of exclusive and unlimited loyalty could hardly be supposed entirely hollow, in order to obtain the repeal of the penal laws and disqualifications which affected that of Rome. And though the maxims of religious toleration had been always in his mouth, he did not hesitate to propitiate her with the most acceptable sacrifice, the persecution of nonconforming ministers. He looked upon the dissenters as men of republican principles; and if he could have made his bargain for the free exercise of the catholic worship, I see no reason to doubt that he would never have announced his general indulgence to tender consciences.[86]

_James deceived as to the disposition of his subjects._--But James had taken too narrow a view of the mighty people whom he governed. The laity of every class, the tory gentleman almost equally with the presbyterian artisan, entertained an inveterate abhorrence of the Romish superstition. Their first education, the usual tenor of preaching, far more polemical than at present, the books most current, the tradition of ancient cruelties and conspiracies, rendered this a cardinal point of religion even with those who had little beside. Many still gave credit to the popish plot; and with those who had been compelled to admit its general falsehood, there remained, as is frequently the case, an indefinite sense of dislike and suspicion, like the swell of waves after a storm, which attached itself to all the objects of that calumny.[87] This was of course enhanced by the insolent and injudicious confidence of the Romish faction, especially the priests, in their demeanour, their language, and their publications. Meanwhile a considerable change had been wrought in the doctrinal system of the Anglican church since the restoration. The men most conspicuous in the reign of Charles II. for their writings, and for their argumentative eloquence in the pulpit, were of the class who had been denominated Latitudinarian divines; and while they maintained the principles of the Remonstrants in opposition to the school of Calvin, were powerful and unequivocal supporters of the protestant cause against Rome. They made none of the dangerous concessions which had shaken the faith of the Duke and Duchess of York, they regretted the disuse of no superstitious ceremony, they denied not the one essential characteristic of the reformation, the right of private judgment, they avoided the mysterious jargon of a real presence in the Lord's Supper. Thus such an agreement between the two churches as had been projected at different times was become far more evidently impracticable, and the separation more broad and defined.[88] These men, as well as others who do not properly belong to the same class, were now distinguished by their courageous and able defences of the reformation. The victory, in the judgment of the nation, was wholly theirs. Rome had indeed her proselytes, but such as it would have been more honourable to have wanted. The people heard sometimes with indignation, or rather with contempt, that an unprincipled minister, a temporising bishop, or a licentious poet, had gone over to the side of a monarch who made conformity with his religion the only certain path to his favour.

_Prorogation of parliament._--The short period of a four years' reign may be divided by several distinguishing points of time, which make so many changes in the posture of government. From the king's accession to the prorogation of parliament on November 30, 1685, he had acted apparently in concurrence with the same party that had supported him in his brother's reign, of which his own seemed the natural and almost undistinguishable continuation. This party, which had become incomparably stronger than the opposite, had greeted him with such unbounded professions,[89] the temper of its representatives had been such in the first session of parliament, that a prince less obstinate than James might have expected to succeed in attaining an authority which the nation seemed to offer. A rebellion speedily and decisively quelled confirms every government; it seemed to place his own beyond hazard. Could he have been induced to change the order of his designs, and accustom the people to a military force, and to a prerogative of dispensing with statutes of temporal concern, before he meddled too ostensibly with their religion, he would possibly have gained both the objects of his desire. Even conversions to popery might have been more frequent, if the gross solicitations of the court had not made them dishonourable. But, neglecting the hint of a prudent adviser, that the death of Monmouth left a far more dangerous enemy behind, he suffered a victory that might have ensured him success, to inspire an arrogant confidence that led on to destruction. Master of an army, and determined to keep it on foot, he naturally thought less of a good understanding with parliament.[90] He had already rejected the proposition of employing bribery among the members, an expedient very little congenial to his presumptuous temper and notions of government.[91] They were assembled, in his opinion, to testify the nation's loyalty, and thankfulness to their gracious prince for not taking away their laws and liberties. But, if a factious spirit of opposition should once prevail, it could not be his fault if he dismissed them till more becoming sentiments should again gain ground.[92] Hence, he did not hesitate to prorogue, and eventually to dissolve, the most compliant House of Commons that had been returned since his family had sat on the throne, at the cost of £700,000, a grant of supply which thus fell to the ground, rather than endure any opposition on the subject of the test and penal laws. Yet, from the strength of the court in all divisions, it must seem not improbable to us that he might, by the usual means of management, have carried both of those favourite measures, at least through the lower house of parliament. For the Crown lost the most important division only by one vote, and had in general a majority. The very address about unqualified officers, which gave the king such offence as to bring on a prorogation, was worded in the most timid manner; the house having rejected unanimously the words first inserted by their committee, requesting that his majesty would be pleased not to continue them in their employments, for a vague petition that "he would be graciously pleased to give such directions that no apprehensions or jealousies may remain in the hearts of his majesty's good and faithful subjects."[93]

The second period of this reign extends from the prorogation of parliament to the dismissal of the Earl of Rochester from the treasury in 1686. During this time James, exasperated at the reluctance of the Commons to acquiesce in his measures, and the decisive opposition of the church, threw off the half restraint he had imposed on himself; and showed plainly that, with a bench of judges to pronounce his commands, and an army to enforce them, he would not suffer the mockery of constitutional limitations to stand any longer in his way. Two important steps were made this year towards the accomplishment of his designs, by the judgment of the court of king's bench in the case of Sir Edward Hales, confirming the right of the Crown to dispense with the test act, and by the establishment of the new ecclesiastical commission.

The kings of England, if not immemorially, yet from a very early æra in our records, had exercised a prerogative unquestioned by parliament, and recognised by courts of justice, that of granting dispensations from the prohibitions and penalties of particular laws. The language of ancient statutes was usually brief and careless, with few of those attempts to regulate prospective contingencies, which, even with our pretended modern caution, are so often imperfect; and, as the sessions were never regular, sometimes interrupted for several years, there was a kind of necessity, or great convenience, in deviating occasionally from the rigour of a general prohibition; more often perhaps some motive of interest or partiality would induce the Crown to infringe on the legal rule. This dispensing power, however, grew up, as it were, collaterally to the sovereignty of the legislature, which it sometimes appeared to overshadow. It was of course asserted in large terms by counsellors of state, and too frequently by the interpreters of law. Lord Coke, before he had learned the bolder tone of his declining years, lays it down, that no act of parliament can bind the king from any prerogative which is inseparable from his person, so that he may not dispense with it by a non-obtante; such is his sovereign power to command any of his subjects to serve him for the public weal, which solely and inseparably is annexed to his person, and cannot be restrained by any act of parliament. Thus, although the statute 23 H. 6, c. 8, provides that all patents to hold the office of sheriff for more than one year shall be void, and even enacts that the king shall not dispense with it; yet it was held by all the judges in the reign of Henry VII. that the king may grant such a patent for a longer term on good grounds, whereof he alone is the judge. So also the statutes which restrain the king from granting pardons in case of murder have been held void; and doubtless the constant practice has been to disregard them.[94]

This high and dangerous prerogative, nevertheless, was subject to several limitations, which none but the grosser flatterers of monarchy could deny. It was agreed among lawyers that the king could not dispense with the common law, nor with any statute prohibiting that which was _malum in se_, nor with any right or interest of a private person, or corporation.[95] The rules, however, were still rather complicated, the boundaries indefinite, and therefore varying according to the political character of the judges. For many years dispensations had been confined to taking away such incapacity as either the statutes of a college, or some law of little consequence, perhaps almost obsolete, might happen to have created. But when a collusive action was brought against Sir Edward Hales, a Roman catholic, in the name of his servant, to recover the penalty of £500 imposed by the test act, for accepting the commission of colonel of a regiment, without the previous qualification of receiving the sacrament in the church of England, the whole importance of the alleged prerogative became visible, and the fate of the established constitution seemed to hang upon the decision. The plaintiff's advocate, Northey, was known to have received his fee from the other side, and was thence suspected, perhaps unfairly, of betraying his own cause;[96] but the chief justice Herbert showed that no arguments against this prerogative would have swayed his determination. Not content with treating the question as one of no difficulty, he grounded his decision in favour of the defendant upon principles that would extend far beyond the immediate case. He laid it down that the kings of England were sovereign princes, that the laws of England were the king's laws; that it was consequently an inseparable prerogative of the Crown to dispense with penal laws in particular cases, for reasons of which it was the sole judge. This he called the ancient remains of the sovereign power and prerogative of the kings of England, which never yet was taken from them, nor could be. There was no law, he said, that might not be dispensed with by the supreme lawgiver (meaning evidently the king, since the proposition would otherwise be impertinent); though he made a sort of distinction as to those which affected the subject's private right. But the general maxims of slavish churchmen and lawyers were asserted so broadly that a future judge would find little difficulty in making use of this precedent to justify any stretch of arbitrary power.[97]

It is by no means evident that the decision in this particular case of Hales, which had the approbation of eleven judges out of twelve, was against law.[98] The course of former precedents seems rather to furnish its justification. But the less untenable such a judgment in favour of the dispensing power might appear, the more necessity would men of reflection perceive of making some great change in the relations of the people towards their sovereign. A prerogative of setting aside the enactments of parliament, which in trifling matters, and for the sake of conferring a benefit on individuals, might be suffered to exist with little mischief, became intolerable when exercised in contravention of the very principle of those statutes which had been provided for the security of fundamental liberties or institutions. Thus the test act, the great achievement, as it had been reckoned, of the protestant party, for the sake of which the most subservient of parliaments had just then ventured to lose the king's favour, became absolutely nugatory and ineffective, by a construction which the law itself did not reject. Nor was it easy to provide any sufficient remedy by means of parliament; since it was the doctrine of the judges, that the king's inseparable and sovereign prerogatives in matters of government could not be taken away or restrained by statute. The unadvised assertion in a court of justice of this principle, which though not by any means novel, had never been advanced in a business of such universal concern and interest, may be said to have sealed the condemnation of the house of Stuart. It made the co-existence of an hereditary line, claiming a sovereign prerogative paramount to the liberties they had vouchsafed to concede, incompatible with the security or probable duration of those liberties. This incompatibility is the true basis of the revolution in 1688.

But, whatever pretext the custom of centuries or the authority of compliant lawyers might afford for these dispensations from the test, no legal defence could be made for the ecclesiastical commission of 1686. The high commission court of Elizabeth had been altogether taken away by an act of the long parliament, which went on to provide that no new court should be erected with the like power, jurisdiction, and authority. Yet the commission issued by James II. followed very nearly the words of that which had created the original court under Elizabeth, omitting a few particulars of little moment.[99] It is not known, I believe, at whose suggestion the king adopted this measure. The pre-eminence reserved by the commission to Jefferies, whose presence was made necessary to all their meetings, and the violence with which he acted in all their transactions on record, seems to point him out as its great promoter; though it is true that, at a later period, Jefferies seems to have perceived the destructive indiscretion of the popish counsellors. It displayed the king's change of policy and entire separation from that high-church party, to whom he was indebted for the throne; since the manifest design of the ecclesiastical commission was to bridle the clergy, and silence the voice of protestant zeal. The proceedings against the Bishop of London, and other instances of hostility to the established religion, are well known.

Elated by success and general submission, exasperated by the reluctance and dissatisfaction of those on whom he had relied for an active concurrence with his desires, the king seems at least by this time to have formed the scheme of subverting, or impairing as far as possible, the religious establishment. He told Barillon, alluding to the ecclesiastical commission, that God had permitted all the statutes which had been enacted against the catholic religion to become the means of its re-establishment.[100] But the most remarkable evidence of this design was the collation of Massey, a recent convert, to the deanery of Christ Church, with a dispensation from all the statutes of uniformity and other ecclesiastical laws, so ample that it made a precedent, and such it was doubtless intended to be, for bestowing any benefices upon members of the church of Rome. This dispensation seems to have been not generally known at the time. Burnet has stated the circumstances of Massey's promotion inaccurately; and no historian, I believe, till the publication of the instrument after the middle of the last century, was fully aware of the degree in which the king had trampled upon the securities of the established church in this transaction.[101]

_Dismissal of Lord Rochester._--A deeper impression was made by the dismissal of Rochester from his post of lord treasurer; so nearly consequent on his positive declaration of adherence to the protestant religion, after the dispute held in his presence at the king's particular command, between divines of both persuasions, that it had much the appearance of a resolution taken at court to exclude from the high offices of the state all those who gave no hope of conversion.[102] Clarendon had already given way to Tyrconnel in the government of Ireland; the privy seal was bestowed on a catholic peer, Lord Arundel; Lord Bellasis, of the same religion, was now placed at the head of the commission of the treasury; Sunderland, though he did not yet cease to conform, made no secret of his pretended change of opinion; the council board, by virtue of the dispensing power, was filled with those who would refuse the test; a small junto of catholics, with Father Petre, the king's confessor, at their head, took the management of almost all affairs upon themselves;[103] men, whose known want of principle gave reason to expect their compliance, were raised to bishoprics; there could be no rational doubt of a concerted scheme to depress and discountenance the established church. The dismissal of Rochester, who had gone great lengths to preserve his power and emoluments, and would in all probability have concurred in the establishment of arbitrary power under a protestant sovereign,[104] may be reckoned the most unequivocal evidence of the king's intentions; and from thence we may date the decisive measures that were taken to counteract them.

_Prince of Orange alarmed._--It was, I do not merely say the interest, but the clear right and bounden duty, of the Prince of Orange, to watch over the internal politics of England, on account of the near connection which his own birth and his marriage with the presumptive heir had created. He was never to be reckoned a foreigner as to this country, which, even in the ordinary course of succession, he might be called to govern. From the time of his union with the Princess Mary, he was the legitimate and natural ally of the whig party; alien in all his sentiments from his two uncles, neither of whom, especially James, treated him with much regard, on account merely of his attachment to religion and liberty, for he might have secured their affection by falling into their plans. Before such differences as subsisted between these personages, the bonds of relationship fall asunder like flax; and William would have had at least the sanction of many precedents in history, if he had employed his influence to excite sedition against Charles or James, and to thwart their administration. Yet his conduct appears to have been merely defensive; nor had he the remotest connection with the violent and factious proceedings of Shaftesbury and his partisans. He played a very dexterous, but apparently very fair, game throughout the last years of Charles; never losing sight of the popular party, through whom alone he could expect influence over England during the life of his father-in-law, while he avoided any direct rupture with the brothers, and every reasonable pretext for their taking offence.

It has never been established by any reputable testimony, though perpetually asserted, nor is it in the least degree probable, that William took any share in prompting the invasion of Monmouth.[105] But it is nevertheless manifest that he derived the greatest advantage from this absurd rebellion and from its failure; not only, as it removed a mischievous adventurer, whom the multitude's idle predilection had elevated so high, that factious men would, under every government, have turned to account his ambitious imbecility; but as the cruelty with which this unhappy enterprise was punished rendered the king odious,[106] while the success of his arms inspired him with false confidence, and neglect of caution. Every month, as it brought forth evidence of James's arbitrary projects, increased the number of those who looked for deliverance to the Prince of Orange, either in the course of succession, or by some special interference. He had, in fact, a stronger motive for watching the councils of his father-in-law than has generally been known. The king was, at his accession, in his fifty-fifth year, and had no male children; nor did the queen's health give much encouragement to expect them. Every dream of the nation's voluntary return to the church of Rome must have vanished, even if the consent of a parliament could be obtained, which was nearly vain to think of; or if open force and the aid of France should enable James to subvert the established religion, what had the catholics to anticipate from his death, but that fearful reaction which had ensued upon the accession of Elizabeth? This had already so much disheartened the moderate part of their body that they were most anxious not to urge forward a change, for which the kingdom was not ripe, and which was so little likely to endure, and used their influence to promote a reconciliation between the king and Prince of Orange, contenting themselves with that free exercise of their worship which was permitted in Holland.[107] But the ambitious priesthood who surrounded the throne had bolder projects. A scheme was formed early in the king's reign, to exclude the Princess of Orange from the succession in favour of her sister Anne, in the event of the latter's conversion to the Romish faith. The French ministers at our court, Barillon and Bonrepos, gave ear to this hardy intrigue. They flattered themselves that both Anne and her husband were favourably disposed. But in this they were wholly mistaken. No one could be more unconquerably fixed in her religion than that princess. The king himself, when the Dutch ambassador, Van Citers, laid before him a document, probably drawn up by some catholics of his court, in which these audacious speculations were developed, declared his indignation at so criminal a project. It was not even in his power, he let the prince afterwards know by a message, or in that of parliament, according to the principles which had been maintained in his own behalf, to change the fundamental order of succession to the Crown.[108] Nothing indeed can more forcibly paint the desperation of the popish faction than their entertainment of so preposterous a scheme. But it naturally increased the solicitude of William about the intrigues of the English cabinet. It does not appear that any direct overtures were made to the Prince of Orange, except by a very few malcontents, till the embassy of Dykvelt from the States in the spring of 1687. It was William's object to ascertain, through that minister, the real state of parties in England. Such assurances as he carried back to Holland gave encouragement to an enterprise that would have been equally injudicious and unwarrantable without them.[109] Danby, Halifax, Nottingham, and others of the tory, as well as whig factions, entered into a secret correspondence with the Prince of Orange; some from a real attachment to the constitutional limitations of monarchy; some from a conviction that, without open apostasy from the protestant faith, they could never obtain from James the prizes of their ambition. This must have been the predominant motive with Lord Churchill, who never gave any proof of solicitude about civil liberty; and his influence taught the Princess Anne to distinguish her interest from those of her father. It was about this time also that even Sunderland entered upon a mysterious communication with the Prince of Orange; but whether he afterwards served his present master only to betray him, as has been generally believed, or sought rather to propitiate, by clandestine professions, one who might in the course of events become such, is not perhaps what the evidence already known to the world will enable us to determine.[110] The apologists of James have often represented Sunderland's treachery as extending back to the commencement of this reign, as if he had entered upon the king's service with no other aim than to put him on measures that would naturally lead to his ruin. But the simpler hypothesis is probably nearer the truth: a corrupt and artful statesman could have no better prospect for his own advantage than the power and popularity of a government which he administered; it was a conviction of the king's incorrigible and infatuated adherence to designs which the rising spirit of the nation rendered utterly infeasible, an apprehension that, whenever a free parliament should be called, he might experience the fate of Strafford as an expiation for the sins of the Crown, which determined him to secure as far as possible his own indemnity upon a revolution that he could not have withstood.[111]

The dismissal of Rochester was followed up at no great distance of time, by the famous declaration for liberty of conscience, suspending the execution of all penal laws concerning religion, and freely pardoning all offences against them, in as full a manner as if each individual had been named. He declared also his will and pleasure that the oaths of supremacy and allegiance, and the several tests enjoined by statutes of the late reign, should no longer be required of any one before his admission to offices of trust. The motive of this declaration was not so much to relieve the Roman catholics from penal and incapacitating statutes (which, since the king's accession and the judgment of the court of king's bench in favour of Hales, were virtually at an end), as by extending to the protestant dissenters the same full measure of toleration, to enlist under the standard of arbitrary power those who had been its most intrepid and steadiest adversaries. It was after the prorogation of parliament that he had begun to caress that party, who in the first months of his reign had endured a continuance of their persecution.[112] But the clergy in general detested the nonconformists still more than the papists, and had always abhorred the idea of even a parliamentary toleration. The present declaration went much farther than the recognised prerogative of dispensing with prohibitory statutes. Instead of removing the disability from individuals by letters patent, it swept away at once, in effect, the solemn ordinances of the legislature. There was, indeed, a reference to the future concurrence of the two houses, whenever he should think it convenient for them to meet; but so expressed as rather to insult, than pay respect to, their authority.[113] And no one could help considering the declaration of a similar nature just published in Scotland, as the best commentary on the present. In that he suspended all laws against the Roman catholics and moderate presbyterians, "by his sovereign authority, prerogative royal, and absolute power, which all his subjects were to obey without reserve;" and its whole tenor spoke, in as unequivocal language as his grandfather was accustomed to use, his contempt of all pretended limitations on his will.[114] Though the constitution of Scotland was not so well balanced as our own, it was notorious that the Crown did not legally possess an absolute power in that kingdom; and men might conclude that, when he should think it less necessary to observe some measures with his English subjects, he would address them in the same strain.

Those, indeed, who knew by what course his favour was to be sought, did not hesitate to go before, and light him, as it were, to the altar on which their country's liberty was to be the victim. Many of the addresses which fill the columns of the _London Gazette_ in 1687, on occasion of the declaration of indulgence, flatter the king with assertions of his dispensing power. The benchers and barristers of the Middle Temple, under the direction of the prostitute Shower, were again foremost in the race of infamy. They thank him "for asserting his own royal prerogatives, the very life of the law, and of their profession; which prerogatives, as they were given by God himself, so no power upon earth could diminish them, but they must always remain entire and inseparable from his royal person; which prerogatives as the addressers had studied to know, so they were resolved to defend, by asserting with their lives and fortunes that divine maxim, _à Deo rex, à lege rex_."[115]

These addresses, which, to the number of some hundreds, were sent up from every description of persons, the clergy, the nonconformists of all denominations, the grand juries, the justices of the peace, the corporations, the inhabitants of towns, in consequence of the declaration, afford a singular contrast to what we know of the prevailing dispositions of the people in that year, and of their general abandonment of the king's cause before the end of the next. Those from the clergy, indeed, disclose their ill-humour at the unconstitutional indulgence, limiting their thanks to some promises of favour the king had used towards the established church. But as to the rest, we should have cause to blush for the servile hypocrisy of our ancestors, if there were not good reason to believe that these addresses were sometimes the work of a small minority in the name of the rest, and that the grand juries and the magistracy in general had been so garbled for the king's purposes in this year that they formed a very inadequate representation of that great class from which they ought to have been taken.[116] It was however very natural that they should deceive the court. The catholics were eager for that security which nothing but an act of the legislature could afford; and James, who, as well as his minister, had a strong aversion to the measure, seems about the latter end of the summer of 1687 to have made a sudden change in his scheme of government, and resolved once more to try the disposition of a parliament. For this purpose, having dissolved that from which he could expect nothing hostile to the church, he set himself to manage the election of another in such a manner as to ensure his main object, the security of the Romish religion.[117]

"His first care," says his biographer Innes, "was to purge the corporations from that leaven which was in danger of corrupting the whole kingdom; so he appointed certain regulators to inspect the conduct of several borough towns, to correct abuses where it was practicable, and where not, by forfeiting their charters, to turn out such rotten members as infected the rest. But in this, as in most other cases, the king had the fortune to choose persons not too well qualified for such an employment, and extremely disagreeable to the people; it was a sort of motley council made up of catholics and presbyterians, a composition which was sure never to hold long together, or that could probably unite in any method suitable to both their interests; it served therefore only to increase the public odium by their too arbitrary ways of turning out and putting in; and yet those who were thus intruded, as it were, by force, being of the presbyterian party, were by this time become as little inclinable to favour the king's intentions as the excluded members."[118]

This endeavour to violate the legal rights of electors as well as to take away other vested franchises, by new modelling corporations through commissions granted to regulators, was the most capital delinquency of the king's government; because it tended to preclude any reparation for the rest, and directly attacked the fundamental constitution of the state.[119] But, like all his other measures, it displayed not more ill-will to the liberties of the nation than inability to overthrow them. The catholics were so small a body, and so weak, especially in corporate towns, that the whole effect produced by the regulators was to place municipal power and trust in the hands of the nonconformists, those precarious and unfaithful allies of the court, whose resentment of past oppression, hereditary attachment to popular principles of government, and inveterate abhorrence of popery, were not to be effaced by an unnatural coalition. Hence, though they availed themselves, and surely without reproach, of the toleration held out to them, and even took the benefit of the scheme of regulation, so as to fill the corporation of London and many others, they were, as is confessed above, too much of Englishmen and protestants for the purposes of the court. The wiser part of the churchmen made secret overtures to their party; and by assurances of a toleration, if not also of a comprehension within the Anglican pale, won them over to a hearty concurrence in the great project that was on foot.[120] The king found it necessary to descend so much from the haughty attitude he had taken at the outset of his reign, as personally to solicit men of rank and local influence for their votes on the two great measures of repealing the test and penal laws. The country gentlemen, in their different counties, were tried with circular questions, whether they would comply with the king in their elections, or, if themselves chosen, in parliament. Those who refused such a promise were erased from the lists of justices and deputy-lieutenants.[121] Yet his biographer admits that he received little encouragement to proceed in the experiment of a parliament;[122] and it is said by the French ambassador that evasive answers were returned to these questions, with such uniformity of expression as indicated an alarming degree of concert.[123]

_Affair of Magdalen College._--It is unnecessary to dwell on circumstances so well known as the expulsion of the fellows of Magdalen College.[124] It was less extensively mischievous than the new-modelling of corporations, but perhaps a more glaring act of despotism. For though the Crown had been accustomed from the time of the reformation to send very peremptory commands to ecclesiastical foundations, and even to dispense with their statutes at discretion, with so little resistance that few seemed to doubt of its prerogative; though Elizabeth would probably have treated the fellows of any college much in the same manner as James II., if they had proceeded to an election in defiance of her recommendation; yet the right was not the less clearly theirs, and the struggles of a century would have been thrown away, if James II. was to govern as the Tudors, or even as his father and grandfather had done before him. And though Parker, Bishop of Oxford, the first president whom the ecclesiastical commissioners obtruded on the college, was still nominally a protestant,[125] his successor Gifford was an avowed member of the church of Rome. The college was filled with persons of the same persuasion; mass was said in the chapel, and the established religion was excluded with a degree of open force which entirely took away all security for its preservation in any other place. This latter act, especially, of the Magdalen drama, in a still greater degree than the nomination of Massey to the deanery of Christ Church, seems a decisive proof that the king's repeated promises of contenting himself with a toleration of his own religion would have yielded to his insuperable bigotry and the zeal of his confessor. We may perhaps add to these encroachments upon the act of uniformity, the design imputed to him of conferring the archbishopric of York on Father Petre; yet there would have been difficulties that seem insurmountable in the way of this, since the validity of Anglican orders not being acknowledged by the church of Rome, Petre would not have sought consecration at the hands of Sancroft; nor, had he done so, would the latter have conferred it on him, even if the chapter of York had gone through the indispensable form of an election.[126]

The infatuated monarch was irritated by that which he should have taken as a terrible warning, this resistance to his will from the university of Oxford. That sanctuary of pure unspotted loyalty, as some would say, that sink of all that was most abject in servility, as less courtly tongues might murmur, the university of Oxford, which had but four short years back, by a solemn decree in convocation, poured forth anathemas on all who had doubted the divine right of monarchy, or asserted the privileges of subjects against their sovereigns, which had boasted in its addresses of an obedience without any restrictions or limitations, which but recently had seen a known convert to popery, and a person disqualified in other ways, installed by the chapter without any remonstrance in the deanery of Christ Church, was now the scene of a firm though temperate opposition to the king's positive command, and soon after the willing instrument of his ruin. In vain the pamphleteers, on the side of the court, upbraided the clergy with their apostacy from the principles they had so much vaunted. The imputation it was hard to repel; but, if they could not retract their course without shame, they could not continue in it without destruction.[127] They were driven to extremity by the order of May 4, 1688, to read the declaration of indulgence in their churches.[128] This, as is well known, met with great resistance, and, by inducing the primate and six other bishops to present a petition to the king against it, brought on that famous persecution, which, more perhaps than all his former actions, cost him the allegiance of the Anglican church. The proceedings upon the trial of those prelates are so familiar as to require no particular notice.[129] What is most worthy of remark is, that the very party who had most extolled the royal prerogative, and often in such terms as if all limitations of it were only to subsist at pleasure, became now the instruments of bringing it down within the compass and control of the law. If the king had a right to suspend the execution of statutes by proclamation, the bishops' petition might not indeed be libellous, but their disobedience and that of the clergy could not be warranted; and the principal argument both of the bar and the bench rested on the great question of that prerogative.

The king, meantime, was blindly hurrying on at the instigation of his own pride and bigotry, and of some ignorant priests, confident in the fancied obedience of the church, and in the hollow support of the dissenters; after all his wiser counsellors, the catholic peers, the nuncio, perhaps the queen herself, had grown sensible of the danger, and solicitous for temporising measures. He had good reason to perceive that neither the fleet nor the army could be relied upon; to cashier the most rigidly protestant officers, to draft Irish troops into the regiments, to place all important commands in the hands of catholics, were difficult and even desperate measures, which rendered his designs more notorious, without rendering them more feasible. It is among the most astonishing parts of this unhappy sovereign's impolicy, that he sometimes neglected, even offended, never steadily and sufficiently courted, the sole ally that could by possibility have co-operated in his scheme of government. In his brother's reign, James had been the most obsequious and unhesitating servant of the French king. Before his own accession, his first step was to implore, through Barillon, a continuance of that support and protection, without which he could undertake nothing which he had designed in favour of the catholics. He received a present of 500,000 livres with tears of gratitude; and telling the ambassador he had not disclosed his real designs to his ministers, pressed for a strict alliance with Louis, as the means of accomplishing them.[130] Yet with a strange inconsistency, he drew off gradually from these professions, and not only kept on rather cool terms with France during part of his reign, but sometimes played a double game by treating of a league with Spain.

_James's coldness towards Louis._--The secret of this uncertain policy, which has not been well known till very lately, is to be found in the king's character. James had a real sense of the dignity pertaining to a king of England, and much of the national pride as well as that of his rank. He felt the degradation of importuning an equal sovereign for money, which Louis gave less frequently and in smaller measure than it was demanded. It is natural for a proud man not to love those before whom he has abased himself. James, of frugal habits and master of a great revenue, soon became more indifferent to a French pension. Nor was he insensible to the reproach of Europe, that he was grown the vassal of France and had tarnished the lustre of the English Crown.[131] Had he been himself protestant, or his subjects catholic, he would probably have given the reins to that jealousy of his ambitious neighbour, which, even in his peculiar circumstances, restrained him from the most expedient course; I mean expedient, on the hypothesis that to overthrow the civil and religious institutions of his people was to be the main object of his reign. For it was idle to attempt this without the steady co-operation of France; and those sentiments of dignity and independence, which at first sight appear to do him honour, being without any consistent magnanimity of character, served only to accelerate his ruin, and confirm the persuasion of his incapacity.[132] Even in the memorable year 1688, though the veil was at length torn from his eyes on the verge of the precipice, and he sought in trembling the assistance he had slighted, his silly pride made him half unwilling to be rescued; and, when the French ambassador at the Hague, by a bold manœuvre of diplomacy, asserted to the States that an alliance already subsisted between his master and the king of England, the latter took offence at the unauthorised declaration, and complained privately that Louis treated him as an inferior.[133] It is probable that a more ingenuous policy in the court of Whitehall, by determining the king of France to declare war sooner on Holland, would have prevented the expedition of the Prince of Orange.[134]