Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

2

party were seeking to take advantage of the Dutch war, and once more throw the kingdom into confusion and anarchy, that they might again try the experiment of their beloved commonwealth. Algernon Sidney was soliciting for this purpose money from France, and men from Holland; consultations had been held with Ludlow concerning the enterprise; and there were enough of Cromwell's officers ready to set their lives upon the hazard. A conspiracy was detected, for which eight persons were convicted. They had all been officers and soldiers in the rebellion, all were Levellers, and they confessed at their execution, that there was an intention of setting London on fire, on the second of September, that being found by Lilly's Almanack, and a scheme erected for that purpose to be a lucky day, a planet then ruling which prognosticated the downfal of monarchy. The men were executed in April; their confession was published in the gazette at the time; and on the day which they had specified, the fire of London broke out. If this were mere coincidence, it is surely the most remarkable in history.

The people nevertheless were persuaded that London had been burnt by the Papists, and the public authorities partook or assented to their credulity. The odium which this senseless calumny raised, was kept up by men of great talents, and consummate profligacy, who, from having been the wickedest ministers, became the wickedest opposition that ever dishonoured this kingdom. The infamous affair of the Popish plot carried it to its height, but the subsequent re-action had well nigh brought about the triumph of the Romish cause. Never were the civil and religious liberties of England in greater danger than when an opposition which had so lately directed the multitude at its will, and whose object it had been, by means of popular delusion, in every possible way to annoy the King, and embarrass the Government, (not without a hope of overthrowing both,) found themselves at once as devoid of support and strength, as they were of character and principle, and saw the whole authority of

1Œuvres de Louis XIV. t. ii. p. 204. burgh, 1751. Ludlow's passport from the might go from Switzerland to Paris to confer is printed in the same volume, p. 157.

2 Ludlow, vol. iii. p. 151-6. EdinComte d'Estrades, sent him that he there with Sidney upon this project, 3 Clarendon's Life, vol. ii. p. 365. Burnet's Own Time, i. p. 399. ed. 1823. Kennet, quoted in Howell's State Trials, vol. vi. p. 826. Parker, Comment. p. 81, 101. He had heard all the details of this conspiracy from Alexander, one of the parties who escaped, p. 82-3.

the State delivered over as it were by acclamation into the King's hands. Every thing then seemed to conspire in favour of the Romanists. And when Charles terminated his dissolute life and disgraceful reign in the communion of the Romish Church, and his brother, who was not only an avowed but a zealous Papist, succeeded to the throne, they considered their ascendency to be

secure.

If Charles ever seriously intended to prepare the way for that ascendency, the manner in which he disposed of the church preferment tended effectually to counteract his intentions. The clergy whom he promoted were, with few exceptions, men of the greatest ability and worth, armed at all points for controversy, munificent in bounty, powerful in preaching, exemplary in their private lives, and in the whole course of their public conduct conscientious and consistent. While they taught and believed that Government is of Divine right, and that passive obedience is the religious duty of the subject, they neither regarded the Sovereign as despotic, nor the people as slaves, knowing that their obedience was due to the laws of the land, and not to the mere will and pleasure of an arbitrary ruler. They could not be insensible to their danger from a Popish successor; and yet when the Bill of Exclusion was brought forward, and their influence as a body might have turned the scale, they adhered to the principle of constitutional loyalty, and the Bishops, without one exception, voted against it. Toward the Papists and the Nonconformists, or Dissenters, as they now began to be called, their conduct was firm and dignified; they regarded the points. of difference between them as essential, and therefore admitting of no compromise.

The Dissenters had always been supported by some unprincipled statesmen, who despised them while they used them as their instruments. Shaftesbury and Buckingham did then as Leicester had done in Elizabeth's days. By the encouragement which they thus received, by just so much persecution as rouses a natural and generous spirit of resistance, and by the zeal and activity which such circumstances excite, they became a recognised, and not an inconsiderable, party in the State, and that which had been an acute was converted into a chronic disease. The better part of their character appeared when it was their

turn to suffer; in fact, both among ministers and people none but the better members were left, who for the sake of what they believed to be their duty, were willing to incur the danger of hopeless imprisonment. The oppression to which they had been subjected was not that which driveth wise men mad; it was such as sobered those who had run wild in the inebriety of success. The crazier sects disappeared: and lay preaching, from which so many evils had arisen, was no longer heard of, except among the Quakers, who suffered more from the laws than all the other sects collectively, and who, laying aside their more outrageous follies, were now settling under a discipline which rendered them from the most extravagant, the most orderly of men. The scheme of making the Dissenters instrumental to the reestablishment of Popery, was well concerted; and, as far as concerned them, it was successful. The only reason for which they had left the Church of England was because it did not, in their opinion, depart sufficiently from the Church of Rome; and among the offences of which they had accused Laud and Charles I., one was that the Primate had favoured certain Priests who were in prison, and that the King had not ordered them to execution. The danger from Popery had then been imaginary, it was now real and imminent: they, however, stood aloof from the struggle, and left the clergy to maintain the Protestant cause from the pulpit and the press. The clergy were equal to this duty. How earnestly James was bent upon his purpose was plain from the constraint which he put upon his own feelings when he condescended to court the Dissenters, and what the consequences of his success would be, none, whose judgement was not biassed by self-interest, could possibly doubt. Even the plan of St. Paul's church was altered by James's interference, and the side oratories added, in despite of Sir Christopher Wren's remonstrances, for the secret purpose of rendering it more convenient as a Roman Catholic place of worship. The Romanists proceeded in the full assurance of success: and while addresses for a general indulgence were obtained from some of the Nonconformists, from some of the old dissenting officers and soldiers, and from a few servile corporations and companies, (even the Cooks2 presented one!) what indulgence was to be expected 1 Spence's Anecdotes, p. 298. 2 Somers' Tracts, vol. ix. p. 47.

under a Popish government was shown by the persecution of the Protestants in France. When the French clergy thanked Louis XIV. for having rooted out heresy from his dominions in that persecution, (which, regarded in all its circumstances, is the most atrocious in European history,) they added that one farther glory was reserved for him, that of lending his aid to reduce' England into the pale of the Catholic Church.

The better to secure his end, James promoted in the Church such persons as he thought would be most pliable: the few who were found so, had been equally compliant when the Puritans were in power. He published directions to the Archbishops to prohibit the clergy from preaching on controversial points. To have obeyed that prohibition when the principles of the establishment were incessantly attacked, would have been consenting to its overthrow; and they did their duty in repelling those attacks, and exposing the frauds and corruptions of the Romish Church. The King then had recourse to another method, which was likely to be more effectual. He appointed a Commission for inquiring into, and punishing ecclesiastical offences; the Commissioners being empowered to summon persons of any rank in the Church, and punish them by suspension, privation, and excommunication, "notwithstanding any laws or statutes of the realm." The Primate, and the Bishops of Durham and Rochester, were named members of this court, and there were four Lay Commissioners, of whom Jefferies was one.

Of the two bishops, one was timid, the other time-serving, and had been promoted for that qualification. But Sancroft, the Primate, was a man of sterling worth, and seventy years had not abated the vigour of his understanding, nor the strength of his heart. Having satisfied himself that the Commission was not legal, and that, even if it were otherwise, he could not legally be compelled to act in it, he declined the appointment upon the plea of his infirmities. The new Bishop of Chester was nominated in his stead, and Sancroft was in such expectation of being cited before this tribunal for declining to bear a part in it, that he prepared a protest against its jurisdiction. About this time he received a letter from the Princess of Orange, expressive of her satisfaction at hearing that the English Clergy were as firm 1 Somers' Tracts, vol. ix. p. 171.

to their Religion as they had always been to their King, and her confidence that God would still preserve the Church which he had provided with such able men. He told her in his reply that she had put new life into a dying old man, ready to sink under the double burthen of age and sorrow; and that such consolation never could have come more seasonably. "It hath seemed good to the Infinite Wisdom," said he, "to exercise this poor Church with trials of all sorts, and of all degrees; but the greatest calamity that ever befell us was, that it pleased God to permit wicked and ungodly men, after they had barbarously murdered the father, to drive out the sons from abiding in the inheritance of the Lord, as if they had said to them, Go and serve other gods: the dreadful effects whereof we still feel every moment, but must not, nay, we cannot, particularly express. And though all this (were it yet much more) cannot in the least shake or alter our steady loyalty to our sovereign and the royal family, in the legal succession of it, yet it imbitters the very comforts that are left us, it blasts all our present joys, and makes us sit down with sorrow in dust and ashes. Blessed be God, who in so dark and dismal a night hath caused some dawn of light to break forth upon us from the eastern shore, in the constancy and good affection of your Royal Highness and the excellent Prince towards us; for if this should fail us too, which the God of heaven and earth forbid, our hearts must surely break."

The measures of the Court were such at that time as to justify the darkest forebodings. A Papist was appointed Dean of Christ Church, and the King dispensed with his taking the oaths. A noble stand against a similar nomination was made by the Fellows of Magdalen College, and though the new Court of Commission exerted its power, and expelled them, the resistance which had there been made produced a strong effect upon the nation. At Cambridge also the King was opposed with equal firmness, and when he sent his mandamus, requiring them to receive one of his priests, a Benedictine, as Master of Arts, they unanimously refused to obey. One aggression followed another; the laws had plied before the King; and if the Clergy had yielded also, the civil and religious liberties of England would have been laid at his feet. But he found in them a steady and principled resistance, and when he issued an Order in Council requiring

« AnteriorContinuar »