inclinations to the Church, and their reciprocal duty and loyalty to him, both which were sufficiently understood and declared before. "Sir," he continued, "I found it grieved my Lords the Bishops to have come so far and to have done so little; and I am assured they came then prepared to have given your Majesty some more particular instances of their duty and zeal for your service, had they not apprehended from some words which fell from your Majesty, that you were not then at leisure to receive them. It was for this reason, then, that I besought your Majesty to command us once more to attend you all together. We are, therefore, here now before you, with all humility, to beg your permission that we may suggest to your Majesty such advices as we think proper at this season, and conducing to your service, and so leave them for your princely consideration." Then, with the King's leave, he read the humble advice of himself and his brethren, which was to this purport: that the King would be pleased to put the government of the several counties into the hands of such of the Nobility and Gentry as were legally qualified; that he would annul the Ecclesiastical Commission, and that no such court as that Commission set up might be erected in future; that no dispensation might be granted or continued, by which persons not duly qualified by law might hold any place in Church or State, or in the Universities, and that the President and Fellows of Magdalen College might be restored that licenses for persons of the Romish Communion to teach public schools might be set aside, and none such granted for the future that his Majesty would be graciously pleased to desist from the exercise of such a dispensing power as had of late been used, and permit that point to be freely and calmly debated, and finally settled in Parliament: that he would inhibit the four foreign Bishops who styled themselves Vicars Apostolical, from further invading the Ecclesiastical jurisdiction, which is by law vested in the Bishops of this Church: (these Romish prelates had been recently consecrated in the King's Chapel, and sent out to exercise episcopal functions in their respective dioceses, where they dispersed their pastoral letters under the express permission of the King;) that he would restore the ancient charters, privileges, and franchises, to those Corporations which had been deprived of them: that he would issue

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writs for the calling of a free and regular Parliament, in which the Church of England might be secured according to the Acts of Uniformity, provision made for due liberty of conscience, and for securing the liberties and properties of all his subjects, and mutual confidence and good understanding established between him and all his people; above all, they requested that he would. permit them to offer such arguments as, they trusted, might, by God's grace, be effectual for persuading him to return to the Communion of the Church of England, " into whose most Catholic faith," said they, "you were baptized, and in which you were educated, and to which it is our daily earnest prayer to God, that you may be re-united. These, Sir, are the humble advices which, out of conscience to the duty we owe to God, to your Majesty, and to your Country, we think fit at this time to offer to your Majesty, as suitable to the present state of your affairs, and most conducing to your service; and so to leave them to your princely consideration. And we heartily beseech almighty God, in whose hands the hearts of all kings are, so to dispose and govern yours, that in all your thoughts, words, and works, you may ever seek his honour and glory, and study to preserve the people committed to your charge, in wealth, peace, and godliness, to your own both temporal and eternal happiness."" The paper was signed by Archbishop Sancroft, as his composition; and by the Bishops of London, Winchester, St. Asaph, Ely, Chichester, Rochester, Bath and Wells, and Peterborough, as heartily concurring in it.

Awakened as James was to the consequences of his own imprudence, he received this advice as if he were sensible of its value, thanked them for it, and promised to observe it. The promise was sincere; and in the course of a few days he dissolved the Ecclesiastical Commission, re-established the Fellows of Magdalen, and restored the Corporations. It was too late: the nation felt that under a king whose conscience was not in his own keeping, there could be no safety against the ambition of a restless Church, which kept no faith, and held principles upon which, by the strictest reasoning, persecution becomes a duty. Some farther security than promises, or even proofs of an altered system, were become needful; what that security should be, perhaps no persons knew or could satisfy themselves; this

only was apparent, that it could only be obtained through the interference of the Prince of Orange, whose close alliance with the royal family gave him a proper interest in what was also the cause of the reformed religion. It was observed, with just jealousy, that even in the Declaration which James had issued in pursuance of his promise, he had spoken of the Church of England as by law established, never of the Protestant or reformed religion and the papistical reservation was clearly understood, which looked upon the Popish Church still as the lawful one. Even the measure of summoning the Bishops to advise the King separately, without any of the other Peers, was thought to be a device for rendering them suspected, and weakening their influence with the nation. And this effect would have followed; if Sancroft, when he was commanded to compose a form of prayer suited to the existing danger of the kingdom, had not performed his difficult task with such excellent discretion as at the same time to satisfy the King, and confirm the people in their constitutional and religious duty.

As the danger drew nearer James required the Bishops to draw up a paper, expressing their abhorrence of the Prince of Orange's intended invasion; this, he insisted, was the more necessary, because William, in his Declaration, affirmed that several of the Lords, spiritual and temporal, had invited him to England. They denied having any part in, or knowledge of, such an invitation; and argued that the very clause which mentioned it, rendered the authenticity of the manifesto suspicious; for if the thing were true, it would be unwise in the Prince to avow it so soon; and if false, it could hardly be imagined that he would publish a manifest untruth, making it the ground of his enterprise. What!... was the King's indignant answer; He that can do as he does, think you he will stick at a lie? You all know how usual it is for men in such cases to affirm any kind of falsehoods for the advantage of their cause. The Prelates had here to steer a difficult course: what the King desired was, that they should put forth the whole influence of the Church against an expedition which was undertaken for the preservation of that Church and of the Protestant cause, and this they were determined not to do. They endeavoured to evade the point, by saying how much they had already suffered

James observed that this

for interfering with matters of state. was not to the purpose, and that he thought all that had been forgotten; that it concerned him more to have the Bishops issue such a paper as he required, than that the temporal Lords should do it, because they had greater interests with the people; and that as all London would know what he had asked of them, it would be a great prejudice to his affairs if it were denied. They were firm to their purpose: the place, they said, in which they could best serve him, was in Parliament, and when he should please to call one he would find that the true interest of the Church of England is inseparable from the true interest of the Crown. My Lords, replied the King, that is a business of more time. What I ask now, I think of present concernment to my affairs. But this is the last time; I will urge you no farther. If you will not assist me as I desire, I must stand upon my own legs, and trust to myself and my own arms. They made answer that as Bishops they did assist him with their prayers, and as Peers they entreated that they might serve him, either by his speedily calling a Parliament, or if that were thought too remote, by assembling with them as many of the temporal Lords as were in London, or its vicinity. But this would not answer the end which James purposed.

It was not known that the Prince of Orange had then actually effected a landing. When that intelligence arrived, the Bishops and some of the temporal Peers assembled at Lambeth, and joined in an address to the King, stating, that under a deep sense of the miseries of a war then breaking forth in the bowels of the kingdom, of the danger to which his person was thereby like to be exposed, as also of the distractions of the people by reason of their present grievances, they thought themselves bound in conscience of the duty which they owed to God, to their holy religion, to his Majesty and to their country, to represent that, in their opinion, the only visible way for preserving himself and the kingdom, would be the calling a Parliament regular and free in all its circumstances. His reply was: "What you ask of me I most passionately desire; and I promise you, upon the faith of a King, that I will have a Parliament, and such a one as you ask for, as soon as ever the Prince of Orange has quitted this realm. For how is it possible a Parlia

ment should be free in all its circumstances, as you petition for, whilst an enemy is in the kingdom, and can make a return of near an hundred voices?" There was more truth, as well as spirit, in this reply, than the people were in a humour to acknowledge. But James by his previous misconduct had placed himself in such a situation, that act how he would now, it was impossible for him to act well. He was beset with false counsellors, and faithless friends, as much as with difficulties; and though sincere enough to sacrifice every thing for the sake of his religion, and never to regret that sacrifice, he could obtain no credit for sincerity in any profession, or promises, or pledges to his people, because they knew that all pledges were set at nought if the interest of the Romish Church required that they should be broken.

A few days afterward, when he became more sensible of his extreme danger, he summoned a Parliament; it was too late: the writs had not been issued, when he fled from London, and Sancroft, with other spiritual and temporal Peers, joined in applying to the Prince of Orange to call one. Thus far the Primate aided in the revolution, no farther. When James was brought back to Whitehall, Sancroft was one of the Prelates who waited on him there, and to whom he expressed a sense of their dutiful affection towards him. If indeed he contrasted the conduct of Becket, and other Popish prelates, toward his predecessors, and that of the puritanical clergy toward his father, with the steady, respectful, dutiful, and peaceful opposition which he had himself experienced from Sancroft and his brethren, he must have perceived the value of that Church, which he in his bigotry had endeavoured to subvert. Something like this he seems to have felt; and one of the first letters which he wrote from France after his final flight, was to the Primate, saying that he had intended to have laid before him the grounds and motives of his conversion to the Roman Catholic religion, but that the suddenness of his departure had prevented it. He had not been persuaded, he said, to change while he was young; the conversion had taken place in his riper years, and on the full conviction of his mind; but he never refused speaking freely with those of the Protestant persuasion, and particularly with him, whom he always considered to be his friend, and for whom he had a great