The History of England from the Accession of James II, Vol. 4

T >> Thomas Babington Macaulay >> The History of England from the Accession of James II, Vol. 4

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A short time after his disappearance, Sidney received from him a
strange communication. Penn begged for an interview, but insisted
on a promise that he should be suffered to return unmolested to
his hiding place. Sidney obtained the royal permission to make an
appointment on these terms. Penn came to the rendezvous, and
spoke at length in his own defence. He declared that he was a
faithful subject of King William and Queen Mary, and that, if he
knew of any design against them, he would discover it. Departing
from his Yea and Nay, he protested, as in the presence of God,
that he knew of no plot, and that he did not believe that there
was any plot, unless the ambitious projects of the French
government might be called plots. Sidney, amazed probably by
hearing a person, who had such an abhorrence of lies that he
would not use the common forms of civility, and such an
abhorrence of oaths that he would not kiss the book in a court of
justice, tell something very like a lie, and confirm it by
something very like an oath, asked how, if there were really no
plot, the letters and minutes which had been found on Ashton were
to be explained. This question Penn evaded. "If," he said, "I
could only see the King, I would confess every thing to him
freely. I would tell him much that it would be important for him
to know. It is only in that way that I can be of service to him.
A witness for the Crown I cannot be for my conscience will not
suffer me to be sworn." He assured Sidney that the most
formidable enemies of the government were the discontented Whigs.
"The Jacobites are not dangerous. There is not a man among them
who has common understanding. Some persons who came over from
Holland with the King are much more to be dreaded." It does not
appear that Penn mentioned any names. He was suffered to depart
in safety. No active search was made for him. He lay hid in
London during some months, and then stole down to the coast of
Sussex and made his escape to France. After about three years of
wandering and lurking he, by the mediation of some eminent men,
who overlooked his faults for the sake of his good qualities,
made his peace with the government, and again ventured to resume
his ministrations. The return which he made for the lenity with
which he had been treated does not much raise his character.
Scarcely had he again begun to harangue in public about the
unlawfulness of war, when he sent a message earnestly exhorting
James to make an immediate descent on England with thirty
thousand men.39

Some months passed before the fate of Preston was decided. After
several respites, the government, convinced that, though he had
told much, he could tell more, fixed a day for his execution, and
ordered the sheriffs to have the machinery of death in
readiness.40 But he was again respited, and, after a delay of
some weeks, obtained a pardon, which, however, extended only to
his life, and left his property subject to all the consequences
of his attainder. As soon as he was set at liberty he gave new
cause of offence and suspicion, and was again arrested, examined
and sent to prison.41 At length he was permitted to retire,
pursued by the hisses and curses of both parties, to a lonely
manor house in the North Riding of Yorkshire. There, at least, he
had not to endure the scornful looks of old associates who had
once thought him a man of dauntless courage and spotless honour,
but who now pronounced that he was at best a meanspirited coward,
and hinted their suspicions that he had been from the beginning a
spy and a trepan.42 He employed the short and sad remains of his
life in turning the Consolation of Boethius into English. The
translation was published after the translator's death. It is
remarkable chiefly on account of some very unsuccessful attempts
to enrich our versification with new metres, and on account of
the allusions with which the preface is filled. Under a thin veil
of figurative language, Preston exhibited to the public
compassion or contempt his own blighted fame and broken heart. He
complained that the tribunal which had sentenced him to death had
dealt with him more leniently than his former friends, and that
many, who had never been tried by temptations like his, had very
cheaply earned a reputation for courage by sneering at his
poltroonery, and by bidding defiance at a distance to horrors
which, when brought near, subdue even a constant spirit.

The spirit of the Jacobites, which had been quelled for a time by
the detection of Preston's plot, was revived by the fall of Mons.
The joy of the whole party was boundless. The nonjuring priests
ran backwards and forwards between Sam's Coffee House and
Westminster Hall, spreading the praises of Lewis, and laughing at
the miserable issue of the deliberations of the great Congress.
In the Park the malecontents wore their biggest looks, and talked
sedition in their loudest tones. The most conspicuous among these
swaggerers was Sir John Fenwick, who had, in the late reign, been
high in favour and in military command, and was now an
indefatigable agitator and conspirator. In his exultation he
forgot the courtesy which man owes to woman. He had more than
once made himself conspicuous by his impertinence to the Queen.
He now ostentatiously put himself in her way when she took her
airing; and, while all around him uncovered and bowed low, gave
her a rude stare and cocked his hat in her face. The affront was
not only brutal, but cowardly. For the law had provided no
punishment for mere impertinence, however gross; and the King was
the only gentleman and soldier in the kingdom who could not
protect his wife from contumely with his sword. All that the
Queen could do was to order the parkkeepers not to admit Sir John
again within the gates. But, long after her death, a day came
when he had reason to wish that he had restrained his insolence.
He found, by terrible proof, that of all the Jacobites, the most
desperate assassins not excepted, he was the only one for whom
William felt an intense personal aversion.43

A few days after this event the rage of the malecontents began to
flame more fiercely than ever. The detection of the conspiracy of
which Preston was the chief had brought on a crisis in
ecclesiastical affairs. The nonjuring bishops had, during the
year which followed their deprivation, continued to reside in the
official mansions which had once been their own. Burnet had, at
Mary's request, laboured to effect a compromise. His direct
interference would probably have done more harm than good. He
therefore judiciously employed the agency of Rochester, who stood
higher in the estimation of the nonjurors than any statesman who
was not a nonjuror, and of Trevor, who, worthless as he was, had
considerable influence with the High Church party. Sancroft and
his brethren were informed that, if they would consent to perform
their spiritual duty, to ordain, to institute, to confirm, and to
watch over the faith and the morality of the priesthood, a bill
should be brought into Parliament to excuse them from taking the
oaths.44 This offer was imprudently liberal; but those to whom it
was made could not consistently accept it. For in the ordination
service, and indeed in almost every service of the Church,
William and Mary were designated as King and Queen. The only
promise that could be obtained from the deprived prelates was
that they would live quietly; and even this promise they had not
all kept. One of them at least had been guilty of treason
aggravated by impiety. He had, under the strong fear of being
butchered by the populace, declared that he abhorred the thought
of calling in the aid of France, and had invoked God to attest
the sincerity of this declaration. Yet, a short time after, he
bad been detected in plotting to bring a French army into
England; and he had written to assure the Court of Saint Germains
that he was acting in concert with his brethren, and especially
with Sancroft. The Whigs called loudly for severity. Even the
Tory counsellors of William owned that indulgence had been
carried to the extreme point. They made, however, a last attempt
to mediate. "Will you and your brethren," said Trevor to Lloyd,
the nonjuring Bishop of Norwich, "disown all connection with
Doctor Turner, and declare that what he has in his letters
imputed to you is false?" Lloyd evaded the question. It was now
evident that William's forbearance had only emboldened the
adversaries whom he had hoped to conciliate. Even Caermarthen,
even Nottingham, declared that it was high time to fill the
vacant sees.45

Tillotson was nominated to the Archbishopric, and was consecrated
on Whitsunday, in the church of St. Mary Le Bow. Compton, cruelly
mortified, refused to bear any part in the ceremony. His place
was supplied by Mew, Bishop of Winchester, who was assisted by
Burnet, Stillingfleet and Hough. The congregation was the most
splendid that had been seen in any place of worship since the
coronation. The Queen's drawingroom was, on that day, deserted.
Most of the peers who were in town met in the morning at Bedford
House, and went thence in procession to Cheapside. Norfolk,
Caermarthen and Dorset were conspicuous in the throng.
Devonshire, who was impatient to see his woods at Chatsworth in
their summer beauty, had deferred his departure in order to mark
his respect for Tillotson. The crowd which lined the streets
greeted the new Primate warmly. For he had, during many years,
preached in the City; and his eloquence, his probity and the
singular gentleness of his temper and manners, had made him the
favourite of the Londoners.46 But the congratulations and
applauses of his friends could not drown the roar of execration
which the Jacobites set up. According to them, he was a thief who
had not entered by the door, but had climbed over the fences. He
was a hireling whose own the sheep were not, who had usurped the
crook of the good shepherd, and who might well be expected to
leave the flock at the mercy of every wolf. He was an Arian, a
Socinian, a Deist, an Atheist. He had cozened the world by fine
phrases, and by a show of moral goodness: but he was in truth a
far more dangerous enemy of the Church than he could have been if
he had openly proclaimed himself a disciple of Hobbes, and had
lived as loosely as Wilmot. He had taught the fine gentlemen and
ladies who admired his style, and who were constantly seen round
his pulpit, that they might be very good Christians, and yet
might believe the account of the Fall in the book of Genesis to
be allegorical. Indeed they might easily be as good Christians as
he; for he had never been christened; his parents were
Anabaptists; he had lost their religion when he was a boy; and he
had never found another. In ribald lampoons he was nicknamed
Undipped John. The parish register of his baptism was produced in
vain. His enemies still continued to complain that they had lived
to see fathers of the Church who never were her children. They
made up a story that the Queen had felt bitter remorse for the
great crime by which she had obtained a throne, that in her agony
she had applied to Tillotson, and that he had comforted her by
assuring her that the punishment of the wicked in a future state
would not be eternal.47 The Archbishop's mind was naturally of
almost feminine delicacy, and had been rather softened than
braced by the habits of along life, during which contending sects
and factions had agreed in speaking of his abilities with
admiration and of his character with esteem. The storm of obloquy
which he had to face for the first time at more than sixty years
of age was too much for him. His spirits declined; his health
gave way; yet he neither flinched from his duty nor attempted to
revenge himself on his persecutors. A few days after his
consecration, some persons were seized while dispersing libels in
which he was reviled. The law officers of the Crown proposed to
institute prosecutions; but he insisted that nobody should be
punished on his account.48 Once, when he had company with him, a
sealed packet was put into his hands; he opened it; and out fell
a mask. His friends were shocked and incensed by this cowardly
insult; but the Archbishop, trying to conceal his anguish by a
smile, pointed to the pamphlets which covered his table, and said
that the reproach which the emblem of the mask was intended to
convey might be called gentle when compared with other reproaches
which he daily had to endure. After his death a bundle of the
savage lampoons which the nonjurors had circulated against him
was found among his papers with this indorsement: "I pray God
forgive them; I do."49

The temper of the deposed primate was very different. He seems to
have been under a complete delusion as to his own importance. The
immense popularity which he had enjoyed three years before, the
prayers and tears of the multitudes who had plunged into the
Thames to implore his blessing, the enthusiasm with which the
sentinels of the Tower had drunk his health under the windows of
his prison, the mighty roar of joy which had risen from Palace
Yard on the morning of his acquittal, the triumphant night when
every window from Hyde Park to Mile End had exhibited seven
candles, the midmost and tallest emblematical of him, were still
fresh in his recollection; nor had he the wisdom to perceive that
all this homage had been paid, not to his person, but to that
religion and to those liberties of which he was, for a moment,
the representative. The extreme tenderness with which the new
government had long persisted in treating him seems to have
confirmed him in his error. That a succession of conciliatory
messages was sent to him from Kensington, that he was offered
terms so liberal as to be scarcely consistent with the dignity of
the Crown and the welfare of the State, that his cold and
uncourteous answers could not tire out the royal indulgence,
that, in spite of the loud clamours of the Whigs, and of the
provocations daily given by the Jacobites, he was residing,
fifteen months after deprivation, in the metropolitan palace, these things
seemed to
him to indicate not the lenity but the timidity of the ruling
powers. He appears to have flattered himself that they would not
dare to eject him. The news, therefore, that his see had been
filled threw him into a passion which lasted as long as his life,
and which hurried him into many foolish and unseemly actions.
Tillotson, as soon as he was appointed, went to Lambeth in the
hope that he might be able, by courtesy and kindness, to soothe
the irritation of which he was the innocent cause. He stayed long
in the antechamber, and sent in his name by several servants; but
Sancroft would not even return an answer.50 Three weeks passed;
and still the deprived Archbishop showed no disposition to move.
At length he received an order intimating to him the royal
pleasure that he should quit the dwelling which had long ceased
to be his own, and in which he was only a guest. He resented this
order bitterly, and declared that he would not obey it. He would
stay till he was pulled out by the Sheriff's officers. He would
defend himself at law as long as he could do so without putting
in any plea acknowledging the authority of the usurpers.51 The
case was so clear that he could not, by any artifice of
chicanery, obtain more than a short delay. When judgment had been
given against him, he left the palace, but directed his steward
to retain possession. The consequence was that the steward was
taken into custody and heavily fined. Tillotson sent a kind
message to assure his predecessor that the fine should not be
exacted. But Sancroft was determined to have a grievance, and
would pay the money.52

From that time the great object of the narrowminded and peevish
old man was to tear in pieces the Church of which he had been the
chief minister. It was in vain that some of those nonjurors,
whose virtue, ability and learning were the glory of their party,
remonstrated against his design. "Our deprivation,"--such was the
reasoning of Ken,--"is, in the sight of God, a nullity. We are,
and shall be, till we die or resign, the true Bishops of our
sees. Those who assume our titles and functions will incur the
guilt of schism. But with us, if we act as becomes us, the schism
will die; and in the next generation the unity of the Church will
be restored. On the other hand, if we consecrate Bishops to
succeed us, the breach may last through ages, and we shall be
justly held accountable, not indeed for its origin, but for its
continuance." These considerations ought, on Sancroft's own
principles, to have had decisive weight with him; but his angry
passions prevailed. Ken quietly retired from the venerable palace
of Wells. He had done, he said, with strife, and should
henceforth vent his feelings not in disputes but in hymns. His
charities to the unhappy of all persuasions, especially to the
followers of Monmouth and to the persecuted Huguenots, had been
so large that his whole private fortune consisted of seven
hundred pounds, and of a library which he could not bear to sell.
But Thomas Thynne, Viscount Weymouth, though not a nonjuror, did
himself honour by offering to the most virtuous of the nonjurors
a tranquil and dignified asylum in the princely mansion of
Longleat. There Ken passed a happy and honoured old age, during
which he never regretted the sacrifice which he had made to what
he thought his duty, and yet constantly became more and more
indulgent to those whose views of duty differed from his.53

Sancroft was of a very different temper. He had, indeed, as
little to complain of as any man whom a revolution has ever
hurled down from an exalted station. He had at Fressingfield, in
Suffolk, a patrimonial estate, which, together with what he had
saved during a primacy of twelve years, enabled him to live, not
indeed as he had lived when he was the first peer of Parliament,
but in the style of an opulent country gentleman. He retired to
his hereditary abode; and there he passed the rest of his life in
brooding over his wrongs. Aversion to the Established Church
became as strong a feeling in him as it had been in Martin
Marprelate. He considered all who remained in communion with her
as heathens and publicans. He nicknamed Tillotson the Mufti. In
the room which was used as a chapel at Fressingfield no person
who had taken the oaths, or who attended the ministry of any
divine who had taken the oaths, was suffered to partake of the
sacred bread and wine. A distinction, however, was made between
two classes of offenders. A layman who remained in communion with
the Church was permitted to be present while prayers were read,
and was excluded only from the highest of Christian mysteries.
But with clergymen who had sworn allegiance to the Sovereigns in
possession Sancroft would not even pray. He took care that the
rule which he had laid down should be widely known, and, both by
precept and by example, taught his followers to look on the most
orthodox, the most devout, the most virtuous of those who
acknowledged William's authority with a feeling similar to that
with which the Jew regarded the Samaritan.54 Such intolerance
would have been reprehensible, even in a man contending for a
great principle. But Sancroft was contending merely for a name.
He was the author of the scheme of Regency. He was perfectly
willing to transfer the whole kingly power from James to William.
The question which, to this smallest and sourest of minds, seemed
important enough to justify the excommunicating of ten thousand
priests and of five millions of laymen was, whether the
magistrate to whom the whole kingly power was transferred should
assume the kingly title. Nor could Sancroft bear to think that
the animosity which he had excited would die with himself. Having
done all that he could to make the feud bitter, he determined to
make it eternal. A list of the divines who had been ejected from
their benefices was sent by him to Saint Germains with a request
that James would nominate two who might keep up the episcopal
succession. James, well pleased, doubtless, to see another sect
added to that multitude of sects which he had been taught to
consider as the reproach of Protestantism, named two fierce and
uncompromising nonjurors, Hickes and Wagstaffe, the former
recommended by Sancroft, the latter recommended by Lloyd, the
ejected Bishop of Norwich.55 Such was the origin of a
schismatical hierarchy, which, having, during a short time,
excited alarm, soon sank into obscurity and contempt, but which,
in obscurity and contempt, continued to drag on a languid
existence during several generations. The little Church, without
temples, revenues or dignities, was even more distracted by
internal disputes than the great Church, which retained
possession of cathedrals, tithes and peerages. Some nonjurors
leaned towards the ceremonial of Rome; others would not tolerate
the slightest departure from the Book of Common Prayer. Altar was
set up against altar. One phantom prelate pronounced the
consecration of another phantom prelate uncanonical. At length
the pastors were left absolutely without flocks. One of these
Lords spiritual very wisely turned surgeon; another left what he
had called his see, and settled in Ireland; and at length, in
1805, the last Bishop of that society which had proudly claimed
to be the only true Church of England dropped unnoticed into the
grave.56

The places of the bishops who had been ejected with Sancroft were
filled in a manner creditable to the government. Patrick
succeeded the traitor Turner. Fowler went to Gloucester. Richard
Cumberland, an aged divine, who had no interest at Court, and
whose only recommendations were his piety and erudition, was
astonished by learning from a newsletter which he found on the
table of a coffeehouse that he had been nominated to the See of
Peterborough.57 Beveridge was selected to succeed Ken; he
consented; and the appointment was actually announced in the
London Gazette. But Beveridge, though an honest, was not a
strongminded man. Some Jacobites expostulated with him; some
reviled him; his heart failed him; and he retracted. While the
nonjurors were rejoicing in this victory, he changed his mind
again; but too late. He had by his irresolution forfeited the
favour of William, and never obtained a mitre till Anne was on
the throne.58 The bishopric of Bath and Wells was bestowed on
Richard Kidder, a man of considerable attainments and blameless
character, but suspected of a leaning towards Presbyterianism.
About the same time Sharp, the highest churchman that had been
zealous for the Comprehension, and the lowest churchman that felt
a scruple about succeeding a deprived prelate, accepted the
Archbishopric of York, vacant by the death of Lamplugh.59

In consequence of the elevation of Tillotson to the See of
Canterbury, the Deanery of Saint Paul's became vacant. As soon as
the name of the new Dean was known, a clamour broke forth such as
perhaps no ecclesiastical appointment has ever produced, a
clamour made up of yells of hatred, of hisses of contempt, and of
shouts of triumphant and half insulting welcome; for the new Dean
was William Sherlock.

The story of his conversion deserves to be fully told; for it
throws great light on the character of the parties which then
divided the Church and the State. Sherlock was, in influence and
reputation, though not in rank, the foremost man among the
nonjurors. His authority and example had induced some of his
brethren, who had at first wavered, to resign their benefices.
The day of suspension came; the day of deprivation came; and
still he was firm. He seemed to have found, in the consciousness
of rectitude, and in meditation on the invisible world, ample
compensation for all his losses. While excluded from the pulpit
where his eloquence had once delighted the learned and polite
inmates of the Temple, he wrote that celebrated Treatise on Death
which, during many years, stood next to the Whole Duty of Man in
the bookcases of serious Arminians. Soon, however, it began to be
suspected that his resolution was giving way. He declared that he
would be no party to a schism; he advised those who sought his
counsel not to leave their parish churches; nay, finding that the
law which had ejected him from his cure did not interdict him
from performing divine service, he officiated at Saint Dunstan's,
and there prayed for King William and Queen Mary. The apostolical
injunction, he said, was that prayers should be made for all in
authority, and William and Mary were visibly in authority. His
Jacobite friends loudly blamed his inconsistency. How, they
asked, if you admit that the Apostle speaks in this passage of
actual authority, can you maintain that, in other passages of a
similar kind, he speaks only of legitimate authority? Or how can
you, without sin, designate as King, in a solemn address to God,
one whom you cannot, without sin, promise to obey as King? These
reasonings were unanswerable; and Sherlock soon began to think
them so; but the conclusion to which they led him was
diametrically opposed to the conclusion to which they were meant
to lead him. He hesitated, however, till a new light flashed on
his mind from a quarter from which there was little reason to
expect any thing but tenfold darkness. In the reign of James the
First, Doctor John Overall, Bishop of Exeter, had written an
elaborate treatise on the rights of civil and ecclesiastical
governors. This treatise had been solemnly approved by the
Convocations of Canterbury and York, and might therefore be
considered as an authoritative exposition of the doctrine of the
Church of England. A copy of the manuscript was in Sancroft's
possession; and he, soon after the Revolution, sent it to the
press. He hoped, doubtless, that the publication would injure the
new government; but he was lamentably disappointed. The book
indeed condemned all resistance in terms as strong as he could
himself have used; but one passage which had escaped his notice
was decisive against himself and his fellow schismatics. Overall,
and the two Convocations which had given their sanction to
Overall's teaching, pronounced that a government, which had
originated in rebellion, ought, when thoroughly settled, to be
considered as ordained by God and to be obeyed by Christian
men.60 Sherlock read, and was convinced. His venerable mother the
Church had spoken; and he, with the docility of a child, accepted
her decree. The government which had sprung from the Revolution
might, at least since the battle of the Boyne and the flight of
James from Ireland, be fairly called a settled government, and
ought therefore to be passively obeyed till it should be
subverted by another revolution and succeeded by another settled
government.