VII. 1687. CHAP. escape; and either of the two suppositions was fatal to the King's character for honesty. It was notorious also that he had been completely subjugated by the Jesuits. Only a few days before the publication of the Indulgence, that Order had been honoured, in spite of the well known wishes of the Holy See, with a new mark of his confidence and approbation. His confessor, Father Mansuete, a Franciscan, whose mild temper and irreproachable life commanded general respect, but who had long been hated by Tyrconnel and Petre, had been discarded. The vacant place had been filled by an Englishman named Warner, who had apostatized from the religion of his country and had turned Jesuit. To the moderate Roman Catholics and to the Nuncio this change was far from agreeable. By every Protestant it was regarded as a proof that the dominion of the Jesuits over the royal mind was absolute. Whatever praises those fathers might justly claim, flattery itself could not ascribe to them either wide liberality or strict veracity. That they had never scrupled, when the interest of their faith or of their Order was at stake, to call in the aid of the civil sword, or to violate the laws of truth and of good faith, had been proclaimed to the world, not only by Protestant accusers, but by men whose virtue and genius were the glory of the Church of Rome. It was incredible that a devoted disciple of the Jesuits should be on principle zealous for freedom of conscience: but it was neither incredible nor improbable that he might think himself justified in disguising his real sentiments, in order to render a service to his religion. It was certain that the King at heart preferred the Churchmen to the Puritans. It was certain that, while he had any hope of gaining the Churchmen, he had never shown the smallest kindness to the Puritans. Could it then be doubted that, if the Churchmen would even now comply with his wishes, he would willingly sacrifice the Puritans? His word, repeatedly pledged, had not restrained him from Feb. 28. • Ellis Correspondence, March 15. July 27. 1686; Barillon, Mar. 10. March. March ♬. 1687; Ronquillo, March ?,. 1687, in the Mackintosh Collection. VII. invading the legal rights of that clergy which had given such CHAP. signal proofs of affection and fidelity to his house. What 1687. security then could his word afford to sects divided from him by the recollection of a thousand inexpiable wounds inflicted and endured? them side When the first agitation produced by the publication of the Some of Indulgence had subsided, it appeared that a breach had with the taken place in the Puritan party. The minority, headed by Court. a few busy men whose judgment was defective or was biassed by interest, supported the King. Henry Care, who had long Care. been the bitterest and most active pamphleteer among the Nonconformists, and who had, in the days of the Popish plot, assailed James with the utmost fury in a weekly journal entitled the Packet of Advice from Rome, was now as loud in adulation, as he had formerly been in calumny and insult.* The chief agent who was employed by the government to manage the Presbyterians was Vincent Alsop, a divine of Alsop. some note both as a preacher and as a writer. His son, who had incurred the penalties of treason, received a pardon; and the whole influence of the father was thus engaged on the side of the Court.** With Alsop was joined Thomas Rosewell. Rosewell. Rosewell had, during that persecution of the Dissenters which followed the detection of the Rye House Plot, been falsely accused of preaching against the government, had been tried for his life by Jeffreys, and had, in defiance of the clearest evidence, been convicted by a packed jury. The injustice of the verdict was so gross that the very courtiers cried shame. One Tory gentleman who had heard the trial went instantly to Charles, and declared that the neck of the most loyal subject in England would not be safe if Rosewell suffered. The jurymen themselves were stung by remorse when they thought over what they had done, and exerted themselves to save the life of the prisoner. At length a pardon was granted; but Wood's Athenæ Oxonienses; Observator; Heraclitus Ridens, passim. But Care's own writings furnish the best materials for an estimate of his character. "Calamy's Account of the Ministers ejected or silenced after the Restoration, Northamptonshire; Wood's Athenæ Oxonienses; Biographia Britannica. VII. 1687. CHAP. Rosewell remained bound under heavy recognisances to good behaviour during life, and to periodical appearance in the Court of King's Bench. His recognisances were now discharged by the royal command; and in this way his services were secured.* Lobb. Penn. The business of gaining the Independents was principally intrusted to one of their ministers named Stephen Lobb. Lobb was a weak, violent, and ambitious man. He had gone such lengths in opposition to the government, that he had been by name proscribed in several proclamations. He now made his peace, and went as far in servility as he had ever done in faction. He joined the Jesuitical cabal, and eagerly recommended measures from which the wisest and most honest Roman Catholics recoiled. It was remarked that he was constantly at the palace and frequently in the closet, that he lived with a splendour to which the Puritan divines were little accustomed, and that he was perpetually surrounded by suitors imploring his interest to procure them offices or pardons.* With Lobb was closely connected William Penn. Penn had never been a strong-headed man: the life which he had been leading during two years had not a little impaired his moral sensibility; and, if his conscience ever reproached him, he comforted himself by repeating that he had a good and noble end in view, and that he was not paid for his services in money. By the influence of these men, and of others less conspicuous, addresses of thanks to the King were procured from several bodies of Dissenters. Tory writers have with justice remarked that the language of these compositions was as fulsomely servile as anything that could be found in the most florid eulogies pronounced by Bishops on the Stuarts. But, on close inquiry, it will appear that the disgrace belongs to but a small part of the Puritan party. There was scarcely * State Trials; Samuel Rose well's Life of Thomas Rosewell, 1718; Calamy's Account. ** London Gazette, March 15. 168; Nichols's Defence of the Church of England; Pierce's Vindication of the Dissenters. CHAP. sepa- VII. a market town in England without at least a knot of ratists. No exertion was spared to induce them to express their gratitude for the Indulgence. Circular letters, imploring them to sign, were sent to every corner of the kingdom in such numbers that the mail bags, it was sportively said, were too heavy for the post-horses. Yet all the addresses which could be obtained from all the Presbyterians, Independents, and Baptists scattered over England did not in six months amount to sixty; nor is there any reason to believe that these addresses were numerously signed." 1687. the against The great body of Protestant Nonconformists, firmly at- The matached to civil liberty, and distrusting the promises of the Pri King and of the Jesuits, steadily refused to return thanks for tans are a favour which, it might well be suspected, concealed a snare. the Court. This was the temper of all the most illustrious chiefs of the party. One of these was Baxter. He had, as we have seen, Baxter. been brought to trial soon after the accession of James, had been brutally insulted by Jeffreys, and had been convicted by a jury, such as the courtly Sheriffs of those times were in the habit of selecting. Baxter had been about a year and a half in prison when the court began to think seriously of gaining the Nonconformists. He was not only set at liberty, but was informed that, if he chose to reside in London, he might do so without fearing that the Five Mile Act would be enforced against him. The government probably hoped that the recollection of past sufferings and the sense of present ease would produce the same effect on him as on Rosewell and Lobb. The hope was disappointed. Baxter was neither to be corrupted nor to be deceived. He refused to join in any address of thanks for the Indulgence, and exerted all his influence to promote good feeling between the Church and the Presbyterians. ** If any man stood higher than Baxter in the estimation Howe. of the Protestant Dissenters, that man was John Howe. Howe had, like Baxter, been personally a gainer by the recent change of policy. The same tyranny which had flung Baxter The Addresses will be found in the London Gazettes. VII, 1687. CHAP. into gaol had driven Howe into banishment; and, soon after Baxter had been let out of the King's Bench prison, Howe returned from Utrecht to England. It was expected at Whitehall that Howe would exert in favour of the Court all the authority which he possessed over his brethren. The King himself condescended to ask the help of the subject whom he had oppressed. Howe appears to have hesitated: but the influence of the Hampdens, with whom he was on terms of close intimacy, kept him steady to the cause of the constitution. A meeting of Presbyterian ministers was held at his house, to consider the state of affairs, and to determine on the course to be adopted. There was great anxiety at the palace to know the result. Two royal messengers were in attendance during the discussion. They carried back the unwelcome news that Howe had declared himself decidedly adverse to the dispensing power, and that he had, after long debate, carried with him the majority of the assembly.* Bunyan. To the names of Baxter and Howe must be added the name of a man far below them in station and in acquired knowledge, but in virtue their equal, and in genius their superior, John Bunyan. Bunyan had been bred a tinker, and had served as a private soldier in the parliamentary army. Early in his life he had been fearfully tortured by remorse for his youthful sins, the worst of which seem, however, to have been such as the world thinks venial. His keen sensibility and his powerful imagination made his internal conflicts singularly terrible. He fancied that he was under sentence of reprobation, that he had committed blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, that he had sold Christ, that he was actually possessed by a demon. Sometimes loud voices from heaven cried out to warn him. Sometimes fiends whispered impious suggestions in his ear. He saw visions of distant mountain tops, on which the sun shone brightly, but from which he was separated by a waste of snow. He felt the Devil Calamy's Life of Howe. The share which the Hampden family had in the matter I learned from a letter of Johnstone of Waristoun, dated June 13, 1688. |