produced by grievances is not always proportioned to their dignity; and it is by no means improbable that the resumption of licenses might have done what the resumption of charters had failed to do. Men of fashion would have missed the chocolate-house in St. James's Street, and men of business the coffee-pot, round which they were accustomed to smoke and talk politics, in Change Alley. Half the clubs would have been wandering in search of shelter. The traveller at nightfall would have found the inn where he had expected to sup and lodge deserted. The clown would have regretted the hedge ale-house, where he had been accustomed to take his pot on the bench before the door in summer, and at the chimney corner in winter. The nation might, perhaps, under such provocation, have risen in general rebellion without waiting for the help of foreing allies. It was not to be expected that a prince who required all the humblest servants of the government to support his policy on pain of dismission, would continue to employ an attorneygeneral whose aversion to that policy was no secret. Sawyer had been suffered to retain his situation more than a year and a half after he had declared against the dispensing power. This extraordinary indulgence he owed to the extreme difficulty which the government found in supplying his place. It was necessary, for the protection of the pecuniary interests of the crown, that at least one of the two chief law officers should be a man of ability and knowledge; and it was by no means easy to induce any barrister of ability and knowledge to put himself in peril by committing every day acts which the next parliament would probably treat as high crimes and misdemeanors. It had been impossible to provide a better solicitor-general than Powis, a man who indeed stuck at nothing, but who was incompetent to perform the ordinary duties of his post. In these circumstances it was thought desirable that there should be a division of labor. An attorney, the value of whose professional talents was much diminished by his conscientious scruples, was coupled with a solicitor whose want of scruples made some amends for his want of talents. When the government wished to enforce the law, recourse was had to Sawyer. When the government wished to break the law, recourse was had to Powis. This arrangement lasted till the king obtained the services of an advocate who was at once baser than Powis and abler than Sawyer. No barrister living had opposed the cour“ with more viru lence than William Williams. He had distinguished himself in the late reign as a Whig and an Exclusionist. When faction was at the height, he had been chosen speaker of the House of Commons. After the prorogation of the Oxford Parliament, he had commonly been counsel for the most noisy demagogues who had been accused of sedition. He was allowed to possess considerable parts and knowledge. His chief faults were supposed to be rashness and party spirit. It was not yet suspected that he had faults compared with which rashness and party spirit might well pass for virtues. The government sought occasion against him, and easily found it. He had published, by order of the House of Commons, a narrative which Dangerfield had written. This narrative, if published by a private man, would undoubtedly have been a seditious libel. A criminal information was filed in the King's Bench against Williams: he pleaded the privileges of parliament in vain he was convicted and sentenced to a fine of ten thousand pounds. A large part of this sum he actually paid; for the rest he gave a bond. The Earl of Peterborough, who had been injuriously mentioned in Dangerfield's narrative, was encouraged, by the success of the criminal information, to bring a civil action, and to demand large damages. Williams was driven to extremity. At this juncture a way of escape presented itself. It was indeed a way which, to a man of strong principles or high spirit, would have been more dreadful than beggary, imprisonment, or death. He might sell himself to that government of which he had been the enemy and the victim. He might offer to go on the forlorn hope in every assault on those liberties and on that religion for which he had professed an inordinate zeal. He might expiate his Whiggism by performing services from which bigoted Tories, stained with the blood of Russell and Sidney, shrank in horror. The bargain was struck. The debt still due to the crown was remitted. Peterborough was induced, by royal mediation, to compromise his action. Sawyer was dismissed. Powis became attorneygeneral. Williams was made solicitor, received the honor of knighthood, and was soon a favorite. Though in rank he was only the second law officer of the crown, his abilities, learning, and energy were such that he completely threw his superior into the shade.* * London Gazette, Dec. 15, 1687. See the proceedings against Williams in the Collection of State Trials. "Ha hecho," says Ron Williams had not been long in office when he was required to bear a chief part in the most memorable state trial recorded in the British annals. On the twenty-seventh of April, 1688, the king put forth a second Declaration of Indulgence. In this paper he recited at length the declaration of the preceding April. His past life, he said, ought to have convinced his people that he was not a man who could easily be induced to depart from any resolution which he had formed. But, as designing men had attempted to persuade the world that he might be prevailed on to give way in this matter, he thought it necessary to proclaim that his purpose was immutably fixed, that he was resolved to employ those only who were prepared to concur in his design, and that he had, in pursuance of that resolution, dismissed many persons from civil and military employments. He announced that he meant to hold a parliament in November at the latest; and he exhorted his subjects to choose representatives who would assist him in the great work which he had undertaken.* This declaration at first produced little sensation. It contained nothing new; and men wondered that the king should think it worth while to publish a solemn manifesto merely for the purpose of telling them that he had not changed his mind.t Perhaps James was mettled by the indifference with which the announcement of his fixed resolution was received by the public, and thought that his dignity and authority would suffer unless he without delay did something novel and striking. On the fourth of May, accordingly, he made an order in council that his declaration of the preceding week should be read, on two successive Sundays at the time of divine service, by the officiating ministers of all the churches and chapels of the kingdom. In London and in the suburbs, the reading was to take place on the twentieth and twenty-seventh of May, in other parts of England on the third and tenth of June. The bishops were directed to distribute copies of the declaration through their respective dioceses.‡ When it is considered that the clergy of the Established quillo, "grande susto el haber nombrado el abogado Williams, que fue el orador y el mas arrabiado de toda la casa des comunes en los ultimos terribles parlamentos del Rey difunto." * London Gazette, April 30, 1688; Barillon, Citters, May 1, 1688. London Gazette, May 7, 1688. Nov. 27 April 26 May 6 1687. Church, with scarcely an exception, regarded the Indulgence as a violation of the laws of the realm, as a breach of the plighted faith of the king, and as a fatal blow levelled at the interest and dignity of their own profession, it will scarcely admit of doubt that the order in council was intended to be felt by them as a cruel affront. It was popularly believed that Petre had avowed this intention in a coarse metaphor borrowed from the rhetoric of the East. He would, he said, make them eat dirt, the vilest and most loathsome of all dirt. But, tyrannical and malignant as the mandate was, would the Anglican priesthood refuse to obey? The king's temper was arbitrary and severe. The proceedings of the Ecclesiastical Commission were as summary as those of a court-martial. Whoever ventured to resist might in a week be ejected from his parsonage, deprived of his whole income, pronounced incapable of holding any other spiritual preferment, and left to beg from door to door. If, indeed, the whole body offered a united opposition to the royal will, it was probable that even James would scarcely venture to punish ten thousand delinquents at once. But there was not time to form an extensive combination. The order in council was gazetted on the seventh of May. On the twentieth the declaration was to be read in all the pulpits of London and the neighborhood. By no exertion was it possible in that age to ascertain within a fortnight the intentions of one tenth part of the parochial ministers who were scattered over the kingdom. It was not easy to collect in so short a time the sense even of the whole episcopal order. It might also well be apprehended that, if the clergy refused to read the declaration, the Protestant Dissenters would misinterpret the refusal, would despair of obtaining any toleration from the members of the Church of England, and would throw their whole weight into the scale of the court. The clergy therefore hesitated; and this hesitation may well be excused; for some eminent laymen, who possessed a large share of the public confidence, were disposed to recommend submission. They thought that a general opposition could hardly be expected, and that a partial opposition would be ruinous to individuals, and of little advantage to the Church and to the nation. Such was the opinion given at this time by Halifax and Nottingham. The day drew near; and still there was no concert and no formed resolution.* * Johnstone, May 27, 1688. At this conjuncture the Protestant Dissenters of London won for themselves a title to the lasting gratitude of their country. They had hitherto been reckoned by the government as part of its strength. A few of their most active and noisy preachers, corrupted by the favors of the court, had got up addresses in favor of the king's measures. Others, estranged by the recollection of many cruel wrongs both from the Church of England and from the House of Stuart, had seen with resentful pleasure the tyrannical prince and the tyrannical hierarchy separated by a bitter enmity, and bidding against each other for the help of sects lately persecuted and despised. But this feeling, however natural, had been indulged long enough.' The time had come when it was necessary to make a choice; and the Dissenters, with a noble spirit, arrayed themselves side by side with the members of the Church in defence of the fundamental laws of the realm. Baxter, Bates, and Howe distinguished themselves by their efforts to bring about this coalition; but the generous enthusiasm which pervaded the whole Puritan body made the task easy. The zeal of the flocks outran that of the pastors. Those Presbyterian and Independent teachers who showed an inclination to take part with the king against the ecclesiastical establishment received distinct notice that, unless they changed their conduct, their congregations would neither hear them nor pay them. Alsop, who had flattered himself that he should be able to bring over a great body of Nonconformists to the royal side, found himself on a sudden an object of contempt and abhorrence to those who had lately revered him as their spiritual guide, sank into a deep melancholy, and hid himself from the public eye. Deputations waited on several of the London clergy, imploring them not to judge of the dissenting body from the abject addresses which had appeared in the London Gazette, and exhorting them, placed as they were in the van of this great fight, to play the men for the liberties of England and for the faith delivered to the saints. These assurances were received with joy and gratitude. Yet there was still much anxiety and much difference of opinion among those who had to decide whether, on Sunday the twentieth, they would or would not obey the king's command. The London clergy, then universally acknowledged to be the flower of their profession, held a meeting. Fifteen doctors of divinity were present. Tillotson, Dean of Canterbury, the most celebrated preacher of the age, came_thither from a sick bed. Sherlock, master of the Temple, Patrick |