the Black Friday, as it was called, on which they were committed, they reached their prison just at the hour of divine service. They instantly hastened to the chapel. It chanced that in the second lesson were these words: "In all things approving ourselves as the ministers of God, in much patience, in afflictions, in distresses, in stripes, in imprisonments." All zealous Churchmen were delighted by this coincidence, and remembered how much comfort a similar coincidence had given, near forty years before, to Charles the First at the time of his death.

On the evening of the next day, Saturday, the ninth, a letter came from Sunderland, enjoining the chaplain of the Tower to read the declaration during divine service on the following morning. As the time fixed by the order in council for the reading in London had long expired, this proceeding of the government could be considered only as a personal insult of the meanest and most childish kind to the venerable prisoners. The chaplain refused to comply: he was dismissed from his situation; and the chapel was shut up.*

66

The bishops edified all who approached them by the firmness and cheerfulness with which they endured confinement, by the modesty and meekness with which they received the applauses and blessings of the whole nation, and by the loyal attachment which they professed for the tyrant who sought their destruction. They remained only a week in custody. On Friday, the fifteenth of June, the first day of term, they were brought before the King's Bench. An immense throng awaited their coming. From the landing-place to the Court of Requests they passed through a lane of spectators who blessed and applauded them. Friends," said the prisoners as they passed, "honor the king; and remember us in your prayers. These humble and pious expressions moved the hearers, even to tears. When at length the procession had made its way through the crowd into the presence of the judges, the attorney-general exhibited the information which he had been commanded to prepare, and moved that the defendants might be ordered to plead. The counsel on the other side objected that the bishops had been unlawfully committed, and were therefore not regularly before the court. The question whether a peer could be required to enter into recog nizances on a charge of libel was argued at great length, and

• Citters, June 12, 1688; Luttrell's Diary, June 18.

decided by a majority of the judges in favor of the crown. The prisoners then pleaded Not Guilty. That day fortnight, the twenty-ninth of June, was fixed for their trial. In the mean time they were allowed to be at large on their own recognizances. The crown lawyers acted prudently in not requiring sureties; for Halifax had arranged that twenty-one temporal peers of the highest consideration should be ready to put in bail, three for each defendant; and such a manifestation of the feeling of the nobility would have been no slight blow to the government. It was also known that one of the most opulent Dissenters of the city had begged that he might have the honor of giving security for Ken.

The bishops were now permitted to depart to their own homes. The common people, who did not understand the nature of the legal proceedings which had taken place in the King's Bench, and who saw that their favorites had been brought to Westminster Hall in custody and were suffered to go away in freedom, imagined that the good cause was prospering. Loud acclamations were raised. The steeples of the churches sent forth joyous peals. Sprat was amazed to hear the bells of his own abbey ringing merrily. He promptly silenced them; but his interference caused much angry muttering. The bishops found it difficult to escape from the importunate crowd of their wellwishers. Lloyd was detained in Palace Yard by admirers who struggled to touch his hands and to kiss the skirt of his robe, till Clarendon, with some difficulty, rescued him and conveyed him home by a by-path. Cartwright, it is said, was so unwise as to mingle with the crowd. Some person who saw his episcopal habit asked and received his blessing. A bystander cried out, “Do you know, who blessed you?" "Surely," said he who had just been honored by the benediction, "it was one of the seven." "No," said the other; "it is the Popish Bishop of Chester." "Popish dog!" cried the enraged Protestant; "take your blessing back again."

Such was the concourse, and such the agitation, that the Dutch ambassador was surprised to see the day close without an insurrection. The king had been by no means at ease. In order that he might be ready to suppress any disturbance, he had passed the morning in reviewing several battalions of infantry in Hyde Park. It is, however, by no means certain that his troops would have stood by him if he had needed their services. When Sancroft reached Lambeth, in the afternoon,

he found the grenadier guards, who were quartered in that suburb, assembled before the gate of his palace. They formed in two lines on his right and left, and asked his benediction as he went through them. He with difficulty prevented them from lighting a bonfire in honor of his return to his dwelling. There were, however, many bonfires that evening in the city. Two Roman Catholics, who were so indiscreet as to beat some boys for joining in these rejoicings, were seized by the mob, stripped naked, and ignominiously branded.*

Sir Edward Hales now came to demand fees from those who had lately been his prisoners. They refused to pay any thing for a detention which they regarded as illegal to an officer whose commission was, on their principles, a nullity. The lieutenant hinted very intelligibly that, if they came into his hands again, they should be put into heavy irons and should lie on bare stones. "We are under our king's displeasure," was the answer, " and most deeply do we feel it; but a fellowsubject who threatens us does but lose his breath.” It is easy to imagine with what indignation the people, excited as they were, must have learned that a renegade from the Protestant faith, who held a command in defiance of the fundamental laws of England, had dared to menace divines of venerable age and dignity with all the barbarities of Lollard's Tower.t

Before the day of trial the agitation had spread to the farthest corners of the island. From Scotland the bishops received letters assuring them of the sympathy of the Presbyterians of that country, so long and so bitterly hostile to prelacy. The people of Cornwall, a fierce, bold, and athletic race, among whom there was a stronger provincial feeling than in any other part of the realm, were greatly moved by the danger of Trelawney, whom they honored less as a ruler of the Church than as the head of an honorable house, and the heir through twenty descents of ancestors who had been of great note before the Normans had set foot on English ground. All over the county was sung a song of which the burden is still remembered.

"And shall Trelawney die, and shall Trelawney die?

Then thirty thousand Cornish boys will know the reason why.”

*For the events of this day see the State Trials; Clarendon's Diary; Luttrell's Diary; Citters, June 1; Johnstone, June 18; Revolution Politics.

† Johnstone, June 18, 1688; Evelyn's Diary, June 19.

Tanner MS.

The peasantry in many parts of the country loudly expressed a strange hope which had never ceased to live in their hearts. Their Protestant duke, their beloved Monmouth, would suddenly appear, would lead them to victory, and would tread down the king and the Jesuits under his feet.*

The ministers were appalled. Even Jeffreys would gladly have retraced his steps. He charged Clarendon with friendly messages to the bishops, and threw on others the blame of the prosecution which he had himself recommended. Sunderland again ventured to recommend concession. The late auspicious birth, he said, had furnished the king with an excellent opportunity of withdrawing from a position full of danger and inconvenience without incurring the reproach of timidity or of caprice. On such happy occasions it had been usual for sovereigns to make the hearts of subjects glad by acts of clemency; and nothing could be more advantageous to the Prince of Wales than that he should, while still in his cradle, be the peacemaker between his father and the agitated nation. But the king's resolution was fixed. "I will go on," he said. "I have been only too indulgent. Indulgence ruined my father." + The artful minister found that his advice had been formerly taken only because it had been shaped to suit the royal temper, and that, from the moment at which he began to counsel well, he began to counsel in vain. He had shown some signs of slackness in the proceeding against Magdalene College. He had recently attempted to convince the king that Tyrconnel's scheme of confiscating the property of the English colonists in Ireland was full of danger, and had, with the help of Powis and Bellasyse, so far succeeded that the execution of the design had been postponed for another year. But this timidity and scrupulosity had excited disgust and suspicion in the royal mind.‡ The day of retribution had arrived. Sunderland was in the same situation in which his rival Rochester had been some months before. Each of the two statesmen in turn experienced the misery of clutching, with an agonizing grasp, power which was perceptibly slipping away. Each in turn saw his sug gestions scornfully rejected. Both endured the pain of reading displeasure and distrust in the countenance and demeanor of

† Adda,

June 29
July 9

1688.

*Johnstone, June 18, 1688. Sunderland's own narrative is, of course, not to be implicitly trusted. But he vouched Godolphin as a witness of what took place respecting the Irish Act of Settlement.

their master; yet both were by their country held responsible for those crimes and errors from which they had vainly endeavored to dissuade him. While he suspected them of trying to win popularity at the expense of his authority and dignity, the public voice loudly accused them of trying to win his favor at the expense of their own honor and of the general weal. Yet, in spite of mortifications and humiliations, they both clung to office with the gripe of drowning men. Both attempted to propitiate the king by affecting a willingness to be reconciled to his Church. But there was a point at which Rochester was determined to stop. He went to the verge of apostasy; but there he recoiled: and the world, in consideration of the firmness with which he refused to take the final step, granted him a liberal amnesty for all former compliances. Sunderland, less scrupulous and less sensible of shame, resolved to atone for his late moderation, and to recover the royal confidence by an act which, to a mind impressed with the importance of religious truth, must-have appeared to be one of the most flagitious of crimes, and which even men of the world regard as the last excess of baseness. About a week before the day fixed for the great trial, it was publicly announced that he was a Papist. The king talked with delight of this triumph of divine grace. Courtiers and envoys kept their countenances as well as they could, while the renegade protested that he had been long Convinced of the impossibility of finding salvation out of the communion of Rome, and that his conscience would not let him rest till he had renounced the heresies in which he had been brought up. The news spread fast. At all the coffeehouses it was told how the prime minister of England, his feet bare, and a taper in his hand, had repaired to the royal chapel and knocked humbly for admittance; how a priestly voice from within had demanded who was there; how Sunderland had made answer that a poor sinner who had long wandered from the true Church implored her to receive and to absolve him; how the doors were opened; and how the neophyte partook of the holy mysteries.*

This scandalous apostasy could not but heighten the interest with which the nation looked forward to the day when the fate of the seven brave confessors of the English Church was to be decided. To pack a jury was now the great object of the

1688; Adda,

June 21 June 28 June 29 * Barillon, ; Citters, July 1' July 8 July 9 Johnstone, July 2, 1688; the Converts, a poem. 25

VOL. II.

June 26 July