the third or fourth class, and must indemnify himself for the contempt with which he would be regarded abroad by triumphs over law and public opinion at home. tic government. make large additions to the military force which his brother had left. The bodies now designated as the first six regiments of dragoon guards, the third and fourth regiments of dragoons, and the nine regiments of infantry of the line, from the seventh to the fifteenth It seemed, indeed, that it would not His plans be easy for him to demand more of domes than the Commons were dis-inclusive, had just been raised.* The posed to give. Already they had abundantly proved that they were desirous to maintain his prerogatives unimpaired, and that they were by no means extreme to mark his encroachments on the rights of the people. Indeed, eleven twelfths of the members were either dependents of the court, or zealous Cavaliers from the country. There were few things which such an assembly could pertinaciously refuse to the Sovereign; but, happily for the nation, those few things were the very things on which James had set his heart. pus Act. effect of these augmentations, and of the recall of the garrison of Tangier, was that the number of regular troops in England had, in a few months, been increased from six thousand to near twenty thousand. No English King had ever, in time of peace, had such a force at his command. Yet even with. this force James was not content. He often repeated that no confidence could be placed in the fidelity of the trainbands, that they sympathised with all the passions of the class to which they belonged: that, at Sedgemoor, there had been more militiamen in the rebel army than in the royal encampment, and that, if the throne had been defended only by the array of the counties, Monmouth would have marched in triumph from Lyme to London. One of his objects was to obtain a The Ha- repeal of the Habeas Corpus beas Cor. Act, which he hated, as it was natural that a tyrant should hate the most stringent curb that ever legislation imposed on tyranny. This The revenue, large as it was when feeling remained deeply fixed in his compared with that of former Kings, mind to the last, and appears in the barely sufficed to meet this new charge. instructions which he drew up, in exile, A great part of the produce of the new for the guidance of his son.* But the taxes was absorbed by the naval exHabeas Corpus Act, though passed penditure. At the close of the late during the ascendency of the Whigs, reign the whole cost of the army, the was not more dear to the Whigs than Tangier regiments included, had been to the Tories. It is indeed not won-under three hundred thousand pounds derful that this great law should be a year. Six hundred thousand pounds highly prized by all Englishmen with- a year would not now suffice. If any out distinction of party: for it is a law which, not by circuitous, but by direct operation, adds to the security and happiness of every inhabitant of the realm. The stand James had yet another design, odious to the party which had set him ing army. on the throne and which had upheld him there. He wished to form a great standing army. He had taken advantage of the late insurrection to * Instructions headed, "For my son the Prince of Wales, 1692," among the Stuart Papers. "The Habeas Corpus," said Johnson, the most bigoted of Tories, to Boswell, "is the single advantage which our government has over that of other countries." further augmentation were made, it would be necessary to demand a supply from Parliament; and it was not likely that Parliament would be in a complying mood. The very name of standing army was hateful to the whole nation, and to no part of the nation more hateful than to the Cavalier gentlemen who filled the Lower House. In their minds * See the Historical Records of Regiments, published under the supervision of the Adju tant General. 13 † Barillon, Dec. 1685. He had studied the subject much. "C'est un détail," he says, "dont j'ai connoissance." It appears from the Treasury Warrant Book that the charge of the army for the year 1687 was fixed on the first of January at 623,1047. 9s. 11d. a standing army was inseparably asso-dence, and justice, such a toleration ciated with the Rump, with the Pro- might have been obtained. tector, with the spoliation of the The extreme antipathy and dread Church, with the purgation of the Uni- with which the English people regardversities, with the abolition of the peer-ed his religion was not to be ascribed age, with the murder of the King, with solely or chiefly to theological anithe sullen reign of the Saints, with cant mosity. That salvation might be and asceticism, with fines and seques- found in the Church of Rome, nay, trations, with the insults which Major that some members of that Church Generals, sprung from the dregs of the had been among the brightest examples people, had offered to the oldest and of Christian virtue, was admitted by most honourable families of the king- all divines of the Anglican communion dom. There was, moreover, scarcely a and by the most illustrious Nonconbaronet or a squire in the Parliament formists. It is notorious that the penal who did not owe part of his importance laws against Popery were strenuously in his own county to his rank in the defended by many who thought Arianmilitia. If that national force were set ism, Quakerism, and Judaism more aside, the gentry of England must lose dangerous, in a spiritual point of view, much of their dignity and influence. than Popery, and who yet showed no It was therefore probable that the King disposition to enact similar laws against would find it more difficult to obtain Arians, Quakers, or Jews. funds for the support of his army than even to obtain the repeal of the Habeas Corpus Act. the Roman religion. But both the designs which have been mentioned were suborDesigns in favour of dinate to one great design on Catholic which the King's whole soul was bent, but which was abhorred by those Tory gentlemen who were ready to shed their blood for his rights, abhorred by that Church which had never, during three generations of civil discord, wavered in fidelity to his house, abhorred even by that army on which, in the last extremity, he must rely. His religion was still under proscription. Many rigorous laws against Roman Catholics appeared on the Statute Book, and had, within no long time, been rigorously executed. The Test Act excluded from civil and military office all who dissented from the Church of England; and, by a subsequent Act, passed when the fictions of Oates had driven the nation wild, it had been provided that no person should sit in either House of Parliament without solemnly abjuring the doctrine of transubstantiation. That the King should wish to obtain for the Church to which he belonged a complete toleration was natural and right; nor is there any reason to doubt that, by a little patience, pru VOL. I. It is easy to explain why the Roman Catholic was treated with less indulgence than was shown to men who renounced the doctrine of the Nicene fathers, and even to men who had not been admitted by baptism within the Christian pale. There was among the English a strong conviction that the Roman Catholic, where the interests of his religion were concerned, thought himself free from all the ordinary rules of morality, nay, that he thought it meritorious to violate those rules if, by so doing, he could avert injury or reproach from the Church of which he was a member. Nor was this opinion destitute of a show of reason. It was impossible to deny that Roman Catholic casuists of great eminence had written in defence of equivocation, of mental reservation, of perjury, and even of assassination. Nor, it was said, had the speculations of this odious school of sophists been barren of results. The massacre of Saint Bartholomew, the murder of the first William of Orange, the murder of Henry the Third of France, the numerous conspiracies which had been formed against the life of Elizabeth, and, above all, the gunpowder treason, were constantly cited as instances of the close connection between vicious theory and vicious practice. It was alleged that every one of these crimes had been Y prompted or applauded by Roman | declarations of pious and honourable Catholic divines. The letters which Roman Catholics who underwent the Everard Digby wrote in lemon juice same fate.* from the Tower to his wife had recently been published, and were often quoted. | He was a scholar and a gentleman, upright in all ordinary dealings, and strongly impressed with a sense of duty to God. Yet he had been deeply concerned in the plot for blowing up King, Lords, and Commons, and had, on the brink of eternity, declared that it was incomprehensible to him how any Roman Catholic should think such a design sinful. The inference popularly drawn from these things was that, however fair the general character of a Papist might be, there was no excess of fraud or cruelty of which he was not capable when the safety and honour of his Church were at stake. The extraordinary success of the fables of Oates is to be chiefly ascribed to the prevalence of this opinion. It was to no purpose that the accused Roman Catholic appealed to the integrity, humanity, and loyalty which he had shown through the whole course of his life. It was to no purpose that he called crowds of respectable witnesses, of his own persuasion, to contradict monstrous romances invented by the most infamous of mankind. It was to no purpose that, with the halter round his neck, he invoked on himself the whole vengeance of the God before whom, in a few moments, he must appear, if he had been guilty of meditating any ill to his prince or to his Protestant fellow countrymen. The evidence which he produced in his favour proved only how little Popish oaths were worth. His very virtues raised a presumption of his guilt. That he had before him death and judgment in immediate prospect only made it more likely that he would deny what, without injury to the holiest of causes, he could not confess. Among the unhappy men who were convicted of the murder of Godfrey was one Protestant of no high character, Henry Berry. It is a remarkable and well attested circumstance, that Berry's last words did more to shake the credit of the plot than the dying It was not only by the ignorant populace, it was not only by zealots in whom fanaticism had extinguished all reason and charity, that the Roman Catholic was regarded as a man the very tenderness of whose conscience might make him a false witness, an incendiary, or a murderer, as a man who, where his Church was concerned, shrank from no atrocity and could be bound by no oath. If there were in that age two persons inclined by their judgment and by their temper to toleration, those persons were Tillotson and Locke. Yet Tillotson, whose indulgence for various kinds of schismatics and heretics brought on him the reproach of heterodoxy, told the House of Commons from the pulpit that it was their duty to make effectual provisions against the propagation of a religion more mischievous than irreligion itself, of a religion which demanded from its followers services directly opposed to the first principles of morality. His temper, he truly said, was prone to lenity; but his duty to the community forced him to be, in this one instance, severe. He declared that, in his judgment, Pagans who had never heard the name of Christ, and who were guided only by the light of nature, were more trustworthy members of civil society than men who had been formed in the schools of the Popish casuists. † Locke, in the celebrated treatise in which he laboured to show that even the grossest forms of idolatry ought not to be prohibited under penal sanctions, contended that the Church which taught men not to keep faith with heretics had no claim to toleration. It is evident that, in such circumstances, the greatest service which an English Roman Catholic could render to his brethren in the faith was to convince the public that, whatever some too subtle theorists might have *Burnet, i. 447. House of Commons, Nov. 5. 1678. Locke, First Letter on Toleration. written, whatever some rash men might, in times of violent excitement, have done, his Church did not hold that any end could sanctify means inconsistent with morality. And this great service it was in the power of James torender. He was King. He was more powerful than any English King had been within the memory of the oldest man. It depended on him whether the reproach which lay on his religion should be taken away or should be made per manent. keep faith with heretics, James might have been expected to keep faith with the Anglican elergy. To them he owed his crown. But for their strenuous opposition to the Exclusion Bill he would have been a banished man. He had repeatedly and emphatically acknowledged the debt which he owed to them, and had vowed to maintain them in all their legal rights. If he could not be bound by ties like these, it must be evident that, where his superstition was concerned, no tie of gratitude or of Had he conformed to the laws, had honour could bind him. To trust him he kept his promises, had he abstained would thenceforth be impossible; and, from employing any unrighteous me- if his people could not trust him, what thods for the propagation of his own member of his Church could they trust? theological tenets, had he suspended He was not supposed to be constituthe operation of the penal statutes by tionally or habitually treacherous. To a large exercise of his unquestionable his blunt manner, and to his want of prerogative of mercy, but, at the same consideration for the feelings of others, time, carefully abstained from violating he owed a much higher reputation for the civil or ecclesiastical constitution of sincerity than he at all deserved. the realm, the feeling of his people eulogists affected to call him James the must have undergone a rapid change. Just. If then it should appear that, in So conspicuous an example of good turning Papist, he had also turned faith punctiliously observed by a Popish dissembler and promisebreaker, what prince towards a Protestant nation conclusion was likely to be drawn by a would have quieted the public appre-nation already disposed to believe that hensions. Men who saw that a Roman Popery had a pernicious influence on Catholic might safely be suffered to the moral character? direct the whole executive administration, to command the army and navy, to convoke and dissolve the legislature, to appoint the Bishops and Deans of the Church of England, would soon have ceased to fear that any great evil would arise from allowing a Roman Catholic to be captain of a company or alderman of a borough. It is probable that, in a few years, the sect so long detested by the nation would, with general applause, have been admitted to office and to Parliament. If, on the other hand, James should attempt to promote the interest of his Church by violating the fundamental laws of his kingdom and the solemn promises which he had repeatedly made in the face of the whole world, it could hardly be doubted that the charges which it had been the fashion to bring against the Roman Catholic religion would be considered by all Protestants as fully established. For, if ever a Roman Catholic could be expected to His For these reasons many of the most eminent Roman Catholics of that age, and among them the Supreme Pontiff, were of opinion that the interests of their Church in our island would be most effectually promoted by a moderate and constitutional policy. But such considerations had no effect on the slow understanding and imperious temper of James. In his eagerness to remove the disabilities under which the professors of his religion lay, he took a which convinced the most enlightened and tolerant Protestants of his time that those disabilities were essential to the safety of the state. To his policy the English Roman Catholics owed three years of lawless and insolent triumph, and a hundred and forty years of subjection and degradation. course Many members of his Church held commissions in the newly Violation raised regiments. This breach of the Test of the law for a time passed Act. uncensured: for men were not disposed | tory. Halifax was informed that his to note every irregularity which was services were no longer needed, and his committed by a King suddenly called name was struck out of the Council upon to defend his crown and his life Book.* against rebels. But the danger was now over. The insurgents had been vanquished and punished. Their unsuccessful attempt had strengthened the government which they had hoped to overthrow. Yet still James continued to grant commissions to unqualified persons; and speedily it was announced that he was determined to be no longer bound by the Test Act, that he hoped to induce the Parliament to repeal that Act, but that, if the Parliament proved refractory, he would not the less have his own way. His dismission produced a great sensation not only in England, Generai but also at Paris, at Vienna, discontent and at the Hague: for it was well known, that he had always laboured to counteract the influence exercised by the court of Versailles on English affairs. Lewis expressed much pleasure at the news. The ministers of the United Provinces and of the House of Austria, on the other hand, extolled the wisdom and virtue of the discarded statesman in a manner which_gave serious offence at Whitehall. James was particularly angry with the secreAs soon as this was known, a deep tary of the imperial legation, who did Disgrace murmur, the forerunner of a not scruple to say that the eminent of Halifax. tempest, gave him warning service which Halifax had performed that the spirit before which his grand-in the debate on the Exclusion Bill father, his father, and his brother had had been requited with gross ingratibeen compelled to recede, though dor- tude.† mant, was not extinct. Opposition It soon became clear that Halifax appeared first in the cabinet. Halifax would have many followers. A portion did not attempt to conceal his disgust of the Tories, with their old leader, and alarm. At the Council board he courageously gave utterance to those feelings which, as it soon appeared, pervaded the whole nation. None of his colleagues seconded him; and the subject dropped. He was summoned to the royal closet, and had two long conferences with his master. James tried the effect of compliments and blandishments, but to no purpose. Halifax positively refused to promise that he would give his vote in the House of Lords for the repeal either of the Test Act or of the Habeas Corpus Act. Danby, at their head, began to hold Whiggish language. Even the prelates hinted that there was a point at which the loyalty due to the prince must yield to higher considerations. The discontent of the chiefs of the army was still more extraordinary and still more formidable. Already began to appear the first symptoms of that feeling which, three years later, impelled so many officers of high rank to desert the royal standard. Men who had never before had a scruple had on a sudden become strangely scrupulous. Churchill gently whispered that the Some of those who were about the King was going too far. Kirke, just King advised him not, on the eve of returned from his Western butchery, the meeting of Parliament, to drive the swore to stand by the Protestant relimost eloquent and accomplished states-gion. Even if he abjured the faith in man of the age into opposition. They represented that Halifax loved the dignity of office, that, while he continued to be Lord President, it would be hardly possible for him to put forth his whole strength against the government, and that to dismiss him from his high post was to emancipate him from all restraint. The King was peremp-Nov. 6; Nov. 18. which he had been bred, he would never, he said, become a Papist. He was already bespoken. If ever he did apostatise, he was bound by a solemn * Council Book. The erasure is dated Oct. 21. 1685. Barillon, Oct. 19 Oct. 27. Oct. 26. 1685; Lewis to Barillon, |