Reign on James II page 10

Johnson was one of those sturdy, uncompromising reformers - always found, like the petrel, just before the occurrence of a storm - who are regarded with almost more terror and aversion by men of more moderate views or weaker nerves than by the national offenders whom they attack.

When assured by the judge that he might be thankful to the attorney-general that he had not arraigned him of high treason, he indignantly replied that he thanked him not; that he did not consider himself favoured by being degraded and whipped like a hound, when popish writers disseminated with impunity what they pleased. This was denied by the attorney-general and the bench; but Johnson was prepared for them, and pulling a whole mass of such publications from his pocket, which were issued by permission of the royal censor, he read their titles aloud, saying, "There, let Mr. Attorney-general now show whether he will do his duty by them." To spare the priesthood degradation in the person of Johnson, he was cited, at the command of the High Commission, before Crewe and Sprat, the royal commissioners, accompanied by the bishops of Rochester and Peterborough, to the chapter-house of St. Paul's, and personally degraded from his order. In having the Bible taken from him in the ceremony, Johnson shed some tears, but said, "You cannot deprive me of its blessed promises." He received two hundred and seventeen lashes in enforcing his punishment, but bore it stoutly, and declared that he could have sung a psalm had he not deemed that it might appear like bravado.

Though the clergy blamed Johnson, and stood aloof from him as a firebrand, because he preached resistance to popery, which they were soon to do themselves, they were now loud in all their pulpits in replying to its attacks, and exposing its lying legends, and all - its mummery of relics, its tricks of priestcraft, its denial of the Scriptures and the cup to the laity, the celibacy of the clergy, the abuse of the confessional, and the idolatry of image worship, and prayers to saints. Distinguished amongst these declaimers were Tillotson, Tenison, Stillingfleet, Sherlock, Prideaux, Wake, Atterbury, and many lesser lights in the pulpit, and through the presses of the universities, Obadiah Walker being for the time especially zealous with his types at Oxford. The catholics, under royal patronage, replied as actively, and the war of pamphlets and pulpits foreshadowed a war of actual arms. James, as blind to all signs of the times as his father had been, went insanely on his way, now eagerly endeavouring to convert his daughter Anne, and now as resolutely* scheming to deprive his daughter Mary of the succession. In Scotland and Ireland his crusade against the constitution of the realm and the protestant religion was equally fierce and reckless.

To Scotland James sent down orders to the government to dispense with the test and admit catholics to all offices, and nothing was to be published without "the chancellor's licence, so that no reflections might be made on the catholic religion or the king's order. The duke of Queensberry - who was lord treasurer, and therefore regarded as prime minister - though a tory, declared that he would not undertake to do anything against the protestant religion, but there were not wanting sycophants who were ready to attempt just what the king pleased, in the hope of supplanting Queensberry. There were lord Perth, the chancellor, and his brother lord Melfort, secretary of state. They went over to Romanism as a means of preferment, and were imitated by the earl of Murray, a descendant of the regent, and a member of the privy council. Perth opened a catholic chapel in his house, and soon received a cargo of priests' dresses, images, crosses, and rosaries. The incensed mob attacked the house during mass, tore down the iron bars from the windows, chased the worshippers from their shrine, and pelted lady Perth with mud. The soldiers were called out, and considerable bloodshed followed. James, irritated instead of being warned, sent down orders to punish the rioters severely, and to screen the catholics from all penalties, but to renew the persecution of the covenanter with all rigour. Alarmed at these insensate orders, three members of the privy council, the duke of Hamilton, Sir George, Lockhart, and general Drummond hastened up to London to explain to James the impossibility of enforcing such orders, but made no impression.

On the 29th of April the time arrived for the meeting of the Scottish parliament, when a letter from James was read calling on the estates to pass a bill freeing the catholics from all penalties; but so far from the parliament accepting such a proposition, the lords of the articles, whose business it was to introduce the propositions for new measures, and who had been chosen by James himself, declined to comply with the proposal. In vain they were urged by Perth, Melfort, and Murray; they remained refractory for three weeks, and then only dared to recommend that the catholics should be permitted to worship in their own houses. But even this the parliament would not consent to, and, after a week's debate, threw out even this very much modified scheme. James, who had during this discussion seen the intense anxiety in England to learn the news of the progress of the debate, perpetrated one of the most audacious acts of arbitrary power that modern times have witnessed. He sent for the mail bags from the north regularly, and detained all correspondence thence till the matter was ended. No single Scotch letter was issued in London for a whole week.

When at length the news, spite of him, burst forth amid loud rejoicings, he was enraged, but, like his father, he declared that he would do by his own royal authority what he wanted. That he had been only foolish in asking for what the act of supremacy gave him in Scotland as perfectly jus in England. He therefore launched the bolts of his vengeance at all those in office who had disputed his will. Queensbury was dismissed from all his offices, the bishop of Dunkeld ejected from his see, and crowds of papists were appointed, to the offices of those who had refused to obey the royal mandate. Without the ceremony of an act of parliament, James proceeded to usurp the rights of boroughs, and to appoint mayors and town councillors at his will; he ordered the judges to declare, all the laws against catholics void, and announced his intention of fitting up a Roman catholic chapel in Holyrood. These measures struck a momentary terror and deep silence into the Scottish people, but it was the silence only preceding the storm.

In Ireland James had a preponderating body of catholics eager to receive justice and the restoration of their estates at his hands. But only a wise and cautious monarch could succeed in racing decent recompense to the native Irish for their many sufferings and spoliations. Their lands, by the act of settlement, were for the most part in the hands of a sturdy race of Englishmen, both episcopalians and presbyterians, who had been placed there at successive periods, and extensively by the commonwealth. To announce that he would repeal this act, and reinvest the natives with their ancient demesnes, was at once to rouse to arms a body of such pluck and nerve as the Celtic race had no chance with, notwithstanding their numbers. At the news that the act was to be revoked, and the church and government of Ireland to be put into the hands of catholics, the timid English gentry fled, the trade of the island received a paralysing blow, and the sturdy Saxon population prepared not only to defend their possessions, but to exterminate, if necessary, the aboriginal tribes.

Clarendon, the lord-lieutenant, the brother of Rochester, the prime minister of England, in great alarm wrote to James, detailing the immediate effects of this announcement, but James persisted in his obstinate course. He declared that the protestants were his enemies, and that it was necessary to fortify himself with his friends. That his father had lost his head by conceding - he should have said by conceding too late - and that he would concede nothing. He went on putting catholics intö the privy council, into the corporations and the army, dismissing protestants to make room for them. He then sent out Tyrconnel, as his unscrupulous instrument, to occupy the post already his, of head of the army; he was ät the same time furnished with instructions to take virtually all the functions of government into his hands, and reduce Clarendon to a cipher. Clarendon, like all the Hydes, was meanly attached to office and its emoluments, or he would at once have resigned rather than suffer the indignity of beholding his office usurped by a bullying ruffian like Tyrconnel. This desperate gambler, duellist, and debauchee, soon began to talk of the act of settlement as a damned and villainous thing; set about remodelling the army so as to exclude all protestants, and replace them by catholics; officers and men of the protestant faith were dismissed by wholesale; he was in league with the priests to drill the whole papist population, so as to confer the whole power of the island on them, and place every protestant throat at their mercy. In a very few weeks he had introduced two thousand popish soldiers into the army, and gave out that by Christmas the whole of the troops would be native catholic. In the church and the state he pushed on rudely the same measures, and with a violence of conduct and of language which appeared more like drunken madness than anything else. Taking the cue from him, and instructed by the priests, everybody treated Clarendon with marked insult and contempt. Still clinging meanly to office, he appealed to Iiis brother in London to obtain for him more honourable treatment, but was thunderstruck by the news that Rochester himself was dismissed.

Rochester, the champion to whom the protestants of the Anglican church looked up for aid, had himself as meanly as his brother disgraced himself by suffering his honour to be compromised by the love of office and income. He saw the career which James was running, and which no remonstrance or popular menace could arrest, and instead of resigning with dignity when his counsels became useless, he had even flattered James with the hope of his conversion. But he did not deceive the Jesuit cabal which surrounded and governed James. They assured the king that nothing would ever make Rochester a genuine supporter of catholic views, and the sooner he cut himself loose from the connection the better. Accordingly, on the 19th of December, the king, with many professions of regard, töok from his brother- in-law Rochester the treasurer's staff, but softened his fall by granting him out of the estate of lord Grey's lands to the yearly value of seventeen hundred pounds, and an annuity of four thousand pounds for his own life and that of his son. He was spared also the mortification of seeing his rival Sunderland invested with his office; the treasurer- ship was put in commission; lord Arundel received the privy seal, and Bellasis was made first lord of the treasury, whilst Dover, a ruined gambler, and Godolphin received places at the board.

The Ml of Clarendon followed rapidly on that of Rochester. On the 8th of January, 1687, he received the order to resign his post to Tyrconnel. Such was the panic at this news, that no less than fifteen hundred families of gentlemen, merchants, and tradesmen, are said to have fled from Dublin to England in a week, and a reigü of terror commenced all over Ireland. The known intentions of the king, and the character of his lord lieutenant, were the signals for proscription to all protestants, and they were turned out of the army, the offices of state, from the bench, and the magistracy, with an indecency which astonished the moderate catholics themselves. Law and justice appeared to be at an end. The worst passions of a population long loaded with every species of injustice were let loose, and the long dominant race now saw themselves the objects of unconcealed hatred and recrimination. The wild population drove off their cattle, set fire to their houses, and the newly-raised soldiery devoted themselves with the gusto of vengeance to pillaging, murdering, and outraging the protestant settlers with a frightful exultation.

Such were the ominous circumstances under which opened the year 1687. By driving from him his relatives, the Hydes, James had severed the last ties betwixt him and protestantism; had demolished the last guarantees of protestant security. The whole protestant public, and many of the- more clear-sighted catholics, looked forward with an awful sense of impending mischief, and they were only too^ correct in their apprehensions.