Reign on James II page 9

To this precious cabal was added father Petre, the Jesuit provincial, brother of lord Petre, and the organ of the Jesuits at court. The pope, too, had his agents at court, Adda, his nuncio, and a vicar apostolic, but these advocated cautious measures, for Innocent XI. had a difficult card to play in the popedom. Louis, the greatest of the catholic kings, was the most dangerous enemy of the temporal power of the pope, as of every other temporal power, and the Jesuits were all at variance with him, because he leaned toward the Jansenist party, which at this time was in the ascendancy, through the triumphant attacks on the Jesuits of Pascal in his "Lettres d'un Provinciate." The Jesuits, on the contrary, advocated all James's views. These generally subtle men seemed driven, by their falling estimation all over Europe, to clutch at a hope of power here, and they had at all times been famed for their sly policy of insinuation than for their caution and moderation when successful. For their high-handed proceedings they had then, as they have since, been driven again and again from almost every Christian country. They did not display more than their ordinary foresight in the affairs of James.

But we should not possess a complete view of the position and character of James's court if we did not take in a few other actors, the French king's agents, and the king's mistresses. To Barillon, who had so long been ambassador at the English court, and the agent of Louis's bribes, the French king had sent over Bonrepaux; and whilst Barillon attached himself to Sunderland and the secret catholic cabal, Bonrepaux devoted his attentions to Rochester and his section of the ministry, so that Louis learned the minutest movements and opinions of both parties. These parties,' in their turn, made use of the king's mistresses, for James, although in disposition the very opposite of the gay Charles, was, with all his moroseness and profession of zealous piety, just as loose in his adulteries, and much more disgusting. James, amongst his other depraved tastes, had a particular fancy for ugly women. Ugliness was as piquant to him as beauty to other men. He chose his first wife, though possessed of no recommendations of birth or family, from among the plainest women of the court;_ and his mistresses, and he had a number of them, were so excessively homely, that Charles used laughingly to say that his confessor must have prescribed them as penances for him. His chief mistress, in his first wife's lifetime, was Arabella Churchill, the plain sister of the after duke of Marlborough. His present wife, Mary of Modena, was young, handsome, and spirited, but these qualities had no attraction for James, who was now the abject slave of Catherine Sedley, the bold and clever but ugly daughter of the profligate wit sind poet, Sir Charles Sedley. The homely but acute Sedley used to ridicule James's fancy for her and her uncomely sisters of his harem, saying, "We are none of us handsome, and it cannot be our wit that he likes us for, for if we had wit, he has not enough himself to find it out."

With the aid of the council of his catholic cabal, James now began in earnest to put down protestantism in this kingdom, and restore Romanism. As there was no hope of money from a parliament, he made his peace with the king of France, stooped his shoulder to the burden, and became once more a servant unto tribute. He abandoned all the best interests of England, apologised to Louis for having received the Huguenots, and took measures to defeat the very subscription in their favour which he had commenced and recommended. He arrested John Claude, one of the refugees who had published an account of the persecutions of the Huguenots by Louis, and caused his book to be publicly burnt. Spite of this, and of his open discouragement, the subscription amounted to forty thousand pounds, but he took good care that the unfortunate Huguenots should never get the money, by ordering every one who applied for it to first take the sacrament according to the Anglican ritual, which he knew differed so much from their own mode, as to form an effectual bar, which it did. And this was the man who complained of the test act as a violation of conscience. He had himself dispensed with this act in open defiance of the law, but he now sought to obtain a sanction from the judges for the breach of the act. To parliament he dare not appeal; he therefore called on the twelve judges to declare that he possessed this dispensing power as part of his prerogative. The judges to a man refused; he dismissed them, and appointed more pliant ones. But the law officers of the crown were equally stubborn. Sawyer, the attorney-general, told the king that he dared not do it, for it was not to abolish a statute, but the whole statute law from the accession of Elizabeth. Sawyer was too useful to be dismissed, but Heneage Finch, the solicitor-general, was turned out, and Powis, a barrister of no mark, put in his place. A case was immediately tried in the court of King's Bench, to obtain the judges' sanction. Sir Edward Hales was formally prosecuted for holding a commission in the army, being a catholic; but the lord chief justice, Sir Edward Herbert, took the opinion of the new judges upon it, which was, that the king possessed the power to dispense with the act, and judgment was given accordingly. No sooner was James in possession of this decision of the King's Bench, than he appointed the four catholic lords of his secret cabal members of the privy council - namely, Arundel, Bellasis, Powis, and Dover.

Having perpetrated this daring act in the council, James hastened to exercise the same power in the church. Encouraged by the known opinions and intentions of the king, several clergymen who had outwardly conformed to the church of England and held livings, now threw off the mask, and proclaimed themselves of the catholic church, and applied to James to authorise them still to hold their livings. These were Obadiah Walker, master of University College, Oxford; Boyce, Dean, and Bernard, fellows of different colleges; and Edward Sclater, curate of Putney and Esher. The king granted them dispensations to hold their livings, spite of their avowed conversion to the doctrines of another church, on the plea that he would not oppress their consciences. But to support men in holding livings in a church which-they had abandoned was so outrageous a violation of that church's conscience, that it was impossible long to be submitted to. James, in his very contracted mind, imagined that, because the bishops and ministers had so zealously advocated absolute submission to his will, they would practise it. How little could he have read human nature. Of these sudden converts, Sclater and Walker as suddenly reconverted themselves at the revolution.

James having now his hand in, went on boldly. He has permitted professed converts to Catholicism to retain their protestant livings, he next appointed a catholic to a church dignity. John Massey, a fellow of Merton, who had gone over to Rome, was, in violation of every local and national statute, appointed dean of Christchurch. Massey at once erected an altar and celebrated mass in the cathedral of Christchurch, and James told the pope's nuncio that the same should soon be the case in Cambridge. It remained now only to fill the sees of the church with catholic bishops as they fell vacant; and to enable him to do that, it was necessary, in the first place, to possess himself of a power in the church like that which he had assumed in the state. He must have a tribunal before which he could summon any refractory clergy, as he could now by his pliant judges control any appeal to the bench. He therefore determined to revive the Court of High Commission, that terrible engine of the Tudors and the Stuarts, which the Long Parliament had put down. This court had power not only to cite any clergyman before it who dared to preach or publish anything reflecting on the views or measures of the king, but "to correct, amend, and alter the statutes of the universities, churches, and schools," or where the statutes were bad to make new ones, and the powers of the commission were declared to be effectual for these purposes, " notwithstanding any law or statute to the contrary." In fact, all the old powers of the High Commission were revived, and the same device and motto were adopted on the seal.

This was a direct and daring declaration of war on the church. The act of supremacy was thus turned against it, and every clergyman, professor, and schoolmaster, from the primate to the simple curate and tutor, were laid at the mercy of this insane tyrant. The alarm of the whole court and country, when this astounding fact was made known, was indescribable. The stauchest courtiers trembled at the temerity of the monarch: the French ministers and the Jesuits alone applauded. The new and terrible power of the tribunal was quickly brought into play. The commission was made known about the middle of July, and seven commissioners named. At their head stood the horrible Jeffreys, who was now to display his truculent spirit in the character of a grand inquisitor. The six other commissioners were archbishop Sancroft, bishops Crewe of Durham and Sprat of Rochester, lords Rochester, Sunderland, and the chief justice Herbert. Sancroft excused himself acting on the plea of ill health, and James in anger immediately ordered him to be omitted in the summons to the privy council, saying if his health were too bad to attend the commission, it was equally so to attend the council, and Cartwright, bishop of Chester, was put in the commission in his stead. These pliant churchmen and courtiers were quickly shown what work they had to do. Amongst the clergymen who had ventured to preach against the Roman church, and to reply to the attacks which the Romish preachers were now emboldened to make on the Anglican church, beginning at Whitehall itself, Sharp, dean of Norwich, and one of the royal chaplains, had been honest enough to defend his own faith, and expose the errors of Rome in a sermon at his own church of St. Giles's-in-the-Fields. Compton, the bishop of London, was immediately called upon by Sunderland to suspend him. But Compton, though he had lately fallen under the royal displeasure for opposing James's designs in the house of lords, and had been dismissed from the privy council, and from his post of dean of the royal chapel, replied that he could not suspend Sharp without hearing him in his defence. Thereupon Compton was at once summoned before the new commissioners. He demurred, declared the court "illegal, that he was a prelate, and amenable only to his peers in the church, or, as lord of parliament, to his peers in parliament. Consenting, however, at length to appear, he was abruptly asked by Jeffreys why he had not suspended Sharp. Compton demanded a copy of the commission, to see by what right they summoned him. This roused the base blood of Jeffreys, who began to insult the prelate, as he had done many a good man fore, declaring that he would take another course with him; but the rest of the commissioners recalled the brutal bully to a sense of the respect due to the bishop. After the hearing of the case, Rochester, Herbert, and Sprat declared for his acquittal; but James, enraged at his treasurer, vowed if he did not give his vote against Compton, he would dismiss him from his office. The place-loving minister gave way. Compton was suspended from his spiritual functions, but dared the court to touch his revenues; and the chief justice warned James, that did he attempt to seize them, he would be defeated at common law. For awhile, therefore, James was obliged to restrain his proceedings till, as he resolved, he had put the laws more completely under his feet.

But enough had already been done to produce a change such as never had been seen in England since the days of queen Mary. Encouraged by the king's countenance and proceedings, the catholics now openly set at nought all the severe laws against them, their chapels, and priests. Though it was still death by the law for any Romish clergyman to appear in England, and all meetings of catholics were forbidden for worship under the severest penalties, the streets now swarmed with the clergy in full canonicals, and popish chapels were opened in every part of the kingdom. The protestant public gazed in astonishment at sights which neither they nor their fathers had beheld in England. The frieze cowls, and girdles of rope, crosses, and rosaries, passed before them as apparitions of an almost fabulous time. James threw open the old chapel at St. James's, where a throng of Benedictine monks located themselves. He built for himself a public chapel at Whitehall, and induced Sandford, an Englishman, but the envoy of the prince palatine, to open a third in the city. A brotherhood of Franciscans established themselves in Lincoln's Inn Fields; another of Carmelites appeared in the city; a convent was founded in Clerkenwell, on the site of the ancient cloister of St. John, and a Jesuit church and school were opened in the Savoy, under a rector named Palmer.

The same ominous change appeared all over the country, especially in those districts where catholics were numerous. But neither in town nor country were the common people disposed to see the whole empire of popery thus restored. They assembled and attacked the catholics going into their chapels, insulted them, knocked down their crosses and images, and turned them into the streets. Hence riots ran high and fiercely in London, Worcester, Coventry, and other places. The lord mayor ordered the chapel of the prince palatine in Lime Street to be closed, but he was severely threatened by the king and Jeffreys. The mob then took the matter into their hands they attacked the chapel at high mass, drove out the people and priests, and set the cross on the parish pump. It was in vain that the train bands were ordered out to quell the riot, they refused to fight for popery.

But this spirit, which would have caused a wiser monarch to pause, only incensed James, and he assembled an army of thirteen thousand men on Hounslow Heath to overawe the city, and conveyed thither twenty-six pieces of artillery, and ample supplies of ammunition from the Tower. But it boded little prospect of support from his army that the people of London immediately fraternised with it, and the camp became the great holiday resort of all classes, resembling, in the strange concourse of strange characters who appeared there, Schiller's description of the camp of Wallenstein. James, however, was proud of his army, and flattered himself that from his having formerly beep a general in the French service, he could command it to some purpose. But there were as clever tacticians as himself at work. He allowed mass to be publicly celebrated in the tent of lord Dumbarton, the second in command, and this with the known fact that many officers 'Were catholics, and the sight of priests and friars strolling about amongst the tents roused the zeal of protestant patriots. Foremost amongst these was Dr. Samuel Johnson, who had been chaplain to lord Russell, and was a man of the most liberal ideas of government, and a sturdy champion of protestantism. In the last reign he had written a severe satire on James, under the title of "Julian the Apostate," in which he drew a vigorous parallel betwixt the Roman apostate and the English one. Julian, according to him, an idolater even when he pretended not to be, was a persecutor when he pretended freedom of conscience, and robbed cities of their municipal charters, which were zealous for the true faith. For this daring philippic he was prosecuted and imprisoned in the King's Bench, but this did not prevent him from still making war on the popish prince. Julian Johnson, as he was called, had found, while imprisoned in the King's Bench, congenial society in the companionship of a fellow-prisoner, whose name was Hugh Speke. This man, Speke, being of a gloomy, seditious temperament, furnished Julian Johnson with money to print, and encouraged him by every kind of argument in endeavouring to excite in the Hounslow camp an active spirit of hostility to the Romish schemers. Thereupon Johnson wrote and published a stirring address to the soldiers, which was distributed in thousands amongst the army. There could be no mistake concerning the style of this document, even if the writer and his friend had kept their counsel, as they did not. The publication was speedily traced to Johnson, who was thereupon brought up to the bar of the King's Bench, and, after a long examination, condemned to stand three times in the pillory, to be whipped from Newgate to Tyburn, and to pay a fine of five hundred marks.