1686.] RESISTANCE OF MAGDALEN COLLEGE, OXFORD. 413 whatever might happen. There were premonitory symptoms that the spirit of English gentlemen would at length be roused out of the sleep of slavery. Obadiah Walker was insulted and ridiculed in his popish seminary. The undergraduates had long believed, as Colley Cibber represented his own school-boy belief in 1684: "It was then a sort of school doctrine to regard our monarch as a deity; as in the former reign it was to insist he was accountable to this world, as well as to that above him."* The undergraduates of 1686 were a little veering round to this obsolete notion; and in spite of the Oxford deification of James II., it was necessary to quarter a troop of dragoons in that loyal city, to allow "Ave Maria" to be sung in more than one chapel without interruption from the scurrilous songs of the street. The crisis was at hand. The presidency of Magdalen College was vacant. It was rumoured that Anthony Farmer was to be recommended by a royal letter. This man was not qualified by the Statutes of the College, the presidency being limited to fellows of Magdalen or of New College; he was of notoriously immoral life; he had become a pervert to Rome. The fellows of Magdalen remonstrated in vain against the probability of this indecent choice. The royal letter came. In the hope of some compromise the election was postponed till it could be postponed no longer. John Hough, a man worthy of the office, was elected. The fellows were cited before the Ecclesiastical Commission. They produced such proofs of Farmer's unfitness, that no attempt was made to enforce his election; but that of Hough was declared void. In August, a royal recommendation of Parker, bishop of Oxford, arrived. The fellows justly held that the right of election was in themselves; that Hough was duly elected; that the presidency was not vacant. The king had set out on a progress. On the 3rd of September he reached Oxford. He lodged at the deanery of Christchurch, and heard Mass in a chapel fitted up by the dean. The fellows of Magdalen College were sent for. William Blathwayte, the Clerk of the Council, writes to Mr. Pepys an account of what took place at this audience: "His Majesty being informed that the fellows of Magdalen College had refused to admit the bishop of Oxford to be their president in the stead of Mr. Farmer, sent for them yesterday, after dinner, to his anti-chamber in Christ-Church College, where his majesty chid them very much for their disobedience, and with much a greater appearance of anger than ever I perceived in his majesty; who bade them go away immediately and choose the bishop of Oxford before this morning, or else they should certainly feel the weight of their sovereign's displeasure. The terms were to this effect; and yet I hear this morning they have not obeyed his majesty's commands, the consequences of which I cannot yet learn." + The consequences were more full of peril to the threatening tyrant, than to the fellows of Magdalen College. Resolute against the king's heaviest displeasure-unseduced by the arts of a man whose political faults all would willingly forget, but whose partial aberration from the path of duty can scarcely be disproved-the fellows of Magdalen College persisted in their right of election. Their legal president was ejected by a special commission, VOL. IV.-122. "Apology for the life of Colley Cibber,"-edit. 1756, p. 23. 474 THE FELLOWS OF MAGDALEN COLLEGE EJECTED. [1686. whose decrees were enforced by troops of cavalry. Hough refused to give up the keys of the college, and the doors were broken open. The bishop of Oxford was installed by proxy, only two fellows of the college giving their attendance. The other fellows at length consented to a modified submission to the authority which had been forced upon them. The king required a public acknowledgment that they had acted undutifully; and that the appointment of the bishop of Oxford was legal: they must sue for pardon. They one and all refused to submit to this humiliation. They were one and all ejected from their college, and declared incapable of holding any ecclesiastical appointment. The Ecclesiastical Commission, by which this edict was issued, forgot that a power might be raised again, as it had once been raised, before which High Commissioners might be swept away, and even the throne might totter to its base. The immediate object of the king was accomplished. Magdalen College soon became a college of Papists, with a Roman Catholic bishop at its head; for Parker, the bishop of Oxford, had enjoyed his dignity only during a few months, in which his authority was so openly resisted that he died, as men believed, of anxiety and mortification. A subscription was raised for the ejected fellows. All but the most bigoted saw that the ties which bound the Church to the Throne were so loosened, that upon one more violent strain the union might be utterly broken. Fall of the Hydes-Tyrconnel Lord Deputy in Ireland-Declarations in Scotland and England for Liberty of Conscience-Abolition of Penal Tests-Effects of the Declaration of IndulgenceThe camp at Hounslow Heath-The Papal Nuncio publicly received by the King-The King's policy towards Dissenters-Dryden's Poem of the Hind and the Panther "-The Declaration commanded to be read in Churches-The Petition of the Seven BishopsThey are committed to the Tower-The public sympathy-The trial and acquittal of the Bishops-Birth of the Prince of Wales. THE year 1687 opened with evil forebodings to those who were well-wishers to the Monarchy and the Church. One whose loyalty must have been sorely shaken by the dangerous experiments upon the temper of the nation thus records his impressions: "Lord Tyrconnel gone to succeed the Lord Lieutenant in Ireland, to the astonishment of all sober men, and to the evident ruin of the Protestants in that kingdom, as well as of its great improvement going on. Much discourse that all the White-Staff officers and others should be dismissed for adhering to their religion." The Lord Lieutenant, to # Evelyn, "Diary," January 17. 416 TYRCONNEL LORD DEPUTY IN IRELAND. [1687. whom Tyrconnel is to succeed, is Clarendon. The White-Staff officers are to follow the dismissed Lord-Treasurer, Rochester. The fall of the two Hydes, the brothers-in-law of the king, was of evil omen. It was seen that the ties of relationship, of ancient friendship, of fidelity under adverse circumstances, were of no moment when the one dominant idea of the king was to coerce all around him into his measures for forcing his creed upon a reluctant nation. From the highest minister of the Crown to the humblest country magistrate, all appointments were to be made with reference to this royal monomania: "Popish justices of the peace established in all counties, of the meanest of the people; judges ignorant of the law, and perverting it. So furiously do the Jesuists drive, and even compel princes to violent courses, and destruction of an excellent government both in Church and State." * Tyrconnel, whose violence and rashness were objected to even by moderate Catholics, was instructed to depress the English interest, and proportionately to raise that of the Irish; " to the end that Ireland might offer a secure asylum to James and his friends, if by any subsequent revolution he should be driven from the English throne." But Tyrconnel, says Dr. Lingard, "had a further and more national object in view." He entered, with the sanction of the king, into secret negotiations with Louis XIV., "to render his native country independent of England, if James should die without male issue, and the prince and princess of Orange should inherit the crown." Ireland was then to become a dependency of France-a truly "national object." Tyrconnel went about his work in a wild way. He displaced the Protestant judges, and filled their seats with Catholics. He terrified the cities and towns into surrender of their charters, and gave them new charters which made parliamentary representation a mockery. He had a scheme for dispossessing the English settlers of the property which they had acquired in the forfeitures of half a century previous. His projects were opposed by grave Catholic peers, who said that the Lord-Deputy was fool and madman enough to ruin ten kingdoms. His character and that of his master, were ridiculed in the famous ballad of Lilli-Burlero: "Dare was an old prophecy found in a bog, Lilli burlero, bullen a-la ; Ireland shall be ruled by an ass and a dog, James was the ass and Tyrconnel the dog. This ribaldry of Lord Wharton was adapted to a spirited air of Purcell, published ten years before. "The whole army," says Burnet, "and at last the people both in city and country, were singing it perpetually." Wharton afterwards boasted that he had rhymed James out of his dominions. He had produced a song, like many other songs, of wondrous popularity, with little intrinsic merit. But those whose conviviality, even in our own days, has been stirred by its fascinating melody, may well believe that it was whistled and sung in every street in 1688; and that it had charms for Corporal Trim, and his fellow soldiers in + Lingard. Evelyn, "Diary," January 17. "A very good song, and very well sung, Jolly companions, every one." 1687.] DECLARATIONS FOR LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE. 417 Flanders, when its satire upon the " new deputie" who "will cut de Englishman's troat," was utterly forgotten. There is no error more common, even amongst educated persons, than to pronounce upon the opinions of a past age according to the lights of their own age. In February, 1687, James issued in Scotland a Declaration for Liberty of Conscience. In April, 1687, he issued a Declaration for Liberty of Conscience in England. Why, it is asked, were these declarations regarded with suspicion by Churchmen and by Dissenters ? Why could not all sincere Christians, of whatever persuasion, have accepted the king's noble measures for the adoption of that tolerant principle which is now found to be perfectly compatible with the security of an Established Church. It was precisely because the principle has been slowly making its way during the contests of a hundred and fifty years, that it is now all but universally recognised as a safe and wholesome principle. It is out of the convictions resulting from our slow historical experience that all tests for admission to civil offices are now abolished for ever. Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, Quaker, Methodist, Independent, Unitarian, Jew, all stand upon the same common ground as the Churchman, of suffering no religious disqualification for the service of their country. But to imagine that such a result could have been effected by the interested will of a Papist king, who had himself been the fiercest of persecutors who had adopted, to their fullest extent, the hatred of his family to every species of non-conformity,-is to imagine that the channels in which the great floods and little rills of religious opinion had long been flowing, were to be suddenly diverted into one mighty stream, for which time and wisdom had prepared no bed. King James announced to his people of Scotland that, "being resolved to unite the hearts and affections of his subjects, to God in religion, to himself in loyalty, and to their neighbours in Christian love and charity, he had therefore thought fit, by his sovereign authority, prerogative royal, and absolute power, which all his subjects were to obey without reserve, to give and grant his royal toleration to the several professors of the Christian religion after named." The moderate Presbyterians might meet in their houses; but field conventiclers were still to be resisted with the utmost severity. Quakers might meet and exercise their worship in any place. Above all, the various prohibitions and penalties against Roman Catholics were to be void; and all oaths and tests by which any subjects are incapacitated from holding place or office were remitted. The Council of Scotland made no hesitation about "sovereign authority" and "absolute power; for they had told James at his accession that "we abhor and detest all principles and positions which are contrary or derogatory to the king's sacred, supreme, absolute power and authority." In Scotland, the experiment appeared to be successful. The successors of John Knox made no sign of resistance to a decree which gave honour to the image-worshippers. James now summoned his English Council to proclaim to them his new charter of religious liberty. Freedom of conscience was conducive to peace and quiet, to commerce and population; during four reigns conformity in religion had been vainly attempted. All penal laws should be suspended by the royal prerogative. "A Daniel come to judgment," cried some short-sighted Protestants of that day. "A wise and upright judge," cry some liberal philosophers of the nineteenth century. |