CHAPTER X THE REVOLUTION AND THE REVOLUTION SETTLEMENT IN GREAT BRITAIN (1) ENGLAND a THE period 1687-1702 is unique in the history of England. Such achievements as the Bill of Rights and the Act of Settlement, the foundation of a National Bank and a National Debt, the Toleration Act and the withdrawal of the Press-Licensing Act, would have exercised an influence both deep and wide at any time and among any people. But, as taking place among this people and in this period, they had peculiar value; for their influence transcended the bounds of one country and had a European significance and effect. The question of the removal of the Tests engaged the attention of Princes and diplomatists in Europe, as well as of Dissenting ministers and Catholic priests in England. Continental statesmen watched the results of divisions in the English House of Commons, knowing that on a casual party vote the fate of a great alliance might depend. The resolutions of the Bank and the state. of the currency in England decided the fate of a campaign on the Continent. A native-born King deserted England and tried to reconquer it with the aid of Frenchmen and Irishmen ; a foreign potentate defended it with an army of Swedes, Dutchmen, Brandenburgers, and Englishmen. The rule of an English-born King threatened disgrace and humiliation to his country; the rule of a Dutchman brought it power and glory. England no longer revolved in an orbit of her own; her course was deflected, and her movements were determined, by the presence of other bodies in the political firmament. International policy is here subordinate to internal history; but, none the less, the course of domestic policy can often be explained only by reference to continental problems. The disasters of James II were chiefly due to the fact that he mistook tributary streams for main currents of national thought. Thus, he gathered from the widely different opinions of the clergy that the Establishment was divided in doctrine; he did not perceive that it would unite against Catholicism. And, as he perceived the disunion and was blind to the latent strength of the Establishment, so he saw the 1687] Second Declaration of Indulgence 237 superficial unity, and was blind to the underlying divisions, between Dissenters and Catholics. Obstinate and courageous, sincerely believing that concession had ruined his father and his brother, he was the very man to ignore obstacles and attempt impossibilities. He at first thought that the resolute expression of his will would move the Establishment to consent to the toleration of Catholics. When this expectation failed, he turned to the Dissenters, and relied upon their coalescence with the Catholics to secure toleration for both parties. Such were some of the motives which inspired the Declaration of Indulgence (issued April 4, 1687), by which he suspended all penal statutes against Catholics and Dissenters, and admitted them to public office in corporations, army, or civil service. The Declaration had been issued on the sole ground of the royal prerogative, by which, it was claimed, the laws could be suspended. Unfortunately for James, though opinion veered as to the true limits of royal power, it was steady on the one point on which he elected to challenge it. Parliament had pronounced a similar Declaration of Charles II illegal, and the King had acquiesced and withdrawn it (1672). If precedents counted for anything, James was legally in the wrong; and, if the legal irregularity was clear, so also was the political motive inspiring it. It was obvious that a power which could enforce the doctrines of toleration might eventually also enforce the doctrines of absolutism, in the teeth of Parliament. Hence, by a strange but intelligible paradox, the establishment of liberty in religion would lead to the destruction of it in politics. But, while recognising that political motives inspired James, it is not necessary to assume that they excluded all other considerations. His religious sincerity does not seem to have been questioned by the foreign diplomatists at his Court. His conversion to the principle of toleration was perhaps late; but the influence of the great William Penn upon him may explain much. At any rate, when the conversion was once effected, it remained permanent. Long afterwards, when in exile- and when he had much to lose by his attitude -James continued to profess at least a theoretical zeal for toleration. An attack upon the Universities accompanied the Declaration, and supplied the mirror in which Englishmen read that toleration meant hostility to the Establishment. The proceedings against Cambridge are particularly important, because resistance was here offered even before the issue of the Declaration. On February 9, 1687, the Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge (Peachell) received a royal letter, commanding him to confer the degree of M. A. upon Alban Francis, a Benedictine. Nearly the whole Senate at once signed a protest against the proposal, describing their resistance as proceeding not "from any principle of disobedience and stubbornness, but from a conscientious sense of our obligations to laws and oaths." Eventually the Vice-Chancellor, with eight delegates (including Isaac Newton), was summoned before the Court of High 238 Attack on the Universities. The Dissenters [1687 Commission (April and May, 1687). Peachell, after being thoroughly bullied by Jeffreys, was deprived of his office. But the protest succeeded, and Francis was left without a degree. The proceedings at Oxford were different and more violent. Catholic influences had already been introduced into Christ Church and University College without much open protest. In April, 1687, James had sent a letter recommending Anthony Farmer- a man of bad character who was a convert to Catholicism for the presidency of Magdalen. But the Fellows had already met and elected John Hough to the post. They were hereupon cited before the Commission, and ultimately expelled. They offered a more dignified, if less successful, resistance than the Cambridge Vice-Chancellor and his companions; but the Oxford opposition, being subsequent to the Declaration, was more natural and has therefore less historic significance. The interference of James with the Universities has more value as an illustration of ecclesiastical and popular resentment than as an instance of royal illegality. For it is hard to say that James had sinned against established custom. Letters mandatory or dispensatory had expelled or appointed Fellows under Charles I and II often enough to create precedents. Professed Lutherans had been admitted to colleges; the ambassador of Morocco had lately received a degree at Cambridge, in direct defiance of statutes and in the absence of loud or general disapproval. But when James tried to leaven the colleges with Roman Catholic Fellows the academic bodies suddenly discovered and denounced the inroad on their privileges. The conviction that the King desired to override the existing law was becoming deep-rooted, and it nowhere found a better expression than in the controversial protests of University officials. But, if James had not violated the statutes or departed from the custom of the Universities, he had certainly broken his word. He had confirmed all the suspicions awakened in the Declaration by an assault upon institutions which every Anglican believed to be nurseries of the learning, the piety, and the steadfastness of his Church. He had attempted to humiliate and degrade, he might actually mean to destroy, the Church which he had repeatedly sworn to defend. Anglicans began to feel that his measures tended, as the Prince of Orange told the English ambassador," really to sap the foundations of the Protestant religion." Meanwhile, the Dissenters were beginning to suspect James as an ally. All the eloquence of the great William Penn, the reputed author of the Declaration, could not win over the Nonconformists. It was significant that he could not even secure the whole body of the Quakers, amongst whom his personal influence had hitherto been boundless. And, apart from them, the majority of the Dissenters looked askance at the Declaration, and their chief divines, Baxter and Howe, actually denounced it. The joint admission of Dissenters and Catholics to office in the corporations was producing extraordinary results. Thus, Newcastle had a Papist Mayor and a Puritan Council, and the corporation vetoed every 1687] Halifax and the Prince of Orange 239 loyal address put forward by its Catholic head. Such a result was typical and indeed inevitable; and all the suspicions which could possibly arise from so unnatural a union were subtly suggested or emphasised by a pamphlet from the pen of Halifax. The famous Letter to a Dissenter (published apparently in the middle of August, 1687) dissected the Declaration with inimitable irony. The incongruity of an alliance between liberty and infallibility, between Tiverton weavers and Jesuit priests was skilfully exposed, and well spiced with allusions to the Popish plot and Romish treachery. Halifax then proceeded to point out the danger of affronting the Church of England "from a desire of ease and revenge." The Declaration depended solely on the sincerity of the Court, for which there was no guarantee; and the first act of Princess Mary of Orange, on her accession, might be to cancel it. Was it worth while to accept a favour of dubious permanence, from a suspected source, at the certain price of alienating the whole Establishment? The air of detachment and seriousness, which Halifax always preserved even in the wittiest and most prejudiced of his pamphlets, made the effect of this appeal more remarkable. Twenty thousand copies were sold; and twenty-four answers, each excelling the other in violence of abuse and feebleness of argument, vainly endeavoured to counteract the effect of the most successful pamphlet of the age. It was followed, at an interval of three and a half months, by another communication which was inferior to it in literary grace, but surpassed it in political importance. The document, which put into the shade even a pamphlet by Halifax, was a letter written by Fagel, Grand Pensionary of Holland, authoritatively announcing the views of the Prince and Princess of Orange upon the Declaration. Though their opinions had been known to James and to diplomatists so early as June, 1687, they were not revealed to the English people until the publication of Fagel's letter in November. Fagel announced that the Prince and Princess desired toleration, and wished no man to be persecuted for matters of private conscience. But, while several religions might be tolerated in private, the Prince and Princess thought that there could not in one State be two, "public and established." Hence they could approve nothing "so much against the existing laws," as removal of the Tests, those necessary safeguards against the Catholics. Such language was admirably chosen. The Prince and Princess disclaimed the right of interference, while clearly condemning the methods of James; they profusely protested their duty and affection to the King, while delicately insinuating that his Declaration was illegal. The success of Fagel's letter was so extraordinary that, by the beginning of 1688, forty-five thousand copies had actually been sold. From this time the position of the Prince of Orange, as the protector of the public liberties and the Protestant religion, was recognised by most members of the Established Church and by the majority of Dissenters. 240 James and Parliament. Mission of Dykvelt [1687 The ablest of English, and one of the ablest of European, statesmen had thus pronounced against the Declaration of James. But apart from these weighty commentaries, the facts themselves seemed to the English people to show clearly enough that the royal policy was directed first. against the Established Church, and ultimately against the Constitution. James was quite aware of their suspicions, and of the danger of putting himself legally in the wrong. He accordingly sought to secure the sanction of Parliament for the repeal of the Tests and for the establishment of religious toleration. With this view he made persistent efforts during the summer of 1687 to establish his personal influence over members of Parliament by securing their adhesion to himself. When this system of "closeting" (as it was called) proved a hopeless failure, he dissolved Parliament (July 2). One last resource remained: a new Parliament might be packed, and the public officers turned into electioneering agents. If officials refused to act this part, they could be turned out. In these circumstances, half the Lords Lieutenant and eight hundred Protestant magistrates speedily resigned or were dismissed. James proceeded to fill the corporations, the benches of magistrates and the state departments with his own nominees. Commissions of "Regulators" filled the corporation councils and the commissions of the peace with Catholics and Dissenters, and expelled from the public departments any officials likely to resist the King. Such violent changes could not be accomplished without disorganising the machinery of State and producing universal discontent. The continuance of drastic reforms in the public service, together with a lavish creation of peers, might at any time place both Houses of Parliament at the feet of James. A revolution of this kind, if systematically pursued, must eventually be met by a revolution of another kind; and from this time forward passive constitutional opposition began to develop into active resistance. By the winter of 1687 James might have read the signs, for almost all the nobility had deserted his Court and retired to their country estates. Foreign diplo matists at least were not deceived, and the sagacious Prince of Orange understood that the time for active interference was approaching. In spite of some previous disputes the differences between William and James did not become acute till 1687. The beginnings of a real quarrel may be dated from that year, when William sent Dykvelt to England on a mission whose professed object was one of diplomatic compliment to James (February - May). Dykvelt speedily revealed his real purpose by arranging for secret interviews with Devonshire, Halifax, Danby, Shrewsbury, and others, and endeavouring to ascertain their views as to the Declaration and the policy of James. It appears that Dykvelt repeated the main substance of these conversations to James, and that there is no reason to suspect any direct attempt at conspiracy. But none the less his mission marks an epoch in the history of the time. William concluded from Dykvelt's report that he must abandon all |