334 The Popish Plot [1673-85 Nonconformists themselves supported the Test Act. Men suspected, and suspected with reason, more than they could prove; and then they grew wild. In vain Parliament strove to force the King into a clear and consistent Protestant foreign policy. Genuine Popish plots in great variety were always hatching in Stewart times, and, if Oates and Bedloe piled up a monstrous heap of perjuries, they piled them over a foundation of truth. At first they got little credit: the panic was only let loose by Godfrey's murder-for murder it seems to have been-but at such a time as this every tale went down. It was the worst panic in English history, for Danby and Shaftesbury encouraged it, each for his own purposes. For once the penal laws against Roman Catholics were strictly enforced, and became a real persecution. The King played his game with consummate skill. Let the managers of the agitation sacrifice as many victims as they pleased: he "gave them line," and waited for the reaction when the series of judicial murders. became too shocking. There was good reason for preventing the succession of the Duke of York; but Shaftesbury scandalised all decent feeling by proposing the King's bastard, Monmouth. So the last years of Charles II were a time of reaction. A loyalist revival swept away Shaftesbury and the Exclusion Bill, and Protestant suspicion was abated. After all, the Papists were not so bad as Oates had made out. Charles used his victory with moderation, and was careful to give no further provocations. Hardly a murmur was raised when the Duke of York became King in 1685; for Monmouth's rebellion was an utter failure. None but exiles could have dreamed of success for so wild an enterprise. Our first impression may be that the reign of Charles II is a pure and simple falling-back from the toleration which seemed approaching in Cromwell's time. It began with persecution systematic and extensive Quakers lay in jail by thousands and it ended with few signs of amendment. Every attempt to relax its severity had been defeated; and in 1685 persecution and passive obedience seemed as much the dominant creed as in 1662. But in 1662 these principles were an enthusiasm; in 1685 they were little more than orthodoxy, and men were not wanting who saw this. The University of Oxford might proclaim passive obedience (1662); but Bishop Morley from his death-bed (1684) warned the Duke of York that, if ever the clergy wanted a way out of it, they would certainly find one. So, too, with persecution. The belief of educated men was more and more coming round to toleration. It was adopted by men of all sorts by divines like Tillotson, by royalists like Bishop Croft, lawyers like Orlando Bridgeman, students like Wilkins and Locke, politicians like Shaftesbury, men of the world like John Churchill, the future Marlborough. The cause was really won; but a shock was needed to show that it was won. That shock was given by James II. 1685-8] The reign of James II 335 James began with fair professions; but his actions soon revived the worst suspicions. Had his one object been to convince the nation that a Roman Catholic is never to be trusted, he could not have done his work better. The open parade of Roman worship and the open favour shown at Court to crowds of Roman Catholics and renegades gave offence enough, and the matter became serious when James packed the Bench till he obtained from his judges what he could not get from the most loyal Parliament on record power to dispense with the Test Act- and when he proceeded to officer the army and the civil service with Roman Catholics. Before long the most devoted loyalists took alarm, and the English Roman Catholics themselves mostly held aloof. The Pope was for moderation, but the Jesuits and the renegades urged the King to reckless haste. So far James had reckoned on the Church, in hopes of getting a legal toleration for recusants only. He thought he could do what he pleased with men who preached passive obedience. But Morley's warning now came true. Instead of practising their doctrine, they began to reconsider it. They had taken for granted that an English King would be a good son of the Church; and they might fairly doubt whether quite the same obedience was due to such an enemy as James. They could go a long way with the King; but, when the successive blows of the new High Commission, the suspension of Compton, Bishop of London, and the attacks on the Universities and the Charterhouse brought them face to face with Romanism and despotism, they settled down into opposition. Meanwhile James had changed his tactics. If the Church would not help him, he could turn to the Nonconformists. They had been persecuted with much severity since 1681, and might be grateful for relief. So in April, 1687, came out a Declaration of Indulgence. King James expounded that conscience ought not to be constrained, and that such constraint had always been contrary to his inclination, promised to protect and maintain the Church as by law established, and finished up by guaranteeing to all men their lands and properties, particularly church and abbey lands. To carry out this liberal policy, he "thinks fit, by virtue of Our royal prerogative," to suspend all penal laws and all religious tests affecting Nonconformists and recusants. The jails were emptied. The Nonconformists were invited to Whitehall, and plied with the seductions of Court favour. It was a strange promotion for them. "The other day they were Sons of Belial; now they were Angels of Light." But would they help the Jesuits and the King to pull down the Church? Some were willing, but leaders like Baxter and Howe and Bunyan ranged themselves on the other side, and presently (about August) the case was summed up by Halifax in his Letter to a Dissenter. Could they believe in this sudden change? Was Popery the only friend to liberty? Would they justify the dispensing 336 The Revolution [1688-9 power and all its consequences? Were they willing to repeal and enact laws with the Roman Consistory for Lords of the Articles? It was idle for the Court to offer securities or "equivalents" to Protestantism. As Halifax said later in his Anatomy of an Equivalent: "If laws were binding, let them be observed: if not, they were no security." Such arguments as these were decisive; and, though a few of the dissenters like Penn supported the Court, it soon appeared that the main body of them preferred a Church which persecuted by law to a King who claimed the right of suspending laws wholesale at his pleasure. In truth, it was not now a persecuting Church. Even in the time of exile the Caroline divines never showed much leaning to Rome. In the main they were as resolute Protestants as the Puritans themselves; and now the common danger drew even extreme men like Sancroft closer to the Nonconformists. The old quarrels were dropped, and all was peace and charity in the Protestant fold. Very few "remained in their peevishness." So, when James added insult to injury by reissuing the Declaration of Indulgence in May, 1688, and ordering the clergy to read it in church, dissenters and churchmen stood together against him. Even the Roman Catholics - the English Roman Catholics- would not lift a hand to save him. What the Revolution overthrew was little more than a cabal of Jesuits and renegades. Now, the condition of this league of Protestants was that the Nonconformists were to be secured relief by law-toleration certainly, and if possible comprehension. Accordingly, so soon as William and Mary were fairly settled on the throne, the work was taken in hand. It was a Tory and a zealous churchman who brought in the Bills. The Earl of Nottingham (then Mr Daniel Finch) had borne a hand in framing them in the days of the Popish Plot; but Shaftesbury would not hear of them. Now, he laid them on the table of the Lords, and the Toleration Act passed without difficulty (May 24, 1689). It enacted that the Act of Uniformity and the persecuting Acts should not apply to persons taking the oaths of allegiance and supremacy and making the declaration against transubstantiation, provided only they did not hold meetings with locked doors. Ministers were also required to sign the Articles excepting those on Church government; and the Anabaptists were further excused the clause approving Infant Baptism. The Quakers had to "promise and solemnly declare" themselves good subjects who renounced the authority of the Pope and believed in the Trinity and the inspiration of the Bible. Dissenting chapels were to be certified, and there was to be a penalty of twenty pounds for disturbing the same. But Papists and those who denied the Trinity were expressly excluded from the benefit of the Act. Toleration was thus established in practice, though not in theory; for the persecuting statutes were still the law of the land, and toleration was only an exemption. So late as 1787 the Methodists were liable to the penalties of the Conventicle Act, and could gain no relief till they were not only licensed, but licensed as dissenters. 337 As for the Roman Catholics, after the Revolution connivance was the most they could expect, and this they generally got. Toleration such as William or Halifax would have given them was hardly a matter of practical politics: the Tories were against it to a man, and most of the Whigs too. Fresh persecuting statutes were enacted later, especially after the Tory reaction of 1699 and Bolingbroke's plot of 1715; and though they soon fell into disuse, no great relief was given by law till 1778, and even then it led to the Gordon riots. After the Toleration Act, the Comprehension Bill. This Bill, brought forward in 1689, relaxed the subscription to the Articles, made the "nocent ceremonies" optional in most churches, and admitted Presbyterian ministers without reordination. The Bishop was to lay his hands on them with the words, "Take thou authority to preach-in the Church of England." It ended by proposing to ask the King and Queen for a commission to revise the Liturgy. But now came difficulties. The mass of the clergy were Tories and High-churchmen; and, now that they had got over the panic of 1688, they were most unwilling to make any changes so as to let in dissenters. If Nottingham himself was for comprehension, he chiefly aimed at making the Church strong enough to enforce the Test Act, which the dissenters largely evaded by the practice of occasional conformity. And this again raised difficulties on the other side. The veterans of 1662 might look back wistfully to the Church from which they had been expelled; but a younger generation was growing up which preferred to remain outside. Better be content with toleration than become unwelcome guests of a hostile Church. Moreover, there were many dissenters whom no comprehension could include; and every such person saw the danger to himself of Nottingham's policy. The greater the success of comprehension, the greater the danger for those not comprehended. Indeed, the men who raised the Sacheverell riots (1710) and passed the Schism Act (1714) were quite capable of repealing the Toleration Act. Thus the Comprehension Bill was attacked on both sides by the High-churchmen who hated the idea, and by the dissenters who feared its success and the Whigs were divided, one section of them wanting Comprehension, the other preferring to relax the Test Act. However, an Ecclesiastical Commission was appointed which revised the Liturgy. But Convocation refused even to discuss their labours, and proved so mutinous that it had to be prorogued. The Comprehension Bill was dropped. C. M. H. V. 22 22 CHAPTER XII AUSTRIA, POLAND, AND TURKEY THE second half of the seventeenth century is perhaps the most critical period in the history of Austria, as it certainly is in the history of the great House of Habsburg, with whose fortunes those of Austria have for ages been inextricably intertwined. The Spanish monarchy, in the hands of the elder branch, was steadily sinking through impotence towards partition. Portugal had to be surrendered in 1668; and the feeble throne of Charles II was only preserved till the close of the century by constant cessions of territory to French greed and by the costly aid of European coalitions. The Austrian Habsburgs seemed to be threatened with a similar fate. Their dreams of a revived Imperial control over Germany, which might have been realised if Ferdinand II could have been his own Wallenstein, instead of having to employ so unmanageable an agent, were shattered by the victories of Gustavus Adolphus, by the disintegrating diplomacy of Richelieu, and in the end by the military strength of France. The Treaty of Westphalia not only transferred the Habsburg rights in Elsass to the Bourbon, but, by securing to the Princes of the Empire the independent control of their foreign relations, it made Germany the loosest and most impotent of federations. Nothing held it together except the survival of a great tradition and a grandiose title, together with the more practical unifying force of the dread of Turkish aggression. This danger enabled Leopold I, the son and successor of Ferdinand III, to obtain his election to the Imperial dignity in 1658, in spite of the intrigues of Mazarin. But, with the aid of French gold, the Electors were induced to extort from the young Emperor in his capitulation a pledge that he would abstain from sending assistance to Spain. And France gave added force to the pledge by joining in the same year the League of the Rhine, formed by those Electors and Princes whose territories would have to be traversed by troops on their way from Austria to the Netherlands. In face of the League of the Rhine and the continued danger of co-operation between France and Sweden, it was impossible to gain substantial power for the German monarchy. If the Austrian Habsburgs |