THE periods CHAPTER V. (HE periods prescribed by the Act which altered the Oaths of Allegiance-first for the suspension, and next for the ejectment of those who refused to swearwere the 1st of August, 1689, and the 1st of February, 1690. In the early part of the year events occurred which increased the importance of exacting the prescribed oaths. James left France in the month of March, 1689. Rumour ran that he had reached England, that he was in London, that he was secretly lodged in the house of Lloyd, the Nonjuror. This proved to be a mistake. He landed at Kingsale in Ireland, trusting to his friends, and saying, "I will recover my own dominions with my own subjects, or perish in the attempt." The French King speeded the parting guest with the equivocal compliment, "The best wish I can form for your service is, that I may never see you again. "2 But with the people of Ireland James found little favour-the Protestants disliking him as a Papist, the Papists suspecting him because they considered his policy towards Protestants too lenient. In support 1 Tanner MSS., 28, 377. Letter from Lloyd to Sancroft, March 31, 1689. 2 Dalrymple, i. 322. 3 Macpherson's Hist., 1. 630. of his attempt to recover the crown, his army laid siege to Londonderry, and the French navy skirmished with an English squadron in Bantry Bay. This occurred in April. A Parliament, at his summons, met in Dublin the following month, and from the Castle, where he took up his residence, he issued a Declaration to his Irish subjects, exhorting them to support his claims. Roussel, a French Protestant Minister, who after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes had witnessed the demolition of his church, and had dared one night, at the request of his congregation, to preach amidst the ruins, was for the offence sentenced to be broken on the wheel. Having effected his escape from France, he happened, at the time of James' arrival in Ireland, to be an exile there. One of the first things done by this Royal friend of religious liberty was to deliver the refugee to the Ambassador of Louis, who had him conveyed home to undergo his sentence.1 Copies of James' Declaration were circulated in England, and found their way to Cambridge. One Thomas Fowler, from the University, stood at the bar of the House of Commons on the 20th of June, to state that the documents came down in boxes, directed to the Masters of Queen's and St. John's; and one of the Burgesses for the University acquainted the House that the boxes were in the custody of the Vice-Chancellor.2 The Government in England, with their elected Sovereign, was challenged to submit to the cashiered King, or to hold their own by force of arms. The gauntlet being 1 Oldmixon, iii. 18. 2 House of Commons' Journals. Amongst the Tanner MSS., xxvii. 161, is a Letter from a Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, to a member of the House of Commons, vindicating the College from the charge of disaffection to the Govern ment. thrown down before the world, no alternative remained but for William to return to Holland, or to fight out the contest as best he could. The position in which these circumstances placed him in reference to the Nonjurors is obvious. Personally he had no disposition to come to extremities with them; he had given proof of a desire to treat them with the utmost leniency; but the exigencies of his position rendered it indispensable that at this moment he should be unyielding towards all justly suspected of disaffection. Of the disaffection of the Nonjurors there could be no doubt. They refused to take the new oath on the very ground that, by virtue of the old one, their allegiance belonged to James. James was their anointed King, their King by Divine right; William was esteemed by them as no better than a usurper. Three nonjuring Prelates died in the course of the spring and summer. Cartwright, the semi-Popish Bishop of Chester, after joining James at St. Germains, accompanied him to Ireland, where on the 15th of April he expired, having received on his death-bed the sacrament and the absolution of the Church of England, instead of conforming to Rome, as at the time he was reported to have done.1 Thomas, Bishop of Worcester, died June the 25th, solemnly declaring on his death-bed that, if his heart did not deceive him, and the grace of God failed him not, he thought he could burn at a stake before he would take the new oath.2 Lake, Bishop of Chichester, followed Thomas to the grave in the month of August, expressing satisfaction with the course which he had pursued, and declaring his conviction that the oaths were inconsistent with the doctrine of passive obedience, which he maintained to be Salmon's Lives, 388. 2 Life of Kettlewell, 199. These testimonies, a doctrine of the English Church.1 hallowed by the solemnity of death, were heirlooms for the Nonjurors, who preserved them with care, and exhibited them with reverence, not without considerable effect in promoting their cause. The Prelates who had not sworn, persistently continued to refuse the oaths; the Primate being reproached with his inconsistency for the part he had taken in the Revolution. He was insolently told by a Jacobite correspondent in Holland, "Your Grace has forfeited your neck already in signing that traitorous Declaration at Guildhall, wherein you cast off your allegiance to your lawful Sovereign, and applied yourself to the Prince of Orange."2 Free to dis charge their functions up to the 1st of August, 1689, the Bishops were then suspended from the exercise of them. Still they enjoyed their benefices, and continued to reside in their palaces. The interim was filled up by the defence of their opinions. Sancroft, following the bent of his disposition, shut himself up at Lambeth, retaining impracticable views of a Regency, refusing to acknowledge William and Mary, combining good intentions with narrowness of mind, and saying to the last, with Pius the IX. at Rome, Non possumus. Lloyd, Bishop of Norwich, unfortunately sympathized with the Archbishop, and encouraged him in his policy. Ken-a far different man, firm in principle, of a tender Life of Kettlewell, 203. The original declaration is in the Tanner MSS., xxvii. 77. The signature of the Bishop is in a trembling hand. Witnesses. Thos. Greene, D.D., the Bishop's G. Hickes, D.D. conscience, yet open to R. Jenkyn, Precentor. MS. copies of the Declaration were circulated at the time. I have one in my possession. 2 Tanner MSS., 27, 16. Letter from the Hague, April 23, 1689. conviction, careless about his interests, only anxious to do what was right-almost resolved to submit. But, after a night's rest, he said to Dr. Hooper, who had pressed submission upon him, "I question not but that you, and several others, have taken the oaths with as good a conscience as myself shall refuse them; and sometimes you have almost persuaded me to comply by the arguments you have used; but I beg you to use them no further, for should I be persuaded to comply, and after see reason to repent, you would make me the most miserable man in the world."1 Turner, Bishop of Ely, another of the nonjuring band, whose character has been indicated already, whose Jacobitism is unquestionable, and who supported the Archbishop in his defiant course, wrote to him on Ascension Day, 1689, a letter in which he refers to Ken, and the doubts felt respecting him. "I must needs say, the sooner we meet our brother of Bath the better, for I must no longer in duty conceal from your Grace-though I beseech you to keep it in terms of a secret-that this very good man is, I fear, warping from us, and the true interests of the Church of England, towards a compliance with the new Government.”2 1 Life of Ken, by a Layman, 365. 2 Ibid, 366. The following extracts respecting Turner are curious: He is said to have very heartily repented of what he did at the trial of the Seven, "and to have acknowledged that their going to the Tower, when they might easily have prevented the same by entering into mutual recognizances for each other, as the King would have had them, was a wrong step taken, and an unnecessary punctilio of honour in Christian Bishops. Howsoever it |