however, of gaining this point by act of parliament, and not unwilling to stretch his own prerogative, James proceeded to claim on behalf of the monarch a dispensing power as it regarded penal enactments made by act of parliament, and, with the concurrence of his judges, declared the authority of the crown to be absolute.

Religious liberty was thus held out to dissenters, at the expense of constitutional freedom. The dilemma was a difficult one; so difficult, as to make us cease to wonder that men should have taken opposite views on the subject. Some rejoiced in their actual freedom, however gained; whilst others saw that dissenters were only protected in order to divide them from the church, and that the end would be the bringing in of a popery which would crush them both. Bunyan, among the rest, detected the motive which prompted the new measures. Whilst addresses went up to the king from various bodies of dissenters, the principal men kept silence. Defoe says, 66 I told the dissenters I had rather the Church of England should pull off our clothes by fines and forfeitures, than that the papists should fall both upon the church and the dissenters, and pull our skins off by fire and fagot." "'* The truth, however, was, that the dissenters were afraid of toleration in the abstract. "The shell," to use Bunyan's simile, was yet "on their head." They hated popery; their feelings regarding it were the extreme of intolerance. Their own and their fathers' sufferings had been so great, that they were distrustful and timorous as to any decided action.

It was scarcely surprising. The havoc committed among them, during the recent execution of the penal laws, was frightful. Twenty thousand presbyterians suffered martyrdom in Scotland, during the reigns of Charles II. and James II. The quakers complained that fifteen hundred of their body were whom three hundred and fifty had died since 1660.

and forty-one were transported to the West Indies,

in prison; of Eight hundred many of whom

died in the passage, and some were sold as slaves. Eight thousand

* Defoe's Appeal to Honor and Justice, p. 52.

+ M'Crie's Covenanters.

dissenters are said to have perished in prison, during the reign of Charles I. alone. As a proof of the temper of the times, it may be mentioned, that Jeremiah White, who had been one of Cromwell's chaplains, had "prepared a list of ministers and others who had suffered imprisonment; distinguishing those who had died, or were starved in jail, with an account of the fines levied by execution on their estates." A large reward was offered by James' party for its publication, as that which would bring infamy on the Church of England. White, however, absolutely refused. “He scorned the temptation, rejected the rewards, and told them he would not so far assist to pull down the church. In short, he refused either to publish his memoranda, or to give them the least opportunity for doing so themselves; and this purely as he saw the design of the party, which, as fellow-protestant, as well as a lissenter, he had more sense, honor and Christianity, than to join in." According to Oldmixon, White had collected a list containing sixty thousand, who suffered for their religious opinions, from the Restoration to the Revolution, five thousand of whom died in prison.

William and Benjamin Hewling, who were baptists, suffered at this time a cruel death. John Howe fled the country. The objects for which the civil war had been undertaken during the last reign were utterly, and, for the present, hopelessly defeated, amidst a series of scenes to which English history offers no parallel.

The meeting-house at Stepney, built in 1674, still exists, to show what were the circumstances under which dissenting worship was carried on in those days, and how the congregations screened themselves from notice.

The lower part of it was probably employed as a family mansion, and divided into rooms. This whole area is now sustained by two majestic pillars, sent over from Holland after the revolution, when Matthew Mead was pastor of the church. But the upper part of the building, then accessible by stairs and trap-doors, was

* Defoe's Review, vol. II., p. 488.

fitted up as a place of public worship, in such a manner as to afford some security against the intrusion of an informer. The whole

building is now one of the most venerable memorials of nonconformist history.

How James II. fulfilled the evil destinies of his notorious family, and, whilst deaf to all friendly warning, rushed madly on the catastrophe which ended his dynasty; - how the king, diverted from the powerless nonconformists, provoked a party able to avenge its wrongs, the prelatical party itself; - how the seven bishops refused to proclaim the indulgence illegally granted by the monarch, and how James' war upon them hastened and consummated his own ruin; how William, Prince of Orange, was summoned by the voice of the nation to the forsaken throne; how, wearied and exhausted by persecution, the nation consented to a form of toleration which, though essentially imperfect, was a large improvement on the terror of the preceding reigns; and how dissent became an evil to be borne with, if it could not be cured, absurd and contemptible as such a condition is, the reader of ordinary

history already knows. That the main evil, however, still remained, though it was somewhat palliated and disguised, will be apparent in the few pages which yet follow.

CHAPTER XI.

"6 HIGH CHURCH."

"Sir Richard Steele hit the mark when he thus distinguished the two principal churches in Christendom, the Church of Rome and the Church of England : that the former pretended to be infallible, and the latter to be always in the right." Whiston's Life, p. 168.

WE have introduced the reader to London, as London, or some part of it, appeared at the commencement of the seventeenth century. The present scene is laid in the heart of the city a hundred years later. The ruins of the great and devastating fire have been long since removed, and the metropolis puts on an altered air. The opportunity would have been a noble one for carrying into execution the magnificent plans of Sir Christopher Wren, and for reducing the ill-arranged streets to a scheme presenting both grandeur and unity. But private interests had prevailed over public convenience, and the city arose as it best could. It was, however, greatly improved in its reconstruction. New churches, of which no less than fifty-one within the city were from the designs of Wren himself, met the eye in every direction, many of them alike remarkable for their elegance and convenience. The thoroughfares were, however, still narrow and confined; booths protruded in front of many of the houses; footpaths were unknown, except in a few favored quarters; and though some imperfect attempts had been made at lighting the streets, the effort had not, as yet, been remarkable for its succees. The great Cathedral Church of St. Paul's, though ruined in the plan for its construction by the desire of James II. to have it adapted to a Roman Catholic ceremon'al, was advancing to its completion under the inspection of its now

aged architect. The crowds which fill the streets are remarkable in their attire. The full periwig, the broad-bottomed coat, the conspicuous shoe-buckle, the dependent queue, distinguish the gentlemen, as the wide-spread hoop, now for some time in fashion, marks the ladies; whilst the more sober citizen contents himself with his single-breasted coat of russet color, and the square cravat which hangs pendent beneath his chin. How different is the new city in its character and costume from the old one, which so much distinguished itself in the wars of the parliament! The naked tyranny of the sovereign is not now the theme of every crowd and coffee-house. Popish plots are no more. The succession to the throne is no longer disputed. Commerce, formerly disordered and disorganized, is prosperous. England, which a little while ago

expatriated its own religious men, has become the haven for those who, driven from their homes by the revocation of the edict of Nantes, have taken refuge here, and have introduced their manufactures to the great benefit of the entire community. Has the nation, then, unlearned its old illiberalities? Has it arrived at

the conclusion that the war of the civil power with conscience is unrighteous and monstrous? Has the magistrate dropped his sword where the rights of Cæsar end, and where those of God begin? We shall see.

We are opposite to the New Exchange, A. D. 1703. (The reader will remember that, at the date of which we speak, it faced, not as now the east, but the south.) A large crowd is collected before the pillory which has been placed there. It is hung with garlands, by hands which little sympathize with the purpose of its erection. It contains a sufferer,-a man of the middle size, about forty years of age, with hooked nose, a sharp chin, a dark-colored wig, and a countenance bearing evident traces of much wear and tear, and in which the grave is about equally mingled with the satirical. His advent to the pillory has been a kind of triumphal procession; and now he is fixed in it, the scoffs do not arise nor the missiles fly; the mob, on the contrary, drink his health. The careful spectator may sel', in the merry twinkle of those gray eyes, the trenchant