Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/553

] declaration would be a great blow, and that in a general liberty of conscience the Anglican church would go down, for persecution of the dissenters would then be revenged upon her, and, unsupported by the crown, she would meet with deserved contempt. And, had the toleration been legitimately obtained and guaranteed, after the servile conduct of the church at that time, this might have been the case. The dissenters had every reason to be thankful for toleration. They had been trodden down by the Anglican hierarchy; they had been dragged before the arbitrary High Commission, and plundered and imprisoned at pleasure. The bishops had supported every unrighteous act against them—the conventicle acts, the test act, the five-mile act, the act of uniformity; and now they could enjoy their property, the peace of their firesides, their liberty, and their worship in the open sight of God and man. These were great boons, and, therefore, a great number of nonconformists expressed their gratitude for them. The quakers in particular sent up a grateful address, which was presented by Penn with an equally warm speech; but both they and the other dissenters restricted themselves to thanking James for the ease they enjoyed, without going into the question of his right to grant it. Some few individuals, in their enthusiasm, or worked upon by the court, went beyond this; but the general body of the nonconformists were on their guard, and some of the most eminent leaders refused even to address the king in acknowledgment of the boon. Amongst these were Baxter, who had been so ignominiously treated by Jeffreys; Howe, who had had to flee abroad, and Bunyan, who had suffered twelve years' imprisonment for his faith; they boldly reminded their followers of the unconstitutional and, therefore, insecure basis on which the relief rested; that a protestant successor might come—even if before that popery, grown strong, had not crushed them—and again subject them to the harsh dominance of the Anglican hierarchy.

No exertions were omitted to induce the dissenters to send up addresses; and they were actively canvassed by members of their different bodies, as Carr, Alsop, Lobb, and Rosewell, the last of whom was liberated from prison for the purpose. James took care to throw all the blame of the past persecutions on the church, which, he said, had been at the bottom of all those councils. The church, on the other hand, deserted by the crown, retorted the accusation, and attributed every act of persecution to the government, to which it professed unwillingly to have submitted. Thus was soon the edifying sight of the two arch-oppressors quarrelling, and in their mutual recriminations letting out the confession that they both knew very well how base and un-Christian their conduct had been.

But there was a third party to which all alike looked with anxiety in this crisis, and this consisted of William of Orange and his wife. As protestants, and the probable successors of James, if they approved of the indulgence, they would greatly strengthen the king; if they disapproved it altogether, it would give a great shock to the protestant interest in England. But William was too politic not to see all the bearings of the question, and he and the princess jointly avowed their entire approval of complete toleration of all phases of the Christian religion, but their disapproval of the illegal means by which James aimed to effect it, and of catholics being admitted to place and power. These were precisely the views of the great majority of Englishmen; and accordingly James sunk still deeper in public odium on this publication, and William and Mary rose in popularity. They seized the opportunity to organise a most powerful party in their favour, and thus pave the way to an accession to the throne, which their sagacity assured them would much sooner arrive than the natural demise of the king. It has been a common subject of censure on Mary that she so readily united in a plan to drive her father from the throne; but the course of this history will greatly extenuate, if not entirely excuse, her conduct. So long as the policy of James promised a continuance of his power, no steps were taken by Mary to supersede him; so soon as it became evident that no earthly power, to say nothing of justice or right, could keep him on the throne, it became a mere act of prudence to take care that no alien interest usurped her own. We shall see that James did contemplate entirely setting aside his legitimate issue in favour of an illegitimate son, and with the intention to permanently destroy protestantism. That Mary contemplated or committed any act of personal cruelty or harshness towards her father anything further than securing her succession against an intruder, remains to be shown. Her husband, with all his virtues, was not proof against allowing if not perpetrating questionable acts, as has been and will be soon; and he was so jealous of his own dignity and power, that he for years in secret brooded in gloomy discontent on the prospect of Mary's succession to the crown of England without his having any claim to share it, not even communicating his splenetic feeling to her. But this secret was penetrated by Burnet, explained to Mary, and, through her generosity, at once the difficulty was dissipated by her engaging to admit him to a full share of her hereditary authority. From that moment William redoubled his zeal to secure the succession; but there is no question that Mary exerted her filial regard to secure her father against any personal injustice, as the event showed.

William now dispatched to England orders to his ambassador, Dykvelt, to use his endeavours to knit up the different sections of the discontented into one paramount interest in his favour. The scattered elements of an overwhelming power lay around the throne, which James, by his blind folly and tyranny, had made hostile to himself, and prepared ready to the hand of a master to combine for his destruction. Danby, who had fallen in the late reign for his opposition to the French influence, and who had been the means of uniting Mary to William, had regained extensive influence amongst both tories and whig:, and was driven by James into determined opposition. Halifax, who had been the chief champion of James's accession by opposing the exclusion bill, and whose dangerous eloquence made him especially formidable, had been dismissed and neglected by him; Finch, earl of Nottingham, a zealous tory and churchman, and one of the most powerful orators of the house of lords, he made his enemy by his dismissal of his younger brother from the post of solicitor-general for not acquiescing in the king's dispensing powers, and by his attacks on the church and the constitution; the earl of Devonshire he had managed, by imprisonment and a monstrous fine, equally to disgust; and