Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/557

] he again turned south, and reached Oxford on the 3rd of September. Everywhere he had been attended by the high sheriffs of the counties with splendid retinues; and the clergy in the towns had flocked around him in great numbers, though he continued on his progress to neglect their preaching for mass. If outward circumstances could be relied on, it might have been supposed that the king had never been more popular: and, with all the prestige of this tour, he summoned the refractory fellows of Magdalene before him, and rated them soundly on their disobedience. They knelt and offered him a petition, but he haughtily refused to look at it, bidding them go that instant and elect the bishop of Oxford, or expect his high displeasure. But the fellows could not be thus brought to submission, and James quitted the town in high dudgeon.

At this crisis comes in one more of the persevering calumnies of Macaulay on William Penn, which are the more remarkable from an historian whose grandfather was dismissed from the Society of Friends, and who was himself ejected from the representation of Edinburgh chiefly by the agency of members of that society. In noting this first instance of his animosity, we once for all are contented to state that, without following his continual attacks on the Society of Friends, we have examined them, and find them groundless. In this case Macaulay states that James engaged Penn to write a letter to the fellows, and afterwards to make them a visit, to persuade them to admit Parker. Macaulay declares that Penn never denied the writing of this letter—an assertion quite contrary to the fact; the copy of the proceedings still preserved at Magdalene bearing on this very letter this endorsement—"Mr. Penn disowned this." So far from Penn being engaged by the king, too, to persuade the fellows, they declare that they solicited his good offices; and a deputation of them even went from Oxford to Windsor to have an interview with him on the subject; and Dr. Hough himself, in a letter still preserved in the British Museum, says, "I thank God he did not so much as offer at any proposal by way of accommodation." These words themselves throw down the whole fabric of Macaulay's calumnious charges on this head; and with this, though often occurring, we may dismiss them.

On the 20th of October James sent down a special commission, consisting of Cartwright, bishop of Chester, Wright, chief justice of the King's Bench, and Jenner, a baron of the exchequer, attended by three troops of cavalry with drawn swords, to Oxford, to expel Hough and install Parker. Parker was installed, but the fellows would not acknowledge him. James, therefore, ejected them altogether. In a few weeks Parker died, and then he proceeded to put the whole college into the hands of papists, appointing Gifford, one of the four vicars-apostolic, president: for now, in the regular progress of his system, James had admitted four vicars-apostolic here, instead of one, which had been the case before. It may be imagined what resentment this arbitrary proceeding occasioned, not only in the universities themselves, but amongst the clergy in every quarter of the kingdom, who now saw that nothing would deter the king from uprooting the deepest foundations of the church.

Still more daring and atrocious schemes were agitated by James and his popish cabal. Soon after his accession it had been proposed to set aside the claims of the princess of Orange, and make Anne heir-apparent on condition that she embraced popery. Anne utterly refused. It was then proposed to make over Ireland to Louis of France in case Mary of Orange could not be prevented succeeding to England; and Louis expressed his assent to the proposal. Tyrconnel was to make all necessary preparations for this traitorous transfer. But at this moment a new light broke on James, which quashed these unnatural and unnational projects: the queen was declared pregnant.

The news of this prospect was received by the public with equal incredulity and suspicion. The queen had had several children, who had died in their infancy; and there was nothing improbable in the expectation of another child, although five years had elapsed since her last confinement. But what excited the ridicule and the suspicion was the obvious interest of the king to have an heir who might be educated in popery, and the foolish prophecies and assertions of the Jesuit cabal about the court. The Jesuits had unfortunately only too notoriously in their writing sanctioned any fraud for gaining their ends, and it was now immediately believed that they had a scheme for foisting a false heir on the country. The queen's mother, the duchess of Modena, before her death, had sent rich offerings to our lady of Loretto, imploring a male heir for James; and this pious monarch himself, on his late progress, had visited St. Winifred's Well, and put up similar earnest petitions to that saint. The Jesuits and other catholics about court propagated the most extraordinary prophecies of a fine, healthy son who was to arrive, and not only of a son, but of twin sons, the second of whom was to be pope of Rome. The consequence was that the whole story was treated with the utmost ridicule by every class throughout the country. The princess of Orange, so far from betraying any alarm on the subject, joined in and encouraged the ridicule; and her sister Anne, the princess of Denmark, wrote letters so plain and even gross, that they cannot now be read without wonder. Anne contended that, if the queen was really pregnant, she would be glad to convince her by an actual personal examination, but that, on the contrary, she avoided letting her see her undress; and she declared that she would never believe the story unless she saw the child born.

The prospect of an heir, however, true or false, drove James on further and more desperate projects. Should a son be born, and live, which none of the queen's children had done hitherto, the popish heir would be exposed to the danger of a long minority. James might be called away before the son had been firmly rooted in the catholic faith, and the protestant bishops and nobles would surround him with protestant instructors, and most likely ruin all James's plans, of perpetuating popery. To obviate this, he determined to have an act of parliament, settling the form of the child's guardianship and education, and vesting all the necessary powers in catholic hands. Any prudent man would at least have waited to see the birth and probable life of the child before rushing on so desperate a scheme; for, to have an act, he must call a parliament; and to call a parliament under the present feeling of the nation was to bring together one of the most determinedly-protestant assemblies of men that had ever been seen. But James was of that mole-eyed,