VI. 1686. discussed. Great numbers of absurd legends about CHAP. miracles wrought by saints and relics were translated from the Italian, and published as specimens of the priestcraft by which the greater part of Christendom had been fooled. Of the tracts put forth on these subjects by Anglican divines during the short reign of James the Second many have probably perished. Those which may still be found in our great libraries make up a mass of near twenty thousand pages. * Divines matched. The Roman Catholics did not yield the victory with- The Roman out a struggle. One of them, named Henry Hills, had Catholic been appointed printer to the royal household and overchapel, and had been placed by the King at the head of a great office in London from which theological tracts came forth by hundreds. Obadiah Walker's press was not less active at Oxford. But, with the exception of some bad translations of Bossuet's admirable works, these establishments put forth nothing of the smallest value. It was indeed impossible for any intelligent and candid Roman Catholic to deny that the champions of his Church were, in every talent and acquirement, completely overmatched. The ablest of them would not, on the other side, have been considered as of the third rate. Many of them, even when they had something to say, knew not how to say it. They had been excluded by their religion from English schools and universities; nor had they ever, till the accession of James, found England an agreeable, or even a safe, residence. They had therefore passed the greater part of their lives on the Continent, and had almost unlearned their mother tongue. When they preached, their outlandish accent moved the derision of the audience. They spelt like washerwomen. Their diction was disfigured by foreign idioms; and, This I can attest from my own son, that Archbishop Wake had not researches. There is an excellent collection in the British Museum. Birch tells us, in his Life of Tillot been able to form even a perfect CHAP. VI. 1686. when they meant to be eloquent, they imitated, as well as they could, what was considered as fine writing in those Italian academies where rhetoric had then reached the last stage of corruption. Disputants labouring under these disadvantages would scarcely, even with truth on their side, have been able to make head against men whose style is eminently distinguished by simple purity and grace. * The situation of England in the year 1686 cannot be better described than in the words of the French Ambassador. "The discontent," he wrote, "is great and general but the fear of incurring still worse evils restrains all who have anything to lose. The King openly expresses his joy at finding himself in a situ ation to strike bold strokes. * Cardinal Howard spoke strongly to Burnet at Rome on this subject. Burnet, i. 662. There is a curious passage to the same effect in a despatch of Barillon: but I have mislaid the reference. One of the Roman Catholic divines who engaged in this controversy, a Jesuit named Andrew Pulton, whom Mr. Oliver, in his biography of the Order, pronounces to have been a man of distinguished ability, very frankly owns his deficiencies. "A. P. having been eighteen years out of his own country, pretends not yet to any perfection of the English expression or orthography." His orthography is indeed deplorable. In one of his letters wright is put for write, woed for would. He challenged Tenison to dispute with him in Latin, that they might be on equal terms. In a contemporary satire, entitled The Advice, is the following couplet: "Send Pulton to be lashed at Busby's school, That he in print no longer play the fool." Another Roman Catholic, named William Clench, wrote a treatise on He likes to be compli the Pope's supremacy, and dedicated it to the Queen in Italian. The following specimen of his style may suffice. "O del sagro marito fortunata consorte! O dolce alleviamento d'affari alti! O grato ristoro di pensieri noiosi, nel cui petto latteo, lucente specchio d'illibata matronal pudicizia, nel cui seno odorato, come in porto d'amor, si ritira il Giacomo! O beata regia coppia! O felice inserto tra l'invincibil leoni e le candide aquile!" Clench's English is of a piece with his Tuscan. For example, "Peter signifies an inexpugnable rock, able to evacuate all the plots of hell's divan, and naufragate all the lurid designs of empoisoned heretics." Another Roman Catholic treatise, entitled "The Church of England truly represented," begins by informing us that "the ignis fatuus of reformation, which had grown to a comet by many acts of spoil and rapine, had been ushered into England, purified of the filth which it had contracted among the lakes of the Alps." mented on this subject. He has talked to me about it, CHAP. and has assured me that he will not flinch."* VI. Meanwhile in other parts of the empire events of grave 1686. importance had taken place. The situation of the epi- State of scopalian Protestants of Scotland differed widely from Scotland. that in which their English brethren stood. In the south of the island the religion of the state was the religion of the people, and had a strength altogether independent of the strength derived from the support of the government. The sincere conformists were far more numerous than the Papists and the Protestant Dissenters taken together. The Established Church of Scotland was the Church of a small minority. The majority of the lowland population was firmly attached to the Presbyterian discipline. Prelacy was abhorred by the great body of Scottish Protestants, both as an unscriptural and as a foreign institution. It was regarded by the disciples of Knox as a relic of the abominations of Babylon the Great. It painfully reminded a people proud of the memory of Wallace and Bruce that Scotland, since her sovereigns had succeeded to a fairer inheritance, had been independent in name only. The episcopal polity was also closely associated in the public mind with all the evils produced by twenty-five years of corrupt and cruel maladministration. Nevertheless this polity stood, though on a narrow basis and amidst fearful storms, tottering indeed, yet upheld by the civil magistrate, and leaning for support, whenever danger became serious, on the power of England. The records of the Scottish Parliament were thick set with laws denouncing vengeance on those who in any direction strayed from the prescribed pale. By an Act passed in the time of Knox, and breathing his spirit, it was a high crime to hear mass, and the third offence was capital. An Act recently passed, at the instance * Barillon, July 19. 1686. † Act Parl. Aug. 24. 1560; Dec. 15. 1567. CHAP. VI. 1686. Queensberry. Perth, Melfort, of James, made it death to preach in any Presbyterian conventicle whatever, and even to attend such a conventicle in the open air.* The Eucharist was not, as in England, degraded into a civil test; but no person could hold any office, could sit in Parliament, or could even vote for a member of Parliament, without subscribing, under the sanction of an oath, a declaration which condemned in the strongest terms the principles both of the Papists and of the Covenanters.† In the Privy Council of Scotland there were two parties corresponding to the two parties which were contending against each other at Whitehall. William Douglas, Duke of Queensberry, was Lord Treasurer, and had, during some years, been considered as first minister. He was nearly connected by affinity, by similarity of opinions, and by similarity of temper, with the Treasurer of England. Both were Tories: both were men of hot temper and strong prejudices; both were ready to support their master in any attack on the civil liberties of his people; but both were sincerely attached to the Established Church. Queensberry had early notified to the court that, if any innovation affecting that Church were contemplated, to such innovation he could be no party. But among his colleagues were several men not less unprincipled than Sunderland. In truth the Council chamber at Edinburgh had been, during a quarter of a century, a seminary of all public and private vices; and some of the politicians whose character had been formed there had a peculiar hardness of heart and forehead to which Westminster, even in that bad age, could hardly show anything quite equal. The Chancellor, James Drummond, Earl of Perth, and his brother, the Secretary of State, John Lord Melfort, were bent on supplanting Queensberry. The Chancellor had already an unquestionable title to the royal favour. He had brought into use a little steel thumb* Act Parl. May 8. 1685. † Act Parl. Aug. 31. 1681. СНАР. VI. 1686. screw which gave such exquisite torment that it had wrung confessions even out of men on whom His Majesty's favourite boot had been tried in vain.* But it was well known that even barbarity was not so sure a way to the heart of James as apostasy. To apostasy, their apostherefore, Perth and Melfort resorted with a certain tasy. audacious baseness which no English statesman could hope to emulate. They declared that the papers found in the strong box of Charles the Second had converted them both to the true faith; and they began to confess and to hear mass. How little conscience had to do with Perth's change of religion he amply proved by taking to wife, a few weeks later, in direct defiance of the laws of the Church which he had just joined, a lady who was his cousin german, without waiting for a dispensation. When the good Pope learned this, he said, with scorn and indignation which well became him, that this was a strange sort of conversion. But James was more easily satisfied. The apostates presented * Burnet, i. 584. Ibid. i. 678. VOL. II. I |