History of Civilization in England, Vol. 1 of 3

713

They are so called by Burnet: ‘these angry men, that had raised this flame in the church.’ Own Time, vol. v. p. 17.

714

Indeed, the high-church party, in their publications, distinctly intimated, that if James were not recalled, he should be reinstated by a foreign army. Somers Tracts, vol. x. pp. 377, 405, 457, 462. Compare Mahon's Hist. of England, vol. ii. p. 138. Burnet (Own Time, vol. iv. pp. 361, 362) says, they were ‘confounded’ when they heard of the peace of 1697; and Calamy (Life of Himself, vol. ii. p. 322) makes the same remark on the death of Louis XIV.: ‘It very much puzzled the counsels of the Jacobites, and spoiled their projects.’

715

D'Oyly's Life of Sancroft, p. 266; Wordsworth's Eccl. Biog. iv. p. 683.

716

Sancroft, on his death-bed, in 1693, prayed for the ‘poor suffering church, which, by this revolution, is almost destroyed.’ D'Oyly's Sancroft, p. 311; and Macpherson's Original Papers, vol. i. p. 280. See also Remarks, published in 1693 (Somers Tracts, vol. x. p. 504) where it is said, that William had, ‘as far as possible he could, dissolved the true old Church of England;’ and that, ‘in a moment of time, her face was so altered, as scarce to be known again.’

717

‘Ken, though deprived, never admitted in the secular power the right of deprivation; and it is well known that he studiously retained his title.’ Bowles's Life of Ken, vol. ii. p. 225. Thus, too, Lloyd, so late as 1703, signs himself, ‘Wm. Nor.’ (Life of Ken, by a Layman, vol. ii. p. 720); though, having been legally deprived, he was no more bishop of Norwich than he was emperor of China. And Sancroft, in the last of his letters, published by D'Oyly (Life, p. 303), signs ‘W. C.’

718

The strange document, by which he appointed Dr. Lloyd his vicar-general, is printed in Latin, in D'Oyly's Sancroft, p. 295, and in English, in Life of Ken, by a Layman, vol. ii. p. 640.

719

Lathbury's Hist. of the Nonjurors, p. 96; Life of Ken, by a Layman, vol. ii. pp. 641, 642.

720

The struggle between James and William was essentially a struggle between ecclesiastical interests and secular interests; and this was seen as early as 1689, when, as we learn from Burnet, who was much more a politician than a priest, ‘the church was as the word given out by the Jacobite party, under which they might more safely shelter themselves,’ Own Time, vol. iv. p. 57. See also, on this identification of the Jacobites with the church, Birch's Life of Tillotson, p. 222; and the argument of Dodwell, pp. 246, 247, in 1691. Dodwell justly observed, that the successors of the deprived bishops were schismatical, in a spiritual point of view; and that, ‘if they should pretend to lay authority as sufficient, they would overthrow the being of a church as a society.’ The bishops appointed by William were evidently intruders, according to church principles; and as their intrusion could only be justified according to lay principles, it followed that the success of the intrusion was the triumph of lay principles over church ones. Hence it is, that the fundamental idea of the rebellion of 1688, is the elevation of the state above the church; just as the fundamental idea of the rebellion of 1642, is the elevation of the commons above the crown.

721

According to Dr. D'Oyly (Life of Sancroft, p. 297), Dr. Gordon ‘died in London, November 1779, and is supposed to have been the last nonjuring bishop.’ In Short's Hist. of the Church of England, p. 583, Lond. 1847, it is also stated, that ‘this schism continued till 1779.’ But Mr. Hallam (Const. Hist. vol. ii. p. 404) has pointed out a passage in the State Trials, which proves that another of the bishops, named Cartwright, was still living at Shrewsbury in 1793; and Mr. Lathbury (Hist. of the Nonjurors, Lond. 1845, p. 412) says, that he died in 1799.

722

Calamy (Own Life, vol. i. pp. 328–330, vol. ii. pp. 338, 357, 358) gives an interesting account of these feuds within the church, consequent upon the revolution. Indeed, their bitterness was such, that it was necessary to coin names for the two parties; and, between 1700 and 1702, we, for the first time, hear the expressions, high-church and low-church. See Burnet's Own Time, vol. iv. p. 447, vol. v. p. 70. Compare Wilson's Life of De Foe, vol. ii. p. 26; Parl. Hist. vol. vi. pp. 162, 498. On the difference between them, as it was understood in the reign of Anne, see Somers Tracts, vol. xii. p. 532, and Macpherson's Orig. Papers, vol. ii. p. 166. On the dawning schism in the church, see the speech of Sir T. Littleton, in 1690, Parl. Hist. vol. v. p. 593. Hence many complained that they could not tell which was the real church. See curious evidence of this perplexity in Somers Tracts, vol. ix. pp. 477–481.

723

The alternative is fairly stated in a letter written in 1691 (Life of Ken, by a Layman, vol. ii. p. 599): ‘If the deprived bishop be the only lawful bishop, then the people and clergy of his diocese are bound to own him, and no other; then all the bishops who own the authority of a new archbishop, and live in communion with him, are schismatics; and the clergy who live in communion with schismatical bishops are schismatics themselves; and the whole Church of England now established by law is schismatical.’

724

Lord Mahon (Hist. of England, vol. ii. p. 245) notices, what he terms, the ‘unnatural alienation between the church and state,’ consequent upon the Revolution of 1688: and on the diminished power of the church caused by the same event, see Phillimore's Mem. of Lyttleton, vol. i. p. 352.

725

The old absurdity of de facto and de jure; as if any man could retain a right to a throne which the people would not allow him to occupy!

726

In 1715, Leslie, by far the ablest of them, thus states their position: ‘You are now driven to this dilemma, – swear, or swear not; if you swear, you kill the soul; and if you swear not, you kill the body, in the loss of your bread.’ Somers Tracts, vol. xiii. p. 686. The result of the dilemma was what might have been expected; and a high-church writer, in the reign of William III., boasts (Somers Tracts, vol. x. p. 344) that the oaths taken by the clergy were no protection to the government: ‘not that the government receives any security from oaths.’ Whiston, too, says in his Memoirs, p. 30: ‘Yet do I too well remember that the far greatest part of those of the university and clergy that then took the oaths to the government, seemed to me to take them with a doubtful conscience, if not against its dictates.’ This was in 1693; and, in 1710, we find: ’There are now circumstances to make us believe that the Jacobite clergy have the like instructions to take any oaths, to get possession of a pulpit for the service of the cause, to bellow out the hereditary right, the pretended title of the Pretender.’ Somers Tracts, vol. xii. p. 641. A knowledge of this fact, or, at all events, a belief of it, was soon diffused; and, eight years later, the celebrated Lord. Cowper, then lord chancellor, said, in the House of Lords, ‘that his majesty had also the best part of the landed, and all the trading interest; that as to the clergy, he would say nothing – but that it was notorious that the majority of the populace had been poisoned, and that the poison was not yet quite expelled.’ Parl. Hist. vol. vii. p. 541; also given, but not quite verbatim, in Campbell's Chancellors, vol. iv. p. 365.

727

‘The prevarication of too many in so sacred a matter contributed not a little to fortify the growing atheism of the present age.’ Burnet's Own Time, vol. iii. p. 381. See also, to the same effect, vol. iv. pp. 176, 177; and a remarkable passage in Somers Tracts, vol. xii. p. 573. I need hardly add, that it was then usual to confuse scepticism with atheism; though the two things are not only different, but incompatible. In regard to the quibble respecting de facto and de jure, and the use made of it by the clergy, the reader should compare Wilson's Mem. of De Foe, vol. i. pp. 171, 172; Somers Tracts, vol. ix. p. 531; Campbell's Chancellors, vol. iv. p. 409; and a letter from the Rev. Francis Jessop, written in 1717, in Nichols's Lit. Illustrations, vol. iv. pp. 120–123.

728

Among which must be particularly mentioned the practice of censuring all books that encouraged free inquiry. In this respect, the clergy were extremely mischievous. See Lathbury's Hist. of Convocation, pp. 124, 286, 338, 351; and Wilson's Life of De Foe, vol. ii. p. 170.

729

In 1704, Burnet (Own Time, vol. v. p. 138) says of Convocation, ‘but little opposition was made to them, as very little regard was had to them.’ In 1700, there was a squabble between the upper and lower house of Convocation for Canterbury; which, no doubt, aided these feelings. See Life of Archbishop Sharp, edited by Newcome, vol. i. p. 348, where this wretched feud is related with great gravity.

730

Charles Butler (Reminiscences, vol. ii. p. 95) says, that the final prorogation was in 1720; but, according to all the other authorities I have met with, it was in 1717. See Hallam's Const. Hist. vol. ii. p. 395; Lathbury's Hist. of Convocation, p. 385; Mahon's Hist. of England, vol. i. p. 302; Monk's Life of Bentley, vol. ii. p. 350.

731

A letter, written by the Rev. Thomas Clayton in 1727, is worth reading, as illustrating the feelings of the clergy on this subject. He asserts, that one of the causes of the obvious degeneracy of the age is, that, owing to Convocation not being allowed to meet, ‘bold and impious books appear barefaced to the world without any public censure.’ See this letter in Nichols's Illustrations of the Eighteenth Century, vol. iv. pp. 414–416; and compare with it, Letters between Warburton and Hurd, pp. 310–312.

732

On the decline of ability in ecclesiastical literature, see note 38 in this chapter. In 1685, a complaint was made that secular professions were becoming more sought after than ecclesiastical ones. See England's Wants, sec. lvi. in Somers Tracts, vol. ix. p. 231, where the writer mournfully states, that in his time ‘physic and law, professions ever acknowledged in all nations to be inferior to divinity, are generally embraced by gentlemen, and sometimes by persons nobly descended, and preferred much above the divine's profession.’ This preference was, of course, most displayed by young men of intellect; and a large amount of energy being thus drawn off from the church, gave rise to that decay of spirit and of general power which has been already noticed; and which is also indicated by Coleridge, in his remarks on the ‘apologising theology’ which succeeded the Revolution. Coleridge's Lit. Remains, vol. iii. pp. 51, 52, 116, 117, 119. Compare Stephen's Essays on Ecclesiast. Biog. 2d edit. 1850, vol. ii. p. 66, on ‘this depression of theology;’ and Hare's Mission of the Comforter, 1850, p. 264, on the ‘intellectually feebler age.’ Evelyn, in 1691, laments the diminished energy then beginning to be observed among ‘young preachers.’ Evelyn's Diary, vol. iii. p. 309; and for another notice, in 1696, of this ‘dead and lifeless way of preaching,’ see Life of Cudworth, p. 35, in vol. i. of Cudworth's Intellect Syst.

733

Sharon Turner, describing the state of things in England in the fifteenth century, says, ‘Clergymen were secretaries of government, the privy seals, cabinet councillors, treasurers of the crown, ambassadors, commissioners to open parliament, and to Scotland; presidents of the king's council, supervisors of the royal works, chancellors, keepers of the records, the masters of the rolls, and even the physicians, both to the king and to the duke of Gloucester, during the reign of Henry VI. and afterwards.’ Turner's Hist. of England, vol. vi. p. 132. On their enormous wealth, see Eccleston's English Antiquities, p. 146: ‘In the early part of the fourteenth century, it is calculated that very nearly one-half of the soil of the kingdom was in the hands of the clergy.’

734

In 1625, Williams bishop of Lincoln was dismissed from his office of lord-keeper; and Lord Campbell observes (Lives of the Chancellors, vol. ii. p. 492): ‘This is the last time that an ecclesiastic has held the great seal of England; and, notwithstanding the admiration in some quarters of mediæval usages, I presume the experiment is not likely to be soon repeated.’

735

Monk (Life of Bentley, vol. i. p. 222) says, that Dr. John Robinson, bishop of Bristol, was ‘lord privy seal, and plenipotentiary at the treaty of Utrecht; and is the last ecclesiastic in England who has held any of the high offices of state.’ A high-church writer, in 1712, complains of the efforts that were being made to ‘thrust the churchmen out of their places of power in the government.’ Somers Tracts, vol. xiii. p. 211.

736

In and after the reign of Henry III. ‘the number of archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors, and ecclesiastical persons was for the most part equal to, and very often far exceeded, the number of the temporal lords and barons.’ Parry's Parliaments and Councils of England, London, 1839, p. xvii. Of this Mr. Parry gives several instances; the most remarkable of which is, that ‘in 49 Henry III., 120 prelates, and only 23 temporal lords, were summoned.’ This, of course, was an extreme case.

737

See an analysis of the House of Lords, in 1713, in Mahon's Hist. of England, vol. i. pp. 43–45; from which it appears that the total was 207, of whom 26 were spiritual. This includes the Catholics.

738

By the returns in Dod for 1854, I find that the House of Lords contains 436 members, of whom 30 belong to the episcopal bench.

739

For different accounts, and of course different views, of this final expulsion of the clergy from the House of Commons, see Pellew's Life of Sidmouth, vol. i. pp. 419, 420; Stephens's Mem. of Tooke, vol. ii. pp. 247–260; Holland's Mem. of the Whig Party, vol. i. pp. 178–180; Campbell's Chancellors, vol. vii. p. 148; Twiss's Life of Eldon, vol. i. p. 263; Adolphus's Hist. of George III., vol. vii. p. 487.

740

That the banishment of the clergy from the lower house was the natural prelude to the banishment of the bishops from the upper, was hinted at the time, and with regret, by a very keen observer. In the discussion ‘on the Bill to prevent Persons in Holy Orders from sitting in the House of Commons,’ Lord Thurlow ‘mentioned the tenure of the bishops at this time, and said, if the bill went to disfranchise the lower orders of the clergy, it might go the length of striking at the right of the reverend bench opposite to seats in that house; though he knew it had been held that the reverend prelates sat, in the right of their baronies, as temporal peers.’ Parl. Hist. vol. xxxv. p. 1542.

741

It is impossible now to ascertain the full extent to which the Church of England, in the seventeenth century, persecuted the dissenters; but Jeremy White is said to have had a list of sixty thousand of these sufferers between 1660 and 1688, of whom no less than five thousand died in prison. Bogue and Bennett's Hist. of the Dissenters, vol. i. p. 108. On the cruel spirit which the clergy displayed in the reign of Charles II. compare Harris's Lives of the Stuarts, vol. v. p. 106; Orme's Life of Owen, p. 344; Somers Tracts, vol. xii. p. 534. Indeed, Harwood frankly said in the House of Commons, in 1672, ‘Our aim is to bring all dissenting men into the Protestant church, and he that is not willing to come into the church should not have ease.’ Parl. Hist. vol. iv. p. 530. On the zeal with which this principle was carried out, see an account, written in 1671, in Somers Tracts, vol. vii. pp. 586–615; and the statement of De Foe, in Wilson's Life of De Foe, vol. ii. pp. 443–444.

742

Besides the correspondence which the Duchess of Marlborough preserved for the instruction of posterity, we have some materials for estimating the abilities of Anne in the letters published in Dalrymple's Memoirs. In one of them Anne writes, soon after the Declaration for Liberty of Conscience was issued, ‘It is a melancholy prospect that all we of the Church of England have. All the sectaries may now do what they please. Every one has the free exercise of their religion, on purpose, no doubt, to ruin us, which I think to all impartial judges is very plain.’ Dalrymple's Memoirs, appendix to book v. vol. ii. p. 173.

743

See a notable passage in Somers Tracts, vol. xii. p. 558, which should be compared with Wilson's Life of De Foe, vol. iii. p. 372.

744

Bogue and Bennett's History of the Dissenters, vol. i. pp. 228–230, 237, 260–277; and Hallam's Const. Hist. vol. ii. pp. 396, 397. Mr. Hallam says, ‘It is impossible to doubt for an instant, that if the queen's life had preserved the Tory government for a few years, every vestige of the toleration would have been effaced.’ It appears from the Vernon Correspond. vol. iii. p. 228, Lond. 1841, that soon after the accession of Anne, there was a proposal ‘to debar dissenters of their votes in elections;’ and we know from Burnet (Own Time, vol. v. pp. 108, 136, 137, 218) that the clergy would have been glad if Anne had displayed even more zeal against them than she really did.

745

Bogue and Bennett's Hist. of the Dissenters, vol. iii. p. 118. In Ivimey's History of the Baptists, it is said that the death of Anne was an ‘answer to the dissenters' prayers.’ Southey's Commonplace Book, third series, p. 135; see also p. 147, on the joy of the dissenters at the death of this troublesome woman.

746

Two of the worst of them, ‘the act against occasional conformity, and that restraining education, were repealed in the session of 1719.’ Hallam's Const. Hist. vol. ii. p. 398. The repeal of the act against occasional conformity was strenuously opposed by the archbishops of York and of Canterbury (Bogue and Bennett's Hist. of the Dissenters, vol. iii. p. 132); but their opposition was futile; and when the Bishop of London, in 1726, wished to strain the Act of Toleration, he was prevented by Yorke, the attorney-general. See the pithy reply of Yorke, in Harris's Life of Hardwicke, vol. i. pp. 193, 194.

747

At the end of the seventeenth century, great attention was excited by the way in which the dissenters were beginning to organize themselves into societies and synods. See, in the Vernon Correspond. vol. ii. pp. 128–130, 133, 156, some curious evidence of this, in letters written by Vernon, who was then secretary of state; and on the apprehensions caused by the increase of their schools, and by their systematic interference in elections, see Life of Archbishop Sharp, edited by Newcome, vol. i. pp. 125, 358. The church was eager to put down all dissenters' schools; and in 1705, the Archbishop of York told the House of Lords that he ‘apprehended danger from the increase of dissenters, and particularly from the many academies set up by them.’ Parl. Hist. vol. vi. pp. 492, 493. See also, on the increase of their schools, pp. 1351, 1352.

748

In Somers Tracts, vol. xii. p. 684, it is stated, that in the reign of Charles II. ‘this hard usage had begotten in the dissenters the utmost animosity against the persecuting churchmen.’ Their increasing discontent, in the reign of Anne, was observed by Calamy. See Calamy's Own Life, vol. ii. pp. 244, 255, 274, 284, 285.

749

If the power of moving the passions be the proper test by which to judge an orator, we may certainly pronounce Whitefield to be the greatest since the apostles. His first sermon was delivered in 1736 (Nichols's Lit. Anec. vol. ii. pp. 102, 122); his field-preaching began in 1739 (Southey's Life of Wesley, vol. i. pp. 196, 197); and the eighteen thousand sermons which he is said to have poured forth during his career of thirty-four years (Southey's Wesley, vol. ii. p. 531) produced the most astonishing effects on all classes, educated and uneducated. For evidence of the excitement caused by this marvellous man, and of the eagerness with which his discourses were read as well as heard, see Nichols's Lit. Anec. vol. ii. pp. 546, 547, and his Illustrations, vol. iv. pp. 302–304; Mem. of Franklin, by Himself, vol. i. pp. 161–167; Doddridge's Correspond. vol. iv. p. 55; Stewart's Philos. of the Mind, vol. iii. pp. 291, 292; Lady Mary Montagu's Letters, in her Works, 1803, vol. iv. p. 162; Correspond. between Ladies Pomfret and Hartford, 2nd edit. 1806, vol. i. pp. 138, 160–162; Marchmont Papers, vol. ii. p. 377.

750

Of whom Mr. Macaulay has said (Essays, vol. i. p. 221, 3rd edit.), that his ‘genius for government was not inferior to that of Richelieu;’ and strongly as this is expressed, it will hardly appear an exaggeration to those who have compared the success of Wesley with his difficulties.

751

It was in 1739 that Wesley first openly rebelled against the church, and refused to obey the Bishop of Bristol, who ordered him to quit his diocese. Southey's Life of Wesley, vol. i. pp. 226, 243. In the same year he began to preach in the fields. See the remarkable entry in his Journals, p. 78, 29th March, 1739.

752

They frankly confess that ‘indifference has been another enemy to the increase of the dissenting cause.’ Bogue and Bennett's Hist. of the Dissenters, vol. iv. p. 320. In Newman's Development of Christian Doctrine, pp. 39–43, there are some remarks on the diminished energy of Wesleyanism, which Mr. Newman seems to ascribe to the fact that the Wesleyans have reached that point in which ‘order takes the place of enthusiasm.’ p. 43. This is probably true; but I still think that the larger cause has been the more active one.

753

Walpole, in his sneering way, mentions the spread of Methodism in the middle of the eighteenth century (Walpole's Letters, vol. ii. pp. 266, 272); and Lord Carlisle, in 1775, told the House of Lords (Parl. Hist. vol. xviii. p. 634) ‘that Methodism was daily gaining ground, particularly in the manufacturing towns;’ while, to come down still later, it appears from a letter by the Duke of Wellington to Lord Eldon(Twiss's Life of Eldon, vol. ii. p. 35) that about 1808 it was making proselytes in the army.

These statements, though accurate, are somewhat vague; but we have other and more precise evidence respecting the rapid growth of religious dissent. According to a paper found in one of the chests of William III., and printed by Dalrymple (Memoirs, vol. ii. part ii., appendix to chapter i. p. 40), the proportion in England of conformists to non-conformists was as 224/5 to 1. Eighty-four years after the death of William, the dissenters, instead of comprising only a twenty-third, were estimated at ‘a fourth part of the whole community.’ Letter from Watson to the Duke of Rutland, written in 1786, in Life of Watson, Bishop of Llandaff, vol. i. p. 246. Since then, the movement has been uninterrupted; and the returns recently published by government disclose the startling fact, that on Sunday, 31st March 1851, the members of the Church of England who attended morning service only exceeded by one-half the Independents, Baptists, and Methodists who attended at their own places of worship. See the Census Table, in Journal of Statist. Soc. vol. xviii. p. 151. If this rate of decline continues, it will be impossible for the Church of England to survive another century the attacks of her enemies.