Gibson William. James II and the Trial of the Seven Bishops

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60 James II and the Trial of the Seven Bishops

them, Cartwright having knelt before one of the Catholic bishops sent

to England.

In December 1686, James ordered the Charterhouse, an almshouse

on the site of a former Carthusian monastery, to admit a Roman

Catholic, Andrew Popham, as a pensioner, in breach of the statutes,

which admitted pensioners by election only. Sancroft delayed for more

than six months before finally protesting to the King and refusing,

as a Charterhouse governor, to cooperate in the election of Popham.

Sancroft’s opposition to James was also seen in his decision to licence

Henry Wharton to preach throughout his province. This exception-

ally wide privilege meant that Wharton, known for his opposition to

Catholicism and his willingness to preach such views, could speak his

mind from any pulpit in the province of Canterbury.

Early in 1687, James finally dismissed his brothers-in-law, Rochester

and Clarendon, and replaced the latter with Lord Tyrconnell, a Catholic

Irish peer with little or no sense of judgement. To many, this seemed

further to undermine the Church as Clarendon, in particular, was so

strongly regarded as its advocate. It was also a move that brought Danby

closer to open opposition to the King for, though Danby had no liking

for Rochester, he viewed him as a bulwark against James’s Catholic

appointees. From that point on, Danby was in almost constant com-

munication with William of Orange.

Though even by the start of 1688

he did not have a clear intention to depose James.

James’s tearful com-

ment, when he dismissed Rochester, was ‘I cannot have a man at the

head of my affairs who is not of my opinions’. The dismissal of Rochester

and Clarendon stirred further anxiety among Anglicans, and the King

seemed to grow unpopular. In February 1687, Bishop Cartwright had

to admonish the inhabitants of Hulme in Lancashire for causing a riot

when they shut their church on 6 February, which was the anniversary

of James’s accession.

The dismissal of Rochester and Clarendon also marked the start of a

new and more vigorous attempt to force through the repeal of the Test

Act. Already James had dismissed scores of magistrates who he felt that

he could not rely on to apply tolerant policies to Catholics. About 500

magistrates were replaced by Catholics.

But in some counties there

were insufficient JPs; in Shropshire, for example the spring quarter

sessions in 1688 were postponed for lack of JPs.

In December 1687,

James began attempts to pick off individual politicians, in a campaign

called ‘closeting’. This was a series of interviews in which James closely

quizzed leading laymen and ministers about converting to Catholicism

in his closet. Sometimes it included pressure to vote for the repeal of the

The King’s Policies 61

Test Acts. Given James’s singular lack of charm, the process was usually

maladroit and often counterproductive. Rather than bringing James a

stream of converts, it offended some of the ministers and officials so

grievously that they were lost to James entirely. Admiral Arthur Herbert,

for example, who had served under James and been promoted by him,

was affronted by the pressure James brought on him to convert and

chose to resign his commission as admiral. Lord Shrewsbury resigned

his command of a cavalry regiment after a ‘closeting’ with the King.

In February 1687, William of Orange despatched Everard van Weede

van Dijkvelt to London to estimate the strength of feeling against

James. Van Dijkvelt was also charged with reassuring those with whom

William had established contact that he was committed to the Church

of England and to the Test Act but wanted a measure of toleration for

the Dissenters. A number of people, including James’s brothers-in-law,

Clarendon and Rochester, spoke to van Dijkvelt of their support for

William. Also among those who met van Dijkvelt were three leading

Tories: Nottingham, Danby and Shrewsbury. Nottingham, always

cautious and anxious not to rock the boat, sent van Dijkvelt a letter

confirming that William was ‘the person on whom they found their

hopes’. Later in the year, Nottingham wrote to William expressing

doubt that James’s policies would come to anything, so great was the

opposition.

In contrast, Danby promised his service to the Prince.

Shrewsbury promised himself faithful to the Prince and Princess Anne

and sent John Churchill to talk to van Dijkvelt. He pledged his loyalty

to his religion and told van Dijkvelt he set his loyalty to the King at

naught. He also hinted that he would protect Anne from her father if

necessary. Like Danby, Churchill was in regular contact with William

from this point on. Of course, as James’s nephew and the consort

of his heir, there need have been no treasonable intent behind such

expressions of support.

At Easter 1687, rumours circulated that James had become an

affiliate of the Society of Jesus. Certainly he had acquired a new

confessor, Father Warner, also a Jesuit and rector of the Jesuit College

at St Omer. But, even before this, James had twice delayed elections to

Parliament, largely on the basis of intelligence that suggested he still

would not obtain one which would cooperate with the repeal of the

Test Act. In some desperation, James began a campaign of bribery, a

strategy he had previously rejected.

Few were intimidated by the King’s determination. Edward

Stillingfleet preached before James, on 10 April 1687, on a biblical text

recalling Moses’s repudiation of his adoptive grandfather, Pharaoh,

62 James II and the Trial of the Seven Bishops

preferring to endure the afflictions of his own people. Even Bishop

Thomas Cartwright was able to see the message that it was better to

adhere to the Church of England and endure affliction rather than

support James.

The government’s desire that there should be no

expansion of the conflict between Catholics and Protestants was also

expressed in the suppression of William Wake’s The Present State of the

Controversie between the Church of England and the Church of Rome, or an

Account of the Books written on both sides. This book and its successor

published a year later, A Continuation of the Present State of the Controversy,

were denied entry in the catalogue of books at Oxford by government

decree. This had the reverse effect, as Wake then found a publisher for

the books which were more widely circulated than if they had been

entered in the University catalogue.

The attack on the universities

In 1687, at James’s behest, the Ecclesiastical Commission turned its

attentions to the universities. It was an attempt to break the Anglican

monopoly and to open clerical education to James’s Catholicising poli-

cies. In April 1687, the Commission summoned the vice-chancellor of

Cambridge for refusing to admit Alban Francis, a Benedictine monk,

to the degree of MA at the King’s request. When the vice-chancellor

mildly replied that the statutes required that an incepting master

should take the required oath, which Francis would not, and that he

could not act other than in conformity to the statutes, the Commission

deprived him of office. Lord Chancellor Jeffreys directly quizzed the

vice-chancellor, but was embarrassed by him; when Jeffreys asked

whether Cambridge had ever previously refused a royal mandate, the

vice-chancellor was able to answer that it had done so when Charles II

had made a similar request to advance a Mr Tatwell to the degree of

MA, Tatwell had also refused to take the oaths so the University had

refused him the degree.

In Oxford there were already two Catholic heads of houses: James had

established a crypto-Catholic, John Massey, as dean of Christ Church

and the master of University College, Obadiah Walker, had converted to

Catholicism.

James had also issued dispensations for some Catholics

to matriculate and graduate without swearing the usual oaths of

conformity and subscribing to the Thirty-Nine Articles. In January 1687,

Robert Charnock, a Catholic, was admitted to a fellowship of Magdalen

College and, in March, Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, was ordered

to admit Joshua Bassett, another Catholic, as a fellow.

The King’s Policies 63

Soon after, the fraught case of Magdalen College, Oxford began. The

King had ordered the fellows to appoint Anthony Farmer as president

and the fellows had petitioned the King not to ask this of them, since

Farmer was a Catholic. James had made a bad choice in Farmer as it

quickly emerged that he was a troublesome man and a drunkard, who

had procured women for undergraduates and even that he had said he

was only masquerading as a Catholic to obtain James’s patronage.

James dropped Farmer and chose instead Samuel Parker, the Bishop

of Oxford, who was widely regarded as a crypto-Catholic, and told the

fellows to elect him. Instead, they elected John Hough as president. At

the end of May, the Ecclesiastical Commissioners cited the fellows to

appear before them. The Commissioners proclaimed Hough’s election

void and appointed Mr Wiggins, the Bishop of Oxford’s chaplain, to

the presidency. The Commissioners also demanded that the fellows

sign the most obnoxious and grovelling apology to the King, all 26

fellows refused and were proclaimed guilty of disobedience to the

King.

The Magdalen College affair was remarkable for the alienation it

effected between the King and perhaps the most loyal of all Anglican

bishops, Peter Mews. Mews was an ardent royalist: he had been a

cavalry commander at Naseby, where he was injured and captured,

he was later a secret agent, during which time he evaded sentence of

death. At the Restoration, he was made president of St John’s College,

Oxford, in 1672 he was consecrated bishop of Bath and Wells – where he

excommunicated Dissenters to deny them the vote so as to guarantee

Tory electoral victories during the Exclusion crisis – and in 1684 was

elevated to Winchester.

When Monmouth invaded in 1685, Mews

took charge of the King’s artillery during the battle of Sedgemoor. Of

all Anglicans and bishops, therefore, Mews could claim the credentials

of the most loyal. As bishop of Winchester, Mews was ex officio visitor

of Magdalen College, Oxford. When, in April 1687, the King nomi-

nated Anthony Farmer as president of Magdalen, the fellows sought

Mews’s advice. He replied that the fellows should proceed according

to the statutes. On 15 April, when the fellows elected Hough, Mews

cooperated with the College to spirit Hough to Farnham Castle within

24 hours, where he immediately admitted him as president. Mews told

Hough and the fellows that he admired their determination. From

this period on, Mews was committed to the opposition to James. Later

in October 1688, when James reversed his policy and restored the

president and fellows to Magdalen, Mews took some satisfaction in

personally restoring Hough and the ejected fellows, leading a service

64 James II and the Trial of the Seven Bishops

of thanksgiving in the chapel and, in the Buttery Book, striking out

the names of the intruded Catholic fellows.

The Magdalen College affair was, as G. V. Bennett noted, the test case

of passive obedience. The fellows had asserted their lawful rights and

passively incurred deprivation for refusing to act illegally. What good

had passive obedience achieved, other than to demonstrate the illegality

of the King’s behaviour, and his indifference to passivity? ‘It is difficult

to overestimate the shock and anger which these events caused.’

The first declaration

In April 1687, two months after he had issued a similar declaration in

Scotland, James issued his first Declaration of Indulgence for Liberty

of Conscience – dispensing with the Test Act and, in effect, abolishing

the Church of England’s monopoly over public office. James, some-

what disingenuously, claimed that the Declaration was issued under his

dispensing power, which he held had been declared legal by the Hales

judgement. The Declaration reflected James’s disappointment with the

Tory Anglicans and the bishops. In the same month that James issued

the Declaration, he spoke to two Anglican bishops he trusted, Bishops

Sprat of Rochester and White of Peterborough, of his unwillingness

to suffer toleration. As a consequence, few believed that James was

a genuine convert to toleration.

On 20 April 1687, Bishop Thomas

Cartwright of Chester, a supporter of James and one who undertook

secret assignments for the King, recorded ‘[the Bishops of Rochester

and Peterborough] said they could not but remember how vehemently

the King had declared against toleration and said he would never by

any counsel be tempted to suffer it’.

Initially, the first Declaration seemed to have an effect. John Evelyn

noted that the Dissenters’ meeting houses were packed and Anglican

churches thinly attended.

But many of the published denunciations

of the Declaration had an impact on men like Richard Baxter, who

resisted the blandishments of the King. Those Dissenters who were wary

of James were those of ‘the highest moral authority’.

Burnet’s agent

in London reported that the bishops could rely on the support of the

Dissenters.

James’s objectives in the Declaration were guessed by the

broadsheet balladeers, not least the author of the Dialogue, who wrote a

pretended conversation between James and Queen Mary of Modena. In

it, James was made to say

A gaol delivery now must be

To make all consciences be free

The King’s Policies 65

Not out of zeal, but pure design

To make Dissenters with us join

To pull down Tests and Penal Laws

The Bulwarks of the hereticks cause

The sly dissenters laugh awhile

They see where lurks the serpents guile

And rather than with us comply

Will on our enemies rely.

James asked ministers to orchestrate addresses of thanks for the

Declaration, and these were included in the London Gazette. In Norwich,

Lord Yarmouth bullied the corporation into making its address, and

in Carlisle dragoons were quartered in the town until an address was

forthcoming. The trouble was that, in time, James appeared to believe

his own propaganda and genuinely believed that toleration was popular

with Dissenters, and that he could therefore dispense with the support

of the Church.

But the Dissenters did not wholeheartedly welcome

toleration from James. Roger Morrice believed that Dissenters would

never agree to the toleration of Catholicism; he wrote that Dissenters

preferred to ‘remain under the persecution of the penal laws in the

hopes and expectation of receiving at the proper period some allevi-

ation, than by separating from the English church, to go surely the

one after the other to the ground’.

Morrice probably exaggerated the

Dissenters’ unanimity on this point. Thomas Jolly, a nonconformist

minister in Chester diocese, responded equivocally to the Declaration

and was probably representative of many others. He wrote in his note-

book that the Declaration was ‘according to our desires and above our

expectations’ but he doubted its durability: ‘considering some men’s

designs in it time will discover, god will defeat’.

In one case, the propaganda campaign to thank the King for his

Declaration backfired badly. In April 1687, the Bishop of Oxford,

Samuel Parker, a strong supporter of James, arranged for the clergy

of his diocese to subscribe to an address thanking the King for his

Declaration. The address that was advanced by the clergy was a

subtly subversive document. It noted that the King had promised to

protect and maintain the Church and the bishops. The reasons given

in favour of subscription to the address were that ‘it may continue

the King’s Favour, whereas the omission [of an address] may irri-

tate the Treasury to call upon the Fifth Bond for first fruits at full

worth’. The second was that it would testify to their submission to the

bishop, who ‘required’ their address. But the address included four

reasons against subscribing, these were that the Declaration ought

66 James II and the Trial of the Seven Bishops

to be issued by Parliament; second, it ‘herds’ the Church ‘among the

various sects under the Toleration’; third, it ought to have had the

endorsement of the Synod or Convocation of the Church and alone

a diocesan address might suggest a division or schism, and finally, ‘it

forfeits the present reputation we have with the nobility, gentry and

commonality of our communion which may tempt them ... to disgust

us for our rash compliance’. The final words were that ‘this address is

no instance of canonical obedience’ and, in an attack on Parker, that

‘till Bishops at their confirmation declare what faith they are of’ it

was unclear whether the clergy were to be obedient to the bishop or

maintain the historic communion of the Church.

Though not published in the London Gazette, the Oxford clergy

address was printed and widely circulated. James pressed on and

demanded that the leading Dissenters, Henry Care, Vincent Alsop,

Thomas Rosewell and Stephen Lobb, who were inclined towards him,

should also drum up addresses of thanks. In the end, 78 addresses of

thanks were sent by Dissenters. Anglicans were also urged to write

such addresses. Sunderland told the bishops of Durham, Rochester,

Peterborough, Oxford and Chester that they should arrange addresses

from their dioceses. It was uphill work to persuade clergy to sign, and

in the end only the dioceses of Lichfield and Coventry, Lincoln and

St Davids produced addresses.

While Halifax has been censured for his timidity during the

Revolution, he can be credited with some foresight. His Letter to a

Dissenter, was written after the Declaration and published secretly in

August 1687 in huge quantities – 20,000 poured from the press in six

editions. In it, Halifax argued that the Dissenters’ duty was to guard

against Catholicism. He urged them not to be taken in by James, and

wrote of the Declaration: ‘this is a violent change and it will be fit for

you to pause upon it, before you believe it.’

He also predicted, that

when James failed to get what he wanted from the Tory Anglicans, he

would turn to them for support. Halifax also persuaded the Dissenters

that the Church was no longer committed to persecution of them.

Occasionally, James made concessions to the Church of England,

though rarely other than at the behest of an ally. In July 1687, prompted

by an appeal from Dr Hooke, vicar of Leeds, and forwarded by Bishop

Cartwright, the King conceded that the Declaration did not legitimise

the non-payment of tithes and church rates, and ordered that suits

against nonconformists for the recovery of tithes could still proceed.

the summer of 1687, the London clergy, stimulated by the Declaration,

The King’s Policies 67

were in the forefront of opposition to the King. Bishop Ken wrote in

July 1687:

For my owne part ye Thoughts of our Clergy, ye London Clergy

especially, doe daily Rejoice me, I give God thanks for them, and

I pray for them, They are pious and learned and zealous, all yt wee

could wish them to be God’s Holy Name be praisd for it, Certainley

God who has sent so many Labourers into His field has designed ye

Harvest to be plentiful, yt though they may saw in teares, yet they

shall reape in joy.

William Wake even suspected that some London clergy were involved

in the planning for William of Orange’s invasion.

In the autumn of 1687, James began a royal progress to persuade the

country that he was no danger to them. At the same time, James felt he

could offer prayers at some of the notable Catholic shrines in England

and Wales, including St Winefriede’s Well in Flintshire. The tour included

Bath, where he touched for the ‘King’s Evil’, and proceeded through the

Marches to Chester, before returning to London via Oxford. As early

as June 1686, it was rumoured that James had dismissed his domestic

chaplains at Windsor and had conducted a ‘ceremony of healing’ for the

‘King’s Evil’ with Catholic priests in attendance.

James was later to touch

for the ‘King’s Evil’ at Winchester, where 250 people were touched.

100

Servants were sent ahead of the royal progress to ensure a warm welcome.

But the truth of it was that James was disappointed at the reaction to

both his Declaration and his tour. Besides plans to restore Catholics to

supremacy in Ireland, he had achieved little. No wonder Bonrepaus, the

French ambassador, believed James was completely out of touch with feel-

ing in the country.

101

In September 1687, during his tour of the country,

James visited Oxford. He had a bad-tempered meeting with the fellows of

Magdalen at which he said they had not behaved like gentlemen. He also

showed his hand by saying ‘You have done very uncivilly to me ... you

have affronted me, know I am your King and I will be obeyed. Is this

your Church of England loyalty?’ He then shouted, ‘Go back and show

yourselves good members of the Church of England ... Get you gone, I

command you to be gone, go and admit the Bishop of Oxford’. When the

fellows again refused, James left Oxford in fury.

Three of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners visited the College in

October 1687, to rebuke the fellows for ignoring the Anglican doctrine

of passive obedience. Finally, the Commission expelled all the fellows

68 James II and the Trial of the Seven Bishops

from office. Lord Huntingdon, one of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners,

later claimed that ‘it cannot be denied the delegated Commissioners

had much more to answer for in their proceedings than we who were at

that time no commissioners for visiting Magdalen College’.

102

The Privy

Council – with an eye to Sancroft’s licensing of Wharton – also added the

penalty that the deprived fellows were to be incapacitated from receipt

of any ecclesiastical office. Trelawny ignored this by presenting one of

the fellows, Charles Penyston, to a living in his gift. Five other fellows

were rewarded in this way.

103

The punishment of incapacitation seemed

to some to be a serious invasion of the fellows’ property rights.

104

Some

bishops allowed the ejected fellows the right to appoint to College livings.

The bishop of Gloucester accepted the nomination to a Magdalen liv-

ing in his diocese from the ejected fellows, and then reported the living

no longer vacant to the intruded Catholic president and fellows.

105

Only

Lord Chief Justice Herbert protested that Hough’s election as president

had been regular and therefore could not be contested. For his role in the

affair, as an Ecclesiastical Commissioner, Bishop Crewe was nicknamed

‘the grand inquisitor’. There were even rumours that Crewe had become

a Roman Catholic, certainly he attended Catholic ceremonies.

106

In fact,

Crewe was keen to suppress the Catholic chapels in his diocese and later

sought the King’s aid to do so.

107

At Oxford, the installation of the Catholic

president of Magdalen was attended by only two fellows and the porter

threw the keys at him, and no blacksmith in the city would agree to force

the locks of the president’s lodgings. It is clear that James’s attitude to the

universities was taken to be ‘stark proof of James’s ill-will to the Church’

since it was designed to challenge the Anglican monopoly.

108

When James arrived back in London, Dr Jane, the Professor of

Divinity at Oxford, preached a sermon at Whitehall on ‘the integrity

and patience of Christians in difficult times’. Jane argued that God’s

providence enabled Christians to bear the most wicked tyrants. The

only response was to live a holy life and to persevere in religion, and

Anglicanism, in particular, since it was ‘the most pure, primitive and

true of all professions of Christianity under heaven’. This was exactly

the sort of reluctant but compliant Anglicanism that reassured James:

it advanced the claims of the Church of England, but at least it had the

merit of not advocating resistance to the King.

109

The attack on the landed alliance

In the face of stubborn resistance to him, James realised that the only

hope he had was to manage the election of a Parliament in which he

The King’s Policies 69

could force through the repeal of the Test Acts. But electing a sufficiently

pliant Parliament was a tall order, especially given the dusty response

he had received in 1686, when he last made the attempt. He had already

tried in the summer of 1687 to get the assize judges on their circuits

to sound out members of parliament on the issue of repeal of the Test

Act and ‘to feel their puls (sic) on this matter’.

110

But the response was

not positive. James’s solution was to institute ‘the three questions’. In

October 1687, lords lieutenant were instructed to put three questions

to all parliamentary candidates and magistrates – they were fiercely

enjoined not to delegate these duties to deputies. First, if they were

appointed to office or elected to Parliament would they favour the

‘taking off’ of penal laws including the Test Act? Second, would they

use their influence to elect candidates committed to this policy? Third,

would they support James’s Declaration for Liberty of Conscience by

living amicably with Catholics? The strategy was another misjudge-

ment and the lords lieutenant of Buckinghamshire, Worcestershire,

Staffordshire and the North Riding of Yorkshire refused to cooperate

in asking the questions. In Warwickshire, the lord lieutenant, Lord

Northampton, told the magistrates that he would not himself answer

positively to the questions. In Ripon, the magistrates refused to answer

the three questions and in Leeds the same evasive form of words was

used by all the JPs, suggesting that there had been some collusion in the

response to the questions.

111

Not only were lords lieutenant unwilling to put the three questions,

but where the questions were put the results were predominantly

negative.

112

It was said that in Norfolk and Wales only about a dozen

candidates altogether were asked the questions. In the East Riding of

Yorkshire, 21 were asked the questions, and 19 replied in the negative.

There was, of course, no penalty for replying in the negative, but a

commission of regulation under Sunderland was formed to scrutinise

the answers of those who were members of corporations so that they

could be removed from office, and therefore excluded from the fran-

chise, by quo warranto amendment of borough charters.

113

In the first

year of his reign, James issued 16 charters to Cornish boroughs alone.

114

Lord Bath told the King that however many times he amended the

charters he would not get a different answer. So candidates for parlia-

ment and the magistracy freely acknowledged that they did not accept

any of the three propositions. An analysis of magistrates who were

asked the three questions indicated that only 16 per cent of Protestant

JPs agreed to them, the rest were negative or absented themselves or

answered ambiguously or gave mixed answers. London livery company