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

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70 James II and the Trial of the Seven Bishops

members were also asked the questions, and 3,500 expelled from the

companies as a result of their failure to agree.

115

Indeed at the Lord

Mayor’s show in 1687, the crowd remarked that all the ‘jolly genteel’

liverymen had been replaced by Catholic ‘fanatics’.

116

The ambassador

of the Holy Roman Emperor observed that the tactic ‘has done more

harm than one can express, seeing chiefly that nearly everywhere a

negative reply was given’. Sunderland told the Papal Nuncio that, even

if James did get a compliant Parliament, there was no guarantee that it

would be willing to betray the Church.

117

To compound matters, James then alienated his natural Tory allies

by dismissing the lords lieutenant who had refused to cooperate with

putting the questions. These included the Dukes of Somerset and

Norfolk, the Earls of Shrewsbury, Derby, Pembroke, Rutland, Bridgwater,

Thanet, Northampton, Scarsdale, Abingdon, Gainsborough and Bath.

Many of these nobles were men whose fathers and grandfathers had

suffered grievously for James’s father. In February 1687, Sir John Reresby

reported that every post ‘brought news of gentlemen laying down their

appointments and Papists, for the most part, being put in their places’.

118

Trampling on these noblemen gave James no advantage. In time, James

would regret making enemies of such natural supporters, many of them

quickly turned to William both before and after his landing. In a piece

of petty spite in December 1687, James removed Bishop Compton’s

nephew, Lord Northampton, from the lieutenancy of Warwickshire for

his failure to enforce the repeal of laws against Catholics.

119

In their

place, Catholics, or crypto-Catholics were appointed as lords lieutenant,

including Father Petre, Lord Dover and Lord Chancellor Jeffreys.

As the three questions would not secure James a compliant Parliament,

James continued the process of restricting the urban franchise to those

who would vote for his candidates, by amending borough charters. A

wholesale revision of charters to narrow the vote to those James felt

he could rely on was a complex and detailed business. Up and down

the land, Dissenters in particular were let into the franchise. It was a

strategy that had the potential to backfire as badly as the three questions.

Some towns simply would not be cowed. Reading is a good example:

James revised the charter only to find that the new corporation was

no more inclined to his will than the last, so the charter was revised

again. Between March and September 1688 alone, 35 warrants for new

borough charters were issued.

120

But Lord Bradford told Sunderland that

even if James could pack the Commons, the Lords would not agree to

the repeal of the Test Act. To the discomfort of all, Sunderland joked

that Lord Churchill’s regiment could be called to the Lords to make sure

The King’s Policies 71

of their votes – it was not clear if he meant that the troops would fire on

the peers or be created peers to vote through the measure.

Besides pressing Catholicism on the universities, and his closeting

campaign, James made no bones of his desire that the nobility should

consider conversion to the Roman Church. To the surprise of those who

knew of their earlier flexible religious views during the Interregnum,

the Duke of Norfolk, the Earl of Shrewsbury and Lord Lumley refused

to convert. But James was determined to have Catholic ministers. In

the place of Lords Clarendon and Rochester he appointed the Catholics

Lords Balasyse and Arundel, who were 72 and 78 respectively. When

the Earl of Mulgrave was made Lord Chamberlain, it was also thought

that he would convert, since he was known to have modest religious

views. But Mulgrave resolutely said that he found it hard to believe that

God had made man, but to believe man had chosen God was impos-

sible. In fact, Mulgrave was an example of a politician sympathetic to

James, who worked closely with the King, but saw his weaknesses. By

1688, Mulgrave ‘assisted openly all the Protestant clergy’.

121

Rochester

had been thought likely to convert, but he did not. James’s Catholic

advisers were sources of scurrilous gossip. To the disgust of some nobles,

there were rumours that some Catholics at court doubted the legality of

the marriage of James to Anne Hyde, the mother of Princesses Mary and

Anne. The French ambassador was certainly persuaded by the evidence,

and Lord Rochester was forced to find the officiating parson and obtain

his signed testimony of the legality of the marriage.

122

Meanwhile the advance of Catholicism in London went on apace.

Catholic schools were founded, by the Jesuits in the Savoy, the

Franciscans in Lincolns Inn and a Benedictine house was estab-

lished in Clerkenwell.

123

The Papal Nuncio was received at court,

and there were rumours of the restoration of a Catholic hierarchy.

Corporations of all sorts, legal, municipal and educational were pres-

surised to admit Catholics.

124

At the same time, the army was housed

at Blackheath, and was regarded by some as a threat to those who

might oppose such developments.

125

In fact James had attempted to

make the army more Catholic by the introduction of more Catholic

junior officers in 1686 and 1687, but failed on both occasions, the army

coming near to mutiny.

126

They had the example of the Irish army,

in which 67 per cent of soldiers were Catholic.

127

None of this might

have appeared quite so threatening if the Catholics had not been so

keen to convert Anglicans. Thomas Tenison had been engaged in a

wrangle in his parish, St Martin in the Fields, with a Catholic priest,

Andrew Pulton, who was recruiting parishioners. Eventually, in 1687,

72 James II and the Trial of the Seven Bishops

Pulton challenged Tenison to a debate, or ‘conference’ which, though

it was held in private, attracted widespread attention. The confer-

ence gave way to a bad- tempered pamphlet war – including Tenison’s

own 83 page account of the meeting, which was published with the

Archbishop’s imprimatur. It was not long before the issues raised in

the tracts were being addressed from the Jesuit pulpit in the Savoy.

During the debate Luther’s principles were called ‘filthy’, Tenison was

attacked as a ‘bigot’ and aspersions were cast on Pulton’s education and

spelling. Conferences like this were not uncommon between Anglican

and Catholics and Anglican and Dissenters. Tenison was able to draw

some satisfaction from attracting an Irish Capuchin priest, John Taffe,

to the Church of England, in June 1688, during the climax of the seven

bishops’ trial.

128

He also gained a reputation for his generous sermon,

in November 1687, on the death of Nell Gwyn, Charles II’s ‘Protestant

whore’ who, Tenison claimed, died a penitent.

129

Tenison’s own views on Catholicism were well-known since the

publication in 1683 of his Argument for Union. In this he wrote

The Romanists are a mighty body of men ... they are all united

in one common polity, and grafted into the one stock of Papal

headship ... they have varieties of learning, they pretend to great

Antiquity, to Miracles, to Martyrs ... to extraordinary charity ... they

have the nerves of worldly power, that is, banks of money and a large

revenue. They have a scheme of policy always in readiness.

130

Such views damned Tenison in James’s eyes, but he had a wide following

in London. Moreover, James’s policies had convinced Tenison that both

Church and country needed to resist the King. For this reason, Sancroft

invited Tenison to attend meetings with the bishops on the issue of the

Declaration. The bishops had only to look to Scotland, where James was

pushing toleration of Catholics much harder than he was in England,

to see what might happen.

131

The Confrontation

The gathering storm

During August 1687, the King continued to issue dispensations to

Dissenters freeing them from penal laws. By the end of the month it

was assumed that any Dissenter who wished to do so could receive a

dispensation against the Clarendon code, including the Test Act. The

number of applications was so great that an office was established to

deal with them; the usual rate was 50 shillings for an indemnity for

a whole family. This, it was assumed, would drive sufficient wedge

between the Church and Dissenters.

In November, James replaced the

Anglican mayor and aldermen of London with Dissenters and urged

them to hold their own services at the Guildhall chapel. But to the King’s

disgust they attended regular Anglican services at the chapel, commu-

nicated and took the oaths required by the Test Act, and permitted 5

November to be celebrated in high Protestant style with the usual anti-

Catholic revels. In Gloucester, James tried to prevent the city from light-

ing bonfires to celebrate the gunpowder plot and the mayor restricted

the bonfires to two; in defiance of the King, the bishop permitted two

more in the cathedral precincts.

By October 1687, Henry Compton, who had retired to Fulham during

his prolonged suspension from his diocese, felt that he had reached

the point of no return. He wrote to William of Orange in guarded but

unmistakable terms:

The terms by which you were pleased to express yourself in reference

to the Church of England were every way so obliging and satisfactory

that I look upon myself as bound in duty to acknowledge the deep

sense I and every true member of the same Church ought to have of

74 James II and the Trial of the Seven Bishops

so great a blessing. And though you are at present at a distance from

us, and not so well able to partake of the fruits of so good intentions,

yet when we shall have served this King with all fidelity, so long as it

shall please God to continue him amongst us; as none that you know

will question the sincerity of your performance, so I make no doubt,

but you will soon find the benefit of having taken up so wise resolu-

tions. For, Sir, you that see all the great motions of the world; and can

so well judge of them, know there is no reliance upon anything that

is not steady in principles, and profess not the common good before

private interest. I pray God to continue to be gracious to you, and to

direct and prosper all your counsels, and to crown the endeavours of

your life with the consummation of all happiness.

Compton did not know at the time that James was considering calling

the Convocation of the Church to demand that it formally acknowl-

edge the legality of his dispensing power.

In time the King thought

better of the idea.

In November 1687, came the news that Queen Mary Beatrice, James’s

wife, was pregnant. Not everyone was convinced by it, even the French

ambassador seemed sceptical, writing to Louis XIV that she ‘believes

herself pregnant’. Previously, the Queen had a series of miscarriages,

but everyone was aware of the implications of the birth of a male heir.

Such an heir would displace Princesses Mary and Anne and William

of Orange in the line of succession, and would inevitably be raised

as a Catholic. What worried many was the determination of James’s

supporters that this child would be a boy. When she heard the news

of the pregnancy, Princess Anne was said to be speechless with rage,

and unable to disguise her fury. James used the opportunity to make a

final attempt to persuade Mary to understand his reasons for conver-

sion. She sent an evasive response. The Queen’s pregnancy also created

a quandary for some of the moderate Catholic peers, Belasyse, Powys

and Dover, who knew that, if the Queen miscarried again, Mary would

remain the heir presumptive. This was a difficult balancing act. For

others, the Queen’s pregnancy was a tipping point; Sunderland told

the King that he had decided to convert to Catholicism but that he

would not do so immediately, preferring a time when the King might

gain some benefit from such a high profile defection to Rome.

In such

circumstances, it is difficult not to regard Sunderland’s later conversion

as a cynical move.

In the same month, James established a commission under the former

Dissenter and Catholic convert Sir Nicholas Butler, a London merchant,

The Confrontation 75

to supervise election business and, in particular, the further revision

of borough charters and the identification of trustworthy candidates

for seats. Butler’s agents were equipped with horses and paid 20 shil-

lings a day to find local people who could act as correspondents for

court candidates. The role of the agents was also to find people who

would disperse royal propaganda and report intelligence to the court.

Agents frequently toured the boroughs, being more likely than county

seats to swing to James. G. H. Jones argued that the electoral agents

were probably more successful than previously thought by historians.

Their reports may have been optimistic, but even of county seats it was

estimated that 223 out of 312 might elect candidates loyal or sympa-

thetic to James.

Douglas Lacey argued that the electoral strategy in the

autumn of 1687 and spring of 1688 was sufficiently successful for mod-

erate Dissenters, and even Anglicans, to respond to the electoral tactics

and return to James’s side.

By Christmas 1687, the contacts between William and disaffected

English politicians were becoming the stuff of rumour; James ordered

postal services to Holland to be searched. Consequently, Gilbert Burnet

arranged for his nephew, James Johnstone, to establish a network of

accommodation addresses in England, and to use secret codes, invis-

ible inks and revealing solutions. These were the instruments of a plot.

But it was clear that William needed some way of communicating with

Englishmen on a wider scale. In mid-January 1688 therefore, England

was flooded with copies of a pamphlet called Their Highness the Prince

and Princess of Orange’s Opinion about a General Liberty of Conscience. The

pamphlet contained a letter from Grand Pensionary Fagel of Holland

to a Scottish refugee from James’s policies. Fagel’s letter was drafted

by William and its title clearly indicated that it contained William’s

views. These were that William and Mary favoured freedom of religion

for Protestant and Catholic Dissenters but within an establishment in

which the Test Act gave Anglicans a monopoly on public office. Despite

desperate attempts by James to exclude the pamphlet – including

searching coaches and wagons leaving London – it gained wide circula-

tion throughout Britain. Richard Andrews, James’s election agent in the

West Country, reported ‘Mons Fagell’s and other pamphlets are spread

through all parts to prejudice those inclined to your Maj’ie’.

The Opinion revolutionised the scene in London. Dissenters who

might have been inclined to support James turned to William; he

offered the prospect of sincere toleration rather than toleration as a

mere expediency to liberate Catholics, and one that might only there-

fore be temporary. The Earl of Devonshire wrote to William that the

76 James II and the Trial of the Seven Bishops

people were in ‘raptures’ at the tract. A furious James wrote to the

States-General and demanded that the English regiments, stationed in

Holland for their defence, be returned to England. At the same time,

crude attempts were made to try to force the moderate Tories to return

to James. Danby, Halifax, Shrewsbury, Dorset and Henry Sidney all

received anonymous notes warning them to ‘make your peace with the

King, or be assured that after this 27 of January you have not many days

to live’.

In January 1688, James asked the Pope to divide England into four

districts, each with an episcopal vicar-apostolic. This was the return of

the Catholic hierarchy that so many feared. James promised an income

of £1,000 for the new bishops. James’s choice as president of Magdalen,

Bishop Samuel Parker of Oxford, died in March 1688 and the King

chose Bonaventure Giffard, one of the new vicars-apostolic, to replace

him. Even Catholics, including one of the other vicars-apostolic, John

Leyburn, believed that this was a step too far. But James pressed on, and

it was widely assumed that Magdalen was being prepared to be a new

Catholic seminary to train priests to convert England. Worse was the

fear that since James had been bold enough to appoint a Catholic to

the bishopric of Oxford, the same would happen to the vacant diocese

of York. But James’s Catholic allies were far from united. The moderate

Catholics, Lord Powis and Lady Middleton, were fiercely opposed to

the spread of Jesuit influence; some Catholics accused Sunderland of

being in secret contact with William; Petre and Sunderland were rivals

for influence over the King and Petre believed Sunderland had blocked

his appointment as a cardinal, something for which James had been

consistently lobbying the Pope. On Sunderland’s advice regarding the

lack of evidence of a chance of obtaining a compliant Parliament, James

postponed the elections until May 1688.

In February 1688, responses from the county seats to the three ques-

tions were returned to London. It was clear that there was much less

support in the counties than in the boroughs. Moreover, in some bor-

oughs the numbers of voters to be removed were so great as to be a seri-

ous problem. In Westminster it emerged that the franchise would have

to be slashed from 2,000 to 200 to produce a compliant electorate.

an attempt to get submissive boroughs, the charters of Northampton,

Leicester and Leominster were reissued four times and that of Maldon

six times. The management of the charters soon became chaotic, so

much so that Winchester, which had had its charter withdrawn in 1684,

was regulated as if it was still in force – and the law officers of the crown

were unaware of the changes imposed on the city.

This was, in part, a

The Confrontation 77

reflection of the casual way in which James treated the boroughs. When

the King visited Chester, Bishop Cartwright told him of some aldermen

who opposed the Declaration; James nonchalantly replied ‘let me know

what alderman opposed and I will turn him out’.

Moreover, in some

revised charters, such as those issued to Barnstaple, Bridport, Chester

and Wells, the entire corporation was removed at a stroke.

The issuing of new charters to boroughs exposed James’s position:

he clearly had to amend charters in such a way as to indicate which

groups he sought to place in control of boroughs, such as Catholics

and Dissenters. There could be no claim to an unprejudiced motive

for revision. Second, with each new charter came ‘a Clause of Pardon

and Dispensation’ which freed members from the legal requirement to

take the oaths of supremacy and allegiance. Third, the charters usually

invested the right to elect MPs only in the corporation and swept away

other franchises. Finally, the charters also reserved powers to the King

to remove individual members of each corporation.

These features

revealed more than many others the lengths to which James was pre-

pared to go in order to obtain a Parliament he wanted and to displace

Anglicanism as the established church.

In February 1688, James also issued a proclamation for suppressing

seditious and unlicensed books and pamphlets. He ordered that only

those who had been licensed by the King or a bishop, and had served

an apprenticeship, could print and sell books. It was, claimed James,

because a series of treasonable books and pamphlets had ‘disturbed the

minds of our loving subjects’.

One book, which the King licensed,

sought to demonstrate the schismatic nature of the Church of England.

It concluded: ‘the Protestants are guilty both of material and formal

schism; since ‘tis evident they have done both a schismatical fact and

out of schismatical affection’.

James felt obliged to follow-up the disobedience of lords lieutenant

in the issue of the three questions. Already some had been sacked, but

in February 1688 a further round of dismissals occurred: Lord Dorset

was removed as lord lieutenant of Sussex and Lord Oxford dismissed

from Essex. To save the King the bother of dismissing him, the Duke

of Newcastle resigned from the lieutenancies of Nottinghamshire and

Northumberland. By early March 1688, the management of packing

the new Parliament had become such a mess that James was forced

to postpone elections again until the autumn.

James was also aware

that something was going on between William and dissidents: when

Danby’s son asked for permission to travel abroad, James told him he

could go to the continent but not travel to Holland.

78 James II and the Trial of the Seven Bishops

James’s attitude to his dispensing power had been presaged in

February 1688, when he reissued his Declaration of Indulgence

in Scotland, which, he said, was issued by dint of ‘our absolute

power ... which all our subjects are bound to obey without reserve’.

Two

months later, the second Declaration was issued in England. Within

a few days Gilbert Burnet anonymously published Reflections which

included the comments:

The King’s suspending of laws strikes at the root of this whole

government and subverts it quite ... [though] the executive power of

the Law is entirely in the King; and the Law ... has ... made it unlawful

upon any pretence whatsoever to resist it ... [yet] the Legislative power

is not so entirely in the King. No Law can be either made, repealed, or,

which is all one, suspended, but by the consent [of Parliament].

By Easter 1688, Mary had conceded ‘there is no other way to save the

Church and the State than that my husband should do to dethrone

[my father] by force’. And Danby told William that ‘our zeal for the

Protestant religion does increase every day in all parts of the nation and

the examination of the minds of the nobility and gentry had made such

a union for the defence of it throughout the Kingdom’.

The second declaration

When, in April 1688, James reissued his Declaration for Liberty of

Conscience, he added the requirement that the Declaration should be

read in all parish churches in the country. The Declaration was, by

his own admission, drafted by Bishop Cartwright,

though there were

also suggestions that Father Petre wrote it.

Later there were rumours,

said to originate with Father Orleans, one of James’s Jesuit priests, that

it was the Presbyterians who had first suggested the idea of making

the bishops enforce the reading of the Declaration by the clergy in

the churches of their dioceses, as a means of splitting Anglicans and

Dissenters. It seems unlikely that most Presbyterians would have

suggested this, but it is possible that it came from those who were close

to James.

The renewal of the Declaration was a reflection of James’s

failure to obtain the election of a Parliament which would pass the

repeal of the Test Acts.

As Halifax had predicted, since the Church of England had been

a grievous disappointment to James he turned to Dissenters. Roger

Thomas concluded James’s purpose in the Declaration and the order

The Confrontation 79

to read it was ‘to form a coalition of Roman Catholics and Dissenters

that would be powerful enough either to cow the Church of England

into submission or break it if it refused’.

This seemed to be confirmed

by the first statement of the newly appointed Catholic bishops who,

in a pastoral letter to the Catholic laity, claimed: ‘a great part of the

Nation, whose persuasion in points of religion doth differ most from

yours, and which in time past hath been severe upon your persons is

willing to enter into a friendly correspondence with you’.

James was

also astute enough to recognise that his Declaration had the potential

to stall the growing contacts between Anglicans and Dissenters and

ruin talks on measures to bring them closer together. James may have

made promises to protect the Church of England but few now placed

any weight on them. James also pursued other policies designed to woo

Protestant Dissenters to his side. He advocated progressive economic

policies including coinage reform, the prevention of the export of wool

and outlawing imprisonment for debt, which would attract those in

trade and commerce, as Dissenters often were.

In Catholic circles there was some unease. James’s Catholic ministers,

Lords Powis, Arundel and Balasys, had warned him that toleration

was a mistake.

And in Catholic areas there was some reluctance to

challenge the Church of England. In Preston, for example, the Tories

and Catholics were loyal to the King, but permitted the performance

of The Devil and the Pope, an anti-Catholic comedy. In Liverpool, the

Catholic dominated corporation was unwilling to support the moves to

repeal the Test Act.

An important element in the failure of the Dissenters to offer strong

and unalloyed support to James was the profusion of theological works

which emphasised the apocalyptic danger of Roman Catholicism. Besides

the works of William Wake and Thomas Tenison, in 1687 and 1688

the works of James Ussher were reprinted, which warned that Catholics

would trample on Protestantism and subjugate it in England.

These

works achieved considerable purchase on Dissenters. Perhaps the most

significant work was the Cases of Conscience, published in 1685 by the

leading London-Anglican clergy to persuade Dissenters to return to the

Church.

The Collection of Cases addressed the anxieties of Dissenters,

not just in presenting the Church of England as strongly differentiated

from the Roman Catholic Church, but by showing how much Dissent

and Anglicanism had in common doctrinally and liturgically. Written

by, among others, William Sherlock, Thomas Tenison, John Sharp,

William Cave, Edward Fowler, William Claggett and Symon Patrick,

the Collection of Cases had a dramatic effect in reassuring Dissenters