CHAP. the measure of exclusion. After less than a week's March 27. XVII. session, Charles II. dissolved the last parliament of his 1681. reign, and appealed to the people against his enemies. 21 to To avoid the charge of despotism, he still hanged a Papist whom he knew to be innocent; and his friends declared him to have no other purpose than to resist the arbitrary sway of "a republican prelacy," and the installation of the multitude in the chair of infallibility. The ferocious intolerance which had sustained the Popish plot, lost its credit; men dreaded anarchy and civil war more than they feared the royal prerogative. ence. The king had already exercised the power of restricting the liberty of the press; through judges, who held places at his pleasure, he was supreme in the courts ; omitting to convoke parliament, he made himself irresponsible to the people; pursuing a judicial warfare against city charters and the monopolies of boroughs, he reformed many real abuses, but, at the same time, subjected the corporations to his influControlling the appointment of sheriffs, he controlled the nomination of juries; and thus, in the last three or four years of the reign of King Charles II., the government of England was administered as an absolute monarchy. An "association" against the duke of York could not succeed among a calculating aristocracy, as the Scottish covenant had done among a faithful people; and, on its disclosure and defeat, the voluntary exile of Shaftesbury excited no plebeian regret. No deep popular indignation attended Russel to the scaf fold; and on the day on which the purest martyr to aristocratic liberty laid his head on the block, the university of Oxford decreed absolute obedience to be the character of the Church of England, while parts of the writings of Knox, Milton, and Baxter, were pronounced JAMES II. SUCCEEDS WITHOUT SERIOUS OPPOSITION. 439 XVII. false, seditious and impious, heretical and blasphe- CHAP. mous, infamous to the Christian religion, and destructive of all government," and were therefore ordered to be burnt. Algernon Sidney followed to the scaffold. Thus liberty, which excited loyalty, at the restoration, banished from among the people, made its way through rakes and the king's mistress into the royal councils. Driven from the palace, it appealed to parliament and the people, and won power through the frenzied antipathy to Roman Catholics. Exiled from parliament by their dissolution, from the people by the ebb of excitement, it concealed itself in an aristocratic association and a secret aristocratic council. Chased from its hiding-place by disclosures and executions, and having no hope from parliament, people, the press, the courts of justice, the king, it left the soil of England, and fled for refuge to the country of the prince of Orange. 1683. Dec. 7. How entirely monarchy had triumphed in England, 1685 appeared on the death of Charles II. His brother, whom the commons, in three successive parliaments, had desired to exclude, ascended the throne without opposition, continued taxes by his prerogative, easily suppressed the insurrection of Monmouth, convened a parliament, under the new system of charters, so subservient, that it bowed its back to royal chastisement; while the "Presbyterian rascals," the troublesome Calvinists, who, from the days of Edward VI., had kept English liberty alive, were consigned to the courts of law. "Richard,” said Jefferies to Baxter, "Richard, thou art an old knave; thou hast written books enough to load a cart, every one as full of sedition as an egg is full of meat. I know thou hast a mighty party, and a great many of the brotherhood are waiting in corners XVII. CHAP. to see what will become of their mighty Don; but, by the grace of Almighty God, I'll crush you all;" and the docile jury found "the main incendiary" guilty of sedition. Faction had ebbed; "rogues" had grown out of fashion; there was nothing left for them but to "thrive in the plantations" of our America, and learn, said the royalists, "How Pennsylvania's air agrees with Quakers, And Carolina's with Associators; Both e'en too good for madmen and for traitors. And every age produces such a store, That now there's need of two New Englands more." But the tide of liberty was still swelling, and soon wafted the "saints," and "rogues," and "rascals," to their deliverance. To understand fully the revolution which followed, it must be borne in mind, that the great mass of dissenters were struggling for liberty; but, checked by the memory of the disastrous issue of the previous revolution, they ranged themselves, with deliberate moderation, under the more liberal party of the aristocracy. Of James, Cromwell's army, the officers had been, "for the most 1.386. part, the meanest sort of men, even brewers, coblers, and other mechanics;" recruits for the camp of William of Orange were led by bishops and the high nobility. There was a vast popular movement, but it was subordinate; the proclamation of the prince took notice of the people only as "followers" of the gentry. Yet the revolution of 1688 is due to the dissenters quite as much as to the whig aristocracy; to Baxter hardly less than to Shaftesbury. It is the consummation of the collision which, in the days of Henry VIII. and Edward, began between the Churchmen and the Puri THE PARTIES OF THE ARISTOCRACY. 441 XVII. tans, between those who invoked religion on the side CHAP of passive obedience, and those who esteemed religion superior to man, and held resistance to tyranny a Christian duty. If the whig aristocracy looked to the stadtholder of aristocratic Holland as the protector of their liberties, Baxter and the Presbyterians saw in William the Calvinist their tolerant avenger. Of the two great aristocratic parties which led the politics of England, both respected the established British constitution. But the tory opposed reform, and leaned to the past; he defended his privileges against the encroachments of advancing civilization. The bishops, claiming for themselves a divine right by direct succession, were his natural allies; and to assert the indefeasible rights of the bishops, of the aristocracy, and of the king, against dissenters, republicans, and whigs, was his whole purpose. The whigs were also a party of the aristocracy, bent on the preservation of their privileges against the encroachments of the monarch. In an age that demanded liberty, the whigs, scarce proposing new enfranchisements, gathered up every liberty, feudal or popular, known to English law, and sanctioned by the fictitious compact of prescription. In a period of progress in the enfranchisement of classes, they shared political influence with the merchants and bankers; in an age of religious sects, they embraced the more moderate and liberal of the Church of England, and those of the dissenters whose dissent was the least glaring; in an age of speculative inquiry, they favored freedom of the press. How vast was the party, is evident, since it cherished among its numbers men so opposite as Shaftesbury and Sidney, as Locke and Baxter. These two parties embraced almost all the wealth XVII. CHAP. and learning of England. But there was a third party of those who were pledged to "seek, and love, and chuse the best things." They insisted that all penal statutes and tests should be abolished; that, for all classes of nonconformists, whether Roman Catholics or dissenters, for the plebeian sects, "the less noble Penn and more clownish sort of people," "the unclean kind," room should equally be made in the English ark; that the Church of England, content with its estates, should give up jails, whips, halters, and gibbets, and cease to plough the deep furrows of persecution; that the concession of equal freedom would give strength to the state, security to the prince, content to the multitude, wealth to the country, and would fit England for its office of asserting European liberty against the ambition of France; that reason, natural right, and public interest, demanded a glorious magna charta for intellectual freedom, even though the grant should be followed by "a dissolution of the great corporation of conscience." These were the views which were advocated by William Penn against what he calls "the prejudices of his times;" and which overwhelmed his name with obloquy as a friend to tyranny and a Jesuit priest in disguise. 1685, 1686. But the easy issue of the contest grew out of a division in the monarchical party itself. James II. could not comprehend the value of freedom, or the obligation of law. The writ of habeas corpus he esteemed inconsistent with monarchy, and "a great misfortune to the people." A standing army, and the terrors of corrupt tribunals, were his dependence; the pupil of Turenne delighted in military parades; the Catholic convert, swayed by his confessor, dispensed with the laws, multiplied Catholic chapels, rejoiced in |