Section 1034

publicly sent as embassador extraordinarj- to Rome to express the king's obeisance to the pope, and to effect the reconcilement of the kingdom with the " holy see." In return the pope sent a nuncio to England, who re- sided openly in London during the remainder of the reign, and was solemnly received at court, in the face of the act of Parliament declaring any communication ■with the pope to be high treason. Four Koman Cath- olic bishops were consecrated in the king's chapel, and sent to exercise the episcopal function, each in his par- ticidar diocese. In Scotland and England, as well as iu Ireland, offices of all kinds, both in the army and iu the state, were now filled with Koman Catholics; even those of the ministers and others who had shown themselves disposed to go furthest along with the king were dismissed, or visibly lost his favor, if they refused to conform to the ancient religion. At last James's " eye was delighted with the asjject of catholicity im- parted to his metropolis by the spectacle of monks trav- ersing its streets in the habits of their respective orders , he was gratified by the i^resence of an Italian prelate, D'Adda, as nuncio from the pope ; and he entertained a sanguine hope of obtaining a Parliament elected under tlie new corporation charters, which should furnish a majority of his adherents, while the lords were to be swamped by a creation of peers compliant with his wishes. The Nonconformists, he calculated, woidd sup- port his views as long as their support would be impor- tant, and he was weak enough to imagine that his dec- laration of indulgence placed him in favorable contrast with the French monarch, to whose exiled Protestant subjects, since the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1684), England was affording its hospitalitj', not aware that his subjects were sufficiently acquainted with the genius and tactics of his religion to know that indid- gence and persecution were but indifferent instruments for its propagation, adapted to the different circum- stances of an ascendant or a declining Protestantism — one and the same spirit actuating the sovereigns of France and of Great Britain, in pursuance of common religions, in subservience to similar political objects" (Baxter, Ch. Hist. p. 639). The dissenters, in particu- lar, soon learned to comprehend the reality of the situa- tion— that a league of the court and Romanism was de- liondcnt ou their assistance for its success to overawe tlic. Episcopalians and secure victory to poperj^; and wlicn they did comprehend the scheme, "notwithstand- ing the renewed sufferings to which they might be ex- )wsed, they took part against it. . . . Independents, Baptists, and Quakers vied with each other in showing ihem (the Episcopal clergy) their sympathy. . . . None of them — not even Penn (q. v.) — was in favor of the tol- eration of Roman Catholicism. No man who valued the civil liberties of England dreamed of giving a foot- hold to the professors of that intolerant creed. Three generations had not sufficed to wipe out the memory of its curse on England. Thousands still living could rec- ollect the Vaudois massacres, and the streets of London were at that moment crowded with sufferers from the revocation of the Edict of Nantes" (Skeats, p. 83). The Nonconformists, almost as a body, refused to recognise the legality of the indulgence, mainly, of course, be- cause they saw ni the encroachment against the law a prerogative which, if not resisted, might lead ultimate- ly to the establishment of popery as the religion of the state. But, whatever were the reasons of the dissent- ers, the attempt of the king to gain their support evi- dently failed, and it became daily more ajiiiarcnt that the war which the king had ojienod with the Church must soon reach a climax. An attempt had already been made to compel the University of Caml)ridge to confer a degree of master of arts on a Benedictine monk. This w^as not persevered in ; l)ut soon after, a vacancy having happened in the presidency of Mag('alen Col- lege, Oxford, tlie vice-president and fellows were order- ed by royal mandate to fill it up by the election of a per- son named Farmer, a late convert to popery Cfor whom