many whom he was totally unable to convince. One of these was the Reverend John Kettlewell, who had long been distinguished for his amiable character and for the energetic zeal with which he had defended his position. Not content with verbal protests he publicly prayed for James II. and the pretended Prince of Wales, and incurred a prosecution. Kettlewell was one of those men whose eager nature is averse from moderate courses, and to whom compromise is actually abhorrent. To Dodwell's reasonable action he therefore offered, as might have been expected, the strongest opposition, and there was hardly anyone who was more responsible for the perpetuation of the schism. In Hickes he found an ally of a still more uncompromising mood. This indefatigable zealot in 1713, with the assistance of some Scotch prelates, consecrated Collier, Spinckes, and Hawes as 'bishops at large,' as they were called. The adherents of this little band were known as 'Hickesites' or 'The Communion of Dr. Hickes.' But this was not the only subsection which was formed out of the nonjuring body. Before the death of James II. in 1701 an Act was passed requiring the Nonjurors to abjure the pretended Prince of Wales and to acknowledge William and his successors as their rightful and lawful' sovereigns. It is certain that if this Act had not been passed, many Nonjurors would have felt that there was no valid reason for their remaining obdurate any longer. But the new Act demanded more than they were able to concede, and so a new body, 'The Non-Abjurors,' was created. Thus splintered into fragments and falling lower and lower in public estimation, the Nonjurors dwindled gradually into an insignificant and unconsidered sect.

Yet the Nonjurors for a decade or more were politically by no means a negligible quantity. As a dissentient group or 'cave,' they like by their virtues and their faults proved an insuperable obstacle to the return of the Tories to a position of influence and power. The more sincere they were, the more impossible they made the unity of the party. It is possible that some of them were not disinclined to undergo a martyrdom of a not very painful kind. But their sincerity-when they had everything to gain by complying-it seems difficult to question. Even those who differed from them most, recognised the strength

1

of their conscientious scruples. Burnet, for instance, while regretting the loss to the Church of so many worthy men, said that he thought the better of them for obeying the dictation of their conscience. And when Nelson asked Tillotson whether he thought that he could rightfully attend the services of the Church, he received a reply which seemed to assert in express terms that the conduct of the Nonjurors in holding aloof from the Church needed no apology. 'I think it plain,' he said, 'that no man can join in prayers in which there is any petition which he is verily persuaded is sinful. I cannot endure a trick anywhere, much less in religion.' It is, indeed, true that the Nonjurors have been charged with hypocrisy and dishonourable conduct. It is hardly to be doubted that some of them acted as Jacobite agents in disguise; nor is it to be wondered at that others, thrown out of regular employment on account of their professions, were forced into a vagabond life, and driven to make a living as best they could. Perfectly honest in the principles which led them into schism, they were constrained by necessity to descend to low and sordid shifts. Not indeed that there were no shining examples of upright lives passed in circumstances of a most depressing kind. The holding of religious services in secret, and the use of passwords tended, moreover, to produce in those who had recourse to them, a want of candour that verged upon hypocrisy. Even if they did attend the services of the Church, their behaviour when the 'immoral prayers for the King and royal family were being said, certainly did not tend to edify. To stand and face the congregation, to sit on hassocks, to turn over the leaves of the Prayer-Book, to pretend to take snuff-such were some of the devices they made use of to signify their disapproval. Sometimes they outraged by their conduct those feelings of mankind which they ought to have respected. Even those who were the ornaments of the party occasionally did things that it is almost impossible to justify. When, for instance, Sir William Parkyns and Sir John Friend were executed in 1696 for their part in the assassination plot, Collier, assisted by two other nonjuring clergymen, Cook and Snatt, publicly absolved Sir William on the scaffold. The condemned man having confessed that he was privy to the plot, Overton's The Nonjurors, p. 245.

the public indignation was profound. The three Nonjurors tried to justify themselves, although the bishops formally passed a sentence of condemnation on their action, as schismatical, seditious, dangerous, and anti-Christian. The plea set up was that Sir William had repented. Cook and Snatt were set at liberty on finding the bail which was demanded; but Collier refused it, and was consequently outlawed.'

The effect of the nonjuring schism upon the Church party and therefore upon the Tories as a whole was exceedingly disastrous. Their disputes, their sophistries, their dialectical fencing, laid them open to the assaults of the Whigs, who, in strong contrast, were united in a course marked out by practical good sense. While the Tories were wrangling over abstract questions of the origin and authority of government, the Whigs thrust theory aside and endeavoured to effect such a settlement as circumstances permitted. The verbal shifts, the ingenious excuses, the explanations, the apologies, to which the Tories had recourse must have often provoked a smile from their opponents, who all the time were addressing themselves to the questions of practical administration. Whether a Tory took the oaths or not, in either case he was a good deal criticised. Some of those who complied did so with reservations; as, for instance, that the oaths bound them only to peaceable behaviour. Dodwell ingeniously argued that those who took them accepted nevertheless the doctrines of divine right and passive obedience; but if that was so, it says little for their intellectual honesty. It is at any rate certain that many of those who bound themselves to support the new government acted rather from prudential motives than from genuine convictions. Where the arguments were nicely balanced self-interest not seldom turned the scale. Some of those who did violence to their consciences were afterwards smitten with remorse, and to meet their case a form of recantation was composed. While those, therefore, who outwardly conformed were often suspected of hypocrisy, the Nonjurors were constantly taunted with their obstinate refusal to recognise the force of facts. A state of things more likely to impair the moral influence of the Church it would be difficult to imagine; for the ordinary layman might, perhaps in some cases

1 Luttrell's Brief Historical Relation, vol. iii. p. 413; vol. iv. pp. 40, 45.

not entirely without reason, have been driven to the conclusion that the clergy were either knaves or fools. It is no wonder that under these circumstances the Tories ceased to exercise their old authority.

Before leaving the Nonjurors it will be convenient to refer briefly to their relations with the Jacobites. The terms were not convertible; for though the Nonjurors in a general way sympathised with the objects of the Jacobites, there were comparatively few who were prepared to go the length of plotting to bring about the restoration of the Stewarts. Strictly speaking the Nonjurors simply declined to affirm the power of parliament to dispense with their oaths to James II., and the majority perhaps were averse from stepping beyond this negative position. Men such as these were infinitely more loyal than the Jacobites who took the oaths in order to cloak their treacherous intrigues. But there were some Nonjurors-Bishop Turner, for examplewho more or less actively took part in Jacobite designs. At the Universities, where the Nonjurors swarmed, Jacobitism found a congenial soil and a stimulating atmosphere. By tradition both Oxford and Cambridge had been strenuously Tory, and it was but to be expected, therefore, that in these academic circles the new Whig principles of government would be received with much disfavour. It is curious, however, that though the Nonjurors were the more numerous at Cambridge, the Jacobites multiplied more luxuriantly at Oxford, where, indeed, it was said that the very streets were paved with their skulls.

In

The extent of the disaster that overtook the Tory party is not to be measured solely by the secession of the nonjuring members. That was serious enough, but it was not all. the same parliament which passed the Act for settling the form of allegiance and supremacy, two Bills were introduced which embarrassed the Tories even more. It was not that these measures actually caused a party split, but they greatly accentuated the differences which existed among Churchmen; they discovered and laid bare to public view the points of dispute, which it was the true policy of the Tories to minimise as much as possible. The Bills for comprehension and toleration on the contrary served to emphasise the points of disagreement, and, therefore, still further to disintegrate the forces upon which

the Tory party in the last resort was based. For disunion among Churchmen rendered impossible the cohesion which is the indispensable condition of party vitality and strength.

The action of the Church in resisting James II. in his designs to impose Roman Catholicism upon an unwilling country placed her in a very strong position. That advantage was now entirely lost-nay rather, the position was greatly altered for the worse. Whether the leaders of the Church were wise and prudent in acting the part in the Revolution that they did is one of those questions upon which opinions may well differ. It may well be that if the bishops had completely held aloof, the Church would have forfeited her claim to any influence in the government, and that her usefulness for the future, as a moderating force would have been impaired, if not destroyed. Be that as it may, the action taken by some of the most eminent of the clergy in precipitating and carrying through the Revolution went far to destroy the solidarity of the Church. There were differences indeed; but for the most part they were not felt to be acute. The once scarcely visible cracks were, however, now yawning into chasms. William had by his coronation oath undertaken to maintain the Protestant Reformed Religion as by law established; but though Supreme Governor of the Church, bis own religious views placed him entirely out of sympathy with the great majority of the clergy. Yet he posed no less as an ecclesiastical ruler than any of his predecessors. A more curious illustration of the inconsistencies which the British Constitution is sometimes stretched to tolerate it would be difficult to find than that of William exercising his ecclesiastical prerogatives. Ruling a Church some of whose most cherished doctrines he privately disowned, it is not to be wondered at that many of the clergy viewed his actions with suspicion and dismay.

The Revolution did not actually create the High and Low Church parties; it found them already in existence. What it did was to spur them into fresh activity and life. In consequence the old sores were hugely aggravated, the old acrimonious feelings much intensified, and the old lines of demarcation much more distinctly cut. When precisely the terms High and Low Church came into common use it is perhaps impossible to say with