elections, which terminated in the return of 'a glut of Tories.'1 The immediate consequences of this famous trial were sufficiently momentous. The downfall of the Whig Ministry, the conclusion of a great war, the disgrace of Marlborough, the imminent danger of the Hanoverian succession, may all be directly traced to this apparently insignificant incident. But the ultimate consequences were still more striking. It would not be too much to say that the Sacheverell trial gave a colour to English politics, and still more to English Churchmanship, for more than half a century. Those who 'roasted the parson' burnt their fingers in the flame; and not only did the burnt child, but his children and his children's children dread the fire. If the Church in danger cry was henceforward less frequent and less loud, the comparative lull must be set down, to a great extent, to the same cause. During the last four years of Queen Anne's reign the party which had been most energetic in raising this cry was naturally appeased. The clergy,' writes Swift, 'were altogether in the interests and measures of the Ministry which had appeared so boldly in their defence during a prosecution against one of their members, when the whole sacred order was understood to be concerned.' But they thought the safety of the Church was not yet secured. Among other dangers which threatened her was one arising from the existence of Dissenting seminaries. Even so good and moderate a man as Archbishop Sharp, though he had the good sense to feel and the courage to declare that 'the Church was not in danger, but that it was merely a struggle between Whig and Tory who should be uppermost,' yet' feared very evil consequences from the many academies set up by Dissenters.' 3 Similar fears were expressed by others far more violently. The result of such 1 For further details of the Sacheverell episode see Mr. Lecky's History of the Eighteenth Century, i. 57, &c., published after the account in the text was written. 2 Swift's Last Four Years of Queen Anne, bk. i. p. 50. Life of Archbishop Sharp, by his Son, p. 364. 4 See a Letter to a Noble Lord on the Case of Dr. Sacheverell, 1710, in which these seminaries are termed 'corporations and societies of schism, to propagate a generation of vipers that will eat through the very bowels of our Church,' 'schis alarms was the passing of Sir W. Wyndham's Bill to prevent the growth of schism. The passage of this iniquitous measure through the Lords was greatly facilitated by Lord Bolingbroke, who called it 'a Bill of the last importance, since it concerned the security of the Church of England, the best and firmest support of the monarchy.' Lord Bolingbroke posing as a defender of the Church is not an edifying spectacle. He certainly laid himself open to the taunt of Wharton, who' was agreeably surprised to see some men of pleasure suddenly so religious as to set up for patrons of the Church.' Nevertheless it would be unfair to set down Bolingbroke, and men of similar character who professed a zeal for the Church, as mere hypocrites. They probably regarded the Church in all sincerity as a useful institution, which ought to be supported by all means, while, at the same time, they laughed in their sleeves at the doctrines which she taught. Bolingbroke had an esoteric doctrine for his friends. and an exoteric doctrine for the outer world. The attitude was not a noble one, but it was intelligible; and it was the attitude of many others. The accession of George I. was the signal for the revival of the 'Church in danger' cry. Some who had not joined in it before swelled it now. 'I remember,' writes Bishop Atterbury, 'when the dispute about the danger of the Church was in agitation in the late reign, I was one of those who thought it not in danger; not but what I was privy to what the Whigs drove at; but I knew we had the Queen on our side, and that nothing could ever influence her to act to the prejudice of the Church of England, the rights whereof she understood and always tenderly loved; but we may say, without reflection on anyone, the case is prodigiously altered.' Whatever Atterbury may have done before, his trumpet certainly now gave no uncertain sound. 'We say,' he writes, 'the Whigs resolve, if they can procure a House of Commons to their mind, to destroy the Church of England. Whereby I do not mean that they have set up matical universities for the education of youth in all the poysonous principles of fanaticism and faction,' and so on. 1 See Cooke's Memoirs of Lord Bolingbroke, second ed., ch. xxv. p. 259. See Lord Bolingbroke's famous Letter to Sir W, Wyndham, passim. Boling. broke's conduct has been commented on in the chapter on the Deists in this work, See his Letter to Mr. Pope. gibbets in their minds, and design to hang, draw, and quarter every member of the Church, nor that all the Whigs will come into the scheme; but we are persuaded that the generality of the Whigs are averse to the present hierarchy and government of the Church; that they neither like our doctrines nor our clergy, but would abolish bishops, priests, and deacons, assume the Church lands to themselves, appoint a small allowance to the parsons, and prescribe them what doctrines to teach from the pulpit; that they would introduce a general comprehension and blend up an ecclesiastical Babel of all the sects and heresies upon the face of the earth, and, lastly, deprive the bishops of their vote in the House of Lords, which particular they have contrived to render the less odious by furnishing the Reverend Bench, as far as was in their power, with such members as few Churchmen will pity or regret when they shall be unloaded.'1 Atterbury did not stand alone in his fears about the King's religion. Among others the irrepressible Dr. Sacheverell reappears on the scene. 'No sooner,' writes a pamphleteer,2 'was the Queen dead, and the King likely to come in peaceably as he did, but the distinguished trumpeters of the town began to alarm people with the fear of Church peril. Since his Majesty's arrival Sacheverell made an harangue that the King was not in the interests of our religion. The press is hard at work to beat a new alarm and fright the rabble into mutiny.' 'Yet,' writes another, 'did they continue with great industry to disperse scandalous and seditious libels, to infuse jealousies into the minds of the weak and unthinking multitude, and to revive the groundless, impudent clamours of the danger of the Church. Such were, "Stand fast to the Church," "Trick upon Trick," "Where are our Bishops now?" "The Religion of King George," "No Presbyterian Government," "The State Gamester; or, the Church of England's Sorrowful Lamentations." '3 The efforts were not in vain. There were riots in London English Advice to the Freeholders of England,' by Bishop Atterbury, 1714. See vol. xiii., of the Somers Tracts. 2 The False Steps of the Ministry after the Revolution, in a Letter to my Lord,' 1714. See the Somers Tracts, vol. xiii. 572, &c. • See Oldmixon's History of England, folio, p. 581. on the King's birthday and on the Restoration Day, with cries of High Church and Ormond!' A print of King William was burnt in Smithfield. At Birmingham, Bath, Bristol, Chippenham, Norwich, Reading, and many other places there were tumults and cries of 'Down with the Whigs! Sacheverell for ever!' The Pretender's health was openly drunk in Ludgate, and Oxford was, of course, a centre of disaffection.1 The rebellion of 1715 was no doubt largely fomented in England by the 'Church in danger' cry. But it is no less true that that rebellion tended in no slight degree to allay the cry. Many were ready to shout that the Church was in danger who were by no means prepared to go the whole lengths of Jacobitism. It was a wise policy to identify the rebellion with the Church clamours.2 A contemporary historian, after having described the execution of Mr. Paul, a Nonjuring clergyman, adds the following reflection: 'It seemed but just and reasonable that so unnatural and wicked a rebellion, which had been chiefly raised and carried on under the false pretence of the Church's danger, should in some measure be expiated by the blood of one of the principal instruments in propagating that delusion.' The King, in his first speech to Parliament after the suppression of the rebellion, said, 'The endeavouring to persuade my people that the Church of England is in danger under my government has been the main artifice in carrying on the design. This insinuation, after the solemn assurance I have given, and my having laid hold on all opportunities to do everything that may tend to the advantage of the Church of England, is both unjust and ungrateful.' A pamphleteer in 1717, advocating the repeal of the Occasional Conformity and Schism Acts, writes, ‘You tell me you are apprehensive upon the motion that there will be a revival of the cry of the danger of the Church. But there is no great matter in that, as long as there be no danger in it 1 See Continuation of Rapin's History, by Tindal, vol. xviii. 374, 420, &c. ; Smollett's Continuation of Hume, vol. ii., passim, Caricature History of the Georges, by T. Wright, ch. i., &c. &c. 2 Addison's Freeholder, a periodical expressly written to defend the Govern ment, gives a large space to the Church in danger cry in connection with the rebellion. See Nos. 7, 14, 22, 32, 47, 52, &c. • Quadriennium Annæ Postremum, 'The Political State of Great Britain,' &c., by Boyer, vol. xii. p. 63. to real religion, about which, they that cry out about the danger of the Church are commonly least concerned. I hope the magic of that cry is almost worn out and spent. If things are come to that pass, that the Church can never be safe till King George is dethroned and we have a new Revolution, I'll venture to say (be the consequence what it will) 'tis no Church of God's appointing; it is a Church for which no true Protestant can have any affection. It can be none but Parson Paul's and Parson Howell's Church. It must come to nothing, or else we must at once be Papists, Slaves and Fools. And from such, good Lord, deliver us!' The very title of the Act in favour of which the pamphlet quoted above was written, 'An Act for strengthening the Protestant Interest,' indicates that the fear of the Church's danger was now overruled by another fear, that of the danger to Protestantism through the machinations of the Jacobites. In vain the High Church party asked whether the Church was to come over to the Dissenters or the Dissenters to the Church.2 The measure was passed, though not without great opposition. This association of the cry with political disaffection is probably the reason why it was but feebly raised in connection with such events as the practical suppression of Convocation. resulting from the great Bangorian controversy, and the exile of Atterbury 3-events which in earlier days would have raised a storm as furious as that which the Sacheverell trial produced. The last occasion on which the cry was raised with anything like its old effect, was during the elections of 1722, when an attack was made upon the court party by exciting the old mob prejudices against a Commonwealth and the Dissenters.1 The 'Church in danger' cry in its old sense was henceforth 1 Quadriennium Annæ Postremum, vol. xiii. p. 417. 2 See Bogue and Bennett's History of the Dissenters, vol. iii. p. 133. * Both these events roused, of course, great excitement among the clergy, but it did not spread among the multitude. Indeed, in the latter case, the mob appears to have been rather on the other side. While we were in the church,' writes R. Thoresby, 'there was a mighty shout in the street, which, we were told, was upon the Bishop of Rochester passing by, some crying out "No Popish bishop, no English Cardinal." But the guards restrained them as much as possible. From mobs of all sorts, Libera nos, Domine.'-Diary for May 11, 1723, ii. 377. See Caricature History of the Georges, ch. ii. |