persons, who merely administered the law in the two previous reigns: and King William is reproached for not executing their cruel demands. What then could the poor Clergy expect from such men! Had they been left to the tender mercies of their enemies, their case would have been sad indeed.
This author gives a list of the Clergy, who had been deprived up to the period of his writing. First, we have a considerable number deprived by the Committee of Estates, in the month of May, 1689, for not reading the Proclamation enjoined by the State: and this the author considers a crime of sufficient magnitude to justify deprivation. Secondly, he gives another list of Clergymen "turned out afterwards by the Council." These are numbered, and their alleged offences are specified. The perusal of it revives the recollection of White's Infamous Centurie in 1643, when the same custom of blackening the characters of the Clergy, in order to ejection, was adopted. The crimes alleged were not praying for the King and Queen by name: not reading the various Proclamations:[1] encouraging the disaffected: not obeying the Thanksgiving: having been appointed by the Bishops: leaving the Church when the papers were read by others. Such were the charges. If the Clergy did not appear, they were deprived on the ground of their own confession, their absence being regarded as an acknowledgment of guilt. Thus this unscrupulous writer, who gives an account of each
- ↑ It has been already proved that some of the Clergy never heard of the Proclamations, until the period fixed for reading them had elapsed. See "A Representation of the Church in North Britain, as to Episcopacy and Liturgy, and of the Sufferings of the orthodox and regular Clergy, from the enemies to both, 8vo. London, 1718." P. 16.
