mission of the royal censor, he read their titles aloud, saying, "There, let Mr. Attorney-general now show whether he will do his duty by them." To spare the priesthood degradation in the person of Johnson, he was cited, at the command of the High Commission, before Crewe and Sprat, the royal commissioners, accompanied by the bishops of Rochester and Peterborough, to the chapter-house of St. Paul's, and personally degraded from his order. In having the Bible taken from him in the ceremony, Johnson shed some tears, but said, "You cannot deprive me of its blessed promises." He received two hundred and seventeen lashes in enforcing his punishment, but bore it stoutly, and declared that he could have sung a psalm had he not deemed that it might appear like bravado.
Though the clergy blamed Johnson, and stood aloof from him as a firebrand, because he preached resistance to popery, which they were soon to do themselves, they were now loud in all their pulpits in replying to its attacks, and exposing its lying legends, and all its mummery of relics, its tricks of priestcraft, its denial of the Scriptures and the cup to the laity, the celibacy of the clergy, the abuse of the confessional, and the idolatry of image worship, and prayers to saints. Distinguished amongst these declaimers were Tillotson, Tenison, Stillingfleet, Sherlock, Prideaux, Wake, Atterbury, and many lessor lights in the pulpit, and through the presses of the universities, Obadiah Walker being for the time especially zealous with his types at Oxford. The catholics, under royal patronage, replied as actively, and the war of pamphlets and pulpits foreshadowed a war of actual arms. James, as blind to all signs of the times as his father had been, went insanely on his way, now eagerly endeavouring to convert his daughter Anne, and now as resolutely scheming to deprive his daughter Mary of the succession. In Scotland and Ireland his crusade against the constitution of the realm and the protestant religion was squally fierce and reckless.
To Scotland James sent down orders to the government to dispense with the test and admit catholics to all offices, and nothing was to be published without the chancellor's licence, so that no reflections might be made on the catholic religion or the king's order. The duke of Queensberry—who was lord treasurer, and therefore regarded as prime minister—though a tory, declared that he would not undertake to do anything against the protestant religion, but there were not wanting sycophants who were ready to attempt just what the king pleased, in the hope of supplanting Queensberry. There were lord Perth, the, chancellor, and his brother lord Melfort, secretary of state. They went over to Romanism as a moans of preferment, and were imitated by the earl of Murray, a descendant of the regent, and a member of the privy council. Perth opened a catholic chapel in his house, and soon received a cargo of priests' dresses, images, crosses, and rosaries. The incensed mob attacked the house during mass, tore down the iron bars from the windows, chased the worshippers from their shrine, and pelted lady Perth with mud. The soldiers were called out, and considerable bloodshed followed. James, irritated instead of being warned, sent down orders to punish the rioters severely, and to screen the catholics from all penalties, but to renew the persecution of the covenanters with all rigour. Alarmed at these insensate orders, three members of the privy council, the duke of Hamilton, Sir George; Lockhart, and general Drummond hastened up to London to: explain to James the impossibility of enforcing such orders, but made no impression.
On the 29th of April the time arrived for the meeting of the Scottish parliament, when a letter from James was read calling on the estates to pass a bill freeing the catholics from all penalties; but so far from the parliament accepting such a proposition, the lords of the articles, whose business it was to introduce the propositions for now measures, and who had been chosen by James himself, declined to comply with the proposal. In vain they were urged by Perth, Melfort, and Murray; they remained refractory for three weeks, and then only desired to recommend that the catholics should be permitted to worship in their own houses. But even this the parliament would not consent to, and, after a week's debate, threw out even this very much modified scheme. James, who had during this discussion seen the intense anxiety in England to learn the news of the progress of the debate, perpetrated one of the most audacious acts of arbitrary power that modern times have witnessed. He sent for the mail bags from the north regularly, and detained all correspondence thence till the matter was ended. No single Scotch letter was issued in London for a whole week.
When at length the news, spite of him, burst forth amid loud rejoicings, he was enraged, but, like his father, he declared that he would do by his own royal authority what he wanted. That he had been only foolish in asking for what the act of supremacy gave him in Scotland as perfectly as in England. He therefore launched the bolts of his vengeance at all those in office who had disputed his will. Queensberry was dismissed from all his offices, the bishop of Dunkeld ejected from his see, and crowds of papists were appointed to the offices of those who had refused to obey the royal mandate. Without the ceremony of an act of parliament, James proceeded to usurp the rights of boroughs, and to appoint mayors and town councillors at his will; he ordered the judges to declare all the laws against catholics void, and announced his intention of fitting up a Roman catholic chapel in Holyrood. These measures struck a momentary terror and deep silence into the Scottish people, but it was the silence only preceding the storm.
In Ireland James had a preponderating body of catholics eager to receive justice and the restoration of their estates at his hands. But only a wise and cautious monarch could succeed in making decent recompense to the native Irish for their many sufferings and spoliations. Their lands, by the act of settlement, were for the most part in the hands of a sturdy race of Englishmen, both episcopalians and presbyterians, who had been placed there at successive periods, and extensively by the commonwealth. To announce that he would repeal this act, and reinvest the natives with their ancient demesnes, was at once to rouse to arms a body of such pluck and nerve as the Celtic race had no chance with, notwithstanding their numbers. At the news that the act was to be revoked, and the church and government of Ireland to be put into the hands of catholics, the timid English gentry fled, the trade of the island received
