finally crushed at Culloden—a violent warfare against the new dynasty in the state, so the ecclesiastical Jacobites, the high-churchmen, or tories in black, continued as violent a warfare against the monarch as spurious, and against all concessions to the dissenters as a renunciation of the absolute principles and ascendancy of orthodoxy.
When parliament, on the accession of William and Mary, presented the oath of allegiance to the lords and commons, eight of the bishops, including Bancroft, archbishop of Canterbury, refused it; and of these, five were of the number of the seven who had refused to sign James II.'s declaration of indulgence, and thus gave the immediate occasion to the outbreak ending in the revolution. Amongst those who took the oath, however, was Lamplugh, arch-bishop of York. This man was bishop of Exeter, and, on the Landing of William, he fled to London, where, for his zeal, he was immediately created archbishop of York; thereupon he did homage to James at Whitehall, and, two days afterwards, joined the lords spiritual and temporal at Guildhall, to invite William to accept the administration of the government! The rest of the bishops complied on more or less honourable principles; but four hundred of the inferior clergy followed the example of the bishops, and refused the oath to the new sovereigns. Thus a fresh faction was produced in the establishment, that of the non-jurors, who were, after much delay and patience, finally excluded from their livings. Besides these avowed non-jurors, there remained, however, in the church a large class of clergymen of all ranks, who were equally averse to the new dynasty, an 1 the new principles of church administration, but who took the oaths to save their livings; and these half-concealed enemies became by far the most troublesome, as we shall see.
MEDAL OF THE SEVEN BISHOPS.
As the existing law could not touch the non-juring bishops so long as they absented themselves from parliament, where the oath had to be put to them, a new act was passed, providing that all who did not take the new oaths before the 1st of August, 1689, should be suspended six months, and at the end of that time, in case of non-compliance, should be ejected from their sees. Still the act was not rigorously complied with; they were indulged with a trial fur a year longer, when, continuing obstinate, they were, on the 1st of February, 1691, excluded from their sees. Two of the eight had escaped this sentence by dying in the interim—namely, the bishops of Worcester and Chichester. The remaining six who were expelled were Sancroft, the primate, Ken of Bath and Wells, Turner of Ely, Frampton of Gloucester, Lloyd of Norwich, and White of Peterborough. In the room of these were appointed prelates of whig principles, the celebrated Dr. Tillotson being made primate. Lamplugh of York also died in 1691, and Sharpe, one of the most eloquent preachers of the time, was put in his place. Other vacancies had recently or did soon fall out; so that, within three years of his accession, William had put in sixteen new bishops, and the whole body was thus favorable to his succession, and, more or less, to the new views of church administration.
Having obtained a favourable episcopal bench, king William now endeavoured to introduce measures of the utmost wisdom and importance—measures of the truest liberality and the profoundest policy—namely, an act of toleration of dissent, and an act of comprehension, by which it was intended to allow presbyterian ministers to occupy livings in the church without denying the validity of their ordination, and also to do away with various things in the ritual of the church which drove great numbers from its community. By the Act of Toleration-under the name of "An act for exempting their majesties' protestant subjects dissenting from the church of England from the penalties of certain laws"—dissenters were exempt from all penalties for not attending church and for attending their own chapels, provided that they took the new oaths of allegiance and supremacy, and subscribed to the declaration against transubstantiation, and also that their chapels were registered, and their services conducted without the doors being locked or barred. As the quakers would take no oaths, they were allowed to subscribe a declaration of fidelity to the government, and a profession of their Christian belief.
But the Comprehension Bill was not so fortunate. The bigots in the church, who had not dared to oppose the extension of some freedom to the dissenters, so that the catholics and socinians were not included in this case, and who, accordingly, were excluded from the benefit of the Toleration Act, became furious at the proposal to liberalise
