1686 had seen progress for James – but he was puzzled and frustrated by Anglican opposition from the English and Scottish parliaments. 1687  saw a continuation of the old strategy to raise the status of Catholics, and stifle independence of civil and military institutions. But it would also see a new strategy – to bypass parliament, and appeal to Dissenters as well as Catholics.

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Transcript

 

Last time, we talked about 1686, and the start of James’ principal objective for his reign, which pushed to the side any other considerations he might have; that was, to bring Catholics into full equality with Anglicans. Thus far, he has shown no strategic desire to embed an all embracing Toleration that includes Dissenters; though he has shown some sympathy with them, loosening the application of the Penal laws to the extent that 1,200 Quakers imprisoned under Charles were released from goal. But his attitude towards Dissenters is complicated, by their association with rebellion and sedition – particularly in SW Scotland. So, James could feel moderately pleased with progress; he had made a start appointing Catholics to key posts in civil administration.

In Ireland he had made the fastest progress, and from February 1687 now had a Catholic as Lord Deputy, which Paul of this parish tells me I have been mis pronouncing – the Earl of Tyrconnell. He was one of his best mates, and he was feeling confident of success there – afterall, it would be the will of the majority. In Scotland, he’d had a pushback from parliament had shocked him; but he had managed to place Catholics in the most powerful political positions, and gained clear recognition there of his absolute power and rights as monarch.

In England James was also confident of success now – James got self confidence, he was good at it – this was his vibe. Sure, he’d had to make wide use of his royal prerogative, to dispense with the requirements of statute law in appointing Catholics to civil and military posts, and he’d done that on a wildly unprecedented scale. But, he’d managed to manufacture a successful test case in England to demonstrate he did have that right anyway – he’d had to dismiss half the judicial bench to do it, but needs must in doing the lord’s work. So – what was anyone going to do to stop him now? Ok, there’d been some unpleasant fuss from the Bishops and Anglican clergy, but he was surely home and dry, just a matter of time, he would continue to raise the status and knowledge of Catholicism, the scales would fall from his people’s eyes and conversions would start flooding in, and pretty soon the Three Kingdoms would all be brought back to Rome. Cry Harry and all of that.

There was one problem; parliament in both Scotland and England had rejected his attempt to embed Catholic emancipation in statutory law. It didn’t necessarily matter – he was preparing the ground for an alternative approach to make Catholic rights general – watch this space – but it did worry him; because his heirs were Protestant, and he wanted to make this reformation irreversible, embedded in statute Law. So he’d have to get a shufti on, he’d hate to shuffle off this mortal coil without finishing the job. Obviously there’d been that stuff about promising to support established laws and all, but he felt he’d acted hastily so soon after this brother’s death, and hey, probably mis-quoted.

Let us start the next stage of James’ Good Work, then, in Scotland, when on 12th February 1687 he  issued a Declaration of Indulgence. James’ objective was to achieve full equality for Catholics, in all respects, political and legal and all, not just some namby pamby freedom to worship thing. He hoped to buy support from Dissenters, to help him against any resistance from the established episcopalian church. But he had a mind to buy it cheap.

The Declaration made its case by lamenting the religious divisions in Scotland, and making the point that only with the unity toleration provided, could Scotland’s trade and prosperity flourish. It was a lobsided old thing though, because James could not bring himself to fully trust the Presbyterians whom he held to have murdered his father, and so he was reluctant to pay the full price for purchase of their loyalty. So he set out to buy it on the cheap – moderate Presbyterians were given toleration – but only to the extent of allowing them to worship privately, they were not to build their own chapels they were not to be allowed organise and meeting large, seditious numbers. Quakers were specially favoured – they were to be allowed to build meeting houses. The main beneficiary were of course Catholics, who were given complete toleration, not only to worship, but in all walks of life, all the religious statutes against them were put aside, deleted effectively, not simply suspended, by his exercise of the royal prerogative. There were some pious words also for the established, Episcopalian church, saying he’d continue to support them.

To make all this work, there was a new oath available as an alternative to the Test Oath, basically recognising James as king and promising never to resist him. The indulgence itself reminded the Scots that their duty was to obey him ‘without reserve’.

The SPC responded with a letter endorsing the Indulgence. You need to remember that James had purged the council twice, so it would have been a bit of a shock if it had not done so; even so, there are signs of unease in the response…their letter significantly drew attention to James’ promise to maintain the church ‘as by law established’; the Duke of Hamilton and two others withdrew from the Council, and three abstained and did not return to the Council again.

The response to the Indulgence was a bit mixed. Presbyterians refused to accept a declaration which was so obviously lobsided, and designed for Catholics; and balked at the requirement that they only preach after swearing to accept the king’s ’Absolute power and authority’. James quickly recognised his policy had failed; so in March he withdrew their requirement to that oath. Still he was greeted by tumbleweed and defiant open air meetings, which of course remained banned under the Indulgence. And so in July, he accepted that he had no choice – he could not get away with a discount – and he gave all dissenters full equality in line with Catholics and Episcopalians.

Radical Covenanters still refused to accept the deal. They reckoned it was simply designed

To make way for the introduction of Popery’

But the larger part of Dissenters met in July in Assembly, and they did now accept it. They would use their new freedom to rebuild their organisations and congregations, which had been shattered by the persecution of the last 25 years. Not all the fences were yet mended though; many still distrusted James intentions, and would need re-assuring over time; such as Robert Ferguson, who warned that once James

Had abused their credulity

they would be made to

drink deepest in the cup of fury and wrath that is mingling and preparing for all protestants[1]

Some prepared for what they felt to be inevitable and looked for a future saviour; Patrick Hume wrote a memorandum to William of Orange and urged him to think about intervening, because James’ was driven on by his religion

Like a strong twist in a clew

For the established church, clergy and congregations, now effectively dis-established, this was tough, really tough. But, much as they might disliked the policy, for most, loyalty to the divinely anointed Stuart monarch trumped all, and they acquiesced. But there was deep and widespread unease. Firstly, as one person wrote, they worried that

By giving liberty of conscience the king designed to ruin the religion then established

Others just kept on going as though it had never happened-the University of Aberdeen was soon in trouble for continuing to get students to swear to ‘profess the Protestant religion’. The situation was complicated by the deep and often blood-stained conflict with the other major protestant group – the Presbyterians. On the one hand, the king had helped crush the power of the Covenanters who had dispensed with bishops, and was therefore their bulwark against their return, and must be supported by them in his absolute power. On the other it was made clear to them that the deal had been based on a fiction; they believed that while absolute, the king would always act in line with custom and law. Now their king had shown that assumption to be false – he had transgressed those customs. So they were caught – between the Scylla of the Presbyterian threat, and the Charybdis of a king who was no longer unreservedly on their side.

In Ireland there had been no need to issue a Declaration of Indulgence, since there were no Test acts. But James was ramping up the speed and extent of change. The Protestant Clarendon was dismissed as Deputy of Ireland – and incidentally his brother Rochester was dismissed from his post as Treasurer in England. Clarendon’s removal meant the promotion of Tyrconnell to Lord Deputy in February 1687, and soon a powerful acceleration of the Catholicisation of Ireland was well underway. The Protestant Irish knew what was coming; almost none of the gentry turned up to greet Tyrconnell at his official arrival; a Protestant in Cork wrote in his diary

Our Great Man is arrived – but God knows what he will do with us

The vast majority of Catholics were delighted at his arrival, and expected great things to follow. Catholic worship was openly practised, and chapels established – even including a Mass being celebrated at St Patrick’s cathedral. Religious orders flourished as well – 16 monasteries and convents were set up in Dublin alone. Education formed part of that process, the church needed officers -Jesuit colleges were set up, while Tyrconnell kept vacant protestant positions at Trinity College vacant; even, in June 1688 announcing those vacancies were now to be filled by Jesuits, which was expressly against the law.

Catholicisation of civil administration was even faster; all JPs and Sheriffs were now Catholic, so that Protestants complained they found it impossible to get justice in law – at which a loud Ha! might have been the response, as Catholics to pointed out that they at last knew how they had felt for so long. Town Corporations were ordered to appoint Catholics, and where they failed to do so, writs of quo warranto were executed out to compel them – 104 of them in fact. The general pattern became that Town corporations were split 1/3^rd Protestant, 2/3^rd Catholic. By 1688, 90% of the army was catholic.

The IPC was now largely catholic, and Tyrconnell turned his mind to the running sore of the land settlement. Many continued to argue that the 1652 settlement was perfectly legal, since it continued the long established tradition of confiscating the lands of rebels; but even Clarendon had accepted that the Restoration had left the issue unresolved. He had proposed a scheme whereby protestants would confirm their rights with the king and pay a fee to do so, and the money raised would be used to buy land for the dispossessed Catholics. Tyrconnell went further; while acknowledging that the policy would alienate Catholics who had bought the land of English soldiers after 1652, he proposed to James that the land settlement should be complete revised, ancient landlords restored, and the English landowners compensated by money payments. James agreed to this approach – and Tyrconnell started to prepare the ground for an Irish parliament to pass the required legislation; the Towns could now be expected to return more Catholic MPs, and he re-instated 11 Catholic peers to the house of Lords to make sure the bills would get through.

Ireland, unsurprisingly, was unsettled by all of this. Hope rose for the dispossessed and disenfranchised Catholics; one Gaelic poet wrote that James had

Freed them from tyranny

And

Hath changed our despondent hopes.

The protestant Thomas Sheridan was worried, and wrote that

Catholic natives were giving out they were soon to be restored to their ancient possessions.

There was some violence; such as when an English family of seven near Dublin were killed and their house burned, a Protestant commemoration of the 1641 uprising was disrupted by a troop of soldiers trying to stop them, and 7 or 8 people killed.

The Protestants in Ireland were in a panic; rumours spread, and one wrote that

A general massacre was to be suddenly put in Execution

Others reported that Protestant families were fleeing in droves. It’s pretty clear that these reports were wildly exaggerated; it’s estimated now that maybe 5% of the protestant population left – though Dublin lost 25%, and Cork 16%. Meanwhile, the economy was tanking from the worries and instability, made worse by bad weather and French duties imposed on Wool and Butter.

And so to England. Tyrconnell’s appointment as Lord Deputy Ireland, and his acceleration of the catholic revival raised alarms everywhere. It’s around this time that Thomas Wharton, enters our story, a whig and Calvinist, who managed to combine his religion with being the most outrageous rake. He owned estates in Ireland, and recognised how important events there were to James’ intentions here in England. He decided to put pen to paper, and fight James’ fervour with sarcasm. This also allows me to introduce Henry Purcell, who I have not yet told you about, which is a disgrace given how fantastic his music is. He was born 1658, and is said to have started writing at the age of 9, and demonstrably so by 11 years old. He’s a bally genius.

Well, Purcell produced a piece of dance music, called Quickstep. In it was a piece called A New Irish Tune possibly in a collection by John Playford; there is much debate about whether he wrote it, or simply arranged it. But either way – it was a bit of a banger.

Thomas Wharton decided that rather than just getting angry and worried about James’ policies in Ireland and their potential English consequence, he’d use the power of music and mockery to inspire  resistance. He wrote a bit of doggerel in a fake Irish accent, and set it to Purcell’s tune. He called it Lillbulero. The source of the word is again, disputed up and down, but possibly is a corruption of a secret watchword used by the Irish in 1641, in the Gaelic An lili ba léir é, ba linn an lá”,

un LIL-eh buh leyr ay buh lin un law

meaning “The lily was manifest, the day was ours”. Sorry for my appalling Irish Gaelic. But of course Wharton’s purpose was to mock the Irish accent.

His doggerel is set up as a conversation between two Irishmen, and contains verses such as:

 

Now Tyrconnell is come ashore

And we shall have commissions galore (Refrain)

And everyone that won’t go to Mass

He will be turned out to look like an ass

Now the heretics all go down

By Christ and Saint Patrick’s the nation’s our own

It became wildly popular in England, very quickly, top of the charts just like Tie a Yellow Ribbon, and grew and grew and grew as James stationed Irish Regiments here. It became an ever present street tune whistled by all and sundry – and it is catchy you must admit, and ideal for whistling. It spawned multiple variations and as trouble erupted it would become almost a whig anthem. Wharton would later claim, with some exaggeration, obs, that he had

“sung a deluded Prince out of three kingdoms”

It has had a long after life. It became a marching song – there are lots of military ban versions; it became strongly associated with the Orange Order, and sung with the words of the Protestant Boys. In England it became a drinking song, the Nottingham Ale. I was listening to the folk band Bellowhead, who did a version, set to the words of an English Ballad that first appeared in print in 1630 as the Devil and the Scold, and by 19^th century as The Farmer’s Curst Wife; people liked to put this farmer in their local neighbourhood, Bellowhead were using a Sussex farmer – Rab Burns did a version in 1792. Anyway – I warble. Lillibulero is a cracking tune, and perfect for whistling I am pleased to say, but my neighbours are not. It flew in 1687 as the political tension ramped up, an easy and effective catch to engage the wider population.

Events in Scotland and the Declaration of Indulgence there were also seen as a dangerous precedent and prophecy; Gilbert Burnet wrote

We here in England see what we must look for

In Whitehall, James’ youngest daughter Anne and her beloved husband George of Denmark were at the centre of a close knit social circle, the Cockpit circle, with Sarah Churchill of course. Her father had gently tried to convert her to the one true faith, but Anne was strongly resistant, well trained by Henry Compton. She was also cross with her Dad, furious when he refused to allow her to visit her sister Mary in The Hague. That’s a bit unfair of her, since there was plague there, but then children can be unfair. So she was very critical of her Dad, and wrote to Mary that she was

Resolved to undergo anything rather than change my religion

Things are come to pass now that if they go on much longer, I believe, in a little while, no protestant will be able to live here

So she was presumably unsurprised when, on 4^th April 1687, James issued a new Declaration of Indulgence  – a declaration for England and Wales.

 

“There is nothing now that we so earnestly desire as to establish our government on such a foundation as may make our subjects happy, and unite them to us by inclination as well as duty; which we think can be done by no means so effectually as by granting to them the free exercise of their religion for the time to come, and add that to the perfect enjoyment of their property…which being the two things men value most…as the truest methods of their peace and our glory.”

Thus spake James II in “His Majesties Gracious Declaration to all His Loving Subjects for Liberty of Conscience”, on 4^th April 1687, and a laudable aim it was, surely. James expressed his regret about the current situation in his kingdoms, that he wished all his subjects

Were members of the Catholic church

But that

Conscience ought not to be constrained nor people forced in matters of religion

Still he promised to defend the rights of the Church of England, whatever those actually were now, and support them in doing their job. Ooh, and although parliament hadn’t been involved, they soon would be, and they will they’ll love it, you mark my words, it’s a shoo-in. Don’t worry your pretty little heads about it.

The declaration gave freedom to worship without constraint, to all including Dissenters and Catholics. James’ strategy had changed. From the autumn of 1686, he had no longer felt he had any chance of working with the Anglican church or its Bishops. The blizzard of invective from the pulpit and his repeated orders to restrain and limit preaching, the refusal of folks like Henry Compton to reign their clergy in, and the Bishop’s defiance over attempt to discipline James Sharp, the public reaction, processions and pope burnings around November 5^th – all had convinced him of that. He would gain the support of Dissenters and Catholics, while the Tories and Anglicans must be brought to heel, forcibly, and must bow to their duty to the crown, their bulwark against the forces of rebellion and sedition. Their loyalty to the royal will demanded it.

James expected the support of the PC, ministers of State, his newly promoted chief minister the Earl of Sunderland to lead the fight at his side. He had already forged a tool to discipline the Anglican clergy with the Ecclesiastical Commission; and then in October 1686 did the same for the civil magistracy – he established a committee of the PC to review commissions of the Peace. As a result, there then followed yet another purge – of local justices of the peace. In a way, this was the intervention which had most local impact; JPs were part of the weft and warp of local community life, the mechanism by which gentry demonstrated their role and leadership – and imposed social control. And yet by March 1687, just before the Declaration of Indulgence was issued, the magistracy in both England and Wales had been thoroughly cleansed. There might be about 900 to 1000 JPs, and half of them were now new appointments, two thirds of these new appointees were Catholic. There had been few Whigs left in those positions after Charles and James had done their work, so most of those dismissed would have been Anglicans. That process, shire by shire would have been deeply unsettling, and become more so. Because after the Declaration of Indulgence took effect, they suffered the indignity of seeing Dissenters, old Cromwellians and even Fifth Monarchists, taking up positions as JPs.

So, progress. But James had failed to carry parliament. And again, that was still absolutely necessary to make Catholic liberation and the following inevitable conversion permanent. Hence his strategy now to build an alliance of non-conformists, and rely on enough Anglicans to choose their divinely appointed monarch over loyalty to their Anglican Tyranny. He expected them to do the right thing, capital R Capital T.

And there were certainly people at his side who believed in him and his mission. William Penn was famously firmly convinced in the benefits of toleration, as a Quaker, and had worked on him with the text of the Declaration. He now went on tour up and down England, speaking to large crowds and smaller gatherings of the local bigwigs, to sell toleration and the Indulgence. Chester, Wiltshire, Bristol, Gloucester; into Kent, Surrey and Sussex. At the same time he wrote multiple pamphlets on the subject, trying to sell the case.

Other authors enthusiastically did the King’s service too, pumping out promotional pamphlets into the world. Many followed a different line to Penn’s religious angle, and followed the approach Roger L’Estrange had taken since the Restoration, namely that

Imperial Princes were absolute immediately under God…to him alone accountable

Which was just what James hoped for – loyalty to monarch above loyalty to church.

Others argued on a practical basis, chasing national competitive advantage and positioning:

Holland no more shall our people drain

No more our wealthy manufactures gain

L’Estrange himself, though, was strangely absent. He was a strong Anglican, and his belief in toleration was thin. Everything he had written so far on Toleration, he insisted, had

Not been…a question of religion but of government

And although he’d bow his head to his monarch, he couldn’t quite bring himself to go the extra mile and undermine the Anglican monopoly. So, in March 1687, he closed down his campaigning paper the Observator, and stayed silent.

How, then, did the majority of nation respond to the Declaration? One standard mechanism for the people to respond to royal proclamations was to present a loyal address from the community, thanking the king for whatever great benefit he had just bestowed. It was expected – afterall, there had been 346 of them when James came to the throne, a flood of enthusiasm.

But the response to this new royal favour was much more muted. First of all, it was slow; by mid August, there were only 79 of them, though the total would reach 200 by the end. Of those that came in, some were indeed unreservedly delighted; the Earl of Arundel, the Earl Marshal and leading Catholic of the realm for some time past and future, presented an address of thanks on behalf of all Catholics of the kingdom.

The response from Tories and Anglicans was not enthusiastic. There were some addresses, and Sunderland and James pulled strings in the purged Corporations to, ahem, ‘encourage’ nice useful addresses. But most had sting in the tail, by concentrating on the bit of the Declaration where James promised to defend the rights of the Anglican church. The Anglican clergy in particular overwhelmingly focussed on that bit, and managed not to mention the Indulgence at all, which is a hoot. But relatively few came in from the Clergy at all; partly this was because the ABC William Sancroft, who had so far been a lamb as far as the king was concerned, as on his way to showing Wolf’s teeth. He composed a long list of ’reasons against Subscription’ condemning the Indulgence. That’s was a seismic change. What remained of the Tory magistracy, the JPs and so on, also held back. Though some of the more whig minded gentry, reflecting back on the alliance these Tories had made with Charles back in 1681 to crush their influence, were not inclined to be sympathetic. Lady Elizabeth Harley barked at as many Bishops as she could find that

You have made a turd pie and seasoned it with passive obedience, and now you must eat it yourselves

For James and Sunderland, the loyal addresses were crucial as a way of manufacturing the impression of national consent – so they worked to publish the best bits of what did come in through the London Gazette, and took care over the ones they chose – only 1 was published from Catholics, for example, to avoid giving the impression of a Catholic alliance. But it was hard work to find enough material.

They did have some responses from Dissenters to work with; and the big question is – had the policy of building a Dissenter – Catholic alliance worked? Well; of the 200 addresses, 78 of them were from Dissenters of various flavours – so they were well over represented in terms of their share of the population. Penn himself presented one from a meeting he held with 800 dissenters. But even then, it was much more mixed than James would have liked; most addresses simply thanked him for the liberty, without thanking him for use of his dispensing power – they were unconvinced by the use of the royal prerogative, and many said they hoped for a following ‘Magna Carta’ for these freedoms, before they would be convinced. Penn himself came under fire from George Fox who objected a Quaker getting himself involved in politics.

However, for those now resolved to oppose James, the idea that he’d be buoyed by a wave of support from Dissenters was an extra worry. And despite all censorship could do, the pamphleting war intensified, to the annoyance of some of the ruling elite for whom all this ‘politics out of doors’, processions, protests and so on were distastefully populist. Lord Halifax, for example, once a PC’er now firmly in the opposition camp, was appalled at hearing the popular voice

‘in an Age overrun with Scriblers, as Egypt was with flyes and Locusts . . .. That worse Vermine of small Authors hath given the world Such a Surfett that instead of desiring to write, a man would be more inclined to wish for his own ease, that he could not read’.[2]

Having said that, he could not help wading in himself. He published with his ‘Letter to Dissenters‘ and it ran like wildfire through society, because it rather neatly encapsulated the Dissenter’s dilemma. Could they trust this king, whose first loyalty was clearly not to whigs or dissenters, but to Catholics? Could they trust this king who used the methods of Absolutism, so diametrically opposed to their political views, and such a dangerous, reversible sword? Or, as Halifax put it, were they

‘To be hugged now, only that you may better be squeezed at another time?’

He urged them to choose Protestant unity and loyalty, and work with the Church of England against the false blandishments of a Papist, because while we all like a nice blandishment – I mean who doesn’t like being blandished? And even blandishing sometimes – Don’t be fooled, don’t be blandished – remember what absolutism and papism did to the Huguenots. Protestants must stick together to survive.

Now – the irony of being urged to Protestant unity with a church that had imposed a tyranny on them in 1662 was not lost on Dissenters – the country echoed with hollow laughs. But the even deeper irony of being urged to unity by a Catholic monarch in the light of a track record that included, I don’t know, Bloody Mary, the Council of Blood in the Netherlands, Louis XIV, or just this last year, in 1686, Victor Amadeus II, the Duke of Savoy. He had yet again sent his soldiers into the Waldensian valleys, and slaughtered over 2,000 protestants and forced the rest to convert or flee their homes. What was a decent, honest, good-living Dissenter meant to do?

On the sidelines, watching all of this with eager and close attention, was William of Orange and his court, which was slowly filling up with various potential rebels. Gilbert Burnet had been there a while, and he had no doubt that James was using illegal, unconstitutional methods

By transgressing against the laws of the constitution he hath abdicated himself from the government and stands virtually deposed

William was a practical man, and was developing an extensive network of contacts within England. He was helped by close links he already had; his close Dutch advisor William Bentinck, for example, had been in England in 1677 to negotiate the marriage with Mary, and had started the network. Their chief contact among many was Henry Sidney, who had been in The Hague in 1685 after he lost his job in James’ army, and according to Burnet, he was

‘the man in whose hands the conduct of the whole design was chiefly deposited, by the prince’s own order’

William had made no active interventions in the politics of the Three Kingdoms, and it’s unlikely he cared a lot about the rights of the English, or indeed for Parliamentary rights. But what did worry him, was to have a strong ally to act as a counter weight to Louis and the expansionist France. So far James had been very willing to talk about alliances with William, as much as with Louis. During the rebellions of 1685, Bentinck himself had come to James court to respond to a request for assistance; and James had feelers out regarding William’s reactions to his policies.

What you need to remember about William though, at all times and in all places, that his priority was survival in the long term struggle against France – everything else was subsidiary to that. So James’ policies now worried him. As he’d said to Penn, he thought James was mad to override the Test acts without parliamentary agreement, bonkers. And liberty of conscience maybe William was also a fan – but equal political right for Catholics? Don’t talk daft, man! One step at a time. He feared that James would plunge his Kingdoms into chaos and civil war by his furious charge. Which wouldn’t keep him up at night, to be fair – except that it meant the Three Kingdoms would then be no worthwhile ally against France. And that DID keep William up at night.

So, by 1687, William had a number of agents in the Three Kingdoms, both British and Dutch. Two in particular were tasked with making sure William was well informed; though at this stage there was absolutely no question of him getting directly involved. His diplomat Everard van Dijkveld was in England from January, establishing contact with ‘persons of interest’ as they say in the films. We might welcome back the Earl of Danby – remember him, Charles’ chief minister of State? Danby was one of them. He had met James soon after he came to the throne, and been sounded out for a job when Halifax was fired from the PC. They had a conversation, and James asked for feedback about a speech he intended to make about the Test Acts. That conversation clearly didn’t go well – because Danby, the arch Tory and the Arch Anglican – and arch loyalist – didn’t get offered a job, and retired into local life, and indeed would then be one of those Tories purged from Justices of the peace. He clearly hadn’t enjoyed what he saw of James’ policies, because when Dijkveld got in touch, he found an enthusiastic responder, who promised William service, and became a correspondent, both with William and Princess Mary.

Dijkveld got in touch with others known to William – Naval officer Edward Russell, the cousin of executed William Russell; the Earl of Devonshire, the man who had led the refusal in parliament to James’ request to overturn the Test Acts and been duly fired from PC; Charles Talbot the Earl of Shrewsbury hosted meetings Dijkveld held in London. By the end of 1687 William’s ear was closely and firmly to England’s ground.

James was oblivious to all of this; he had no qualms at all about pushing on, he’d just got started, and right and God were on his side. He was determined to stitch Catholicism into the ecology of society. To do that, he must follow the principle of Tom Leher’s Old Dope Pedlar – and start get them while they were young,  so Catholicism must be stitched into education. He picked specific opportunities as they came up; at Charterhouse for example, he’d tried to force the governors to elect a Catholic to a scholarship and Judge Jeffreys thoughtfully provided a royal dispensation for the young man; the response he met from the college was a sort of passive resistance – ‘Oh we’d love to Sire, but you see our statutes don’t allow us to, so sorry’. In this case, the college included Danby, who was prepared to go further, declaring

The power of dispensing to be illegal

And that he thought the Godden Vs Hales legal decision

To be unwarrantable by the laws of England, and by the generality of the best of lawyers

In other cases though James did have his way – four senior academics in Oxford, the Master of Sidney Sussex in Cambridge; I mean obviously these days there’s not be so much fuss about, I don’t know, the VC of Northampton University, but Oxford and Cambridge back then were absolutely leading public and national institutions at this time, feeding the greatest of public roles.

On occasion such resistance came with a cost; when the VC of Cambridge refused to admit two catholic to their degree without taking any oaths on the basis of the Cambridge statures. James would not take no for an answer; the Ecclesiastical Commission was rolled into action and removed said VC from all his posts.

The most controversial and public case was Magdalen College in Oxford. James ordered them to appoint the Catholic Anthony Farmer as a Fellow; the College refused on two grounds. Firstly that  Anthony Farmer was a bad man – a notorious drunkard and womanizer who had been known to make women

Dance naked before him

Oh – and their statutes required them to appoint a protestant. So they elected their own man.

Again the Ecclesiastical Commission was rolled in, and voided Magdalen’s decision – but then unfortunately, yup, found Farmer to be a thoroughly bad egg. So James visited them this time with another candidate of his own; again the Fellows of Magdalen refused insisting their statutes just didn’t allow them without perjuring themselves – obviously they’d love to, but you know, more than my immortal soul’s with guv’. So the Commission removed all but three of the Fellows, and James had his way.

The passive resistance carried on; when mass was held in the chapel at Magdalen, men and women of the town turned up to heckle, and Students kept their hats on in defiance in public occasions. It’s not big heroic stuff obviously; but feelings ran through the very fabric of public institutions and townspeople, and the sight of once again a royal church  Commission was being used as an object of coercion was alarming – and brought back memories of the days of Charles I and William Laud.

Well; whatever; as far as James was concerned, the project was well on track. He had created tools to enforce the royal will; he controlled key national institutions such as the Privy Council and Judiciary, and created a Commission to impose discipline on the church. He had made good progress in packing local government – Borough Councils and the Magistracy. He had manoeuvred the legal profession into legitimising a tool most considered illegal in the way he was using it; Royal Dispensing power, used on a wide, common place scale, rather than as an occasional device to correct obvious injustices. And by using that dodgy tool, Catholics were being appointed to key positions throughout public institutions, despite a sort of mulish, passive resistance he was increasingly able to push aside. The Catholic church and regular clergy were establishing places of worship. And now he could ramp it all up – because he had a general declaration of Indulgence.

One key institution remained to be controlled before he could consider his reformation secure, and his will absolute; parliament must also be controlled. He flattered himself he would find willing supporters if he called a fresh election – grateful Dissenters, Catholic MPs with suitable dispensations to take up their seats, Placemen dependent on official court positions and salaries. There were signs of trouble, occasional protests and the normal running sore of bonfires, jolly old November 5^th and Queen Elizabeth’s accession day, scurrilous anti catholic preaching from Anglican pulpits, there was also continual trouble and protest with the quartering of soldiers up and down the country in pubs, houses, commandeered chapels and so on. But he had the tools to deal with all of this now, and that standing army was his security so he wasn’t about to give up on that .

So the next big job; control parliament as a tool of royal will, and embed his reformation in statute law. In July 1687, then, he officially dissolved the parliament which had last met in November 1686, and started his next project – to make sure that when he did decide to call an election, it would be the proper sort of parliament, one that enhanced and extended royal power.

[1] Jackson, C:’Deviland’,p470

[2] Southcombe, George; Tapsell, Grant. Restoration Politics, Religion and Culture: Britain and Ireland, 1660-1714 (British History in Perspective) (p. 141).