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CHAPTER II.

THE POPISH PLOT.

SEVERAL other events, which had a more or less direct bearing on this history, occurred about the time of Sheldon's decease, and contributed to bring about changes which mark that period as an epoch in the history of this country, and especially in its ecclesiastical history. Among them were the Great Fire of London, the appointment of Sancroft to the primacy of the English Church, and the celebrated Popish Plot, which was the cause of a long series of judicial murders, but which also defeated the hopes and designs of the unscrupulous monarchs and statesmen who were secretly conspiring to introduce Romanism and lawless despotism into this country. That such a design actually existed there can be no doubt. Coleman, who was the secretary of the Duchess of York, and who was also general agent of the foreign Roman Catholics, was denounced by Titus Oates, but had time to burn all his papers, with the exception of one, in which he asked the assistance of the Père la Chaise, the confessor of the King of France, for the striking of the greatest blow

against Protestantism that it had ever yet received. There can be no doubt that, as Dryden says, in these charges "some truth there was, though dashed and brewed with lies." What could be more natural than that many foolish and many unscrupulous Catholics, emboldened by the knowledge, or at least by the belief, that Charles was secretly a member of their Church— and by the certainty that the next heir to the crown was her devoted champion, and was prepared to make any sacrifices for her, that both of them were in constant and secret communication with the French monarch; in fact, that there was a great European conspiracy headed by the kings of France and England. All this being more or less known to men who were profoundly ignorant of the state of public opinion and feeling in England, naturally inspired them with hopes which, without being formed into settled plans, took the character of aspirations, and were expressed in correspondence by zealots who imagined that England was on the eve of being reconverted to the ancient faith. Hopes and fears of this nature have been entertained in our day and have produced great results. How much more likely were they to be cherished at a time when most men were profoundly ignorant of the real weakness of the Romish party in England and elsewhere, and of obstacles that stood in the way of the realization of such ideas. It is only very lately that the English people have discarded the bugbears that terrified our forefathers, have come to perceive how groundless such fears are, and to learn that the best protection against the tyranny of one

religious body over the rest is to give equal liberty of teaching to all. What might not be hoped on the one hand and feared on the other, with a Popish king actually on the throne and a Popish successor animated by the spirit of Ignatius Loyola, and determined to strain every nerve to secure the triumph of his religion; and behind him a Popish ally, the richest, the most absolute, the most powerful monarch in the world, and rendered still more powerful through the exaggerated belief that men entertained of the greatness of his resources, who, from policy and ambition as well as from religious zeal, entered warmly into the designs of his English allies, and had promised to afford them his aid by land and by sea, whenever matters should seem ripe for the attempt. Under such circumstances it need cause no surprise that foolish and unscrupulous Catholics like Coleman, should, in their secret conclaves and clandestine correspondence, give expression to their wild dreams of conquest and conversion, and that knaves like Titus Oates, by listening at keyholes and piecing out by imagination scraps of letters and sentences half uttered and half whispered, should have framed that monstrous farrago of fact and falsehood, which is known by the name of the Popish Plot, and which, beginning in delusion, ended in unmitigated perjury. The great fire, which the panic fears and prejudices of the populace generally attributed to the Roman Catholics, increased the greediness with which the supposed discoveries of Oates and his associates were swallowed. Any one who ventured to doubt that it was their work was not listened to for a moment, and it

was well for him if he was not arrested and imprisoned. The clergy, required as they were by the first canon to preach against Popery, at least four times a year, zealously discharged this duty, and many of them, by their ignorant and virulent invectives, increased the panic and fanned it into a furious flame. The men who believed that the Romanists had been guilty of the atrocities that were imputed to them, naturally and logically concluded that they would commit crimes even more monstrous, and lived in continual dread of the perpetration of something even more terrible than the destruction of their city. The erection of the monument, with its libellous inscription, seemed to set the seal of the highest authority in the land on the truth of the abominable fiction, for it was naturally supposed that the king would not have permitted the inscription which the pillar bore to be placed on it originally, or afterwards to remain on it, if he were not himself satisfied of the truth of the frightful accusation it conveyed; and this belief was further strengthened, when, as each 5th of November came round, the memory of the treason and plot to blow up king, lords, and commons, was resuscitated, and the haranguers against Popery were able to point to a fact which seemed to afford some warrant for their anti-Papistical declamations.

We look on the period of 1678, which we have now reached, as marking a new point of departure in the history of the Anglican Church, not because of the great fire of London or the Popish Plot, not because the long reign of Sheldon was at length brought to a

close and a new primate, mounting the archiepiscopal throne of Canterbury, was labouring hard to infuse new life and vigour into the Church, of which he now became the first minister; but because that date marks, at least approximately, the period when the cavalier or ecclesiastico-conservative reaction having run its course, and reached its highest point, the reflux tide had now become distinctly noticeable. From this time forward, it may be roughly calculated that conformity had attained its culminating point, and that henceforward the history of the English Church presents the spectacle of a series of struggles between free opinion on the one hand, and enforced conformity on the other. The former steadily progressing in spite of all the efforts that were made to arrest its advances, while the latter, beaten from each successive position, but still standing firmly and steadily on the defensive, and retiring from post to post in the hope that each position would prove more defensible than that which had been given up before it. I do not pretend to mark, with any degree of accuracy, the date of the commencement of the long struggle that is still going on between the opposing forces of religious liberalism and religious conservatism. But if I am asked to fix as nearly as possible the time at which the two forces entered into strong and decided antagonism, I should put my finger on the period when the great fire had burnt itself out, and when the torpor which characterized the latter part of Sheldon's life, was exchanged for the zealous activity and well intentioned firmness of Archbishop Sancroft. At all events, I would submit

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