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London alone remained firm for the Whigs; but the friendship of a Tory mayor secured the nomination of Tory sheriffs in the summer of 1682, and the juries they packed left the life of every Exclusionist at the mercy of the Crown. Shaftesbury saw himself threatened with ruin.
It was not thought that Goodenough had yet earned his pardon. The government was bent on destroying a victim of no high rank, a surgeon in the City, named Bateman. He had attended Shaftesbury professionally, and had been a zealous Exclusionist.
Accordingly, within a week after the great verdict had been pronounced in Westminster Hall, Silas Titus, a noted Presbyterian, a vehement Exclusionist, and a manager of Stafford's impeachment, was invited to occupy a seat in the Privy Council. He was one of the persons on whom the opposition had most confidently reckoned.
Some of those whom he has been advised to entrust with military command have not yet been able to bring themselves to take the oath of allegiance to him. Others were well known, in the evil days, as stanch jurymen, who were sure to find an Exclusionist guilty on any evidence or no evidence."
The juries, carefully selected by Sheriffs whom the Crown had named, were men animated by the fiercest party spirit, men who had as little tenderness for an Exclusionist of a Dissenter as for a mad dog.
He had been a zealous Exclusionist, had concurred in the design of insurrection, and had been committed to the Tower, but had succeeded in making his keepers drunk, and in effecting his escape to the Continent. His parliamentary abilities were great, and his manners pleasing: but his life had been sullied by a great domestic crime. His wife was a daughter of the noble house of Berkeley.
The old Exclusionist took the old Abhorrer by the hand. Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Independents, Baptists, forgot their long feuds, and remembered only their common Protestantism and their common danger. Divines bred in the school of Laud talked loudly, not only of toleration, but of comprehension.
Even the most ardent exclusionist can see from this that there is nothing to dread as to an overwhelming influx that will threaten the integrity and existence of our civilisation.
"No man had ever a point of pride that was not injurious to him," said Burke. The exclusive in fashionable life does not see that he excludes himself from enjoyment, in the attempt to appropriate it. The exclusionist in religion does not see that he shuts the door of heaven on himself, in striving to shut out others. Treat men as pawns and ninepins and you shall suffer as well as they.
"No man had ever a point of pride that was not injurious to him," said Burke. The exclusive in fashionable life does not see that he excludes himself from enjoyment in the attempt to appropriate it. The exclusionist in religion does not see that he shuts the door of heaven on himself, in striving to shut out others. Treat men as pawns and ninepins, and you shall suffer as well as they.
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