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Hickes, the acknowledged leader of the thorough Nonjurors, had become, as chaplain to the Earl of Lauderdale, well acquainted with its bishops; a large proportion of its clergy were Jacobites and Nonjurors; and, like themselves, they were a depressed and often persecuted remnant.
Some of the more rigid Nonjurors, headed by Bancroft himself, went so far as to refuse all Church communion with those among their late brethren who had incurred the sin of compliance; and it was plainly impossible to be on any terms of intimacy with one who could be welcomed back into the company of the faithful only as 'a true penitent for the sin of schism. There were some, on the other hand, who were fully aware of the difficulties that beset the question, and had not a word or thought of condemnation for those who did not share in the scruples they themselves felt.
Whigs and Tories joined in thanking God for this great deliverance; and the most respectable nonjurors could not but be glad at heart that the rightful King was not to be brought back by an army of foreigners. The public joy was therefore all but universal. During several days the bells of London pealed without ceasing. Flags were flying on all the steeples.
As for those Nonjurors and Jacobites who joined as laymen in the public services, undeterred by prayers which they objected to, it is just that question of dissent within, instead of without the Church, which has gained increased attention in our own days.
The rage of the nonjurors amounted almost to frenzy. Was it not enough, they asked, to desert the true and pure Church, in this her hour of sorrow and peril, without also slandering her?
Lord Chancellor Somers, whose able treatise upon the Rights of Kings brought to bear against the Nonjurors a vast array of arguments from Reason, Scripture, History, and Law, remarked in it that there were some divines of the Church of England who instilled notions of absolute power, passive obedience, and non-resistance, as essential points of religion, doctrines necessary to salvation.
But Thomas Thynne, Viscount Weymouth, though not a nonjuror, did himself honour by offering to the most virtuous of the nonjurors a tranquil and dignified asylum in the princely mansion of Longleat.
The fall of James was caused, not as the Nonjurors were tempted to think, by popular disregard of Divine personality, but by his own misunderstanding of the limits to which misgovernment may go. Here their opponents had a strong case to present; for, as Stillingfleet remarked, if William had not come over there might have been no Church of England for the Nonjurors to preserve.
In a situation of this kind, a man of pure and exalted character, such a man as Ken was among the nonjurors, and Watts among the nonconformists, may preserve his dignity, and may much more than repay by his example and his instructions the benefits which he receives. But to a person whose virtue is not high toned this way of life is full of peril.
This man was celebrated by the nonjurors as a martyr to loyalty; and they boldly affirmed, that his chief crime in the eyes of the government was his having among his baggage an account of such evidence as would have been convincing to all the world concerning the birth of the prince of Wales, which by a great number of people was believed supposititious.* Lord Preston obtained a pardon; Elliot was not tried, because no evidence appeared against him; the earl of Clarendon was sent to the Tower, where he remained some months, and he was afterwards confined to his own house in the country an indulgence which he owed to his consanguinity with the queen, who was his first cousin.
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