growth of forty years' duration. The Duchess, indeed, unconsciously expresses the anachronism in her use of the party term when she says of the queen as soon as she was seated on the throne, the Torieswhom she usually called by the agreeable name of The Church Party,' became the distinguished objects of the royal favour."1 What we should be content to take in the well-instructed and vigilant Sarah's definition, is the absorbing influence on the queen of zeal for the Church of England, so as to prepare ourselves for the effects of this zeal on the destinies of the nation, and on the content or discontent of her subjects at large.

1 Duchess of Marlborough's account of her Conduct, 1742, 124.

CHAPTER II.

The Religious World.

THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND: HIGH CHURCH AND LOW CHURCHTHE THREE GROUPS OF DISSENTERS: PRESBYTERIANS, INDEPENDENTS, AND BAPTISTS-THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS, AND THEIR ENEMIES WILLIAM PENN-THE PRESBYTERIANS IN SCOTLANDDISSIMILITUDE OF DISSENT IN THE TWO COUNTRIES-REMNANTS OF THE WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY-UNIVERSITY MEN AMONG THEM-THIS DISTINCTION LOST TO THEIR SUCCESSORS-THE UNIVERSITY AND THE COLLEGE- -SOCIAL POSITION OF THE DISSENTERS-NONJURORS-POPISH RECUSANTS-TEST AND CORPORATION ACTS-BILL AGAINST OCCASIONAL CONFORMITY TENDER CONSCIENCES APPEARANCE IN THE CONFLICT

OF "THE SHORTEST WAY WITH THE DISSENTERS" - DANIEL DEFOE: HIS OFFER TO REVEAL HIS ACCOMPLICES-THE EPISCOPAL REMNANT IN SCOTLAND.

AT the period of the queen's accession, here and there throughout the empire-chiefly in Irelandthere were people who believed that the divine right of a sovereign reigning over them could only be certified by the papal benediction of the oil used in the anointing at the coronation; others held that the true sovereign was infallibly indicated in the divine rule of primogeniture. Perhaps there were believers that the power of adjustment lay with Parliament. There were others-far more numerous-who passed no judgment on the abstract question, but were

thankful that Parliament had acted, and acted wisely. There was a body of infallible men-chiefly dwelling in the moorlands of the south-western counties of Scotland-who held the test of legitimate sovereignty to be an oath of adherence to the Solemn League and Covenant, and who were in a condition of chronic penitence and lamentation for the sins of the land that bent under an uncovenanted sovereign. The Church of England sat perhaps more lightly on the heart than any of these motive creeds; but the queen herself, and many of her subjects-chiefly among the clergy thought adherence to the Church of England essential to the sovereign of England. And she especially felt and acted as one who was legitimately placed on the throne for the protection and promotion of that Church. Without passing judgment on it as an abstract principle, it may be admitted that this assurance in the royal mind protected the empire from many dangers.

As the Dissenters or "Nonconformists," as they were more commonly called-are, throughout our narrative, a political power, it may be well here to note their position and conduct in the earlier years of Queen Anne's reign. They were growing in numbers and influence; but it was the infirm growth of a feeble vitality that might be extinguished in any hard contest. The mighty organisation of Methodism was neither in existence nor in expectation; for John Wesley was an infant in the cradle in the midst of the short contest about occasional conformity; and his father had abandoned his charge as a dissenting minister to become a High Church clergy

man.

All but an exceptional few of those who professed themselves Protestants not of the Church of England clustered into three groups-the Presbyterians, the Independents, and the Baptists. There were, to be sure, "the people called Quakers," perhaps larger in number than any of the three. But they were a peculiar people, standing aloof; and if it might not be said that their hand was against every man, yet every man's hand was against them. The Quakers, indeed, left on the opening of the reign a distinct mark, that between them and the other Dissenters there was no community of interests or sympathies. Among the many addresses lamenting the departure and hailing the succession, "the Dissenters in and about London presented also an address, which was the more remarkable because all the non-conformers except the Quakers joined it. The queen, in her answer, assured them of her protection, and that she would do nothing to forfeit her interest in their affections, which words were afterwards remembered when the royal assent was given to the Schism and Occasional Bills." 1

Taking a "Dissenter," in the strict sense, to be one who has separated from his friends on some special points of difference-who will be delighted to rejoin them if they will drop the cause of quarrel or scandal-the Quaker could not be aptly called a dissenter. The community of "Friends," to which he belonged, had bound themselves together by an organisation that discarded, as far as they could, all the traditions of a common origin that even those

1 Parl. Hist., vi. 7, where it is cited from Tindal. I am not aware of any other authority for this exchange of courtesies.

who had gone farthest away from the Church of the middle ages carried with them. While all others had more or less in common indicative of relationship and common parentage, the Society of Friends was like an erratic formation bursting through the whole, standing erect above the surrounding country and courting every storm. It would be difficult to say which of the denominations of the day hated them most thoroughly. It was difficult to sympathise with them in their sufferings, or to denounce those who persecuted them; for they themselves seemed to court persecution, as aspiring to the crown of martyrdom. Their casting themselves in the way of those who hated them most was, in fact, a sort of retaliatory persecution; for when the most bigoted of the Puritans crossed the Atlantic to isolate themselves in pious communities, unpolluted by the presence of the various abominations that embittered life to them in Britain, did not the most abominable of all, dog them to their place of refuge, courting martyrdom, and obtaining it in full measure? The general silence of British history about the cruel persecution of the Quakers in New England, is an emphatic testimony to their isolation from the sympathies of their kind. Among the scanty allusions to the affair, one tells how a message went from some of "the Dissenters of the three several denominations, transmitted to New England, in approval of some laws there against the Quakers."1

The stern resoluteness of the Quakers was crossed by a quality as peculiarly their own as everything else about them. Their uncompliability was neutral,

1 Life of Calamy, ii. 34.