James II and the First Modern Revolution by John Van Der Kiste

James II and the First Modern Revolution by John Van Der Kiste

Author:John Van Der Kiste
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History / Europe / Great Britain / Stuart Era(1603-1714)
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2021-12-15T00:00:00+00:00


Chapter 7

Approaching Storm

With his renewed faith in the future, King James became less cautious and more of an autocrat. He persuaded the Pope to appoint four vicars apostolic as Catholic bishops in partibus infidelium, or bishops without a see but who still held authority as important allies of the king. When Samuel Parker, the Bishop of Oxford foisted on Magdalen College, died in March 1688, he was replaced as president by royal mandate by Bonaventura Giffard, a Catholic bishop, while a Catholic master, James Johnson, was appointed to Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, in similar fashion at the same time. It was beginning to look as though the universities were being gradually converted into seminaries for training Catholic priests on royal orders.

The Declaration of Indulgence was reissued on 27 April 1688, accompanied by an explanation of the king’s intentions. He was determined to demonstrate to his subjects that he would not be deflected from his intention to repel the penal laws and Test Acts, and he justified the changes he had made among the holders of office in England on the grounds that nobody should be employed in public life who would not make any contribution towards the peace and greatness of their country. Intent on publicising its provisions as widely as possible, on 4 May he issued an Order in Council that it should be read twice in every church throughout the kingdom, on 20 and 27 May in London and on 3 and 10 June elsewhere, and that all bishops must distribute it throughout their dioceses.

It was regular practice for the clergy to be asked to read out important national public pronouncements from their pulpits. In 1641 the House of Commons had undertaken a similar measure, as had Charles II to make known his reasons for dissolving Parliament in 1681, and there had been a provision in the Exclusion Bills that if the Duke of York was to lose his place in the order of succession it would be announced in the same way. The king and his ministers doubtless expected total acquiescence on the part of all the clergy. They had no objection to reading from the pulpit proclamations concerned with secular matters, but thought that any concession to the Dissenters, particularly to the Catholic Dissenters, would be an injury to the Church. On this occasion the move led to open resistance from Anglicans, and very few members of clergy obeyed the order to read it out in church.

Many others were becoming convinced they had to make a stand for their beliefs against the increasingly authoritarian rule of their king, seemingly intent on bringing England to Rome and reducing the Church of England to the position of a mere sect. It was wrong, they insisted, to collaborate with any scheme that would place them under the implication of approving the Declaration of Indulgence and thus make them accomplices in the destruction of their own Church. As a body, the Church of England as well as its clergy had



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