128

HISTORY OF ENGLAND.

CHAP.

VIII.

1687.

Resent-ment oftho

clergy.

The nature of the academical system of England is suchthat no event which seriously affects the interests and honourof either University can fail to excite a strong feeling through-out the country. Every successive blow, therefore, whichfell on Magdalene College, was felt to the extremities of thekingdom. In the coffee-houses of London, in the Inns ofCourt, in the closes of all the Cathedral towns, in parsonagesand manor houses scattered over the remotest shires, pity forthe sufferers and indignation against the government went ongrowing. The protest of Hough was everywhere applauded:the forcing of his door was everywhere mentioned with ab-horrence : and at length the sentence of deprivation fulmi-nated against the Fellows dissolved those ties once so closeand dear which had bound the Church of England to theHouse of Stuart. Bitter resentment and cruel apprehensiontook the place of love and confidence. There was no pre-bendary, no rector, no vifcar, whose mind was not hauntedby the thought that, however quiet his temper, howeverobscure his situation, he might, in a few months, be drivenfrom his dwelling by an arbitrary edict to beg in a raggedcassock with his wife and children, while his freehold, securedto him by laws of immemorial antiquity and by the royal word,was occupied by some apostate. This then was the rewardof that heroic loyalty never once found wanting through thevicissitudes of fifty tempestuous years. It was for this thatthe clergy had endured spoliation and persecution in the causeof Charles the First. It was for this that they had supportedCharles the Second in his hard contest with the Whig opposi-tion. It was for this that they had stood in the front of thebattle against those who sought to despoil James of his birth-right. To their fidelity alone their oppressor owed the powerwhich he was now employing to their ruin. They had long

Anthony Farmer president of the said College, in the Collection of SlateTrials, Howell's edition; Lultrell’s Diary, June 15. it., Oct. 24., Dec. 10.1681; Smith’s Narrative; Letter of Dr. Ilichard Rawlinson, dated Oct. 31.1687; Ueresby’s Memoirs; Durnel, i. 699..; Cartwright’s Diary; Citters,

Oct. 25.Nov. 4.*

Oct. 28.Nov. 7.

Nov. Nov. H 1687 .