A Short Litany: July, 1688. "The Government being resolv'd To new furnish the House of State, What cost the price of three Kingdoms. And a Catholick Troth, That never was worth a farthing." -A Sale of old State Household-Stuff, 1683.1 HE following "Short Letany" marks the time when the acquittal of the Seven Bishops drew forth a shout of rejoicing throughout the land, and gave to James the Second a final warning of immediate danger, which he was not wise enough to understand or lay to heart. As it was said of old by Euripides, "Οταν δὲ Δαίμων ἀνδρὶ πορσύνη κακά, Τὸν νοῦν ἔβλαψε πρώτον. To no one has this truth applied more closely than to King James. We give him credit for sincerity in his religious zeal to propagate the Roman Catholic faith, but, as usual, the zeal of the Convert outran his discretion; and we cannot but wonder at the fatuity which made him defeat his own avowed ends. On coming to the throne he had won an unexpected submission. His bitterest foes were in a hopeless minority. A dread of reviving the horrors of anarchical CivilWar filled the mind of the more sensible citizens, who remembered the past tyranny and greed of Commonwealth Sectaries, Pietists and rebels. Not many persons held sympathy with the ill-planned and worse-executed Western Rising under Monmouth, and among those To the tune of, Old Sir Simon the King. Of the utterly outrageous insolence spirted against James II. in his fall, a single verse may serve as a specimen. In 1689, to the already popular tune of Lilli-burlero, was sung a ballad beginning, Our History reckons some Kings of great fame, But none before this who deserved the name Of Jemmy Mack Nero, Jemmy Transub.; Nero, Nero, Nero, Nero, Ninny Mack Nero, &c. Tom Wharton, Tutchin, or (already hanged) Stephen College could not have descended lower than this wretched composition from The Muses' Farewell. who did so, it was felt to be wise to abide a more fitting time, for giving expression to their sentiments, than the first months of a new reign. An experiment was being tried, and impatience would defeat the chances of success. The ruthless manner in which the crushed rebellion was made an excuse for butchery, and for extortionate fines, opened the eyes of those who were early inclined to hope well of James and his government. The apostasy of a large number of distinguished men, whom none could possibly believe to have been conscientiously attracted to Romanism, or by anything except selfish aims at Court-favour, helped to spread disgust and contempt against the King's religion.' Ridicule was thus expressed :— A Man in Favour; or, The Way to Preferment. be a Man of Favour? Would you you have your Fortune kind? Wear the Cross, and eat the Wafer, And you'l have all things to your mind. Then, step by step, attempts were made to give places of large emolument and influence into the hands of these Converts, and into 1 The author of a libel entitled "The Converts," of date 1686-87, begins, I did intend in Rhimes Heroick To write of Converts Apostolick, Describe their persons and their shames, And leave the World to guess their Names: But soon I found the scoundrel Theme Was for Heroick Song too mean; Their Characters we'll then rehearse In Burlesque or in Dogrel Verse; Of Earls, or Lords, of Knights I'll sing, That chang'd their Faith to please their King. See the notes on Henry Mordaunt and James Cecil, Earls of Peterborough and Salisbury, on our pp. 302-4, in connexion with "The Papists' Exaltation." 2 It is in the Pepys Collection, V. 127, printed by J. H[ose], 1688. It was sung to Capt. Pack's tune, Would you be a Man of Fashion: composed before 1685. Compare Roxb. Coll., II. 111, where the original is given in our Introduction. Erratum. The date at bottom of p. 290 should be March, 1688. The only true Reconciliation with the Church of Rome. 289 the firmer grasp of Romish priests, friars, and Jesuits. When the Universities made a stand against encroachments, the clergy saw themselves menaced with future loss of pluralities, and the Bishops ventured to urge a personal protest, which excited the King's anger, as though it were an act of High Treason. His rash attempt to punish them, by imprisonment in the Tower, made them Confessors, and virtually Martyrs. It soon united into a firm front a body of angry and indignant remonstrants, who held little in common except a resistance of intolerable Romanism. A wiser King, placed where James was, and after such troubled times, might possibly have succeeded in winning back much national favour towards the forms and faith of a religion accepted by himself. Despite all the ravings of the fanatics, there was not in the land such an ineradicable hostility to the practice of the Catholic rites and ceremonies, that a really earnest and prayerful devotee might not in time have seen the fulfilment of cherished wishes, in the reconciliation with Rome. Not the subversion of our national church under the rule of the Papacy; not the resumption of errors in doctrine and corruptions in practice, from which England affected to have freed herself, after the middle-ages had encrusted the primitive Christianity with a poisonous growth of fungus; but a large-hearted friendship between men professing diverse creeds, with mutual respect and interchange of vital assistance, is such as could be reasonably the desire of a truly religious priesthood. Against such a limited union the ignorant and audacious self-elected lay-teachers or schismatics would, in any case, be irreconcileable enemies. But their hatred and misconstruction could be defied, although not overcome by argument. Whatever hopes of such a reconciliation may have been cherished, either then or later, the misconduct of affairs by the bigotted King James soon defeated all possibility of attainment during his reign.1 Such hope as had stirred men's hearts at the accession of James the Second finds indication in a Roxburghe Ballad, hereafter to be given in our pages, "The Success of the Two English Travellers," beginning, "As we were a-ranging upon the salt Seas." There are other Loyal Songs on his Coronation. A belief in his honesty of purpose and fidelity to his plighted word, even more binding than a Coronation-oath, led many of his faithful subjects to yield him unfeigned allegiance. He had always borne this character for blunt and rugged honesty (except in relation to women, where it was not counted as indispensable). His paltering with his obligations can scarcely be said to have began until after Monmouth's rebellion. 1 Some few persons to this day may hold a lingering and similar hope, but it is little more than a dream, and one that is baseless so long as the present conditions of chaotic sectarianism remain. At least, it is not a subject deserving of ridicule; like the projected amalgamation with the fantastic Greek Church, which certain shallow Latitudinarians advocate. 290 James attempts a league with Irreconcileable Sectaries. This fact is recognised in "The Explanation," quoted on p. 293, His first Royal Promise was never to touch [i.e. Lord Grey. 25 30 But whatever favourable auguries may first have been drawn, the evil portents soon prevailed. No enemies, whether secret or avowed, numerous though they were, could have so rapidly undermined the national loyalty, had it not been that the King himself prepared his own downfall, by his impatience to establish Romanism. His first offers of Toleration were undoubtedly a bait to the Puritan dissenters, in order to gain their connivance at his breaking the Test-Act obligations. He saw that the English Churchmen, despite their accustomed loyalty, were prepared to resist the encroachments of his intruded Papists: therefore he attempted to league himself with enemies, men who were formerly assailants of both Church and Crown; fierce in their self-will, as opinionative and aggressive in their heresies, who had tried unsuccessfully to exclude him from the throne, and not only mocked, but persecuted unto death, during the reign of his brother Charles, those Catholics whose only crime had been a zeal for religion. There were noisy Protestants who scanned the horizon, during the four years' reign of James, and defined the signs of a coming One ballad, time "When Popery out of this nation shall ruu.' entitled "The Prophesie," political and rancorous (which appears to have been written in January or February, 168%), begins thus, with a reference to Catherine Sedley: 2 verse " It was 1 One such ballad, satirical, but only playfully ironical, "The Protestant's Prophesie," has been already reprinted by the present Editor, in Bagford Ballads, p. 439, beginning, "Come, hearken to me, whilst the truth I do write." to the same Tune," When Covetousness out of England will run," as the thirteenProphesie" mentioned above. The tune is named from the burden of a ballad beginning "Come listen all you that to mirth are inclined," which, being licensed by Roger L'Estrange, cannot be of later date than August, 1685. 2 Sir Charles Sedley's daughter Catharine, whom the Duke of York debauched, but raised afterwards to be Countess of Dorchester. Not for her beauty, she having none, or for her wit, because he could not appreciate it: as she herself admitted. Her father's witticism on her disgrace and elevation of rank is well known (that, since James had made Sedley's daughter a countess, he would make the daughter of James a queen), and he fulfilled his threat. The lampoons of One by the Earl of Dorset, ridiculing her the day did not spare the Countess. love of finery and display, and her assumption of youthful airs, begins "Tell me, When the K[ing] leaves off S[ed]ly, and holds to the Queen, And Popery out of this Nation shall run. When M[ul]grave 3 shall leave off his Lust and his Pride, And C[orn]wall his Pimp, which none but his breed, Dorinda, why so gay?" He has another, on her marriage with Sir David Collyer, and it is still more libellous, beginning, "Proud with the spoils of Royal Cully." With Arabella Churchill she is remembered in "The Converts," a poem, For in his Mistresses kind James Loves ugliness in its extreams. A taste peculiar; like the Duchess of Argyle's farmer enjoying his addled chick: "I thank yer Leddyship, but I dinna like my eggs ower fresh!" 1 James, Duke of Berwick, son of Arabella Churchill and the Duke of York. 2 A reference to some similar scandal appears in the satirical poem of "The Lover's Session: in imitation of Sir John Suckling's Session of Poets." Venus there declares that wealth Was to catch Womankind the infallible bait. This pow'rful Temptation none e'er could oppose; [Sir Allen A.? Not Mat. Clifford, Master of the Charterhouse. friend of Cowley and Bishop Sprat: for he died in 1677. Was our Prophesie Clifford Sir Thomas's widow?" 3 John Sheffield, Earl of Mulgrave, whose Essay on Satire attacked John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester; for which Dryden was brutally cudgelled by "Black Will." Mulgrave was of the Privy-Council, Lord Chamberlain, and on the High Commission. He attended James to Mass, but was not converted from free-thinking to Popery. In 1694, he became Marquess of Normanby. He had been earlier nicknamed Lord All-Pride, by the same Earl of Rochester, two of whose lampoons, thus entitled, are in our Roxburghe Collection (III. 819), and will follow hereafter. One begins " If you're deceiv'd, it is not by my cheat; the other, "Bursting with pride, the loath'd imposthume swells: " 1679. In his will, Normanby commended his two natural daughters, Sophia and Charlotte, to the continued care of his widow, Catharine Darnley, whom he had married in 1705, and who was the illegitimate daughter of James II., by Catherine Sedley. She had been divorced from James Annesley, third Earl of Anglesea. These facts are mentioned as confirming the allegations of "Mulgrave's lust and pride." Sic in original, but it is scarcely intelligible. The text seems corrupt, like the imagination of its writer. Possibly the line may have been written," And Conway his Pimp with none but his Bride." Some scandal had already connected Conway and Mulgrave, for in a poem entitled "Madam Le Croy" we find written, of Star and Garter (which he obtained on St. George's Day, 1674): These, Mulgrave, were thy pow'rful Charms It was the Star that made the Stealth. This was the earliest of Mulgrave's three wives, Ursula Stawel, whose first husband was the Earl of Conway. In "A New Litany for the Holy Time of |