When winter approached, the prospect of a new Parliament and a new Convocation opened on the eyes of Atterbury with a fascinating effect; and as the autumn leaves fell in the London parks, the Archdeacon girded up his loins for a fresh attack. He was concerned about many things—about the opposition his party was likely to encounter, about the exact place of meeting of the Clergy, and about the execution of the præmunientes clause, notwithstanding Kennet’s destructive criticisms. He says to Trelawny, “Unless some spirit be put into our affairs, and the managers of them, and they attend here punctually, and behave courageously, our cause must sink, and we must be broken; for we are beset, and unless a vigorous stand be made, shall find they will be too hard for us. Their Lay interest is much stronger than it is imagined to be; they know it, and feel it, and accordingly speak in a much higher strain than ever they used to do, and talk more securely of success at the next meeting.”[348]

It was thought the Lower House needed more room for their assembly. Sir Christopher Wren was consulted on the subject; but “any carpenter in the town understood that matter as well as he, and I would undertake,” said the impatient Archdeacon, “to bring one that should contrive seats to hold near six score, which is more than ever yet met at once.”[349]

Christmas festivities had scarcely ended, holly branches still hung in the parish churches, when the new Convocation met. The day before New Years’ Day, after a Latin service read by the Bishop of Oxford, a Latin sermon preached by the Dean of St. Paul’s, and the King’s writ and the Bishop of London’s certificate formally delivered, “the Archbishop admonished the Clergy to retire into the chapel, at the west end of the church, where morning prayers are usually said, and there, under the conduct of the Dean of St. Paul’s, to choose a Prolocutor, and present him in Henry the VII.’s Chapel, on Tuesday, the 13th of January.”[350] No sooner had they met for that purpose, than the old embers of strife were kindled afresh, and blazed up furiously as before. The first contention pertained to proxy votes, the Dean of Canterbury contending they were valid, others answering they were quite contrary to custom, and indeed, that absent members were guilty of contumacy till their absence received judicial excuse, and therefore lay under a canonical impediment,[351] which for the time deprived them of their ecclesiastical power. The election of Prolocutor was the next struggle. Even such a candidate as Beveridge, decided Anglican as he was, could not satisfy the extreme party, and they elected, by a majority of 36 or 37 against 30, the Dean of Salisbury, Dr. Woodward, a civilian who had grown popular with High Churchmen by opposing his Diocesan. At that very moment, the two were engaged in litigation with each other; and, in addition to this circumstance, which rendered the election unseemly, the fact should be remembered that Woodward, now a sharp thorn in the sides of Burnet, owed to that Prelate his church preferment. The election over, the new Prolocutor approached the chair occupied by the Dean of St. Paul’s as temporary president whilst the votes were being taken; but the Dean kept possession of his seat, on the ground that the Prolocutor could not preside when as yet there was no House. The Prolocutor being duly presented to the Archbishop, on the 13th of January he made a speech, bristling with military allusions.

After this, Archbishop Tenison, rock-like as ever, in a graceful tone, recommended charity and union, and lamented existing divisions; the only good effect of which, he said, was the impulse it had given to the study of historical questions, whereby light had fallen on Convocational rights, privileges, and customs. “The Prolocutor and Clergy were then ordered to withdraw to the consistory at the west end of the church.” Now reappeared the old bone of contention. A schedule of prorogation from the Archbishop reached the hands of the Prolocutor: “A paper,” he called it, “by which their Lordships had adjourned themselves;” a paper which he would not read to the House himself; a paper which he gave the actuary to read; a paper to which he added words of his own, substituting this place for Jerusalem Chamber—the gist of his treating the document thus, being that he would not admit the power of the Upper House to prorogue the meeting of the Lower. “Mr. Prolocutor,” said Archdeacon Beveridge, “I advise you, in the name of Jesus Christ, not to open our first meeting in such contempt and disobedience to the Archbishop and Bishops, and in giving such offence and scandal to our enemies.” “I have,” replied Woodward, “the power to alter the schedule when I intimate it.”[352] The battle for independence now reopened, the majority of the Lower House, headed by the defiant Prolocutor, resolving to fight it out to the last.

The Clergy, on the 20th of January, assembled early in the cold nave of the Abbey, after which they proceeded to prayers in the Jerusalem Chamber. Thence they returned to Henry the VII.’s Chapel, where they found the floor matted and curtains hung,—no small comfort on a frosty morning.[353] If their feet were as warm as their tempers, they had no reason to complain, for no sooner had they taken their places than it was proposed to have prayers over again by themselves, to show their independence. The motion was opposed. Debates followed. The Archbishop’s messenger waited at the door while the question of his being admitted was discussed. After “a little noise,” he came in with the hated schedule of prorogation. The Prolocutor took it up, and “playing with it in his hands, supposed it to be a paper about adjourning; and at last repeated the place and time, and putting it to the House for their pleasure, drew up a paper and read it.” This occurred on the 22nd of January. Upon the 28th, the Prolocutor again informed the members he had received a message of adjournment, but that he would not communicate it except by order of the House. Dr. Freeman maintained it ought to be delivered in obedience to the Archbishop. The Prolocutor tartly replied, he did not need to be taught what was his business; and Atterbury, starting up, accused Freeman of using indecent words.[354] Then came discussions about committees for purposes presented in the last Convocation. Further personalities arose. One made an offensive allusion, another felt annoyed. “Expressions were used,” it is said, “which might have laid the foundation of a misunderstanding or something worse,” but for subsequent explanations. On the 28th, Atterbury—the spirit of the storm—rejoiced in his native element, as he proposed, and at last carried the point, that the Prolocutor should have inserted in the minutes a phrase which assumed the right of independent assembling. “This new and improper entry,” in Kennet’s judgment, “so thrust upon the minutes, was the great cause of widening the divisions in the Lower House.”[355]

Another source of discord was found in the quarrel between Burnet and Woodward the Prolocutor. Some members complained of a breach of privilege, and an indignity to Convocation offered to the Prolocutor by Burnet, his Diocesan, who was said to have required him to attend a visitation, while he was occupied with Convocational duties, and to have issued a process against him for non-compliance. Burnet was also charged by Woodward himself, with declaring that Convocation had no privileges which it could plead.[356]

On the 9th of February, Beveridge “made a long and pathetic speech upon the dispute at present depending between the two Houses.” “He earnestly exhorted both sides to union, and to think of such methods of healing the breach as might secure the Lower House’s liberty, and yet not entrench on the Archbishop’s authority.” He so influenced his brethren, that a committee was appointed to consider an expedient for composing the differences relative to prorogations.[357] But to this note of peace there speedily succeeded another outburst of war.

Never, perhaps, did Convocation pass through a more tumultuous day than Thursday, the 12th of February, ushered in though it was by a circumstance adapted to calm the spirit of ever so excited an assembly. Between 9 and 10 o’clock, as the members of the Lower House were pacing up and down the nave of Westminster Abbey—not then crowded with monuments as it is now—waiting for the commencement of business, and eager to know what turn discussions were about to take, news came that Woodward, the Prolocutor, had been taken ill—very ill, and could not possibly attend to his duties. He must send a deputy, said his friends, and the deputy sent, turned out to be Aldrich, Dean of Christ Church, a man of like spirit with the Prolocutor himself. Upon proceeding to read prayers in the Lower House, this deputy was interrupted by a question, whether he ought to take the chair, without receiving the sanction of the Archbishop to his appointment. Kennet and Birch hastily departed to inform his Grace of what had been done; but on their way through the cloisters[358] to the yard, into which opened the principal door to the Jerusalem Chamber, they were stopped by another member, who proposed that they should return and wait until after prayers. They did so. As Aldrich, encouraged by Atterbury, ventured to take the chair, “a tumultuous noise” arose. Opposing members “persisted with vehemence in their demand, that the Dean of Christ Church should relinquish the chair.” They were “peremptory in their manner”—they came “prepared for a rupture,” says a nettled member on the other side.[359] In the midst of the disturbance, Wickart, Dean of Winchester, and Archdeacon Beveridge, removed the instrument of substitution from the table, and carried it to the Upper House, where they met with a gracious reception. After the two had ventured so far to take the matter into their own hands, the Lower House came to a resolution formally to depute certain others to go and wait upon their Lordships; but these messengers, unlike their predecessors, were not admitted. Instead, an order was despatched for the whole House to attend. Accordingly they left Henry the VII.’s Chapel, the Dean of Christ Church at their head “in his square cap and a verger before him,”[360] and crowded up the steps to the Jerusalem Chamber, where, face to face with those whom they regarded as their enemies, they heard from the lips of the Archbishop a simple acknowledgment of a paper of consequence having been received, in allusion to their choice of a deputy, as “an incident of great moment;” and, besides, a formal announcement of prorogation until February the 14th. This Atterbury and his friends confessed to be “every way a surprise to them;” yet, nothing daunted, the Corypheus of the party—as the members were struggling through the small room, and the narrow passage which formed the only outlet from what was the Prelates’ audience-room—pushed them on, crying, “Away to the Lower House—to the Lower House.” In accordance with this boisterous suggestion, about forty-two members rushed towards the steps of Henry the VII.’s Chapel, and there, in defiance of archiepiscopal authority, placed their sub-prolocutor in the chair, intending by this method to constitute a House. Having, as they considered, thus saved their rights, they then formally adjourned to the same day as the Upper House had fixed. Woodward died on the 13th of February. The House now destitute of a Prolocutor—a body without a head—became organically incomplete, and therefore incapable of constitutional action. The first object of desire with the members struggling for independence, was to supply the deficiency; but this was what the Archbishop and his friends in the Upper House were determined to prevent—being by this time tired out of all patience with their impracticable brethren. When, therefore, the Lower House, on the 14th, formally communicated intelligence of the death of Dr. Woodward, his Grace curtly expressed surprise at the news, and at once ordered a schedule of prorogation for the 19th, the day after Ash Wednesday. Tenison persevered in the policy of prorogation. On the 29th he told his brethren, in plain words, he meant to do so, assuring them, on the one hand, that they were mistaken who thought that he and the Bishops wished to bring Convocation into disuse; and remarking, on the other, that such heats as theirs had given great scandal to those who understood not the controversy, but were much concerned that there should be any differences among men, who were by profession ministers of the gospel of peace.

The party who sympathized with the Bishops felt satisfied; a great majority felt otherwise. They met of their own accord in Henry the VII.’s Chapel, and having chosen a Chairman or Moderator, marched up to the little old anteroom, which had become a sort of outpost for the episcopal garrison, where the invincible besiegers were ever pressing upon the trenches of the upper citadel. They were now met by the Bishop of Lincoln, whom they requested to convey a message to the other Bishops, expressing a desire to elect a Prolocutor. A new point of difference immediately arose. As amidst the confusion of the crowded apartments, some members began to dictate a message to the effect that the House wished to proceed to an election, Kennet interposed, saying he hoped the message would not be worded so, for they were not a House, and were unable to act as such; and, moreover, some of the members, he being one, did not agree to the proposed message. The Bishop wrote down the communication as coming from certain members of the Lower House—a form of expression vehemently opposed by several of the listening and agitated group, and bringing down hot indignation upon him who had suggested it.

One death had already disabled the Lower House, another death suddenly and completely extinguished its paralyzed and convulsed existence.

William of Orange fell from his horse as he was riding in the neighbourhood of Hampton Court, and broke his collar-bone. Removed to Kensington, he was seized with shivering fits, and it soon appeared death was approaching. The Earl of Portland states, “that when he was once encouraging him, from the good state his affairs were in both home and abroad, to take more heart, the King answered him, that he knew death was that which he had looked at on all occasions without any terror; sometimes he would have been glad to have been delivered out of all his troubles, but he confessed now he saw another scene, and could wish to live a little longer. He died with a clear and full presence of mind, and in a wonderful tranquillity. Those who knew it was his rule all his life long to hide the impressions that religion made on him, as much as possible, did not wonder at his silence in his last minutes; but they lamented it much, they knew what a handle it would give to censure and obloquy.”[361] Early on Sunday, January the 8th, he received “the Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist, with great devotion, from the hands of the Archbishop of Canterbury”[362]—about 8 o’clock he was a corpse. Round his neck a black ribbon was discovered with a gold ring, and a lock of Queen Mary’s hair.

The moral conduct of the King had not been in accordance with his religious professions. Burnet, who honestly gives his impressions of William’s character, says in a few words, “He had no vice but of one sort, in which he was very cautious and secret”—a statement which, whilst it presents a contrast to James and Charles, who were barefaced in their sensualities, admits the fact of William’s being addicted to vicious indulgence, of which concealment neither expiated nor diminished the guilt. It is not a little surprising that so many good men, both Churchmen and Dissenters, who could not have been indifferent to the interests of morality, should have lauded, as they did, the Hero of the Revolution, both living and dead, as if he had been the very ideal of virtue and piety. Yet Burnet, who was disposed to take the most favourable view of his character, cannot be charged with exaggeration when he informs us, that “he believed the truth of the Christian religion very firmly, and he expressed a horror at atheism and blasphemy, and though there was much of both in his Court, yet it was always denied to him, and kept out of his sight. He was most exemplary, decent, and devout in the public exercises of the worship of God—only on week days he came too seldom to them. He was an attentive hearer of sermons,[363] and was constant in his private prayers and in reading the Scriptures; and when he spoke of religious matters, which he did not often, it was with a becoming gravity. He was much possessed with the belief of absolute decrees: he said to me, he adhered to these, because he did not see how the belief of Providence could be maintained upon any other supposition. His indifference as to the forms of Church government, and his being zealous for toleration, together with his cold behaviour towards the Clergy, gave them generally very ill impressions of him.”[364] The effect of frigid manners, felt by the nation at large, was deepened in the case of high Churchmen, by William’s well-known Presbyterian predilections, and his dislike to what is meant by Anglo-Catholicism. As we have seen, during the life of Mary, he left the exercise of his prerogative in reference to ecclesiastical matters in her hands, and after her death meddled with them in the smallest possible degree, so that he never could be said to have exerted any direct influence in the government of the Church.[365] But, indirectly, by the Revolution itself, and by the Act of Toleration which followed, and was promoted by him, he changed the position of the Establishment altogether, and opened up to the Episcopal Church a new career, in which conciliation instead of persecution could alone prove its permanent safeguard, and a secret of prosperity. The first monarch on the throne of these realms who loved a constitutional system of religious liberty, William not only won the affection of Dissenters, as he might be naturally expected to do, but by his wise and equitable policy in this respect, laid the whole kingdom and posterity under obligations which have never yet been fully acknowledged.