Church would have been dissolved.
He would have repaired to some nonjuring assembly, where the service
which he loved was performed without mutilation. The new sect, which
as yet consisted almost exclusively of priests, would soon have been
swelled by numerous and large congregations; and in those congregations
would have been found a much greater proportion of the opulent, of the
highly descended, and of the highly educated, than any other body of
dissenters could show. The Episcopal schismatics, thus reinforced, would
probably have been as formidable to the new King and his successors as
ever the Puritan schismatics had been to the princes of the House of
Stuart. It is an indisputable and a most instructive fact, that we are,
in a great measure, indebted for the civil and religious liberty which
we enjoy to the pertinacity with which the High Church party, in
the Convocation of 1689, refused even to deliberate on any plan of
Comprehension, [516]

CHAPTER XV

The Parliament meets; Retirement of Halifax--Supplies voted--The Bill
of Rights passed--Inquiry into Naval Abuses--Inquiry into the Conduct of
the Irish War--Reception of Walker in England--Edmund Ludlow--Violence
of the Whigs--Impeachments--Committee of Murder--Malevolence of John
Hampden--The Corporation Bill--Debates on the Indemnity Bill--Case of
Sir Robert Sawyer--The King purposes to retire to Holland--He is induced
to change his Intention; the Whigs oppose his going to Ireland--He
prorogues the Parliament--Joy of the Tories--Dissolution and General
Election--Changes in the Executive Departments--Caermarthen Chief
Minister--Sir John Lowther--Rise and Progress of Parliamentary
Corruption in England--Sir John Trevor--Godolphin retires; Changes at
the Admiralty--Changes in the Commissions of Lieutenancy--Temper of
the Whigs; Dealings of some Whigs with Saint Germains; Shrewsbury;
Ferguson--Hopes of the Jacobites--Meeting of the new Parliament;
Settlement of the Revenue--Provision for the Princess of Denmark--Bill
declaring the Acts of the preceding Parliament valid--Debate on the
Changes in the Lieutenancy of London--Abjuration Bill--Act of Grace--The
Parliament prorogued; Preparations for the first War--Administration of
James at Dublin--An auxiliary Force sent from France to Ireland--Plan
of the English Jacobites; Clarendon, Aylesbury,
Dartmouth--Penn--Preston--The Jacobites betrayed by Fuller--Crone
arrested--Difficulties of Wil