had been driven from their other favourite doctrine of
passive obedience, and the requirement of an oath of allegiance to the
new sovereigns from all persons exercising public functions was resented
as an intolerable wrong by almost every parson. The whole bench of
bishops resolved, though to no purpose, that Parliament had no right to
impose such an oath on the clergy. Sancroft, the Archbishop of
Canterbury, with a few prelates and a large number of the higher clergy
absolutely refused the oath when it was imposed, treated all who took it
as schismatics, and on their deprivation by Act of Parliament regarded
themselves and their adherents, who were known as Nonjurors, as the only
members of the true Church of England. The bulk of the clergy bowed to
necessity, but their bitterness against the new Government was fanned
into a flame by the religious policy announced in this assertion of the
supremacy of Parliament over the Church, and the deposition of bishops
by an act of the legislature. It was fanned into yet fiercer flame by
the choice of successors to the nonjuring prelates. The new bishops were
men of learning and piety, but they were for the most part
Latitudinarians and some of them Whigs. Tillotson, the new Archbishop of
Canterbury, was the foremost theologian of the school of Chillingworth
and Hales. Burnet, the new bishop of Salisbury, was as liberal as
Tillotson in religion and more liberal in politics. It was indeed only
among Whigs and Latitudinarians that William and William's successors
could find friends in the ranks of the clergy; and it was to these that
they were driven with a few breaks here and there to entrust all the
higher offices of the Church. The result was a severance between the
higher dignitaries and the mass of the clergy which broke the strength
of the Church. From the time of William to the time of George the Third
its fiercest strife was waged within its own ranks. But the resentment
at the measure which brought this strife about already added to the
difficulties which William had to encounter.

[Sidenote: William and the Parliament.]

Yet greater difficulties arose from the temper of his Parliament. In the
Commons, chosen as they had been in the first moment of revolutionary
enthusiasm, the bulk of the members were Whigs, and their first aim was
to redress the wrongs which the Whig party had suffered during the last
two reigns. The attainder of Lord Russell was reversed. The judgments