a complete victory
over the opposition; nor can there be any doubt that they would have
shown equal loyalty to his brother James, if James would, even at the
last moment, have refrained from outraging their strongest feeling. For
there was one institution, and one only, which they prized even more
than hereditary monarchy; and that institution was the Church of
England. Their love of the Church was not, indeed, the effect of study
or meditation. Few among them could have given any reason, drawn from
Scripture or ecclesiastical history, for adhering to her doctrines, her
ritual, and her polity; nor were they, as a class, by any means strict
observers of that code of morality which is common to all Christian
sects. But the experience of many ages proves that men may be ready to
fight to the death, and to persecute without pity, for a religion
whose creed they do not understand, and whose precepts they habitually
disobey. [76]

The rural clergy were even more vehement in Toryism than the rural
gentry, end were a class scarcely less important. It is to be observed,
however, that the individual clergyman, as compared with the individual
gentleman, then ranked much lower than in our days. The main support of
the Church was derived from the tithe; and the tithe bore to the rent a
much smaller ratio than at present. King estimated the whole income
of the parochial and collegiate clergy at only four hundred and eighty
thousand pounds a year; Davenant at only five hundred and forty-four
thousand a year. It is certainly now more than seven times as great
as the larger of these two sums. The average rent of the land has not,
according to any estimate, increased proportionally. It follows that
the rectors and vicars must have been, as compared with the neighbouring
knights and squires, much poorer in the seventeenth than in the
nineteenth century.

The place of the clergyman in society had been completely changed by the
Reformation. Before that event, ecclesiastics had formed the majority
of the House of Lords, had, in wealth and splendour, equalled, and
sometimes outshone, the greatest of the temporal barons, and had
generally held the highest civil offices. Many of the Treasurers, and
almost all the Chancellors of the Plantagenets were Bishops. The Lord
Keeper of the Privy Seal and the Master of the Rolls were ordinarily
churchmen. Churchmen transacted the most important diplomatic business.
Indeed all that large portion of the