place; and
Nottingham appointed a gentleman of good blood and scanty fortune named
Edmund Bohun. This change of men produced an immediate and total change
of system; for Bohun was as strong a Tory as a conscientious man who
had taken the oaths could possibly be. He had been conspicuous as a
persecutor of nonconformists and a champion of the doctrine of passive
obedience. He had edited Filmer's absurd treatise on the origin of
government, and had written an answer to the paper which Algernon Sidney
had delivered to the Sheriffs on Tower Hill. Nor did Bohun admit that,
in swearing allegiance to William and Mary, he had done any thing
inconsistent with his old creed. For he had succeeded in convincing
himself that they reigned by right of conquest, and that it was the duty
of an Englishman to serve them as faithfully as Daniel had served Darius
or as Nehemiah had served Artaxerxes. This doctrine, whatever peace it
might bring to his own conscience, found little favour with any
party. The Whigs loathed it as servile; the Jacobites loathed it as
revolutionary. Great numbers of Tories had doubtless submitted to
William on the ground that he was, rightfully or wrongfully, King
in possession; but very few of them were disposed to allow that his
possession had originated in conquest. Indeed the plea which had
satisfied the weak and narrow mind of Bohun was a mere fiction, and, had
it been a truth, would have been a truth not to be uttered by Englishmen
without agonies of shame and mortification. [381] He however clung to
his favourite whimsy with a tenacity which the general disapprobation
only made more intense. His old friends, the stedfast adherents
of indefeasible hereditary right, grew cold and reserved. He asked
Sancroft's blessing, and got only a sharp word, and a black look.
He asked Ken's blessing; and Ken, though not much in the habit of
transgressing the rules of Christian charity and courtesy, murmured
something about a little scribbler. Thus cast out by one faction, Bohun
was not received by any other. He formed indeed a class apart; for he
was at once a zealous Filmerite and a zealous Williamite. He held that
pure monarchy, not limited by any law or contract, was the form of
government which had been divinely ordained. But he held that William
was now the absolute monarch, who might annul the Great Charter, abolish
trial by jury, or impose taxes by royal proclamation, without forfeiting
the right to be implicitly o