Part 29

"My Lord, The honor and reputation which your Grace's piety, prudence, and signal courage, have justly merited and obtained, not only from the sons of the Church of England, but even universally from those Protestants among us who are Dissenters from her discipline; God Almighty's Providence and blessing upon your Grace's vigilancy and extraordinary endeavors will not suffer to be diminished in this conjuncture. The conversation I now and then have with some in place who have the opportunity of knowing what is doing in the most secret recesses and cabals of our Church's adversaries, obliges me to acquaint you, that the calling of your Grace and the rest of the Lords Bishops to Court, and what has there of late been required of you, is only to create a jealousy and suspicion among well-meaning people of such compliances, as it is certain they have no cause to apprehend. The plan of this and of all that which is to follow of seeming favor thence, is wholly drawn by the Jesuits, who are at this time more than ever busy to make divisions among us, all other arts and mechanisms having hitherto failed them. They have, with other things contrived that your Lordships the Bishops should give his Majesty advice separately, without calling any of the rest of the Peers, which, though maliciously suggested, spreads generally about the town. I do not at all question but your Grace will speedily prevent the operation of this venom, and that you will think it highly necessary so to do, that your Grace is also enjoined to compose a form of prayer, wherein the Prince of Orange is expressly to be named the Invader: of this I presume not to say anything; but for as much as in all the Declarations, etc., which have hitherto been published in pretended favor of the Church of England, there is not once the least mention of the REFORMED or PROTESTANT RELIGION, but only of the CHURCH OF ENGLAND AS BY LAW ESTABLISHED, which Church the Papists tell us is the CHURCH OF ROME, which is (say they) the Catholic Church of England--that only is established by Law; the Church of England in the REFORMED sense so established, is but by an usurped authority. The antiquity of THAT would by these words be explained, and utterly defeat this false and subdolous construction, and take off all exceptions whatsoever; if, in all extraordinary offices, upon these occasions, the words REFORMED and PROTESTANT were added to that of the CHURCH OF ENGLAND BY LAW ESTABLISHED. And whosoever threatens to invade or come against us, to the prejudice of that Church, in God's name, be they Dutch or Irish, let us heartily pray and fight against them. My Lord, this is, I confess, a bold, but honest period; and, though I am well assured that your Grace is perfectly acquainted with all this before, and therefore may blame my impertinence, as that does [Greek: allotrioepiskopein]; yet I am confident you will not reprove the zeal of one who most humbly begs your Grace's pardon, with your blessing. Lond., 10 Oct., 1688." (From a copy in Evelyn's handwriting.) See _post_, p. 285.]

14th October, 1688. The King's birthday. No guns from the Tower as usual. The sun eclipsed at its rising. This day signal for the victory of William the Conqueror against Harold, near Battel, in Sussex. The wind, which had been hitherto west, was east all this day. Wonderful expectation of the Dutch fleet. Public prayers ordered to be read in the churches against invasion.

28th October, 1688. A tumult in London on the rabble demolishing a Popish chapel that had been set up in the city.

29th October, 1688. Lady Sunderland acquainted me with his Majesty's taking away the Seals from Lord Sunderland, and of her being with the Queen to intercede for him. It is conceived that he had of late grown remiss in pursuing the interest of the Jesuitical counsels; some reported one thing, some another; but there was doubtless some secret betrayed, which time may discover.

There was a Council called, to which were summoned the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Judges, the Lord Mayor, etc. The Queen Dowager, and all the ladies and lords who were present at the Queen Consort's labor, were to give their testimony upon oath of the Prince of Wales's birth, recorded both at the Council Board and at the Chancery a day or two after. This procedure was censured by some as below his Majesty to condescend to, on the talk of the people. It was remarkable that on this occasion the Archbishop, Marquis of Halifax, the Earls of Clarendon and Nottingham, refused to sit at the Council table among Papists, and their bold telling his Majesty that whatever was done while such sat among them was unlawful and incurred _præmunire_;--at least, if what I heard be true.

30th October, 1688. I dined with Lord Preston, made Secretary of State, in the place of the Earl of Sunderland.

Visited Mr. Boyle, when came in the Duke of Hamilton and Earl of Burlington. The Duke told us many particulars of Mary Queen of Scots, and her amours with the Italian favorite, etc.

31st October, 1688. My birthday, being the 68th year of my age. O blessed Lord, grant that as I grow in years, so may I improve in grace! Be thou my protector this following year, and preserve me and mine from those dangers and great confusions that threaten a sad revolution to this sinful nation! Defend thy church, our holy religion, and just laws, disposing his Majesty to listen to sober and healing counsels, that if it be thy blessed will, we may still enjoy that happy tranquility which hitherto thou hast continued to us! Amen, Amen!

1st November, 1688. Dined with Lord Preston, with other company, at Sir Stephen Fox's. Continual alarms of the Prince of Orange, but no certainty. Reports of his great losses of horse in the storm, but without any assurance. A man was taken with divers papers and printed manifestoes, and carried to Newgate, after examination at the Cabinet Council. There was likewise a declaration of the States for satisfaction of all public ministers at The Hague, except to the English and the French. There was in that of the Prince's an expression, as if the Lords both spiritual and temporal had invited him over, with a deduction of the causes of his enterprise. This made his Majesty convene my Lord of Canterbury and the other Bishops now in town, to give an account of what was in the manifesto, and to enjoin them to clear themselves by some public writing of this disloyal charge.

2d November, 1688. It was now certainly reported by some who saw the fleet, and the Prince embark, that they sailed from the Brill on Wednesday morning, and that the Princess of Orange was there to take leave of her husband.

4th November, 1688. Fresh reports of the Prince being landed somewhere about Portsmouth, or the Isle of Wight, whereas it was thought it would have been northward. The Court in great hurry.

[Sidenote: LONDON]

5th November, 1688. I went to London; heard the news of the Prince having landed at Torbay, coming with a fleet of near 700 sail, passing through the Channel with so favorable a wind, that our navy could not intercept, or molest them. This put the King and Court into great consternation, they were now employed in forming an army to stop their further progress, for they were got into Exeter, and the season and ways very improper for his Majesty's forces to march so great a distance.

The Archbishop of Canterbury and some few of the other Bishops and Lords in London, were sent for to Whitehall, and required to set forth their abhorrence of this invasion. They assured his Majesty that they had never invited any of the Prince's party, or were in the least privy to it, and would be ready to show all testimony of their loyalty; but, as to a public declaration, being so few, they desired that his Majesty would call the rest of their brethren and Peers, that they might consult what was fit to be done on this occasion, not thinking it right to publish anything without them, and till they had themselves seen the Prince's manifesto, in which it was pretended he was invited in by the Lords, spiritual and temporal. This did not please the King; so they departed.

A declaration was published, prohibiting all persons to see or read the Prince's manifesto, in which was set forth at large the cause of his expedition, as there had been one before from the States.

These are the beginnings of sorrow, unless God in his mercy prevent it by some happy reconciliation of all dissensions among us. This, in all likelihood, nothing can effect except a free Parliament; but this we cannot hope to see, while there are any forces on either side. I pray God to protect and direct the King for the best and truest interest of his people!--I saw his Majesty touch for the evil, Piten the Jesuit, and Warner officiating.

14th November, 1688. The Prince increases everyday in force. Several Lords go in to him. Lord Cornbury carries some regiments, and marches to Honiton, the Prince's headquarters. The city of London in disorder; the rabble pulled down the nunnery newly bought by the Papists of Lord Berkeley, at St. John's. The Queen prepares to go to Portsmouth for safety, to attend the issue of this commotion, which has a dreadful aspect.

18th November, 1688. It was now a very hard frost. The King goes to Salisbury to rendezvous the army, and return to London. Lord Delamere appears for the Prince in Cheshire. The nobility meet in Yorkshire. The Archbishop of Canterbury and some Bishops, and such Peers as were in London, address his Majesty to call a Parliament. The King invites all foreign nations to come over. The French take all the Palatinate, and alarm the Germans more than ever.

29th November, 1688. I went to the Royal Society. We adjourned the election of a President to 23d of April, by reason of the public commotions, yet dined together as of custom this day.

2d December, 1688. Dr. Tenison preached at St. Martin's on Psalm xxxvi. 5, 6, 7, concerning Providence. I received the blessed Sacrament. Afterward, visited my Lord Godolphin, then going with the Marquis of Halifax and Earl of Nottingham as Commissioners to the Prince of Orange; he told me they had little power. Plymouth declared for the Prince. Bath, York, Hull, Bristol, and all the eminent nobility and persons of quality through England, declare for the Protestant religion and laws, and go to meet the Prince, who every day sets forth new Declarations against the Papists. The great favorites at Court, Priests and Jesuits, fly or abscond. Everything, till now concealed, flies abroad in public print, and is cried about the streets. Expectation of the Prince coming to Oxford. The Prince of Wales and great treasure sent privily to Portsmouth, the Earl of Dover being Governor. Address from the Fleet not grateful to his Majesty. The Papists in offices lay down their commissions, and fly. Universal consternation among them; it looks like a revolution.

7th December, 1688. My son went toward Oxford. I returned home.

9th December, 1688. Lord Sunderland meditates flight. The rabble demolished all Popish chapels, and several Papist lords and gentlemen's houses, especially that of the Spanish Ambassador, which they pillaged, and burned his library.

13th December, 1688. The King flies to sea, puts in at Faversham for ballast; is rudely treated by the people; comes back to Whitehall.

The Prince of Orange is advanced to Windsor, is invited by the King to St. James's, the messenger sent was the Earl of Faversham, the General of the Forces, who going without trumpet, or passport, is detained prisoner by the Prince, who accepts the invitation, but requires his Majesty to retire to some distant place, that his own guards may be quartered about the palace and city. This is taken heinously and the King goes privately to Rochester; is persuaded to come back; comes on the Sunday; goes to mass, and dines in public, a Jesuit saying grace (I was present).

17th December, 1688. That night was a Council; his Majesty refuses to assent to all the proposals; goes away again to Rochester.

[Sidenote: LONDON]

18th December, 1688. I saw the King take barge to Gravesend at twelve o'clock--a sad sight! The Prince comes to St. James's, and fills Whitehall with Dutch guards. A Council of Peers meet about an expedient to call a Parliament; adjourn to the House of Lords. The Chancellor, Earl of Peterborough, and divers others taken. The Earl of Sunderland flies; Sir Edward Hale, Walker, and others, taken and secured.

All the world go to see the Prince at St. James's, where there is a great Court. There I saw him, and several of my acquaintance who came over with him. He is very stately, serious and reserved. The English soldiers sent out of town to disband them; not well pleased.

24th December, 1688. The King passes into France, whither the Queen and child were gone a few days before.

26th December, 1688. The Peers and such Commoners as were members of the Parliament at Oxford, being the last of Charles II. meeting, desire the Prince of Orange to take on him the disposal of the public revenue till a convention of Lords and Commons should meet in full body, appointed by his circular letters to the shires and boroughs, 22d of January. I had now quartered upon me a Lieutenant-Colonel and eight horses.

30th December, 1688. This day prayers for the Prince of Wales were first left off in our Church.

7th January, 1688-89. A long frost and deep snow; the Thames almost frozen over.

15th January, 1689. I visited the Archbishop of Canterbury, where I found the Bishops of St. Asaph, Ely, Bath and Wells, Peterborough, and Chichester, the Earls of Aylesbury and Clarendon, Sir George Mackenzie, Lord-Advocate of Scotland, and then came in a Scotch Archbishop, etc. After prayers and dinner, divers serious matters were discoursed, concerning the present state of the Public, and sorry I was to find there was as yet no accord in the judgments of those of the Lords and Commons who were to convene; some would have the Princess made Queen without any more dispute, others were for a Regency; there was a Tory party (then so called), who were for inviting his Majesty again upon conditions; and there were Republicans who would make the Prince of Orange like a Stadtholder. The Romanists were busy among these several

## parties to bring them into confusion: most for ambition or other

interest, few for conscience and moderate resolutions. I found nothing of all this in this assembly of Bishops, who were pleased to admit me into their discourses; they were all for a Regency, thereby to salve their oaths, and so all public matters to proceed in his Majesty's name, by that to facilitate the calling of Parliament, according to the laws in being. Such was the result of this meeting.

My Lord of Canterbury gave me great thanks for the advertisement I sent him in October, and assured me they took my counsel in that particular, and that it came very seasonably.

I found by the Lord-Advocate that the Bishops of Scotland (who were indeed little worthy of that character, and had done much mischief in that Church) were now coming about to the true interest, in this conjuncture which threatened to abolish the whole hierarchy in that kingdom; and therefore the Scottish Archbishop and Lord-Advocate requested the Archbishop of Canterbury to use his best endeavors with the Prince to maintain the Church there in the same state, as by law at present settled.

It now growing late, after some private discourse with his Grace, I took my leave, most of the Lords being gone.

The trial of the bishops was now printed.

The great convention being assembled the day before, falling upon the question about the government, resolved that King James having by the advice of the Jesuits and other wicked persons endeavored to subvert the laws of the Church and State, and deserted the kingdom, carrying away the seals, etc., without any care for the management of the government, had by demise abdicated himself and wholly vacated his right; they did therefore desire the Lords' concurrence to their vote, to place the crown on the next heir, the Prince of Orange, for his life, then to the Princess, his wife, and if she died without issue, to the Princess of Denmark, and she failing, to the heirs of the Prince, excluding forever all possibility of admitting a Roman Catholic.

[Sidenote: LONDON]

27th January, 1689. I dined at the Admiralty, where was brought in a child not twelve years old, the son of one Dr. Clench, of the most prodigious maturity of knowledge, for I cannot call it altogether memory, but something more extraordinary. Mr. Pepys and myself examined him, not in any method, but with promiscuous questions, which required judgment and discernment to answer so readily and pertinently. There was not anything in chronology, history, geography, the several systems of astronomy, courses of the stars, longitude, latitude, doctrine of the spheres, courses and sources of rivers, creeks, harbors, eminent cities, boundaries and bearings of countries, not only in Europe, but in any other part of the earth, which he did not readily resolve and demonstrate his knowledge of, readily drawing out with a pen anything he would describe. He was able not only to repeat the most famous things which are left us in any of the Greek or Roman histories, monarchies, republics, wars, colonies, exploits by sea and land, but all the sacred stories of the Old and New Testament; the succession of all the monarchies, Babylonian, Persian, Greek, Roman, with all the lower Emperors, Popes, Heresiarchs, and Councils, what they were called about, what they determined, or in the controversy about Easter, the tenets of the Gnostics, Sabellians, Arians, Nestorians; the difference between St. Cyprian and Stephen about re-baptism, the schisms. We leaped from that to other things totally different, to Olympic years, and synchronisms; we asked him questions which could not be resolved without considerable meditation and judgment, nay of some particulars of the Civil Laws, of the Digest and Code. He gave a stupendous account of both natural and moral philosophy, and even in metaphysics.

Having thus exhausted ourselves rather than this wonderful child, or angel rather, for he was as beautiful and lovely in countenance as in knowledge, we concluded with asking him if, in all he had read or heard of, he had ever met with anything which was like this expedition of the Prince of Orange, with so small a force to obtain three great kingdoms without any contest. After a little thought, he told us that he knew of nothing which did more resemble it than the coming of Constantine the Great out of Britain, through France and Italy, so tedious a march, to meet Maxentius, whom he overthrew at Pons Milvius with very little conflict, and at the very gates of Rome, which he entered and was received with triumph, and obtained the empire, not of three kingdoms only, but of all the then known world. He was perfect in the Latin authors, spoke French naturally, and gave us a description of France, Italy, Savoy, Spain, ancient and modernly divided; as also of ancient Greece, Scythia, and northern countries and tracts: we left questioning further. He did this without any set or formal repetitions, as one who had learned things without book, but as if he minded other things, going about the room, and toying with a parrot there, and as he was at dinner (_tanquam aliua agens_, as it were) seeming to be full of play, of a lively, sprightly temper, always smiling, and exceedingly pleasant, without the least levity, rudeness, or childishness.

His father assured us he never imposed anything to charge his memory by causing him to get things by heart, not even the rules of grammar; but his tutor (who was a Frenchman) read to him, first in French, then in Latin; that he usually played among other boys four or five hours every day, and that he was as earnest at his play as at his study. He was perfect in arithmetic, and now newly entered into Greek. In sum (_horresco referens_), I had read of divers forward and precocious youths, and some I have known, but I never did either hear or read of anything like to this sweet child, if it be right to call him child who has more knowledge than most men in the world. I counseled his father not to set his heart too much on this jewel,

"_Immodicis brevis est ætas, et rara senectus,_"

as I myself learned by sad experience in my most dear child Richard, many years since, who, dying before he was six years old, was both in shape and countenance and pregnancy of learning, next to a prodigy.

29th January, 1689. The votes of the House of Commons being carried up by Mr. Hampden, their chairman, to the Lords, I got a station by the Prince's lodgings at the door of the lobby to the House, and heard much of the debate, which lasted very long. Lord Derby was in the chair (for the House was resolved into a grand committee of the whole House); after all had spoken, it came to the question, which was carried by three voices against a Regency, which 51 were for, 54 against; the minority alleging the danger of dethroning Kings, and scrupling many passages and expressions in the vote of the Commons, too long to set down

## particularly. Some were for sending to his Majesty with conditions:

others that the King could do no wrong, and that the maladministration was chargeable on his ministers. There were not more than eight or nine bishops, and but two against the Regency; the archbishop was absent, and the clergy now began to change their note, both in pulpit and discourse, on their old passive obedience, so as people began to talk of the bishops being cast out of the House. In short, things tended to dissatisfaction on both sides; add to this, the morose temper of the Prince of Orange, who showed little countenance to the noblemen and others, who expected a more gracious and cheerful reception when they made their court. The English army also was not so in order, and firm to his interest, nor so weakened but that it might give interruption. Ireland was in an ill posture as well as Scotland. Nothing was yet done toward a settlement. God of his infinite mercy compose these things, that we may be at last a Nation and a Church under some fixed and sober establishment!

30th January, 1689. The anniversary of King Charles I.'s MARTYRDOM; but in all the public offices and pulpit prayers, the collects, and litany for the King and Queen were curtailed and mutilated. Dr. Sharp preached before the Commons, but was disliked, and not thanked for his sermon.

31st January, 1689. At our church (the next day being appointed a thanksgiving for deliverance by the Prince of Orange, with prayers purposely composed), our lecturer preached in the afternoon a very honest sermon, showing our duty to God for the many signal deliverances of our Church, without touching on politics.

6th February, 1689. The King's coronation day was ordered not to be observed, as hitherto it had been.