Part 39

That Convocation of 1689 saved the Church of England from dissolution into a formless, gelatinous, and invertebrate mass.

Burnet himself, though disappointed at the time, felt afterwards that the determination of the Lower House had saved the Church at a time of crisis. "There was," he says, "a very happy direction of the providence of God observed in this matter. The Jacobite clergy who were then under suspension were designing to make a schism in the Church, whensoever they should be turned out and their places should be filled up by others. They saw it would not be easy to make a separation upon a private and personal account; they therefore wished to be furnished with more specious pretences, and if we had made alterations in the Rubrics and other parts of the Common Prayer, they would have pretended that they still stuck to the ancient Church of England, in opposition to those who were altering it and setting up new models. And, as I do firmly believe that there is a wise providence that watches upon human affairs, and directs them--so I have observed this in many instances relating to the Revolution ... by all the judgments we could afterwards make, if we had carried a majority in the Convocation for alterations, they would have done us more hurt than good."

Burnet was morally and intellectually incapable of seeing that it was a case of conscience, of stantis vel cadentis ecclesiæ, and he attributed the motives of the recalcitrant clergy to political prejudice.

On Jane's return to Oxford, he found another opportunity of defending the Church, by framing the decree of 1690, which condemned the "Naked Gospel" of Arthur Burge.

Jane had no hopes whatever of preferment from William, if he cared for it. In 1696 it was even rumoured that the King meditated turning him out of his professorship, because he had not signed the "Association for King William." But on Anne's accession, all his fears were at an end. It would appear from a letter of Atterbury that at Oxford the University desired to get rid of him, because he neglected giving lectures on Divinity, and left the work to be discharged by a subordinate named Smallridge.

In 1703 Bishop Trelawny appointed him to the Chancellorship of Exeter Cathedral, which he exchanged for the precentorship in 1704, but he retained his Regius professorship to the end. Undoubtedly it was a great pleasure to him in the decline of his life to be back in the West Country.

He resigned the precentorship of Exeter in 1706, and died on the 23rd February, 1707, at Oxford, and was buried in Christ Church.

The writer of his life in the Dictionary of National Biography sums up his career with these words: "Jane was a clerical politician of a low type; Calamy says of him, 'Though fond of the rites and ceremonies of the Church, he was a Calvinist in the respect of doctrine,' and the pleasantest thing recorded of him is his kindness shown at Oxford to the ejected Presbyterian, Thomas Gilbert."

Calamy, as a Dissenter, was prejudiced against Jane; and I do not see that he was of a low type of polemical cleric--because when he saw that the theory of government he had embraced would not bear the test of experience, he had the courage to reject it. Every man is liable to make mistakes; it is only the brave man who can acknowledge that he has been mistaken.

Nor was Jane alone. Compton, Bishop of London, and several other bishops, had appealed to William of Orange to come over and help the people and the Church of England to be free from a tyrannous and subversive despotism. The Earl of Danby, under whose administration, and with his sanction, a law had been proposed, which, if it had passed, would have excluded from Parliament and office all who refused to declare on oath that they thought resistance to the King in every case unlawful--he had seen the mistake as well, and had invited William over.

As Macaulay says: "This theory (of passive obedience) at first presented itself to the Cavalier as the very opposite of slavish. Its tendency was to make him not a slave, but a free man and a master. It exalted him by exalting one whom he regarded as his protector, as his friend, as the head of his beloved party, and of his more beloved Church. When Republicans were dominant the Royalist had endured wrongs and insults which the restoration of the legitimate government had enabled him to retaliate. Rebellion was therefore associated in his imagination with subjection and degradation, and monarchical authority with liberty and ascendancy. It had never crossed his imagination that a time might come when a King, a Stuart, could prosecute the most loyal of the clergy and gentry with more than the animosity of the Rump or the Protector. That time had however arrived. Oppression speedily did what philosophy and eloquence would have failed to do. The system of Filmer might have survived the attacks of Locke; but it never recovered from the death-blow given by James."

Jane changed his opinion indeed, but so did nearly the whole of the Tory party and of the clergy of the Church.

THE PENNINGTONS

About seven years ago I attended the baptism of some bells for a new church at Châteaulin, in Brittany. The ceremony was quaint, archaic, and grotesque. The bells were suspended in the chancel "all of a row," dressed in white frocks with pink sashes round their waists. To each was given god-parents who had to answer for them, and each was actually baptized, after which each was made to speak for itself. The ceremony evidently dates from a period when the bell was regarded as anything but an inanimate object--it had its responsibilities, it did its duties, it spoke in sonorous tones. The very inscriptions on them to the present day prescribe something of this character--invest each bell with a personality, as these:--

I sweetly tolling men do call To taste of meats to feed the soul.

Also:--

I sound to bid the sick repent, In hope of life when breath is spent.

As late as last century we find these:--

Both day and night I measure time for all, To mirth and grief, to church I call.

And this in 1864:--

I toll the funeral knell, I ring the festal day, I mark the fleeting hours, And chime the church to pray.

In the Western Counties bell-ringing was a favourite and delightful pastime. Parties of ringers went about from parish to parish and rang on the church bells, very generally for a prize--"a hat laced with gold." At Launcells, where the bells are of superior sweetness, the ringers who rang for the accession of George III rang for that of George IV, there not having been a gap caused by death among them in sixty years. No songs are so popular and well remembered at bell-ringers' feasts as those that record the achievements of some who went before them in the same office. I give one that has never before been printed, that can be traced back to 1810, but is certainly older. It relates to the ringers of Egloshayle.

1. Come all you ringers good and grave, Come listen to my peal, I'll tell you of five ringers brave That lived in Egloshayle. They bear the sway in ring array, Where'er they chance to go; Good music of melodious bells, 'Tis their delight to show.

2. The foreman gives the sigan-al, He steps long with the toe, He casts his eyes about them all, And gives the sign to go. Away they pull, with courage full, The heart it do revive, To hear them swing, and music ring, One, two, three, four, and five.

3. There's Craddock the cordwainer first, That rings the treble bell; The second is John Ellery, And none may him excel; The third is Pollard, carpenter; The fourth is Thomas Cleave; Goodfellow is the tenor man, That rings them round so brave.

4. They went up to Lanlivery, They brought away the prize; And then they went to San-Tudy, And there they did likewise. There's Stratton men, S. Mabyn men, S. Issey and S. Kew, But we five lads of Egloshayle Can all the rest outdo.

5. Now, to conclude my merry task, I' th' Sovereign's health we join; Stand every man and pass the flask, And drink his health in wine. And here's to Craddock, Ellery, And here's to Thomas Cleave, To Pollard and the tenor man That rings them round so brave.

Humphry Craddock died in 1839; John Ellery in 1845, aged 85 years; John Pollard in 1825, aged 71; Thomas Cleave in 1821, aged 78; John Goodfellow in 1846, aged 80.