being both in her principles and constant practice unquestionably loyal, and having to her great honour, been more than once publicly acknowledged to be so by your gracious majesty) nor yet from any want of due tender5 ness to dissenters, in relation to whom they are willing to come to such a temper, as shall be thought fit, when that matter shall be considered and settled in parliament and convocation: but among many other considerations, from making this the sole ground for resisting a command issued by the 10 lawful governor and supreme head of the church. Now in the year 1672 (and it is not necessary to examine the circumstances of the earlier case), it was only the house of commons that expressed a disapproval of king Charles' dispensations; and the lords, when the papers connected with the transaction had been communicated to them, 15 passed a vote of thanks for the royal message, as they thence obtained the means of shewing their duty to his majesty, and asserting the ancient just rights and privileges of the house of peers." Afterwards in the beginning of king James' reign (in November 1685), when the commons addressed the king respecting the popish recusants in the army, 20 (whose commissions were held by royal dispensation,) and alleged that "the continuance of them in their employments may be taken to be a dispensing with the law without act of parliament," it was proposed, that the lords should be desired to concur in the address, but the vote passed in the negative. And besides the indication afforded by this unwilling25 ness to consult the house of lords on so solemn an occasion, there are other reasons for doubting whether that house would have concurred in denying to the king the power of dispensing with the observance of acts of parliament; for at the time of the revolution, when the lords had seen further reasons for marking out and limiting the extent of the 30 king's prerogative, they could not be brought to declare the dispensing power to be altogether illegal, but only as it had been assumed and exercised of late." So that the bishops in alleging the authority of parliament, took merely the opinion of the commons, who were judicially incompetent to decide; the other house, which was competent, 35 having pronounced no opinion on the subject, and being more likely, if an occasion had offered itself, to have decided otherwise. It is clear from a paper which is preserved among the archbishop's MSS. in the Bodleian (Tanner MSS. vol. xxviii. No. 80.), and contains minutes of the speech prepared to be delivered by him at his trial, that this especially; because that declaration is founded upon such a dispensing power, as hath been often declared illegal in parliament, and particularly in the years MDCLXII., MDCLXXII. and in the beginning of your majesty's reign; and is a matter of so great moment and consequence to 5 the whole nation, both in church and state, that your petitioners cannot in prudence, honour, or conscience so far make themselves parties to it, as the distribution of it the real ground of objection to the king's exercise of his dispensing power was, not its illegality, but its incompatibility with a free form of 10 government. The paper notices indeed the votes of the house of commons that have been already considered; it also refers to a letter of remonstrance written by archbishop Abbot to king James I. in the year 1623 on occasion of certain indulgences attempted to be granted by means of proclamations (see Tanner MSS. vol. lxxxii. p. 365), and 15 mentions some other facts of a like nature, and of no greater authority; but its main argument consists in the following observations: "It was apparent that if the king had that power, which in those declarations he had exercised, the reformation itself was become arbitrary, and that the church of England, as it was the religion of the state, had no other 20 subsistence but by the king's mere favour.... that all the acts of uniformity and all the acts for taking the oaths of allegiance and supremacy and the tests are suspended and dispensed with; all which laws are so much the fences, the mounds and the bulwarks of the protestant religion and the church of England, that no man can concur to the weak- 25 ening or destroying of them without betraying at once his religion and the laws of the land." And certainly if the case were treated only as a legal question, the king had great authorities in his favour. Lord Bacon in his Elements of the Common Law (Works, vol. iv. p. 62) says that it is "an insepar- 30 able prerogative of the crown to dispense with politic statutes of a given kind:" sir Edward Coke (12 Rep. p. 18) says, that "no act of parliament can bind the king from any prerogative which is sole and inseparable to his person, but that he may dispense with it by a nonobstante:" and in the recent case of sir Edward Hales, in which it was 35 sought to recover a penalty imposed by the test act, and the strength of the prerogative was tried in a distinct and apposite issue, eleven out of the twelve judges decided in favour of the king's dispensation. It was evident that a power so vague and revolutionary, exercised too in all over the nation, and the solemn publication of it once and again even in God's house, and in the time of his divine service must amount to in common and reasonable construction. Your petitioners therefore most humbly 5 and earnestly beseech your majesty, that you will be graciously pleased not to insist upon their distributing and reading your majesty's said declaration. And your petitioners shall ever pray, etc. a manner so unsparing, could not long be allowed to continue in its 10 existing condition; and it was accordingly declared in the bill of rights (1 of Will. and Mary, sess. 2. c. 2.), that the pretended power of suspending or dispensing with laws, or the execution of laws, by regal authority, without consent of parliament, was illegal. Lords' and Commons' Journals. Blackst. Comm. Hallam, vol. ii. pp. 406. 450. Burnet, 15 O. T. vol. iii. pp. 227. 400. Neal, Purit. vol. iii. p. 301. Collect. Curiosa, vol. i. p. 365. D'Oyly's Sancroft, vol. i. p. 258. Calamy's Life, vol. i. pp. 199. 334. Clarke's James II. vol. ii. pp. 81. 152. Lingard, vol. viii. p. 372. The articles recommended by the archbishop of Cant. to all the bishops within his metropolitan jurisdiction. SIR, YESTERDAY the archbishop of Cant. delivered the articles, which I send you enclosed, to those bishops, who are at present in this place, and ordered copies of them to be likewise sent, in his name, to the absent 5 The articles recommended] The trial of the seven bishops took place on the 29th of June, and in the following month the archbishop addressed these articles to the bishops of his province. The matter most deserving of notice in them is the different tone adopted with reference to the protestant dissenters; and the change was occasioned by the 10 sense of common danger that had been created in both parties from the encroachments of popery, and by the respect and gratitude which many of the non-conformists paid to the established clergy for their great services in the common cause of protestantism. In the MSS. minutes for the archbishop's speech we find the following notice: 15 Here may be said what shall be judged convenient about taking off penal laws against dissenters ;" and we know from other sources that he had already arranged a plan for comprehending many of them within the established church, and was employing some of the most eminent divines of the time in preparing it for the convocation. The following 20 account of the matter was given by Dr. Wake, then bishop of Lincoln, in the speech that he delivered in the year 1710, at the trial of Dr. Sacheverel : "Towards the end of that unhappy reign, when we were in the height of our labours, defending the church of England against the assaults of popery, and thought of nothing else, that wise prelate 25 [archbishop Sancroft] foreseeing some such revolution as soon after was happily brought about, began to consider how utterly unprepared they had been at the restoration of king Charles II. to settle many things to the advantage of the church; and what a happy opportunity had been lost, for want of such a previous care for its more perfect 30 establishment. It was visible to all the nation, that the more moderate dissenters were generally so well satisfied with that stand which |