factory performance of the services of the Church at this period:

"May it please your Grace,

"Tho' I chufe at present to wait upon you in disguise, and to speak from behind the curtain (which among other reasons I do, that I may not be suspected of vainglory, or of having any defign or interest to serve by this Address, but what is honeft), yet I come with as great purity of intention as a dying Penitent unloads the burden of his confcience into the bofom of his Confeffor.

me,

"It will be enough for your Grace to know thus much of that I am a member and a Priest of the establisht Church of England, which I have for several years endeavoured to serve, by my life, and by my discourses from the pulpit and the prefs, and 'tis my zeal for her Honour, next to that of her dearest Lord, that has made me conquer all reluctance I had, to put this letter into your Grace's hand.

"Tas been my trouble, and 'tis now my complaint, to see so many of her pious and primitive customs and institutions moft deplorably neglected all round about me, in the country where I live, and that I suppose more than in other places, of the truth of which I have at least a moral certainty.

"1. The obfervation of her Festivals is fo neglected, that scarce any of my neighbours do so much as bid them, or give notice of them: and myself (to my trouble) have been esteemed a person of fingularity for so doing.

"2. The Fafts of the Church fo totally forgotten, that even Ash-Wednesday and Good Friday are scarce known by the people, or taken notice of by the Prieft. Tho if none else, yet methinks, these two should have a little more of our notices. Your Grace has doubtlefs obferved that a late Author* ascribes the preservation of Christianity (next to the miraculous and gracious Providence of God) in the Eastern

* Dr. Smith's Account of the Greek Church, p.18.

Church, to the fstrict and religious observation of the Festivals and Fafts of the Church: This (fays he) being the happy and bleffed effect of these antient and pious inftitutions, the total neglect of which, would foon introduce ignorance, and a fenfible decay of piety and religion in other countrys besides those of the Levant.

"3. The neglect of reading the prayers at least Wednesdays and Fridays.—I humbly conceive that a particular injunction for the revival of that custom, or rather for the observation of that Canon, would be a seasonable countermine to the designs of the fchifmatical Lecturers on those days.

"4. With deference to your Grace, I conceive it would make very much for the honour of the Church, and for the beauty and folemnity of divine worship, if the Communion Service, were ordered by a particular command, to be read at its proper place, the Communion table, and that constantly every Sunday, which is scarce obferved by one Perfon in this country, and the Table generally is not so much as cover'd on Sundays.

"5. When there is a Sacrament then there is a most universal neglect of collecting the alms at the Offertory : infomuch that the people generally know nothing of it. And as by the divine aid I have revived that primitive custom in my own Parish, so I believe an injunction from your Grace down to us would yet be successfull.

"My Lord, tho' to my grief I have a fufficient affurance that these things are true, yet I mention them not to the disreputation of my Diocesan, or Arch-Deacon: For whom no man in the Diocese of Exon, or Arch-Deaconry of Barnstable, has a greater love and veneration than my self.

"My Lord, tho' the bringing a representation of these things before your Grace be a greater indication of the love than the wisdom of the Informer; yet I hope my zeal for this excellent part of the Catholic Church will attone for an instance of Indiscretion: And also be an occafion of my being

put into your Grace's Litanys, which is humbly and earnestly defired by

"Your Grace's moft affectionate honerer, and

dutifull and faithfully devoted Servant,

"Devon. Sep. 1. 1687."

"THEOPHILUS.*

* Tanner MSS., vol. xxix. fol. 71. Dr. Thomas Lamplugh, afterwards Archbishop of York, held the fee of Exeter, when this letter was written. For fome particulars concerning him, fee Burnet's Reign of James II., by Dr. Routh, pp. 257, 375, 504: Macaulay's History of England, vol. ii. p. 497: Reliquiæ Baxterianæ, part iii. p. 178: Dean Comber's Memoirs, pp. 267, 283-4, 298.

CHAPTER XV.

The King perfeveres in his measures for the establishment of Romanifm-Ken's jermon at Whitehall, for which he is reproved by James-His firm reply.

HE year 1688 dawned upon England
as the morning of an eventful struggle.
Juft a century before, Philip of Spain
had threatened the religion and liberties
of our country.
But how different

then was the spirit of the fovereign! Elizabeth, devoted to the honour and interefts of the Kingdom, and zealous for the Reformed faith, riding in state to review her armies at Tilbury, inflamed all England to the highest pitch of loyalty and patriotifm. James, on the other hand,-a penfioner of France, refolving to extirpate, as an obftinate herefy, the religion in which he had been brought up, and to bend his people to an arbitrary government,-encamped his army on Hounslow Heath, that he might over-awe them into an unwilling obedience.

The fame brave and vigorous fpirit animated the gentlemen, the clergy, and the people of England at each crifis. It is no vain boaft, that in our complex fyftem the character of the English gentry moulds and governs fociety. Whatever violates the spirit of it offends the public mind. The Prince himself may not deviate from it;-the lower claffes know how to appreciate it in those who are above them, and confefs to its influence; the aristocracy, as a class, are its best

exemplars. It is true, indeed, that in every rank of life we have many fhades of evil: in all nations the depraved will, the selfishness of the human heart, the deadening power of indulgence, exercife a fearful fway. Still, the character of the English Gentleman is a national character: it may not, perhaps, be eafily defined: but it forms the standard to which all aspire; it is a title without which the nobleman is not truly noble, and the denial of which is the greatest insult that can be offered to an Englishman.

Again, throughout the land, whether we regard rank, wealth, education, power of intellect, purity of life, enlarged charity, the spirit of forbearance, the noiseless tenour of a Chriftian course, devoted loyalty, confiftent patriotism,-it will be found that the Church of England (in its close union of Clergy and Laity) is the fanctuary of England, the poor man's refuge,the rich man's fecurity, the Ægis of the throne. To all this James was utterly infenfible: his every meafure was opposed to the vigorous good sense that characterized his people. He was completely under the dominion of a flock of foreign priests and Jesuits, who vied with each other in driving him forward to a pure defpotism, as the fureft means of establishing a Popish rule, distasteful to the vast majority of the nation.*

* The following statement of the number of Papifts in England, at this time, will enable us to judge of the hopelessness of their case :— "THE TELLING OF NOSES; or, the Number of Freeholders in England, according to Sir W[illiam] P[etty], 1688.