o turn the Church of England from Catholic to Protestant. Under
James it might be used to turn the Church back again from Protestant to
Catholic. The High Commission indeed which had enforced this supremacy
had been declared illegal by an Act of the Long Parliament, and this Act
had been confirmed by the Parliament of the Restoration. But it was
thought possible to evade this Act by omitting from the instructions on
which the Commission acted the extraordinary powers and jurisdictions by
which its predecessor had given offence. With this reserve, seven
commissioners were appointed in the summer of 1686 for the government
of the Church with the Chancellor, Lord Jeffreys, at their head. The
first blow of the Commission was at the Bishop of London whose refusal
to suspend Sharp was punished by his own suspension. But the pressure of
the Commission only drove the clergy to a bolder defiance of the royal
will. The legality of the Commission and of its proceedings was denied.
Not even the Pope, it was said, had claimed such rights over the conduct
and jurisdiction of English bishops as were claimed by the king. The
prohibition of attacks on the "king's religion" was set at nought.
Sermons against superstition were preached from every pulpit; and the
two most famous divines of the day, Tillotson and Stillingfleet, put
themselves at the head of a host of controversialists who scattered
pamphlets and tracts from every printing press.

[Sidenote: James and the Tories.]

It was in vain that the bulk of the Catholic gentry stood aloof and
predicted the inevitable reaction which the king's course must bring
about, or that Rome itself counselled greater moderation. James was
infatuated with what seemed to be the success of his enterprises. He
looked on the opposition he experienced as due to the influence of the
High Church Tories who had remained in power since the reaction of 1681,
and these he determined "to chastise." The Duke of Queensberry, the
leader of this party in Scotland, was driven from office. Tyrconnell, as
we have seen, was placed as a check on Ormond in Ireland. In England
James resolved to show the world that even the closest ties of blood
were as nothing to him if they conflicted with the demands of his faith.
His earlier marriage with Anne Hyde, the daughter of Clarendon, bound
both the Chancellor's sons to his fortunes; and on his accession he had
sent his elder brother-in-law, Edward, Earl of Clarendon, as
Lord