to be a feast; that Good
Friday would cease to be a fast; that canons on whom no Bishop had
ever laid his hand would, without the sacred vestment of white linen,
distribute, in the choirs of Cathedrals, the eucharistic bread and
wine to communicants lolling on benches. The Prince, indeed, was not a
fanatical Presbyterian; but he was at best a Latitudinarian. He had no
scruple about communicating in the Anglican form; but he cared not in
what form other people communicated. His wife, it was to be feared, had
imbibed too much of his spirit. Her conscience was under the direction
of Burnet. She heard preachers of different Protestant sects. She had
recently said that she saw no essential difference between the Church
of England and the other reformed Churches. [632] It was necessary,
therefore, that the Cavaliers should, at this conjuncture, follow the
example set by their fathers in 1641, should draw off from Roundheads
and sectaries, and should, in spite of all the faults of the hereditary
monarch, uphold the cause of hereditary monarchy.

The body which was animated by these sentiments was large and
respectable. It included about one half of the House of Lords, about one
third of the House of Commons, a majority of the country gentlemen, and
at least nine tenths of the clergy; but it was torn by dissensions, and
beset on every side by difficulties.

One section of this great party, a section which was especially strong
among divines, and of which Sherlock was the chief organ, wished that a
negotiation should be opened with James, and that he should be invited
to return to Whitehall on such conditions as might fully secure the
civil and ecclesiastical constitution of the realm. [633] It is
evident that this plan, though strenuously supported by the clergy, was
altogether inconsistent with the doctrines which the clergy had been
teaching during many years. It was, in truth, an attempt to make
a middle way where there was no room for a middle way, to effect
a compromise between two things which do not admit of compromise,
resistance and nonresistance. The Tories had formerly taken their stand
on the principle of nonresistance. But that ground most of them had
now abandoned, and were not disposed again to occupy. The Cavaliers
of England had, as a class, been so deeply concerned, directly or
indirectly, in the late rising against the King, that they could not,
for very shame, talk at that moment about the sacred duty of ob