d many of his disobedient
servants from civil and military employments. He announced that he meant
to hold a Parliament in November at the latest; and he exhorted his
subjects to choose representatives who would assist him in the great
work which he had undertaken. [356]

This Declaration at first produced little sensation. It contained
nothing new; and men wondered that the King should think it worth while
to publish a solemn manifesto merely for the purpose of telling them
that he had not changed his mind. [357] Perhaps James was nettled by
the indifference with which the announcement of his fixed resolution was
received by the public, and thought that his dignity and authority would
suffer unless he without delay did something novel and striking. On
the fourth of May, accordingly, he made an Order in Council that his
Declaration of the preceding week should be read, on two successive
Sundays at the time of divine service, by the officiating ministers
of all the churches and chapels of the kingdom. In London and in
the suburbs the reading was to take place on the twentieth and
twenty-seventh of May, in other parts of England on the third and
tenth of June. The Bishops were directed to distribute copies of the
Declaration through their respective dioceses. [358]

When it is considered that the clergy of the Established Church, with
scarcely an exception, regarded the Indulgence as a violation of the
laws of the realm, as a breach of the plighted faith of the King, and
as a fatal blow levelled at the interest and dignity of their own
profession, it will scarcely admit of doubt that the Order in Council
was intended to be felt by them as a cruel affront. It was popularly
believed that Petre had avowed this intention in a coarse metaphor
borrowed from the rhetoric of the East. He would, he said, make them
eat dirt, the vilest and most loathsome of all dirt. But, tyrannical and
malignant as the mandate was, would the Anglican priesthood refuse to
obey? The King's temper was arbitrary and severe. The proceedings of the
Ecclesiastical Commission were as summary as those of a court martial.
Whoever ventured to resist might in a week be ejected from his
parsonage, deprived of his whole income, pronounced incapable of holding
any other spiritual preferment, and left to beg from door to door. If,
indeed, the whole body offered an united opposition to the royal will,
it was probable that even James would scarcely venture to puni