e royal mind, but merely to inflame
the discontents of the people. [367] These complaints were utterly
groundless. The King had laid on the Bishops a command new, surprising,
and embarrassing. It was their duty to communicate with each other, and
to ascertain as far as possible the sense of the profession of which
they were the heads before they took any step. They were dispersed over
the whole kingdom. Some of them were distant from others a full week's
journey. James allowed them only a fortnight to inform themselves, to
meet, to deliberate, and to decide; and he surely had no right to think
himself aggrieved because that fortnight was drawing to a close before
he learned their decision. Nor is it true that they did not leave him
time to revoke his order if he had been wise enough to do so. He might
have called together his Council on Saturday morning, and before night
it might have been known throughout London and the suburbs that he had
yielded to the intreaties of the fathers of the Church. The Saturday,
however, passed over without any sign of relenting on the part of the
government, and the Sunday arrived, a day long remembered.

In the City and Liberties of London were about a hundred parish
churches. In only four of these was the Order in Council obeyed. At
Saint Gregory's the Declaration was read by a divine of the name of
Martin. As soon as he uttered the first words, the whole congregation
rose and withdrew. At Saint Matthew's, in Friday Street, a wretch named
Timothy Hall, who had disgraced his gown by acting as broker for the
Duchess of Portsmouth in the sale of pardons, and who now had hopes of
obtaining the vacant bishopric of Oxford, was in like manner left alone
in his church. At Serjeant's Inn, in Chancery Lane, the clerk pretended
that he had forgotten to bring a copy; and the Chief justice of the
King's Bench, who had attended in order to see that the royal mandate
was obeyed, was forced to content himself with this excuse. Samuel
Wesley, the father of John and Charles Wesley, a curate in London, took
for his text that day the noble answer of the three Jews to the Chaldean
tyrant. "Be it known unto thee, O King, that we will not serve thy gods,
nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up." Even in the chapel
of Saint James's Palace the officiating minister had the courage to
disobey the order. The Westminster boys long remembered what took place
that day in the Abbey. Sprat, Bishop of Rochest