Sunday had dawned, and the bells of the parish churches were ringing
for early prayers, before the fires began to languish and the crowds
to disperse. A proclamation was speedily put forth against the rioters.
Many of them, mostly young apprentices, were apprehended; but the bills
were thrown out at the Middlesex sessions. The magistrates, many of whom
were Roman Catholics, expostulated with the grand jury and sent them
three or four times back, but to no purpose. [409]

Meanwhile the glad tidings were flying to every part of the kingdom,
and were everywhere received with rapture. Gloucester, Bedford, and
Lichfield, were among the places which were distinguished by peculiar
zeal: but Bristol and Norwich, which stood nearest to London in
population and wealth, approached nearest to London in enthusiasm on
this joyful occasion.

The prosecution of the Bishops is an event which stands by itself in our
history. It was the first and the last occasion on which two feelings
of tremendous potency, two feelings which have generally been opposed to
each other, and either of which, when strongly excited, has sufficed to
convulse the state, were united in perfect harmony. Those feelings were
love of the Church and love of freedom. During many generations every
violent outbreak of High Church feeling, with one exception, has been
unfavourable to civil liberty; every violent outbreak of zeal for
liberty, with one exception, has been unfavourable to the authority and
influence of the prelacy and the priesthood. In 1688 the cause of the
hierarchy was for a moment that of the popular party. More than nine
thousand clergymen, with the Primate and his most respectable suffragans
at their head, offered themselves to endure bonds and the spoiling
of their goods for the great fundamental principle of our free
constitution. The effect was a coalition which included the most zealous
Cavaliers, the most zealous Republicans, and all the intermediate
sections of the community. The spirit which had supported Hampden in the
preceding generation, the spirit which, in the succeeding generation,
supported Sacheverell, combined to support the Archbishop who was
Hampden and Sacheverell in one. Those classes of society which are most
deeply interested in the preservation of order, which in troubled times
are generally most ready to strengthen the hands of government, and
which have a natural antipathy to agitators, followed, without scruple,
the guidan