cross which it was their duty to
take up and bear in the hope of being recompensed for their sufferings
hereafter, and though Hickes assured them that there was not a single
Compounder in the whole Theban legion, very few churchmen were inclined
to run the risk of the gallows merely for the purpose of reestablishing
the High Commission and the Dispensing Power.

The Compounders formed the main strength of the Jacobite party in
England; but the Noncompounders had hitherto had undivided sway at Saint
Germains. No Protestant, no moderate Roman Catholic, no man who dared to
hint that any law could bind the royal prerogative, could hope for the
smallest mark of favour from the banished King. The priests and the
apostate Melfort, the avowed enemy of the Protestant religion and of
civil liberty, of Parliaments, of trial by jury and of the Habeas Corpus
Act, were in exclusive possession of the royal ear. Herbert was called
Chancellor, walked before the other officers of state, wore a black robe
embroidered with gold, and carried a seal; but he was a member of the
Church of England; and therefore he was not suffered to sit at the
Council Board. [426]

The truth is that the faults of James's head and heart were incurable.
In his view there could be between him and his subjects no reciprocity
of obligation. Their duty was to risk property, liberty, life, in order
to replace him on the throne, and then to bear patiently whatever he
chose to inflict upon them. They could no more pretend to merit
before him than before God. When they had done all, they were still
unprofitable servants. The highest praise due to the royalist who shed
his blood on the field of battle or on the scaffold for hereditary
monarchy was simply that he was not a traitor. After all the severe
discipline which the deposed King had undergone, he was still as much
bent on plundering and abasing the Church of England as on the day when
he told the kneeling fellows of Magdalene to get out of his sight, or
on the day when he sent the Bishops to the Tower. He was in the habit
of declaring that he would rather die without seeing England again than
stoop to capitulate with those whom he ought to command. [427] In the
Declaration of April 1692 the whole man appears without disguise, full
of his own imaginary rights, unable to understand how any body but
himself can have any rights, dull, obstinate and cruel. Another paper
which he drew up about the same time shows, if p