ions, seems to have been very generally read upon these
occasions.[1042] A political element in them was always clearly
recognised by the Nonjurors. The more moderate among them, who attended
other services of the National Church, would not, except in rare
instances, attend these. 'They held that to be present on such special
occasions, which were significant of a direct purpose, was to profess
allegiance to the new reigning family, and therefore an act of
dissimulation; but not so their attendance on the ordinary
services.'[1043]

The prayers appointed for these set days of humiliation appear to have
often had the reputation of being neither impressive nor edifying.
Winston spoke, indeed, in the highest terms of a prayer drawn up by
Tenison on occasion of the great hurricane of 1703. He thought it a
model composition, unequalled in modern and unsurpassed in ancient
times.[1044] But its excellences, he added, were especially marked by
the strong contrast with the jejune and courtly formulas which usually
characterized such prayers, and most of all those which had been written
for the days of fasting during the war.[1045] They were, too commonly,
examples of the bad custom, scarcely to be extenuated by long
established precedent, of clothing in the outward form of adulation of
powers that be, what was ordinarily meant for nothing worse than
expressions of patriotic loyalty. Another frequent fault of these
special prayers was uncharitableness. Gilbert Wakefield speaks in
particular of an 'execrable prayer against the Americans,' and of the
storms which threatened him when he 'read it, but with the omission of
all those unchristian words and clauses which constituted the very life
and soul of the composition to the generality of hearers.'[1046]

The two anniversaries of January 30 and November 5 gave rise--especially
the former--to a whole literature of special sermons, the great majority
of which should never have been preached, or at least never published.
Extreme men on either side delighted in the favourable opportunity
presented by the one or the other of these two days of airing their
respective opinions on subjects which could not yet be discussed without
excitement. Protestant ardour, scarcely satisfied with commemorating
Gunpowder Treason in Church services which matched in language the
bonfires of the evening, found scope also for Antipapal demonstrations
in other and more distant reminiscences. November 27, the