ABSTRACT
The Restoration was believed by many to be just that − a restoration of the Stuart dynasty to the English and Scottish thrones, and the re-establishment of the Church of England and the Church of Scotland − a restoration of the old order, including the Divine Right of Kings. This was ritualized in England not only by anointing the monarch in the Coronation rite, but also in the Royal touch for healing. It is true that Richard Hooker had argued that a bad monarch might be removed, and that Locke’s views of constitutional government were shared by many, but on the whole the stance of many of the Church of England was of passive obedience and non-resistance. The Dutch invasion and the subsequent events of 1689 caused both a constitutional crisis and a crisis of conscience, particularly for the High Churchmen for whom Divine Right and loyalty to the Established Church of England were paramount. Archbishop William Sancroft, and bishops Turner of Ely, Lake of Chichester, Thomas of Worcester, White of Peterborough, Ken of Bath and Wells, Lloyd of Norwich, and Frampton of Gloucester, were unable in conscience to take new oaths of allegiance to William and Mary.1 A good number of priests also declined to take the oaths, and some four hundred were eventually deprived. From this crisis of 1689 were born the Jacobite and Nonjuring movements. Overton rightly pointed out that a ‘Jacobite’ and a ‘Nonjuror’ were not convertible terms. There were active and aggressive Jacobites who sought the restoration of James II and his heirs who were not Nonjurors, and there were Nonjurors who were content to live peaceably and quietly without any thought of political intrigue.2 Yet the two nevertheless were close neighbours, particularly after the death of Queen Anne and the accession of the Hanoverians. It was no coincidence that the peaceable Nonjuring Usager, Bishop Thomas Deacon of Manchester (Fig. 5.1), was associated with the composition of the dying speeches of the rebels the Rev. William Paul and John Hall, Esq. after the 1715 rebellion.
