The Tower

Abstract

Two days after the bishops’ confrontation with James was the date set for the reading of the Declaration in London churches. It was a bad error of judgement to permit the date for the reading of the Declaration in the rest of the country to be two weeks later than the date for the reading in London, not least because the country clergy were clearly looking for a lead from those in London. The London clergy were as good as their word. Simon Patrick claimed that it was not read in any parish church, and only in Westminster Abbey because Thomas Sprat, bishop of Rochester, a supporter of James, was dean and ordered a minor canon to read it — though the congregation walked out and Sprat absented himself in the country. At the Whitehall chapel, only a member of the choir was prevailed upon to read it, and afterward the preacher, the Latitudinarian John Scott, preached an archly apposite sermon on ‘the vicissitudes of worldly things’. Evelyn claimed that the Declaration was ‘almost universally forborne throughout all London’.¹ In Wales, it was reported that ‘the King’s edict for the reading the Declaration of Indulgence was wholly disobeyed’.² In fact, only four London parish clergy, one of whom was hopeful of appointment to the vacant see of Oxford, read the Declaration. Some leading clergy, such as Stillingfleet and Tenison, made sure they were out of London on 20 May, so that they could not read the Declaration.³ In other cases, clever clergy read the Declaration to empty churches, having dismissed the congregations before doing so.