London - Edward Rutherfurd [437]
“It’s a Declaration of Indulgence,” Penny told his astonished family one April day. “Everyone is free to worship as they please.” Catholic King James, it seemed, irritated by opposition from the Church, had called in no less a Protestant than William Penn, the patron of the Quakers, and with his help had designed this remarkable edict. “It means that the Catholics are free to worship and to hold public positions,” he explained. “But it also means that all the other faiths may do so too – Calvinists, Baptists, even Quakers.” Such religious tolerance was not unknown in northern Europe. In Protestant Holland, for instance, Dutch Catholics and Jews worshipped freely and were never troubled by William of Orange. The Declaration would override the Test Act until Parliament repealed it.
In Bristol, Penny noticed, most of the nonconformist Protestants welcomed the news. The number of Catholics who would benefit was small, the number of Protestants far larger. “It benefits us,” a Baptist remarked to him, “so we welcome it.” They even sent the king a vote of thanks. But Penny himself was more cautious. He began to pay close attention to the news that came from London. He read broadsheets; asked questions. He learned that the papal nuncio had gone to Windsor in state; all over the country, he discovered, the king was replacing the lord-lieutenant and the justices of the peace who ran the counties with Catholics. News came from Oxford that King James was trying to turn one of the colleges into a Catholic seminary. At the end of the year there was even news that the queen was pregnant again – though since, in fifteen years of marriage, she had never done anything but miscarry, nobody was much concerned by that. But taken together these things disturbed Penny profoundly. The phlegmatic English might accept them, but the Huguenots he knew, who had experienced the French king’s persecution, found them ominous. That spring, when King James announced that a Parliament would be called to turn this tolerance into law, and ordered his Declaration read in churches, Penny remained sceptical. “We were protected once, by the Treaty of Nantes,” he remarked. “And look what happened to that.”
Since there was little he could do about these fears, he had come to London to see Tompion anyway, and found his old friend Carpenter as well. But it was O Be Joyful who had provided the greatest surprise of all. Although the woodcarver hated popery, it seemed he was ready to support the king.
“So are the aldermen of London and the guilds,” he explained and then added, almost apologetically: “Things have changed.”
As he discovered what had passed in London, Penny saw how clever King James II had been. Since he wanted his Declaration passed into law, he needed a Parliament to vote for it. As the Tories, his natural supporters, were mostly Church of England men, they could not be relied on. But the opposition Whigs, inheriting some of the old Roundhead character from Cromwell, favoured toleration. King James II had therefore been securing Whig dominance in boroughs all over the country, so that they would send Whigs to Parliament. And nowhere had he been more thorough than in the city of London.
“By royal dispensation,” O Be Joyful explained, “you no longer have to be Church of England to join the livery companies or become an alderman. The Dissenters have been flooding in. The Weavers, the Goldsmiths, even the grand old Mercers company have sent addresses thanking the king. The very things my father fought for are being granted.