On the same day all the prelates who were in town, Sancroft excepted, waited on the Prince in a body. Then came the clergy of London, the foremost men of their profession in knowledge, eloquence, and influence, with their bishop at their head. With them were mingled some eminent dissenting ministers, whom Compton, much to his honour, treated with marked courtesy. A few months earlier, or a few months later, such courtesy would have been considered by many Churchmen as treason to the Church. Even then it was but too plain to a discerning eye that the armistice to which the Protestant sects had been forced would not long outlast the danger from which it had sprung. About a hundred Nonconformist divines, resident in the capital, presented a separate address. They were introduced by Devonshire, and were received with every mark of respect and kindness. The lawyers paid their homage, headed by Maynard, who, at ninety years of age, was as alert and clearheaded as when he stood up in Westminster Hall to accuse Strafford. "Mr. Serjeant," said the Prince, "you must have survived all the lawyers of your standing." "Yes, sir," said the old man, "and, but for your Highness, I should have survived the laws too."608But, though the addresses were numerous and full of eulogy, though the acclamations were loud, though the illuminations were splendid, though Saint James's Palace was too small for the crowd of courtiers, though the theatres were every night, from the pit to the ceiling, one blaze of orange ribands, William felt that the difficulties of his enterprise were but beginning. He had pulled a government down. The far harder task of reconstruction was now to be performed. From the moment of his landing till he reached London he had exercised the authority which, by the laws of war, acknowledged throughout the civilised world, belongs to the commander of an army in the field. It was now necessary that he should exchange the character of a general for that of a magistrate; and this was no easy task. A single false step might be fatal; and it was impossible to take any step without offending prejudices and rousing angry passions.
Some of the Prince's advisers pressed him to assume the crown at once as his own by right of conquest, and then, as King, to send out, under his Great Seal, writs calling a Parliament. This course was strongly recommended by some eminent lawyers. It was, they said, the shortest way to what could otherwise be attained only through innumerable difficulties and disputes. It was in strict conformity with the auspicious precedent set after the battle of Bosworth by Henry the Seventh. It would also quiet the scruples which many respectable people felt as to the lawfulness of transferring allegiance from one ruler to another. Neither the law of England nor the Church of England recognised any right in subjects to depose a sovereign. But no jurist, no divine, had ever denied that a nation, overcome in war, might, without sin, submit to the decision of the God of battles. Thus, after the Chaldean conquest, the most pious and patriotic Jews did not think that they violated their duty to their native King by serving with loyalty the new master whom Providence had set over them. The three confessors, who had been marvellously preserved in the furnace, held high office in the province of Babylon.
