The stereotype of the late Stuart clerical chameleon is the Vicar of Bray. His famous mantra that ‘whatsoever King shall reign, I'll still be the Vicar of Bray, Sir!’Footnote 1 indicates his subjugation of principle to preferment. He was willing to cut his sails to the regime of the day irrespective of the loyalty he had promised its predecessor. The reality of the late Stuart clerical chameleon is much more nuanced. The vacillations of William Sherlock (1641–1707) illustrate the subtle dilemmas regarding loyalty and allegiance that faced many clergy. Sherlock initially became a non-juror and resisted taking the oaths of allegiance to William and Mary. However, his change of opinion in 1690 made him totemic for loyalists to the Revolution. It is now possible to examine in fresh detail the private influences and pressures that informed Sherlock's very public actions in the crucial months between November 1688 and November 1690. W. M. T. Dodds began some work in this area in 1944, but her article was aimed principally at unravelling how Sherlock fell out with his friend Robert South and contains relatively little on Sherlock's changing political theology.Footnote 2 More pertinent is a manuscript in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, ms Bodl. Add.c.180, which contains four unpublished and underexplored documents revealing Sherlock's transition. As a whole the set of papers appears to have been compiled by a prominent non-juror, Thomas Wagstaffe, and recatalogued after his death by his son, also Thomas.Footnote 3 The most important document is a position paper written by Sherlock in the spring of 1689 justifying taking the oaths of allegiance on the limited grounds that James ii's kingship, while still legally valid, had been suspended by William's de facto conquest. The second is a letter dated 30 September 1690 from George Hickes, the deprived dean of Worcester, to Thomas Wagstaffe. This letter demonstrates the influence of James's defeat at the battle of the Boyne on Sherlock's decision to abandon the non-jurors. Third is a letter of 20 August 1690 from Sherlock to Archbishop Sancroft which explains Sherlock's decision to take the oaths of allegiance. Wagstaffe, having received intimation from William Lloyd, bishop of Norwich, about Sherlock's letter to Sancroft, made a manuscript reply at some point before the appearance of Sherlock's final position in the Case of allegiance (published on 3 November 1690); Wagstaffe's reply to Sherlock's letter is the fourth and final paper of relevance among the manuscripts. The manuscript exchange between Sherlock and Wagstaffe draws up battle lines over Bishop John Overall's Convocation book. Sancroft had published this book, transcribed from Overall's record of the 1603–10 Convocation, in the belief that it lent historical support to the non-jurors' cause.Footnote 4 Sherlock and Wagstaffe's treatments of the Convocation book are significant in jointly tracing, avant la lettre, some of the key arguments that would explode in the pamphlet war that followed the publication of Sherlock's Case of allegiance. Taken together, these new papers add colour to the outline of Sherlock's shifting views on Divine Right and enhance appreciation of the magnitude of the intellectual challenge with which the Revolution confronted every English churchman.
This study both reflects and develops the observations of recent scholarship. Anne McLaren, re-examining the Vindiciae contra tyrannos, a classic early modern text on the nature and scope of political disobedience, emphasises the biblical framework underpinning the Vindiciae. This is the same pre-secularised theological context in which Sherlock operates. The solemnity and seriousness with which he takes political theology at the time of the Glorious Revolution reflects his sincere belief that he exercises loyalty under the eye of God. McLaren's work chimes with Warren Johnston's assessment that many contemporary observers interpreted the Revolution through the prism of the book of Revelation. Its eschatological predictions of God's wrath against sin and the subsequent restoration of divine authority seemed highly relevant in 1688–9. On the broader political canvas of the age, Tim Harris emphasises political continuity within the three British kingdoms across the seventeenth century, arguing that they were radically altered not so much by the mid-century civil wars but by the long-term implications of the Revolution. Sherlock as an individual conforms to the Harris thesis, in that the events of the day did force a change to his political theology. However, as a High Churchman, the concessions and changes he offered were gradual. Far from abandoning the Divine Right of Kings, Sherlock adapted his understanding of the theory to permit obedience to William of Orange.Footnote 5
Although Sherlock's dilemma was a very public example of the internal agonising that was going on in the wider Church, Sherlock himself was a distinctive and eclectic thinker. He does not fit into any clear ecclesiastical box. Indeed, this independence in part contributed to his prominence. He was educated at Eton and Peterhouse, Cambridge. In 1669 he acquired the rectory of St George's Botolph Lane, London, and after receiving a prebend at St Paul's Cathedral in 1681, became Master of the Temple in 1685. His work as a controversialist began in 1674 when his Discourse concerning the knowledge of Jesus Christ attacked John Owen's Communion with God. Here Sherlock tacked his flag to the anti-Calvinist mast. He denied the doctrines of election, of an atonement that satisfied God's justice, and of a personal union with Christ through which sinners were imputed righteous. Rather, Christians were to be obedient to Christ's law. This soteriology was similar to that of the latitudinarian Edward Fowler, whose Principles and practices of certain moderate divines had been published in 1670. However, Sherlock's thought differed from latitudinarian standpoints in a number of areas. For example, in later life he wrote against Fowler on the incarnation. More important, his attempt in the 1690s to express avant-garde theological views on the nature of God was not part of a recognisable model within the Church of England. His Vindication of the … Trinity (1690) described the divine persons as three infinite minds individuated by their own self-consciousness and united by their mutual consciousness. This use of contemporary psychological notions was traced by Sherlock's former friend, Robert South, to the Cartesianism contained within the Epistolae theologicae (1679) of the Swiss-born Remonstrant theologian Jean le Clerc (1657–1736). Sherlock's High Church ecclesiology and political theology were also at odds with latitudinarianism. He rejected pressure in 1689 for attenuation of the Prayer Book in order to win dissenters to the Church, in contrast to Fowler, Gilbert Burnet and John Tillotson. Sherlock's tendency to draw from diverse wells and his oscillations between different camps in 1688–90 sets him alongside his contemporary William Talbot in his ability to embrace High and Low Church principles within an inevitably individualistic thought system.Footnote 6
Part of Sherlock's system was a High Church Tory attachment to the Divine Right of Kings, a central and multi-faceted doctrine of the early modern Church and State. The idea that kingship was God-given rested on the twin pillars of providence and legitimacy.Footnote 7 On the one hand God could be seen setting up rulers by his overarching will and power. On the other, kings enjoyed Divine Right because God blessed the lineal descent of their crowns. Both these strands are visible in the tradition of the Church of England; they worked alongside and reinforced one another. The hereditary foundation of Divine Right was strongly promoted in the loyalty felt by cavalier Tories to the restored Stuart regime. Charles i's descendants had miraculously triumphed against all the odds and so his lineage carried particular divine approval. A good example of the English clerical preference for legitimist arguments is found in the coronation sermon of James ii preached by Francis Turner, bishop of Ely, on 23 April 1685. The text Turner chooses is 1 Chronicles xxix.23: ‘then Solomon sate on the Throne of the Lord, a King, instead of David his Father, and prospered, and all Israel obeyed him’.Footnote 8 Solomon's title was good, Turner explains, both because he sat on the throne of the Lord (a providentialist emphasis) and because it was in the stead of his father (legitimism). However, later in the sermon, Turner explains his preference for the latter argument, at least in assessing contemporary monarchs, because of the difficulty of demonstrating the former. When explaining the unquestionability of James's title, Turner says that ‘[n]o Title by Gods immediate Designation (as it was in Solomon's Case) is now to be expected: No Prophet or Vision to be look't for: Nothing but ordinary Providence’. This ordinary providence Turner discerns at work in the blessing given by Charles ii to his brother on his deathbed, akin to David's paternal approval of Solomon. God's wider approval of James's inheritance is hinted at by the remarkable deliverances the new king had experienced from the Exclusion Bill and from the sinking of the frigate The Gloucester in 1682, but the implication is that it is in James's inheritance that the strength of his claim lies.Footnote 9 The reticence felt by Restoration churchmen towards providentialist arguments stemmed from their use in the previous generation to justify the Interregnum regimes which Cavaliers loathed so much. For example, Francis Rous, writing anonymously in 1649, had stressed the number of English monarchs whose rule contravened legitimate inheritance and yet to whom men were subject for conscience. Rous's conclusion left open significant potential for flexibility in government: ‘it seemes in the ordinary acception, the word Successor is taken for him that actually succeeds in Government, and not for him that is actually excluded’.Footnote 10 Against this background it can be seen how practical problems emerged for the advocates of the Divine Right of Kings, especially those with hereditary emphases, at the time of the Revolution, for the king by lawful succession became distinct from the king by right of conquest. G. V. Bennett notes the judicious movement away from stresses on inheritance and towards God's more immediate Providence, concluding that ‘it was thus by a dextrous modification of traditional loyalist theory that the chasm of the Revolution was bridged’.Footnote 11 This was the modification that Sherlock had to undergo. A tussle between de iure and de facto claims on the crown of England is at the heart of the allegiance controversy sparked off by the events of 1688–9. This controversy questioned who was owed non-resistance and passive obedience, concomitants of the Divine Right of Kings. These concomitants held that subjects owed active obedience to all lawful commands which a king should make. Even if he were to make ungodly demands, these were to be patiently endured; the king would have to answer to God for any wrong actions, but the subject's duty was to be passively obedient since the monarch was the Lord's anointed. The question of to whom obedience was due was relatively uncomplicated, until obedience to James ii could be regarded as resistance to William iii.Footnote 12
Good King Charles's golden days
Ironing out tensions within the traditional expression of iure divino rule took up much of Sherlock's time in the 1680s and early 1690s. In the wake of the Rye House Plot in 1683 he came to the defence of Charles ii in his Case of resistance, unaware that it would set him up for a decade of mental gymnastics. Although his primary intention was to reassert the passive obedience required of Christian Englishmen rather than tackle the later question of who had the right to be king, his argument was heavily reliant on legitimist forms of Divine Right theory and shows a reticence about more providentialist expressions: ‘We are to learn our duty from the Law of God, not from his Providence; at least, this must be a setled Principle, that the Providence of God will never justifie any action which his Law forbids.’Footnote 13 Similarly, when commenting on Romans xiii. 1–2, Sherlock writes that
the most prosperous Rebel is not the Higher Powers, while our natural Prince, to whom we owe obedience and subjection, is in being. And therefore, though such men may get the power into their hands by Gods permission, yet not by Gods Ordinance; and he who resists them, does not resist the Ordinance of God, but the usurpations of men.Footnote 14
It is this forceful reliance on a legitimist defence that Sherlock needed to retract in 1690 if he were to square allegiance to the invading Dutchman. All that he would permit in 1684 was that de facto claims were only of use when nobody could pretend a right to a throne greater than that of a usurper: ‘for the possession of Supream and Soveraign power is Title enough, when there is no better Title to oppose against it’.Footnote 15
The logical corollary of God's establishment of kings was that non-resistance and passive obedience were due from their subjects. In realms like England, which are not absolute and are governed by laws, ‘[s]ubjects are bound to yeild an active obedience onely according to Law, though they are bound not to resist, when they suffer against Law’.Footnote 16 However, subjects in their obedience to the king cannot encroach upon what they owe to God. It is here that Sherlock's opt-out clause for the reign of James ii lay, and it is clear that James's Catholicism might prove a battleground. In his Restoration Day sermon before the House of Commons on 29 May 1685 Sherlock stated that ‘[i]t is a Church of England loyalty I persuade you to’; i.e. to be ‘true to our Prince, we must be true to our Church and to our religion’.Footnote 17 It is in this ‘Church of England loyalty’ that Mark Goldie detects a potentially disruptive streak even among High Churchmen. In those laws which are God-given, the king is merely an executive agent. In this area, even if he is absolute, he has no right to be arbitrary. As such, the doctrine of passive obedience is better described as ‘non-assistance’. In claiming that the Test Acts against Roman Catholics were fundamental to the preservation of true religion, Anglicans found a loophole for their resistance to James's demand in 1688 that they read the Declaration of Indulgence. Sherlock joined the 95 per cent of clergy who were non-assistant in this matter. He was also busy during James's reign amongst those polemicists who kept up a constant stream of anti-Catholic invective. Sherlock's High Churchmanship bit against Tory iure divino royalism. Kings were not the only ones with divine authority. Bishops had it too. Tim Harris regards Sherlock as the strongest voice among those of the London clergy who opposed reading the Declaration of Indulgence. In his Letter from a clergy-man in the city (May 1688) Sherlock takes his stand on the law of the land. He advanced a case that the king can do no wrong, including making a violation of the law. This meant that officers of the crown were culpable for any illegal actions that they made, even if this was in obedience to royal commands.Footnote 18
The nation's grievance
Sherlock's position under James was thus awkward, but within the terms of his 1684 political theology. Things became a great deal more complicated after William's landing at Torbay on 5 November 1688 and especially after he began publicly to intimate his interest in the crown. It is possible to trace in some detail Sherlock's fluctuations in the months that followed. William Wake, another London clergyman, believed that by late 1688 Sherlock ‘was deep in it’.Footnote 19 Robert Beddard reads this to mean that Sherlock was running between the Williamite and Jacobite camps among the clergy and hence carrying the confidence of neither. Robert South would later imply that Sherlock had actually aided William's expedition to England and that he had been in the company of those around William on his very first night in London.Footnote 20 Whatever the truth of this allegation, he was certainly not so pro-Williamite by January 1689. Sherlock decided to call, albeit anonymously, in his Letter to a member of the convention for the return of James ii:
It is certain, would the convention treat with the king, either they would agree, or they would not agree; if they could not agree upon the proposal of reasonable securities [for James to return] this would satisfy multitudes of people that they had tried; if they did agree, this would give universal satisfaction and there were an happy end of all our troubles.Footnote 21
The letter goes on to reject all other options as mounting insuperable constitutional difficulties: ‘I should be as heartily glad as any man to see the Prince of Orange legally seated on the English throne; but these are difficulties I cannot break through.’Footnote 22
On 13 February 1689 William and Mary were proclaimed king and queen. An act appointing oaths of allegiance was passed on 24 April. Clergy had to swear before the customary authorities by 1 August 1689. If they failed they would be suspended for six months. If they still did not comply by 1 February 1690, they would be ipso facto deprived. Clerical minnows could slip through the net of this poorly worded legislation, but fat fish like Sherlock could not. He was in a real quandary by this stage, as Robert South reveals. South invited Sherlock to discuss matters on 7 April, an opportunity Sherlock took up the next day. Although he did not view South's attendance at William's coronation to be consistent with acknowledging the rights of James ii, Sherlock was undecided as to whether he would swear the oaths. What Sherlock was planning by 8 April was to write a discourse delineating the allegiance owed to kings de iure and de facto respectively. Sherlock soon put the promised papers into South's hands. Although they were not as perfect as Sherlock had hoped, South records that Sherlock had come down in favour of swearing allegiance. It was alleged a year later that Sherlock had attempted to publish these papers, but considering what followed, he will have been very glad he did not. These pro-oath papers have hitherto remained unidentified. However, within ms Bodl. Add. c.180 is a memorandum of seventeen sides entitled ‘Dr Sherlocks first Paper about the Oath indeavouring to prove the Takeing it Lawfull’.Footnote 23 The internal dating and argument of the paper are thoroughly consistent with the context South describes. The papers show Sherlock in a period of transition between legitimist and providentialist expressions of Divine Right. He was agonising over whether he had shifted enough to permit swearing allegiance to a man he still labelled a usurper.
Couching his argument in terms of an anonymous letter to a friend, Sherlock uses the reader to bear his own difficulties: ‘you would very readily do your Duty to God, to K[ing] J[ames] & to K[ing] W[illiam] if you knew w[ha]t you were to do, you would neither offend the present power, nor violate your former oaths’. Explicitly avoiding an attempt to persuade the reader that he is delivered from his earlier allegiance to James, ‘for I perceive it will be a difficult matter to satisfie you in that’,Footnote 24 Sherlock explores instead the grounds on which concurrent allegiance might be sworn to another. He argues ‘[t]hat tho wee can never be absolv'd from our naturall Alleg[iance] to our Rightfull Soveraign … yett the actuall exercise of our Alleg[iance] may be necessarily suspended’.Footnote 25 This is because it is impossible to render unto James the things that were due to him as duties of allegiance. Kings are owed obedience in respect of their laws, maintenance for the support of public government and defence of their person and dignity. These three duties are all suspended when a king is absent and lacks the authority to exact them. Submission in respect of the king's power is therefore largely curtailed also, with the substantial caveat that ‘if non-Resistance be a Duty, this can never be suspended, & therefore those, who believe this, can never thinke it lawfull to resist, & therefore must never oppose him, if he offer to return into his Kingdoms’:Footnote 26
The Sum is this. The Alleg[iance] of the Subject has a necessary Relation to the Authority & Power of the Prince, & therefore as the exercise of his Legall power may be suspended, so the exercise of our Alleg[iance] may & must be suspended w[i]th it. [B]ut if he can never forfeit his Right, wee must never in word or deed renounce him.Footnote 27
Sherlock goes on to argue that in a lacuna in which the lawful king's exercise of power is suspended, it is both possible and indeed advisable for subjects to transfer their allegiance to a king de facto. Sherlock is precise and cautious about quite what this accords to William. Kings de facto in no way impinge on the right of the lawful monarch. This is witnessed in the recognition by parliament of the title that Edward iv had through his ancestors: ‘tho the Throne for Severall Successions was possessd by de facto K[ing]s & if the Law allow the Right heir to be true K[ing] it canot own the K[ing] de facto to be such, for our Law allowes but one K[ing]’.Footnote 28 Nevertheless, during a suspension of the exercise of a lawful king's authority, all laws concerning regal power and jurisdiction should be applied to the king de facto. To behave otherwise would be unreasonable. The allegiance of subjects does not stretch to following their de iure ruler into exile, where both they and their lawful monarch would be subjects of another and a burden on that country. Nor does it require subjects who remain domiciled to forfeit their estates and live in fruitless opposition to the king de facto; such stubbornness can do the lawful king no good service. What is reasonable is that the nation should be peaceably governed. Government per se is more necessary than government by any particular prince.Footnote 29 This inherent dislike of anarchy leads Sherlock to express himself more as a helpless onlooker on the unfathomable workings of providence than he would have done five years previously:
There is nothing wherein the Providence of God is more peculiarly concern[e]d than in the Revolution of Govt … And therefore in Scripture God challenges the pulling down of K[ing]s & the setting up of K[ing]s to himselfe, not merely as the effect of his bare permission, but of his Decrees & Councells[.] … This indeed does not justifie the Actors in such a Revolution, w[he]n it is brought about by ill meanes, no more then it justifyed Josephs brethren in selling him into Egypt … But it is a hard case if it do not justifie inocent & dutifull Subjects in their submission to the present Power, for w[ha]t a case are Subjects in, if God by an Arbitrary & unaccountable will to us … setts w[ha]t K[ing] over us he pleases, & yett makes it unlawfull for us to obey or submit to any but our Rightfull K[ing] … therefore I can never thinke but that w[he]n God transferrs the Crown, He does in some measure transferr our Alleg[iance] too.Footnote 30
The particularly difficult area is the extent to which the de facto king is owed subjects' duties of allegiance in respect of defence against the king de iure. Sherlock considers it unacceptable to raise rebellion in favour of the king de iure and also permits the rendering to the king de facto of men and arms, horses and money, according to the legal rates. However, he will not give the king de facto the
Personal & Active Defence, about w[ha]t the Law requires, as voluntary hazarding our lives & ffortunes in his defence ag[ains]t our lawfull K[ing.] This certainly canot be lawful because it is a voluntary opposition to our Rightfull Prince w[hi]ch can be in no degree consist[en]t w[i]th our Duty to him in owning his Right.Footnote 31
Sherlock's final aim in the May 1689 paper is to relate his theoretical distinctions between de iure and de facto monarchs to the immediate problem of the oaths that William and Mary were requiring of the English clergy. In particular, he holds his attenuated understanding of allegiance to be permissible within the wording of the oaths. Sherlock interprets the clause in the oath ‘to be faithful and bear true allegiance’ to refer to the temporary allegiance he believes is due to a king de facto during a suspension of allegiance to a king de iure.Footnote 32 If this conclusion looks as though Sherlock was having his cake and eating it, he was in good company with much of the Church of England. Most clergy who printed on the subject of the oaths started with an assumption that James was rightfully king but that allegiance was permissible in a lower sense under the terms of the oaths to William and Mary as de facto rulers.Footnote 33
Despite the prevalence in the country of views similar to those in Sherlock's pro-oath paper, the Master of the Temple himself was not able to keep his conscience on the tightrope of dual allegiance through multiple oaths. About a month after showing South his pro-oath papers, Sherlock was ‘much chang'd & speaking ag[ain]st the Oath, & affirming the taking of it was not only a Recognizing, but a real making him K[ing] adding also that tho he c[oul]d actually forbear assisting K[ing] J[ames] yet he did not see how he c[oul]d swear never to assist him in any consistency w[i]th an acknowledgm[en]t of his Rights’.Footnote 34 This is consonant with the particular scruples that Sherlock clearly felt in his pro-oath papers about non-resistance to James, should James offer to return to England. It also fits with the attenuated degree to which those papers permit the duty of defence to kings de facto. The next time South and Sherlock met, Sherlock explicitly condemned his pro-oath papers and by 29 July 1689 he had written alternatives, this time opposing the oaths. Thus, by the time South took the oaths at the end of July, Sherlock had firmly set his face towards non-juring.Footnote 35
It is uncertain how Wagstaffe acquired Sherlock's May 1689 position paper. As the relationship between South and Sherlock deteriorated during the winter of 1689–90, they came to dispute whether South had publicised the existence of Sherlock's pro-oath writing. Sherlock alleges on 17 February 1690 that South had informed a Devonshire clergyman, Mr [Humphrey] Smith, about the existence of Sherlock's pro-oath papers. Dodds assumes that in this letter Sherlock was keen to hush up the papers, given his failure to swear the oaths. Sherlock underlines this by claiming that he was unconvinced of the truth of his pro-oath argument even while he wrote it. For his part, South denies all knowledge of Mr Smith. Moreover, South claims that when Sherlock ‘put his first Discourse into my hands, he did it w[i]thout any injunction of secrecy, y[e]t however I kept it to my self, communicating the sight of it to none’. South has a different theory about how the information seeped out. He had met two men in Tunbridge over the summer of 1689 who said they had seen Sherlock's pro-oath papers; one of them also alleged sight of Sherlock's anti-oath writings. If correct, the leak must have come from one of the other ‘few’ with whom Sherlock admits he had shared his secret. A letter from Archdeacon Read to South, dated 29 April 1690, draws on an account of the matter sent from Humphrey Smith to the archdeacon. It would certainly seem to support South's affront at Sherlock's allegations of betrayal. Smith had seen Sherlock's manuscript and had been talking unwisely about the matter, although the transcriber had forbidden Smith from copying what he had seen. Assuming that transcriber was not South, we are still none the wiser as to whose copy Smith had read or indeed how it reached Wagstaffe. The implication of the whole confusion, however, is that a few interested parties were aware of Sherlock's pro-oath papers and were keenly guarding them in the light of his later refusal to swear the oaths.Footnote 36
When William was our king declared
The most famous twist in the whole story of course is that Sherlock's retraction was not permanent. Despite his letter to South of 17 February 1690 attempting to clamp down on the rumours that he once favoured the oaths, a spring thaw had already set into his opposition. Sherlock was never deprived after 1 February 1690 as required by statute. This was because on 2 February he made the practical shift of praying for William and Mary as de facto rulers. Not too much should be read into this, because Sherlock's problem was never with Orange as de facto king but rather with swearing allegiance to him. Sherlock's resolution of this specific conundrum had to wait a few months more. Much speculation was generated at the time about exactly why and when Sherlock abandoned the non-jurors. Popular rumour attributed it to the influence of his wife, to James's defeat at the Boyne, or to a desire for preferment. Sherlock's public reason, offered in the Case of allegiance was that John Overall's Convocation book broke through his former difficulties.Footnote 37 George Hickes is very clear which of these drove Sherlock during the summer of 1690. Writing to Wagstaffe on 30 September, Hickes supplies the earliest clear dating of Sherlock's change of heart and a precise motivation. He recalls dining at Sherlock's house with two other non-jurors, ‘Dr Cr.’ and ‘Dr Tr.’, two or three days after the public rejoicing in London for the victory at the Boyne:
Upon our first arrivall the Master [of the Temple] began very warmly to talke ag[ains]t K[ing] James for behaving himselfe no better att the Boin, & goeing out of the Kingdom after the Battell, saying to this purpose, w[ha]t shall wee be ruin'd for a K[ing] that will not do his own part. I thinke wee must ee'n looke to ourselves, & take the oaths!Footnote 38
Not surprisingly the three non-jurors were unpersuaded by Sherlock, but dinner ended with them cutting an amicable deal. Hickes and his companions agreed not to rumour Sherlock's intentions abroad, while Sherlock promised to give them his arguments in writing prior to taking the oaths or publishing his reasons. Part of Hickes's motivation for writing to Wagstaffe is fear that Sherlock had reneged on the bargain. Hickes had received nothing from him and wondered whether Sherlock had written instead to some of the non-juring bishops and, if so, what they were doing about it.Footnote 39 Hickes was a shrewd fisherman, seemingly aware that Wagstaffe was in the know. On 20 August Sherlock had laid out his arguments in a letter before Archbishop William Sancroft. Wagstaffe had been informed of this by Bishop Lloyd of Norwich and prepared a written response.Footnote 40 Sherlock's letter, and Wagstaffe's reply, provide a manuscript prequel to the printed dispute that would explode with the publication of the Case of allegiance.
Sherlock's letter to Sancroft flows from his acceptance of a more providentialist view of Divine Right. He now holds that William iii's regime had been established and that church history in the form of Overall's Convocation book advocated loyalty to that establishment. His first point is that governments can be established by God contrary to human laws. The sentence Sherlock will keep returning to in the months ahead is the statement from chapter xxviii of the Convocation book that
When haveing attained their ungodly desires (whether Ambitious Kings by bringing any Countrey into subjection, or disloyall subjects by their rebellious riseing ag[ains]t: their naturall Soveraigns) they have Established any of the said degenerate fforms of Gov[ernmen]t amongst their people, The Authority either soe unjustly gotten, or wrung by force from the true & lawfull Possessor being allwayes God's Authority.Footnote 41
Sherlock takes a number of examples from the Convocation book which he maintains demonstrates the need for obedience to thoroughly established usurpers. For instance, the Jews' subjection under the Moabites could only be resisted through God's explicit raising up of Ahud as a Judge. Likewise God's power in disposing of kingdoms is witnessed in his setting up of Jehu against the rightful king, Ahab. The problematic example that Sherlock needs to dismiss is that of Athaliah and Joash. Athaliah usurped power after the death of Ahaziah. However, Ahaziah's baby son and legitimate heir, Joash, was spirited away and later restored as king by the high priest Jehoiada. Sherlock argues that Jehoiada was only justified in resisting Athaliah because of God's special entail of the crown of Judah on the line of David, the implication being that such a resistance would not be permitted in ‘ordinary’ kingdoms.Footnote 42
The specific obedience which is owed to thoroughly established usurpers is the same as that which is owed to ‘the most rightfull Prince in the world, to obey them to submitt to them, not to bear arms ag[ains]t them, to pray for their Persons, & the continuance & prosperity of their Gov[ernmen]t to pay Tribute & Customes & all Taxaions [sic]’. Sherlock cites Christ's advocacy of paying tribute to Caesar as evidence for this.Footnote 43 This equality of duties owed to de iure and established de facto kings marks a distinctive shift away from his May 1689 caution over what was owed to William.
Sherlock's most difficult problem – that of swearing allegiance to William – is predictably left to last. Here Sherlock draws Sancroft's attention to the Convocation book's use of Jaddus. Jaddus was high priest in Jerusalem when Alexander the Great destroyed the Persian empire of Darius and thus became overlord of the Jews. Jaddus refused Alexander's written request for his submission, but did submit when Alexander came to Jerusalem in person. Sherlock portrays Jaddus as submitting only when he knew that Alexander was thoroughly established. The high priest thus becomes Sherlock's own prototype, delaying his expression of loyalty until the establishment of Alexander's power became clear.Footnote 44
The three key elements of Sherlock's letter to Sancroft show how he had moved away from legitimist Divine Right arguments. First, William's regime had been thoroughly established by God contrary to the normal means of succession. Second, in carrying God's authority it was due the full obedience a rightful king would expect. Finally, this obedience included swearing an oath of allegiance. Providentialism for Sherlock had cut across both the desirability and necessity of a dual loyalty to de facto and de iure kings. This argument and the examples chosen to illustrate it form the backbone of the Case of allegiance. Chapter ii of the Case, which states the doctrine of the Church of England on the point of allegiance, is essentially a replication of the letter to Sancroft.Footnote 45 Looking back on the previous decade, Sherlock even grudgingly acknowledges his altered opinion:
I have renounced no Principle that ever I taught, excepting one in The Case of Resistance … viz. that when St Paul says, All power is of God, he means only Legal Powers; but that in an Hereditary Monarchy, where the right Heir is living, Usurped Powers are not of God, nor the Ordinance of God; as I proved by the Example of Joash.Footnote 46
Just as Sherlock's printed arguments in the Case of allegiance are given a trial run in manuscript, so is Wagstaffe's reply. His hastily-composed riposte to Sherlock's letter to Sancroft seeks to reclaim Overall and the biblical illustrations of the Convocation book for the non-jurors. Wagstaffe tries to carve a distinction between those biblical examples of usurpers, such as the Moabites and Aramites that Sherlock cited, and the regime of William iii. Wagstaffe argues that Convocation held the Moabites to be both legitimate and de facto, a combination which cannot be claimed for William. Likewise, Jehu's regime was acceptable not merely because God had cut across human laws of succession (as Sherlock thought) but because God had expressly revealed his will in the matter. Athaliah also offers another strong card for Wagstaffe. Wagstaffe rejects Sherlock's special pleading about God's particular entail of the crown of Judah on the line of David to justify Jehoiada's intrusion of Joash onto the throne. Rather, Wagstaffe simply holds that Athaliah's regime never had legitimacy in any case, and so Jehoiada's actions were out of natural loyalty to Joash the rightful ruler.Footnote 47 The more difficult case for Wagstaffe is the swearing of allegiance by Jaddus to Alexander. Wagstaffe disputes Sherlock's point that Darius was necessarily still alive when Jaddus swore to Alexander:
It seemes probable that the Conv[ocation] thought he [Darius] was then dead … for they say at the begining of the last mentioned Chap[ter]: ‘Alexander by God's providence haveing vanquished the Persians, The Jewes (among many other nations) became his Subjects.’Footnote 48
Moreover, Jaddus' actions followed God's express revelation. This revelation, as in the case of Jehu, renders it inapplicable in Wagstaffe's eyes to the general workings of providence and thus the contemporary predicament.
Wagstaffe's paper is rushed and unpolished. Matters are more fully and deliberately considered in his Answer to obedience and submission.Footnote 49 This was principally aimed against an anonymous pro-Williamite interpretation of the Convocation book by Zachary Taylor. However, in a postscript it also attacked Sherlock's Case of allegiance. The Answer recapitulated Wagstaffe's manuscript interpretation of Convocation's pronouncement on the disputed biblical illustrations but also expanded his analysis, especially of the Jaddus debate. Wagstaffe maintained that Convocation assumed that Darius was dead by the time of Jaddus' submission to Alexander and that in Josephus' account, Jaddus only submitted after express divine revelation. None the less, Wagstaffe clearly felt vulnerable because he moved behind the Convocation book to question the reliability of Josephus' account itself. Wagstaffe's suspicions were aroused by the absence of the story from accounts by other historians and the weaknesses in Josephus' chronology.Footnote 50 The other area that Wagstaffe delicately skated over in his manuscript, and to which he returned in the Answer, was the important matter of precisely when a government becomes thoroughly settled. In print he defined a thorough settlement as existing when the right to rule ‘is enjoyed plainly, evidently, without any Contradiction or Objection’.Footnote 51 Such a thorough settlement was held, for example, by the Egyptians over Jacob's progeny but William lacked it over James's kingdom. Wagstaffe had no simple formula for deciding when such a settlement might occur. It might stem either from lineal descent or from the submission of those in whom right had once resided, coupled with the agreement of those over whom that king had formerly ruled. However, it might be effected by ‘a long undisturbed Possession, called Prescription’. At the point of prescription, Wagstaffe seemingly holds that the government acquires legality also. The fact that there was little effective difference other than an unspecified length of time between Wagstaffe's ‘prescription’ and Sherlock's ‘thorough settlement’ ensured that the debate would drone on for some time.Footnote 52
The aftermath of Sherlock's taking the oaths is much better known than his intellectual journey towards doing so.Footnote 53 If he had hoped for glittering preferment from his conversion, he was to be disappointed. His embroilment in the Trinitarian controversy before he had extricated himself from the allegiance question led to further bitter quarrels, especially with Robert South. Jealous of Sherlock's deanery, South did enough damage to ensure that Sherlock went no further than St Paul's. Nevertheless, Sherlock's recovery was remarkable. He had remained loyal to his principle of passive obedience to a king who ruled by Divine Right. His cutting through his earlier Gordian knot of dual allegiance to de iure and de facto kings drew criticism from estranged non-jurors but chimed with much moderate opinion.Footnote 54 Sherlock had achieved a subtle unravelling of the concepts that had previously bound him. As such his triumphant Case proved a lifeline for him and for the consciences of countless others. He had no need to follow the disingenuous Vicar of Bray's oscillation into Tory support for Queen Anne. Sherlock had been a Tory all along.
