Debates in the House of Lords on ‘The Church in Danger’, 1705, and on Dr Sacheverell's Impeachment, 1710

Abstract

The reign of Queen Anne saw the last major flowering of the traditional tory political values and ideals of passive obedience to the monarchy, non-resistance and divine right. These values and ideals had been severely compromised at the Revolution of i688 which had driven James II from his kingdom and had placed his daughter and son-in-law, Mary II and William III, on his throne, excluding his son, the Old Pretender, with the conscience-salving fiction of his being suppositious. But the Tories after the Revolution were jealously determined to prevent any further erosion of the privileges which were still left to the Church of England after the settlement of I 689 had recognized the legal basis of toleration of dissenters. The death of James II in I702, and the accession of a lifelong Anglican, his daughter, Queen Anne, made possible a revival of Tory sentiment. Tory fears of the Whigs' policy of toleration of dissent and of hostility to the established Church were intense. Though the Tory archbishop of York, John Sharp, believed that the Whigs did not mean any harm to the Church,1 his views were not in accord with those of the majority of high churchmen of his day. The cry of the 'Church in danger' was to prove a useful political rallying-call to the Tories when they found themselves faced with the threat of the Whigs seizing control of the government, as in late I 705, or when the Whigs were firmly in control, as in early I7I0. Queen Anne, sharing Tory principles, appointed at her accession a cabinet with a definite Tory bias under her two 'managers' Godolphin and Marlborough. Gradually, as both the queen and her managers became disillusioned with the immoderate support of such figures as Lord Rochester, the queen's uncle, the leading Tories left or were forced out of the cabinet. The early years of Anne's reign saw a decline in the Tories' influence and power, and with this decline their fears grew as to what would happen to their Church when the Whigs gained power. There seemed to be plenty of straws in the wind. There had been the defeat of three attempts by the Tories to introduce a law to end the practice of occasional conformity, whereby dissenters gained access to mlunicipal and national government, barred to them by the test and corporation acts, by attending Anglican communion at least once a year which enabled them to qualify for office.2