The persecutions of these French Protestants, their arrival on our shores, and the kindness with which they were received, are not mentioned here simply because they are incidents of a religious character locally connected with our own country, but for another and more forcible reason. These persecutions had become a staple of conversation in many an English home; and many an English heart had palpitated with deep sympathy, as stories of violence and suffering had fallen on the ear. Each fresh gust of intolerance, as it broke on France, had stirred the feelings of English Puritans, scarcely less than the feelings of French Protestants living on this side Dover Straits. And the revival of oppression, after the death of Mazarin, could not fail to inspire indignation in the breasts of multitudes within our shores when the anti-Popery agitation burst out afresh. The sight of the fugitives, their tales of horrid barbarity, of patient endurance, and of romantic adventure, would reinvigorate the Protestantism of our fathers, and largely contribute to that fixed resolve, which defied the contrivances of Charles and James, and ended in what has been ever since esteemed the _Glorious_ Revolution.[126] [Sidenote: THE CABINET.] It was natural for foreign Protestants to look to England for help in more ways than one. The Archbishop of Canterbury received a letter from Dr. Covel, chaplain at the Hague to the Princess of Orange, urging the formation of a public League in defence of European Protestantism. Sancroft did not possess the courage and heroism to promote such a measure, had it been wise; but he did possess the sagacity and prudence to see that the object desired was not wise; and, in addition to those qualities, he displayed, in the answer to his correspondent, a large measure of Protestant sympathy and devout feeling.[127] The prospects of Protestantism became darker and darker. The Act for excluding Papists from office was for a while cunningly evaded by Charles, who placed the whole business of the Admiralty in the hands of his brother, the Duke of York, he himself signing all official papers in that department:--at last, this shadowy pretence he cast aside, and boldly invited James to a seat at the Council-table--a step which even one of his Tory supporters acknowledged “became the subject of much talk, and was deemed to be a breach of one of the most solemn and most explicit Acts of Parliament.”[128] Two other persons, at the same time Members of the Council, ought to be noticed. One was Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys, too infamous a character to require anything more than the mention of his name; and Lord Keeper Guilford, who, whilst hating Jeffreys with a bitter hatred, in some respects resembled him. The part which these men took at this time in relation to Papists and Protestant Nonconformists, and the manner of their conducting ecclesiastical business, are illustrated by the following incident. [Sidenote: 1684.]