As the 1st of February approached, a few Clergymen in the archdeaconry of Sudbury applied to their Diocesan, Lloyd, Bishop of Norwich, telling him that though they thought of nothing less than losing all, yet they passionately desired to know whether they should voluntarily leave their respective cures, or wait to be forcibly thrust out; also they wished to know how they were to behave, so as, if possible, to preserve the ancient Church of England. He informed them that in the opinion of eminent lawyers a judicial sentence alone could eject them; and therefore that they might retain possession until they were judicially expelled. Their second question he left unanswered.[178] Whether Lloyd’s notion of law was right or wrong, the Clergy generally did not act upon it, for most of them quietly quitted possession on the 1st of February.[179] Amongst the most distinguished of these Nonjurors were George Hickes, Dean of Worcester; Henry Dodwell, who, though not in orders, was Camden Professor of Ancient History at Oxford; Jeremy Collier, Lecturer at Gray’s Inn; and John Kettlewell, Vicar of Coleshill, in Warwickshire. [Sidenote: NONJURORS.] Hickes was a man of great learning, skilled both in patristic lore and Teutonic tongues. He was brother to the Nonconformist Minister of the name, who suffered death after Monmouth’s rebellion; but, so far from being tainted with his brother’s sentiments, he was an intense opponent of Nonconformity, and an extravagant assertor of passive obedience. He published the last speeches of two Presbyterian Ministers, under the title of _The Spirit of Popery, speaking out of the Mouths of Fanatical Protestants_; and declared, in his _Thebæan Legion_, that if King James should imitate the Emperor Maximian, and doom his soldiers to death, for refusing to commit idolatry, it would be their duty to submit with meekness to the Royal decree. He wrote letters to a Popish priest, and an apologetical vindication of the English Church, in answer to those who reproached her with heresy and schism; and he also composed a book, entitled _Speculum Beatæ Virginis, a discourse of the due praise and heroism of the Virgin Mary_. These works indicate what manner of man he must have been, yet it is affirmed that at first he felt disposed to take the oaths, and came up to London for the purpose, but swerved from it through the influence of his High Church friends; a statement which seems very improbable.[180] Dodwell was still more learned than Hickes, and if in his theories more absurd, he was in practice more reasonable. Some of his speculative ideas upon marriage and music, upon the old serpent and the human soul, were as extraordinary as any that ever entered the human brain; but the fact which more immediately relates to my purpose is, that on the one hand he wrote _Discourses against the Romanists_, and on the other hand treatises upon _Schism_ and _One Priesthood_, in such a style, that when Tillotson read the MS.