Protestants in this present Army,"[426] exhorting them not to serve as instruments to eradicate their religion and enslave their country, he again fell under the grasp of power, was tried and sentenced to be thrice pilloried, and whipped from Newgate to Tyburn; having been previously degraded from his ecclesiastical orders. He bore both the previous ceremony of degradation, and the cruel punishment which followed, with the greatest magnanimity. When they disrobed him, he told the divines present, that he could not but grieve, since all he had written was to keep the gowns on their backs, they should nevertheless be the unhappy instruments to pull off his. When they put a Bible into his hand as a part of the formality of degradation, and again took it from him, he was much affected, and said with tears, they could not, however, deprive him of the use and benefit of that sacred deposit.[427] On the 1st of December, 1686, he suffered the remainder of his inhuman sentence; the pain being his, but the infamy that of the persons who imposed it. After the Revolution, the proceedings against this staunch patriot were declared illegal; and he received a pension of L.300 yearly, with L.1000 in money, and a post for his son. Crewe, Bishop of Durham, who acted as one of the commissioners for discharging the duty of the Bishop of London, and as such was active in Mr Johnson's degradation, compounded with him against a suit at law, by payment of a handsome sum. Yet Johnson's dangers were not over; for, such was the enmity of the adherents of King James against him, that a party of desperate assassins broke into his house by night, beat, wounded, and threatened to pistol him, for the books he had written; but, upon his wife's intreaties, at length desisted from their bloody design. The latter part of his days were spent in quietness and independence. The reader may contrast the character which Dryden has given of Johnson, with that of Hampden, who, in an account of him to the Duchess of Mazarine, says; "Being two years with him in the same prison, I had the opportunity to know him perfectly well; and, to speak my thoughts of him in one word, I can assure your Grace, that I never knew a man of better sense, of a more innocent life, nor of greater virtue, which was proof against all temptation, than Mr Johnson."--See Memorials of his Life prefixed to his Works in folio. Note XII. _If Balack should be called to leave his place, As profit is the loudest call of grace, His temple, dispossessed of one, would be Replenished with seven devils more by thee._--P. 331.