THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND FROM THE ACCESSION OF JAMES THE SECOND

VOLUME IV

(Chapters XVIII-XXII)

by Thomas Babington Macaulay

CONTENTS:

CHAPTER XVII

William's Voyage to HollandWilliam's Entrance into the HagueCongress at the HagueWilliam his own Minister for Foreign AffairsWilliam obtains a Toleration for the Waldenses; Vices inherent in the Nature of CoalitionsSiege and Fall of MonsWilliam returns to England; Trials of Preston and AshtonExecution of AshtonPreston's Irresolution and ConfessionsLenity shown to the ConspiratorsDartmouthTurner; PennDeath of George Fox; his CharacterInterview between Penn and SidneyPreston pardonedJoy of the Jacobites at the Fall of MonsThe vacant Sees filledTillotson Archbishop of CanterburyConduct of SancroftDifference between Sancroft and KenHatred of Sancroft to the Established Church; he provides for the episcopal Succession among the NonjurorsThe new BishopsSherlock Dean of Saint Paul'sTreachery of some of William's ServantsRussellGodolphinMarlboroughWilliam returns to the ContinentThe Campaign of 1691 in FlandersThe War in Ireland; State of the English Part of IrelandState of the Part of Ireland which was subject to JamesDissensions among the Irish at LimerickReturn of Tyrconnel to IrelandArrival of a French Fleet at Limerick; Saint RuthThe English take the FieldFall of Ballymore; Siege and Fall of AthloneRetreat of the Irish ArmySaint Ruth determines to fightBattle of AghrimFall of GalwayDeath of TyrconnelSecond Siege of LimerickThe Irish desirous to capitulateNegotiations between the Irish Chiefs and the BesiegersThe Capitulation of LimerickThe Irish Troops required to make their Election between their Country and FranceMost of the Irish Troops volunteer for FranceMany of the Irish who had volunteered for France desertThe last Division of the Irish Army sails from Cork for FranceState of Ireland after the War

CHAPTER XVIII

Opening of the ParliamentDebates on the Salaries and Fees of Official MenAct excluding Papists from Public Trust in IrelandDebates on the East India TradeDebates on the Bill for regulating Trials in Cases of High TreasonPlot formed by Marlborough against the Government of WilliamMarlborough's Plot disclosed by the JacobitesDisgrace of Marlborough; Various Reports touching the Cause of Marlborough's Disgrace. Rupture between Mary and AnneFuller's PlotClose of the Session; Bill for ascertaining the Salaries of the Judges rejectedMisterial Changes in EnglandMinisterial Changes in ScotlandState of the HighlandsBreadalbane employed to negotiate with the Rebel ClansGlencoeWilliam goes to the Continent; Death of LouvoisThe French Government determines to send an Expedition against EnglandJames believes that the English Fleet is friendly to himConduct of RussellA Daughter born to JamesPreparations made in England to repel InvasionJames goes down to his Army at La HogueJames's DeclarationEffect produced by James's DeclarationThe English and Dutch Fleets join; Temper of the English FleetBattle of La HogueRejoicings in EnglandYoung's Plot

CHAPTER XIX

Foreign Policy of WilliamThe Northern PowersThe PopeConduct of the AlliesThe EmperorSpainWilliam succeeds in preventing the Dissolution of the CoalitionNew Arrangements for the Government of the Spanish NetherlandsLewis takes the FieldSiege of NamurLewis returns to VersaillesLuxemburgBattle of SteinkirkConspiracy of GrandvalReturn of William to EnglandNaval MaladministrationEarthquake at Port RoyalDistress in England; Increase of CrimeMeeting of Parliament; State of PartiesThe King's Speech; Question of Privilege raised by the LordsDebates on the State of the NationBill for the Regulation of Trials in Cases of TreasonCase of Lord MohunDebates on the India TradeSupplyWays and Means; Land TaxOrigin of the National DebtParliamentary ReformThe Place BillThe Triennial BillThe First Parliamentary Discussion on the Liberty of the PressState of IrelandThe King refuses to pass the Triennial BillMinisterial ArrangementsThe King goes to Holland; a Session of Parliament in Scotland

CHAPTER XX

State of the Court of Saint GermainsFeeling of the Jacobites; Compounders and NoncompoundersChange of Ministry at Saint Germains; MiddletonNew Declaration put forth by JamesEffect of the new DeclarationFrench Preparations for the Campaign; Institution of the Order of Saint LewisMiddleton's Account of VersaillesWilliam's Preparations for the CampaignLewis takes the FieldLewis returns to VersaillesManoeuvres of LuxemburgBattle of LandenMiscarriage of the Smyrna FleetExcitement in LondonJacobite Libels; William AndertonWritings and Artifices of the JacobitesConduct of CaermarthenNow Charter granted to the East India CompanyReturn of William to England; Military Successes of FranceDistress of FranceA Ministry necessary to Parliamentary GovernmentThe First Ministry gradually formedSunderlandSunderland advises the King to give the Preference to the WhigsReasons for preferring the WhigsChiefs of the Whig Party; RussellSomersMontagueWhartonChiefs of the Tory Party; HarleyFoleyHoweMeeting of ParliamentDebates about the Naval MiscarriagesRussell First Lord of the Admiralty; Retirement of NottinghamShrewsbury refuses OfficeDebates about the Trade with IndiaBill for the Regulation of Trials in Cases of TreasonTriennial BillPlace BillBill for the Naturalisation of Foreign ProtestantsSupplyWays and Means; Lottery LoanThe Bank of EnglandProrogation of Parliament; Ministerial Arrangements; Shrewsbury Secretary of StateNew Titles bestowedFrench Plan of War; English Plan of WarExpedition against BrestNaval Operations in the MediterraneanWar by LandComplaints of Trenchard's AdministrationThe Lancashire ProsecutionsMeeting of the Parliament; Death of TillotsonTenison Archbishop of Canterbury; Debates on the Lancashire ProsecutionsPlace BillBill for the Regulation of Trials in Cases of Treason; the Triennial Bill passedDeath of MaryFuneral of MaryGreenwich Hospital founded

CHAPTER XXI

Effect of Mary's Death on the ContinentDeath of LuxemburgDistress of WilliamParliamentary Proceedings; Emancipation of the PressDeath of HalifaxParliamentary Inquiries into the Corruption of the Public OfficesVote of Censure on the SpeakerFoley elected Speaker; Inquiry into the Accounts of the East India CompanySuspicious Dealings of SeymourBill against Sir Thomas CookInquiry by a joint Committee of Lords and CommonsImpeachment of LeedsDisgrace of LeedsLords Justices appointed; Reconciliation between William and the Princess AnneJacobite Plots against William's PersonCharnock; PorterGoodman; ParkynsFenwickSession of the Scottish Parliament; Inquiry into the Slaughter of GlencoeWar in the Netherlands; Marshal VilleroyThe Duke of MaineJacobite Plots against the Government during William's AbsenceSiege of NamurSurrender of the Town of NamurSurrender of the Castle of NamurArrest of BoufflersEffect of the Emancipation of the English PressReturn of William to England; Dissolution of the ParliamentWilliam makes a Progress through the CountryThe ElectionsAlarming State of the CurrencyMeeting of the Parliament; Loyalty of the House of CommonsControversy touching the CurrencyParliamentary Proceedings touching the CurrencyPassing of the Act regulating Trials in Cases of High TreasonParliamentary Proceedings touching the Grant of Crown Lands in Wales to PortlandTwo Jacobite Plots formedBerwick's Plot; the Assassination Plot; Sir George BarclayFailure of Berwick's PlotDetection of the Assassination PlotParliamentary Proceedings touching the Assassination PlotState of Public FeelingTrial of Charnock, King and KeyesExecution of Charnock, King and KeyesTrial of FriendTrial of ParkynsExecution of Friend and ParkynsTrials of Rookwood, Cranburne and LowickThe AssociationBill for the Regulation of ElectionsAct establishing a Land Bank

CHAPTER XXII

Military Operations in the NetherlandsCommercial Crisis in EnglandFinancial CrisisEfforts to restore the CurrencyDistress of the People; their Temper and ConductNegotiations with France; the Duke of Savoy deserts the CoalitionSearch for Jacobite Conspirators in England; Sir John FenwickCapture of FenwickFenwick's ConfessionReturn of William to EnglandMeeting of Parliament; State of the Country; Speech of William at the Commencement of the SessionResolutions of the House of CommonsReturn of ProsperityEffect of the Proceedings of the House of Commons on Foreign GovernmentsRestoration of the FinancesEffects of Fenwick's ConfessionResignation of GodolphinFeeling of the Whigs about FenwickWilliam examines FenwickDisappearance of GoodmanParliamentary Proceedings touching Fenwick's ConfessionBill for attainting FenwickDebates of the Commons on the Bill of AttainderThe Bill of Attainder carried up to the LordsArtifices of MonmouthDebates of the Lords on the Bill of AttainderProceedings against MonmouthPosition and Feelings of ShrewsburyThe Bill of Attainder passed; Attempts to save FenwickFenwick's Execution; Bill for the Regulating of ElectionsBill for the Regulation of the PressBill abolishing the Privileges of Whitefriars and the SavoyClose of the Session; Promotions and AppointmentsState of IrelandState of ScotlandA Session of Parliament at Edinburgh; Act for the Settling of SchoolsCase of Thomas AikenheadMilitary Operations in the NetherlandsTerms of Peace offered by FranceConduct of Spain; Conduct of the EmperorCongress of RyswickWilliam opens a distinct NegotiationMeetings of Portland and BoufflersTerms of Peace between France and England settledDifficulties caused by Spain and the EmperorAttempts of James to prevent a general PacificationThe Treaty of Ryswick signed; Anxiety in EnglandNews of the Peace arrives in EnglandDismay of the JacobitesGeneral RejoicingThe King's Entry into LondonThe Thanksgiving Day

CHAPTER XVII

 William's Voyage to Holland--William's Entrance into the Hague--Congress at the Hague--William his own Minister for Foreign Affairs--William obtains a Toleration for the Waldenses; Vices inherent in the Nature of Coalitions--Siege and Fall of Mons--William returns to England; Trials of Preston and Ashton--Execution of Ashton--Preston's Irresolution and Confessions--Lenity shown to the Conspirators--Dartmouth--Turner; Penn--Death of George Fox; his Character--Interview between Penn and Sidney--Preston pardoned--Joy of the Jacobites at the Fall of Mons--The vacant Sees filled--Tillotson Archbishop of Canterbury--Conduct of Sancroft--Difference between Sancroft and Ken--Hatred of Sancroft to the Established Church; he provides for the episcopal Succession among the Nonjurors--The new Bishops--Sherlock Dean of Saint Paul's--Treachery of some of William's Servants--Russell--Godolphin--Marlborough--William returns to the Continent--The Campaign of 1691 in Flanders--The War in Ireland; State of the English Part of Ireland--State of the Part of Ireland which was subject to James--Dissensions among the Irish at Limerick--Return of Tyrconnel to Ireland--Arrival of a French Fleet at Limerick; Saint Ruth--The English take the Field--Fall of Ballymore; Siege and Fall of Athlone--Retreat of the Irish Army--Saint Ruth determines to fight--Battle of Aghrim--Fall of Galway--Death of Tyrconnel--Second Siege of Limerick--The Irish desirous to capitulate--Negotiations between the Irish Chiefs and the Besiegers--The Capitulation of Limerick--The Irish Troops required to make their Election between their Country and France--Most of the Irish Troops volunteer for France--Many of the Irish who had volunteered for France desert--The last Division of the Irish Army sails from Cork for France--State of Ireland after the War

ON the eighteenth of January 1691, the King, having been detained somedays by adverse winds, went on board at Gravesend. Four yachts hadbeen fitted up for him and for his retinue. Among his attendants wereNorfolk, Ormond, Devonshire, Dorset, Portland, Monmouth, Zulestein, andthe Bishop of London. Two distinguished admirals, Cloudesley Shoveland George Rooke, commanded the men of war which formed the convoy. Thepassage was tedious and disagreeable. During many hours the fleet wasbecalmed off the Godwin Sands; and it was not till the fifth day thatthe soundings proved the coast of Holland to be near. The sea fog wasso thick that no land could be seen; and it was not thought safe forthe ships to proceed further in the darkness. William, tired out by thevoyage, and impatient to be once more in his beloved country, determinedto land in an open boat. The noblemen who were in his train tried todissuade him from risking so valuable a life; but, when they found thathis mind was made up, they insisted on sharing the danger. That dangerproved more serious than they had expected. It had been supposed thatin an hour the party would be on shore. But great masses of floatingice impeded the progress of the skiff; the night came on; the fog grewthicker; the waves broke over the King and the courtiers. Once thekeel struck on a sand bank, and was with great difficulty got off. Thehardiest mariners showed some signs of uneasiness. But William, throughthe whole night, was as composed as if he had been in the drawingroom atKensington. "For shame, " he said to one of the dismayed sailors "areyou afraid to die in my company?" A bold Dutch seaman ventured to springout, and, with great difficulty, swam and scrambled through breakers, ice and mud, to firm ground. Here he discharged a musket and lighteda fire as a signal that he was safe. None of his fellow passengers, however, thought it prudent to follow his example. They lay tossing insight of the flame which he had kindled, till the first pale light of aJanuary morning showed them that they were close to the island of Goree. The King and his Lords, stiff with cold and covered with icicles, gladlylanded to warm and rest themselves. [1]

After reposing some hours in the hut of a peasant, William proceeded tothe Hague. He was impatiently expected there for, though the fleet whichbrought him was not visible from the shore, the royal salutes had beenheard through the mist, and had apprised the whole coast of his arrival. Thousands had assembled at Honslaerdyk to welcome him with applausewhich came from their hearts and which went to his heart. That was oneof the few white days of a life, beneficent indeed and glorious, butfar from happy. After more than two years passed in a strange land, theexile had again set foot on his native soil. He heard again the languageof his nursery. He saw again the scenery and the architecture which wereinseparably associated in his mind with the recollections of childhoodand the sacred feeling of home; the dreary mounds of sand, shells andweeds, on which the waves of the German Ocean broke; the interminablemeadows intersected by trenches; the straight canals; the villas brightwith paint and adorned with quaint images and inscriptions. He had livedduring many weary months among a people who did not love him, who didnot understand him, who could never forget that he was a foreigner. Those Englishmen who served him most faithfully served him withoutenthusiasm, without personal attachment, and merely from a sense ofpublic duty. In their hearts they were sorry that they had no choice butbetween an English tyrant and a Dutch deliverer. All was now changed. William was among a population by which he was adored, as Elizabeth hadbeen adored when she rode through her army at Tilbury, as Charles theSecond had been adored when he landed at Dover. It is true that the oldenemies of the House of Orange had not been inactive during the absenceof the Stadtholder. There had been, not indeed clamours, but mutteringsagainst him. He had, it was said, neglected his native land for hisnew kingdom. Whenever the dignity of the English flag, whenever theprosperity of the English trade was concerned, he forgot that he was aHollander. But, as soon as his well remembered face was again seen, all jealousy, all coldness, was at an end. There was not a boor, nota fisherman, not an artisan, in the crowds which lined the road fromHonslaerdyk to the Hague, whose heart did not swell with pride at thethought that the first minister of Holland had become a great King, had freed the English, and had conquered the Irish. It would have beenmadness in William to travel from Hampton Court to Westminster withouta guard; but in his own land he needed no swords or carbines to defendhim. "Do not keep the people off;" he cried: "let them come close tome; they are all my good friends. " He soon learned that sumptuouspreparations were making for his entrance into the Hague. At first hemurmured and objected. He detested, he said, noise and display. Thenecessary cost of the war was quite heavy enough. He hoped that his kindfellow townsmen would consider him as a neighbour, born and bredamong them, and would not pay him so bad a compliment as to treat himceremoniously. But all his expostulations were vain. The Hollanders, simple and parsimonious as their ordinary habits were, had set theirhearts on giving their illustrious countryman a reception suited to hisdignity and to his merit; and he found it necessary to yield. On the dayof his triumph the concourse was immense. All the wheeled carriagesand horses of the province were too few for the multitude of those whoflocked to the show. Many thousands came sliding or skating along thefrozen canals from Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Leyden, Haarlem, Delft. At tenin the morning of the twenty-sixth of January, the great bell of theTown House gave the signal. Sixteen hundred substantial burghers, wellarmed, and clad in the finest dresses which were to be found inthe recesses of their wardrobes, kept order in the crowded streets. Balconies and scaffolds, embowered in evergreens and hung with tapestry, hid the windows. The royal coach, escorted by an army of halberdiersand running footmen, and followed by a long train of splendid equipages, passed under numerous arches rich with carving and painting, amidstincessant shouts of "Long live the King our Stadtholder. " The front ofthe Town House and the whole circuit of the marketplace were in a blazewith brilliant colours. Civic crowns, trophies, emblems of arts, ofsciences, of commerce and of agriculture, appeared every where. In oneplace William saw portrayed the glorious actions of his ancestors. Therewas the silent prince, the founder of the Batavian commonwealth, passingthe Meuse with his warriors. There was the more impetuous Mauriceleading the charge at Nieuport. A little further on, the hero mightretrace the eventful story of his own life. He was a child at hiswidowed mother's knee. He was at the altar with Diary's hand in his. Hewas landing at Torbay. He was swimming through the Boyne. There, too, was a boat amidst the ice and the breakers; and above it was mostappropriately inscribed, in the majestic language of Rome, the saying ofthe great Roman, "What dost thou fear? Thou hast Caesar on board. " Thetask of furnishing the Latin mottoes had been intrusted to two men, who, till Bentley appeared, held the highest place among the classicalscholars of that age. Spanheim, whose knowledge of the Roman medals wasunrivalled, imitated, not unsuccessfully, the noble conciseness of thoseancient legends which he had assiduously studied; and he was assisted byGraevius, who then filled a chair at Utrecht, and whose just reputationhad drawn to that University multitudes of students from every part ofProtestant Europe. [2] When the night came, fireworks were exhibited onthe great tank which washes the walls of the Palace of the Federation. That tank was now as hard as marble; and the Dutch boasted that nothinghad ever been seen, even on the terrace of Versailles, more brilliantthan the effect produced by the innumerable cascades of flame whichwere reflected in the smooth mirror of ice. [3] The English Lordscongratulated their master on his immense popularity. "Yes, " said he;"but I am not the favourite. The shouting was nothing to what it wouldhave been if Mary had been with me. "

A few hours after the triumphal entry, the King attended a sitting ofthe States General. His last appearance among them had been on the dayon which he embarked for England. He had then, amidst the broken wordsand loud weeping of those grave Senators, thanked them for the kindnesswith which they had watched over his childhood, trained his young mind, and supported his authority in his riper years; and he had solemnlycommended his beloved wife to their care. He now came back among themthe King of three kingdoms, the head of the greatest coalition thatEurope had seen during a hundred and eighty years; and nothing was heardin the hall but applause and congratulations. [4]

But this time the streets of the Hague were overflowing with theequipages and retinues of princes and ambassadors who came flockingto the great Congress. First appeared the ambitious and ostentatiousFrederic, Elector of Brandenburg, who, a few years later, took thetitle of King of Prussia. Then arrived the young Elector of Bavaria, the Regent of Wirtemberg, the Landgraves of Hesse Cassel and HesseDarmstadt, and a long train of sovereign princes, sprung from theillustrious houses of Brunswick, of Saxony, of Holstein, and of Nassau. The Marquess of Gastanaga, Governor of the Spanish Netherlands, repairedto the assembly from the viceregal Court of Brussels. Extraordinaryministers had been sent by the Emperor, by the Kings of Spain, Poland, Denmark, and Sweden, and by the Duke of Savoy. There was scarcely roomin the town and the neighbourhood for the English Lords and gentlemenand the German Counts and Barons whom curiosity or official duty hadbrought to the place of meeting. The grave capital of the most thriftyand industrious of nations was as gay as Venice in the Carnival. Thewalks cut among those noble limes and elms in which the villa of thePrinces of Orange is embosomed were gay with the plumes, the stars, the flowing wigs, the embroidered coats and the gold hilted swords ofgallants from London, Berlin and Vienna. With the nobles were mingledsharpers not less gorgeously attired than they. At night the hazardtables were thronged; and the theatre was filled to the roof. Princelybanquets followed one another in rapid succession. The meats wereserved in gold; and, according to that old Teutonic fashion with whichShakspeare had made his countrymen familiar, as often as any of thegreat princes proposed a health, the kettle drums and trumpets sounded. Some English lords, particularly Devonshire, gave entertainmentswhich vied with those of Sovereigns. It was remarked that the Germanpotentates, though generally disposed to be litigious and punctiliousabout etiquette, associated, on this occasion, in an unceremoniousmanner, and seemed to have forgotten their passion for genealogical andheraldic controversy. The taste for wine, which was then characteristicof their nation, they had not forgotten. At the table of the Electorof Brandenburg much mirth was caused by the gravity of the statesmen ofHolland, who, sober themselves, confuted out of Grotius and Puffendorfthe nonsense stuttered by the tipsy nobles of the Empire. One of thosenobles swallowed so many bumpers that he tumbled into the turf fire, andwas not pulled out till his fine velvet suit had been burned. [5]

In the midst of all this revelry, business was not neglected. A formalmeeting of the Congress was held at which William presided. In a shortand dignified speech, which was speedily circulated throughout Europe, he set forth the necessity of firm union and strenuous exertion. Theprofound respect with which he was heard by that splendid assemblycaused bitter mortification to his enemies both in England and inFrance. The German potentates were bitterly reviled for yieldingprecedence to an upstart. Indeed the most illustrious among them paid tohim such marks of deference as they would scarcely have deigned to payto the Imperial Majesty, mingled with the crowd in his antechamber, andat his table behaved as respectfully as any English lord in waiting. In one caricature the allied princes were represented as muzzled bears, some with crowns, some with caps of state. William had them all ina chain, and was teaching them to dance. In another caricature, heappeared taking his ease in an arm chair, with his feet on a cushion, and his hat on his head, while the Electors of Brandenburg and Bavaria, uncovered, occupied small stools on the right and left; the crowd ofLandgraves and Sovereign dukes stood at humble distance; and Gastanaga, the unworthy successor of Alva, awaited the orders of the heretic tyranton bended knee. [6]

It was soon announced by authority that, before the beginning of summer, two hundred and twenty thousand men would be in the field againstFrance. [7] The contingent which each of the allied powers wasto furnish was made known. Matters about which it would have beeninexpedient to put forth any declaration were privately discussed bythe King of England with his allies. On this occasion, as on every otherimportant occasion during his reign, he was his own minister forforeign affairs. It was necessary for the sake of form that he should beattended by a Secretary of State; and Nottingham had therefore followedhim to Holland. But Nottingham, though, in matters concerning theinternal government of England, he enjoyed a large share of his master'sconfidence, knew little more about the business of the Congress thanwhat he saw in the Gazettes. 

This mode of transacting business would now be thought mostunconstitutional; and many writers, applying the standard of their ownage to the transactions of a former age, have severely blamed Williamfor acting without the advice of his ministers, and his ministersfor submitting to be kept in ignorance of transactions which deeplyconcerned the honour of the Crown and the welfare of the nation. Yetsurely the presumption is that what the most honest and honourable menof both parties, Nottingham, for example, among the Tories, and Somersamong the Whigs, not only did, but avowed, cannot have been altogetherinexcusable; and a very sufficient excuse will without difficulty befound. 

The doctrine that the Sovereign is not responsible is doubtless as oldas any part of our constitution. The doctrine that his ministers areresponsible is also of immemorial antiquity. That where there isno responsibility there can be no trustworthy security againstmaladministration, is a doctrine which, in our age and country, fewpeople will be inclined to dispute. From these three propositions itplainly follows that the administration is likely to be best conductedwhen the Sovereign performs no public act without the concurrence andinstrumentality of a minister. This argument is perfectly sound. But wemust remember that arguments are constructed in one way, and governmentsin another. In logic, none but an idiot admits the premises and deniesthe legitimate conclusion. But in practice, we see that great andenlightened communities often persist, generation after generation, inasserting principles, and refusing to act upon those principles. Itmay be doubted whether any real polity that ever existed has exactlycorresponded to the pure idea of that polity. According to the pure ideaof constitutional royalty, the prince reigns and does not govern; andconstitutional royalty, as it now exists in England, comes nearer thanin any other country to the pure idea. Yet it would be a great errorto imagine that our princes merely reign and never govern. In theseventeenth century, both Whigs and Tories thought it, not only theright, but the duty, of the first magistrate to govern. All partiesagreed in blaming Charles the Second for not being his own PrimeMinister; all parties agreed in praising James for being his own LordHigh Admiral; and all parties thought it natural and reasonable thatWilliam should be his own Foreign Secretary. 

It may be observed that the ablest and best informed of those whohave censured the manner in which the negotiations of that time wereconducted are scarcely consistent with themselves. For, while they blameWilliam for being his own Ambassador Plenipotentiary at the Hague, theypraise him for being his own Commander in Chief in Ireland. Yet where isthe distinction in principle between the two cases? Surely every reasonwhich can be brought to prove that he violated the constitution, when, by his own sole authority, he made compacts with the Emperor andthe Elector of Brandenburg, will equally prove that he violated theconstitution, when, by his own sole authority, he ordered one column toplunge into the water at Oldbridge and another to cross the bridge ofSlane. If the constitution gave him the command of the forces of theState, the constitution gave him also the direction of the foreignrelations of the State. On what principle then can it be maintained thathe was at liberty to exercise the former power without consulting anybody, but that he was bound to exercise the latter power in conformitywith the advice of a minister? Will it be said that an error indiplomacy is likely to be more injurious to the country than an errorin strategy? Surely not. It is hardly conceivable that any blunder whichWilliam might have made at the Hague could have been more injurious tothe public interests than a defeat at the Boyne. Or will it be said thatthere was greater reason for placing confidence in his military than inhis diplomatic skill? Surely not. In war he showed some great moral andintellectual qualities; but, as a tactician, he did not rank high; andof his many campaigns only two were decidedly successful. In the talentsof a negotiator, on the other hand, he has never been surpassed. Of theinterests and the tempers of the continental courts he knew more thanall his Privy Council together. Some of his ministers were doubtless menof great ability, excellent orators in the House of Lords, and versedin our insular politics. But, in the deliberations of the Congress, Caermarthen and Nottingham would have been found as far inferior to himas he would have been found inferior to them in a parliamentary debateon a question purely English. The coalition against France was his work. He alone had joined together the parts of that great whole; and he alonecould keep them together. If he had trusted that vast and complicatedmachine in the hands of any of his subjects, it would instantly havefallen to pieces. 

Some things indeed were to be done which none of his subjects would haveventured to do. Pope Alexander was really, though not in name, one ofthe allies; it was of the highest importance to have him for a friend;and yet such was the temper of the English nation that an Englishminister might well shrink from having any dealings, direct or indirect, with the Vatican. The Secretaries of State were glad to leave a matterso delicate and so full of risk to their master, and to be ableto protest with truth that not a line to which the most intolerantProtestant could object had ever gone out of their offices. 

It must not be supposed however that William ever forgot that hisespecial, his hereditary, mission was to protect the Reformed Faith. His influence with Roman Catholic princes was constantly and strenuouslyexerted for the benefit of their Protestant subjects. In the spring of1691, the Waldensian shepherds, long and cruelly persecuted, and wearyof their lives, were surprised by glad tidings. Those who had been inprison for heresy returned to their homes. Children, who had beentaken from their parents to be educated by priests, were sent back. Congregations, which had hitherto met only by stealth and with extremeperil, now worshipped God without molestation in the face of day. Thosesimple mountaineers probably never knew that their fate had been asubject of discussion at the Hague, and that they owed the happinessof their firesides, and the security of their humble temples to theascendency which William exercised over the Duke of Savoy. [8]

No coalition of which history has preserved the memory has had an ablerchief than William. But even William often contended in vain againstthose vices which are inherent in the nature of all coalitions. Noundertaking which requires the hearty and long continued cooperationof many independent states is likely to prosper. Jealousies inevitablyspring up. Disputes engender disputes. Every confederate is tempted tothrow on others some part of the burden which he ought himself to bear. Scarcely one honestly furnishes the promised contingent. Scarcely oneexactly observes the appointed day. But perhaps no coalition that everexisted was in such constant danger of dissolution as the coalitionwhich William had with infinite difficulty formed. The long list ofpotentates, who met in person or by their representatives at the Hague, looked well in the Gazettes. The crowd of princely equipages, attendedby manycoloured guards and lacqueys, looked well among the lime treesof the Voorhout. But the very circumstances which made the Congressmore splendid than other congresses made the league weaker than otherleagues. The more numerous the allies, the more numerous were thedangers which threatened the alliance. It was impossible that twentygovernments, divided by quarrels about precedence, quarrels aboutterritory, quarrels about trade, quarrels about religion, could longact together in perfect harmony. That they acted together during severalyears in imperfect harmony is to be ascribed to the wisdom, patience andfirmness of William. 

The situation of his great enemy was very different. The resources ofthe French monarchy, though certainly not equal to those of England, Holland, the House of Austria, and the Empire of Germany united, wereyet very formidable; they were all collected in a central position; theywere all under the absolute direction of a single mind. Lewis could dowith two words what William could hardly bring about by two months ofnegotiation at Berlin, Munich, Brussels, Turin and Vienna. Thus Francewas found equal in effective strength to all the states which werecombined against her. For in the political, as in the natural world, there may be an equality of momentum between unequal bodies, when thebody which is inferior in weight is superior in velocity. 

This was soon signally proved. In March the princes and ambassadorswho had been assembled at the Hague separated and scarcely had theyseparated when all their plans were disconcerted by a bold and skilfulmove of the enemy. 

Lewis was sensible that the meeting of the Congress was likely toproduce a great effect on the public mind of Europe. That effect hedetermined to counteract by striking a sudden and terrible blow. Whilehis enemies were settling how many troops each of them should furnish, he ordered numerous divisions of his army to march from widely distantpoints towards Mons, one of the most important, if not the mostimportant, of the fortresses which protected the Spanish Netherlands. His purpose was discovered only when it was all but accomplished. William, who had retired for a few days to Loo, learned, with surpriseand extreme vexation, that cavalry, infantry, artillery, bridges ofboats, were fast approaching the fated city by many converging routes. A hundred thousand men had been brought together. All the implementsof war had been largely provided by Louvois, the first of livingadministrators. The command was entrusted to Luxemburg, the first ofliving generals. The scientific operations were directed by Vauban, thefirst of living engineers. That nothing might be wanting which couldkindle emulation through all the ranks of a gallant and loyal army, themagnificent King himself had set out from Versailles for the camp. YetWilliam had still some faint hope that it might be possible to raise thesiege. He flew to the Hague, put all the forces of the States General inmotion, and sent pressing messages to the German Princes. Within threeweeks after he had received the first hint of the danger, he was in theneighbourhood of the besieged city, at the head of near fifty thousandtroops of different nations. To attack a superior force commanded bysuch a captain as Luxemburg was a bold, almost a desperate, enterprise. Yet William was so sensible that the loss of Mons would be an almostirreparable disaster and disgrace that he made up his mind to run thehazard. He was convinced that the event of the siege would determinethe policy of the Courts of Stockholm and Copenhagen. Those Courts hadlately seemed inclined to join the coalition. If Mons fell, they wouldcertainly remain neutral; they might possibly become hostile. "Therisk, " he wrote to Heinsius, "is great; yet I am not without hope. Iwill do what can be done. The issue is in the hands of God. " On thevery day on which this letter was written Mons fell. The siege had beenvigorously pressed. Lewis himself, though suffering from the gout, hadset the example of strenuous exertion. His household troops, the finestbody of soldiers in Europe, had, under his eye, surpassed themselves. The young nobles of his court had tried to attract his notice byexposing themselves to the hottest fire with the same gay alacrity withwhich they were wont to exhibit their graceful figures at his balls. Hiswounded soldiers were charmed by the benignant courtesy with which hewalked among their pallets, assisted while wounds were dressed by thehospital surgeons, and breakfasted on a porringer of the hospital broth. While all was obedience and enthusiasm among the besiegers, all wasdisunion and dismay among the besieged. The duty of the French lines wasso well performed that no messenger sent by William was able to crossthem. The garrison did not know that relief was close at hand. Theburghers were appalled by the prospect of those horrible calamitieswhich befall cities taken by storm. Showers of shells and redhot bulletswere falling in the streets. The town was on fire in ten places at once. The peaceful inhabitants derived an unwonted courage from the excessof their fear, and rose on the soldiers. Thenceforth resistance wasimpossible; and a capitulation was concluded. The armies then retiredinto quarters. Military operations were suspended during some weeks;Lewis returned in triumph to Versailles; and William paid a short visitto England, where his presence was much needed. [9]

He found the ministers still employed in tracing out the ramificationsof the plot which had been discovered just before his departure. Earlyin January, Preston, Ashton and Elliot had been arraigned at the OldBailey. They claimed the right of severing in their challenges. It wastherefore necessary to try them separately. The audience was numerousand splendid. Many peers were present. The Lord President and the twoSecretaries of State attended in order to prove that the papersproduced in Court were the same which Billop had brought to Whitehall. Aconsiderable number of judges appeared on the bench; and Holt presided. A full report of the proceedings has come down to us, and well deservesto be attentively studied, and to be compared with the reports of othertrials which had not long before taken place under the same roof. Thewhole spirit of the tribunal had undergone in a few months a change socomplete that it might seem to have been the work of ages. Twelve yearsearlier, unhappy Roman Catholics, accused of wickedness which had neverentered into their thoughts, had stood in that dock. The witnesses forthe Crown had repeated their hideous fictions amidst the applauding humsof the audience. The judges had shared, or had pretended to share, thestupid credulity and the savage passions of the populace, had exchangedsmiles and compliments with the perjured informers, had roared downthe arguments feebly stammered forth by the prisoners, and had notbeen ashamed, in passing the sentence of death, to make ribald jests onpurgatory and the mass. As soon as the butchery of Papists was over, thebutchery of Whigs had commenced; and the judges had applied themselvesto their new work with even more than their old barbarity. To thesescandals the Revolution had put an end. Whoever, after perusing thetrials of Ireland and Pickering, of Grove and Berry, of Sidney, Cornishand Alice Lisle, turns to the trials of Preston and Ashton, will beastonished by the contrast. The Solicitor General, Somers, conducted theprosecutions with a moderation and humanity of which his predecessorshad left him no example. "I did never think, " he said, "that it was thepart of any who were of counsel for the King in cases of this natureto aggravate the crime of the prisoners, or to put false colours on theevidence. " [10] Holt's conduct was faultless. Pollexfen, an older manthan Holt or Somers, retained a little, --and a little was too much, --ofthe tone of that bad school in which he had been bred. But, though heonce or twice forgot the austere decorum of his place, he cannotbe accused of any violation of substantial justice. The prisonersthemselves seem to have been surprised by the fairness and gentlenesswith which they were treated. "I would not mislead the jury, I'll assureyou, " said Holt to Preston, "nor do Your Lordship any manner of injuryin the world. " "No, my Lord;" said Preston; "I see it well enough thatYour Lordship would not. " "Whatever my fate may be, " said Ashton, "Icannot but own that I have had a fair trial for my life. "

The culprits gained nothing by the moderation of the Solicitor Generalor by the impartiality of the Court; for the evidence was irresistible. The meaning of the papers seized by Billop was so plain that the dullestjuryman could not misunderstand it. Of those papers part was fullyproved to be in Preston's handwriting. Part was in Ashton's handwritingbut this the counsel for the prosecution had not the means of proving. They therefore rested the case against Ashton on the indisputable factsthat the treasonable packet had been found in his bosom, and that he hadused language which was quite unintelligible except on the suppositionthat he had a guilty knowledge of the contents. [11]

Both Preston and Ashton were convicted and sentenced to death. Ashton was speedily executed. He might have saved his life by makingdisclosures. But though he declared that, if he were spared, he wouldalways be a faithful subject of Their Majesties, he was fully resolvednot to give up the names of his accomplices. In this resolution he wasencouraged by the nonjuring divines who attended him in his cell. Itwas probably by their influence that he was induced to deliver to theSheriffs on the scaffold a declaration which he had transcribedand signed, but had not, it is to be hoped, composed or attentivelyconsidered. In this paper he was made to complain of the unfairness of atrial which he had himself in public acknowledged to have been eminentlyfair. He was also made to aver, on the word of a dying man, that he knewnothing of the papers which had been found upon him. Unfortunately hisdeclaration, when inspected, proved to be in the same handwriting withone of the most important of those papers. He died with manly fortitude. [12]

Elliot was not brought to trial. The evidence against him was not quiteso clear as that on which his associates had been convicted; and he wasnot worth the anger of the government. The fate of Preston was long insuspense. The Jacobites affected to be confident that the governmentwould not dare to shed his blood. He was, they said, a favourite atVersailles, and his death would be followed by a terrible retaliation. They scattered about the streets of London papers in which it wasasserted that, if any harm befell him, Mountjoy, and all the otherEnglishmen of quality who were prisoners in France, would be brokenon the wheel. [13] These absurd threats would not have deferred theexecution one day. But those who had Preston in their power were notunwilling to spare him on certain conditions. He was privy to all thecounsels of the disaffected party, and could furnish information of thehighest value. He was informed that his fate depended on himself. Thestruggle was long and severe. Pride, conscience, party spirit, were onone side; the intense love of life on the other. He went during a timeirresolutely to and fro. He listened to his brother Jacobites; and hiscourage rose. He listened to the agents of the government; and his heartsank within him. In an evening when he had dined and drunk his claret, he feared nothing. He would die like a man, rather than save his neck byan act of baseness. But his temper was very different when he woke thenext morning, when the courage which he had drawn from wine and companyhad evaporated, when he was alone with the iron grates and stone walls, and when the thought of the block, the axe and the sawdust rose in hismind. During some time he regularly wrote a confession every forenoonwhen he was sober, and burned it every night when he was merry. [14]His nonjuring friends formed a plan for bringing Sancroft to visitthe Tower, in the hope, doubtless, that the exhortations of so great aprelate and so great a saint would confirm the wavering virtue of theprisoner. [15] Whether this plan would have been successful may bedoubted; it was not carried into effect; the fatal hour drew near; andthe fortitude of Preston gave way. He confessed his guilt, and namedClarendon, Dartmouth, the Bishop of Ely and William Penn, as hisaccomplices. He added a long list of persons against whom he could nothimself give evidence, but who, if he could trust to Penn's assurances, were friendly to King James. Among these persons were Devonshire andDorset. [16] There is not the slightest reason to believe that eitherof these great noblemen ever had any dealings, direct or indirect, with Saint Germains. It is not, however, necessary to accuse Penn ofdeliberate falsehood. He was credulous and garrulous. The Lord Stewardand the Lord Chamberlain had shared in the vexation with which theirparty had observed the leaning of William towards the Tories; and theyhad probably expressed that vexation unguardedly. So weak a man as Penn, wishing to find Jacobites every where, and prone to believe whatever hewished, might easily put an erroneous construction on invectives such asthe haughty and irritable Devonshire was but too ready to utter, and onsarcasms such as, in moments of spleen, dropped but too easily from thelips of the keenwitted Dorset. Caermarthen, a Tory, and a Tory who hadbeen mercilessly persecuted by the Whigs, was disposed to make the mostof this idle hearsay. But he received no encouragement from his master, who, of all the great politicians mentioned in history, was the leastprone to suspicion. When William returned to England, Preston wasbrought before him, and was commanded to repeat the confession whichhad already been made to the ministers. The King stood behind the LordPresident's chair and listened gravely while Clarendon, Dartmouth, Turner and Penn were named. But as soon as the prisoner, passing fromwhat he could himself testify, began to repeat the stories which Pennhad told him, William touched Caermarthen on the shoulder and said, "MyLord, we have had too much of this. " [17] This judicious magnanimityhad its proper reward. Devonshire and Dorset became from that day morezealous than ever in the cause of the master who, in spite of calumnyfor which their own indiscretion had perhaps furnished some ground, hadcontinued to repose confidence in their loyalty. [18]

Even those who were undoubtedly criminal were generally treated withgreat lenity. Clarendon lay in the Tower about six months. His guiltwas fully established; and a party among the Whigs called loudly andimportunately for his head. But he was saved by the pathetic entreatiesof his brother Rochester, by the good offices of the humane andgenerous Burnet, and by Mary's respect for the memory of her mother. Theprisoner's confinement was not strict. He was allowed to entertainhis friends at dinner. When at length his health began to suffer fromrestraint, he was permitted to go into the country under the care of awarder; the warder was soon removed; and Clarendon was informed that, while he led a quiet rural life, he should not be molested. [19]

The treason of Dartmouth was of no common dye. He was an English seaman;and he had laid a plan for betraying Portsmouth to the French, and hadoffered to take the command of a French squadron against his country. Itwas a serious aggravation of his guilt that he had been one of the veryfirst persons who took the oaths to William and Mary. He was arrestedand brought to the Council Chamber. A narrative of what passed there, written by himself, has been preserved. In that narrative he admits thathe was treated with great courtesy and delicacy. He vehemently assertedhis innocence. He declared that he had never corresponded with SaintGermains, that he was no favourite there, and that Mary of Modena inparticular owed him a grudge. "My Lords, " he said, "I am an Englishman. I always, when the interest of the House of Bourbon was strongest here, shunned the French, both men and women. I would lose the last drop ofmy blood rather than see Portsmouth in the power of foreigners. I am notsuch a fool as to think that King Lewis will conquer us merely for thebenefit of King James. I am certain that nothing can be truly imputedto me beyond some foolish talk over a bottle. " His protestations seemto have produced some effect; for he was at first permitted to remain inthe gentle custody of the Black Rod. On further inquiry, however, it wasdetermined to send him to the Tower. After a confinement of a few weekshe died of apoplexy; but he lived long enough to complete his disgraceby offering his sword to the new government, and by expressing infervent language his hope that he might, by the goodness of God and ofTheir Majesties, have an opportunity of showing how much he hated theFrench. [20]

Turner ran no serious risk; for the government was most unwilling tosend to the scaffold one of the Seven who had signed the memorablepetition. A warrant was however issued for his apprehension; and hisfriends had little hope that he would escape; for his nose was such asnone who had seen it could forget; and it was to little purpose that heput on a flowing wig and that he suffered his beard to grow. The pursuitwas probably not very hot; for, after skulking a few weeks in England, he succeeded in crossing the Channel, and remained some time in France. [21]

A warrant was issued against Penn; and he narrowly escaped themessengers. It chanced that, on the day on which they were sent insearch of him, he was attending a remarkable ceremony at some distancefrom his home. An event had taken place which a historian, whose objectis to record the real life of a nation, ought not to pass unnoticed. While London was agitated by the news that a plot had been discovered, George Fox, the founder of the sect of Quakers, died. 

More than forty years had elapsed since Fox had begun to see visions andto cast out devils. [22] He was then a youth of pure morals and gravedeportment, with a perverse temper, with the education of a labouringman, and with an intellect in the most unhappy of all states, that isto say, too much disordered for liberty, and not sufficiently disorderedfor Bedlam. The circumstances in which he was placed were such as couldscarcely fail to bring out in the strongest form the constitutionaldiseases of his mind. At the time when his faculties were ripening, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Independents, Baptists, were striving formastery, and were, in every corner of the realm, refuting and revilingeach other. He wandered from congregation to congregation; he heardpriests harangue against Puritans; he heard Puritans harangue againstpriests; and he in vain applied for spiritual direction and consolationto doctors of both parties. One jolly old clergyman of the Anglicancommunion told him to smoke tobacco and sing psalms; another advisedhim to go and lose some blood. [23] The young inquirer turned in disgustfrom these advisers to the Dissenters, and found them also blind guides. [24] After some time he came to the conclusion that no human being wascompetent to instruct him in divine things, and that the truth had beencommunicated to him by direct inspiration from heaven. He argued that, as the division of languages began at Babel, and as the persecutors ofChrist put on the cross an inscription in Latin, Greek and Hebrew, theknowledge of languages, and more especially of Latin, Greek and Hebrew, must be useless to a Christian minister. [25] Indeed, he was so farfrom knowing many languages, that he knew none; nor can the most corruptpassage in Hebrew be more unintelligible to the unlearned than hisEnglish often is to the most acute and attentive reader. [26] One of theprecious truths which were divinely revealed to this new apostle was, that it was falsehood and adulation to use the second person pluralinstead of the second person singular. Another was, that to talk of themonth of March was to worship the bloodthirsty god Mars, and that totalk of Monday was to pay idolatrous homage to the moon. To say Goodmorning or Good evening was highly reprehensible, for those phrasesevidently imported that God had made bad days and bad nights. [27] AChristian was bound to face death itself rather than touch his hatto the greatest of mankind. When Fox was challenged to produce anyScriptural authority for this dogma, he cited the passage in which it iswritten that Shadrach, Meshech and Abednego were thrown into the fieryfurnace with their hats on; and, if his own narrative may be trusted, the Chief Justice of England was altogether unable to answer thisargument except by crying out, "Take him away, gaoler. " [28] Foxinsisted much on the not less weighty argument that the Turks never showtheir bare heads to their superiors; and he asked, with great animation, whether those who bore the noble name of Christians ought not to surpassTurks in virtue. [29] Bowing he strictly prohibited, and, indeed, seemed to consider it as the effect of Satanical influence; for, as heobserved, the woman in the Gospel, while she had a spirit of infirmity, was bowed together, and ceased to bow as soon as Divine power hadliberated her from the tyranny of the Evil One. [30] His expositions ofthe sacred writings were of a very peculiar kind. Passages, which hadbeen, in the apprehension of all the readers of the Gospels duringsixteen centuries, figurative, he construed literally. Passages, whichno human being before him had ever understood in any other than aliteral sense, he construed figuratively. Thus, from those rhetoricalexpressions in which the duty of patience under injuries is enjoined hededuced the doctrine that selfdefence against pirates and assassins isunlawful. On the other hand, the plain commands to baptize with water, and to partake of bread and wine in commemoration of the redemption ofmankind, he pronounced to be allegorical. He long wandered from place toplace, teaching this strange theology, shaking like an aspen leaf in hisparoxysms of fanatical excitement, forcing his way into churches, which he nicknamed steeple houses interrupting prayers and sermons withclamour and scurrility, [31] and pestering rectors and justices withepistles much resembling burlesques of those sublime odes in which theHebrew prophets foretold the calamities of Babylon and Tyre. [32] Hesoon acquired great notoriety by these feats. His strange face, hisstrange chant, his immovable hat and his leather breeches were known allover the country; and he boasts that, as soon as the rumour was heard, "The Man in Leather Breeches is coming, " terror seized hypocriticalprofessors, and hireling priests made haste to get out of his way. [33]He was repeatedly imprisoned and set in the stocks, sometimes justly, for disturbing the public worship of congregations, and sometimesunjustly, for merely talking nonsense. He soon gathered round him a bodyof disciples, some of whom went beyond himself in absurdity. He has toldus that one of his friends walked naked through Skipton declaring thetruth. [34] and that another was divinely moved to go naked duringseveral years to marketplaces, and to the houses of gentlemen andclergymen. [35] Fox complains bitterly that these pious acts, promptedby the Holy Spirit, were requited by an untoward generation withhooting, pelting, coachwhipping and horsewhipping. But, though heapplauded the zeal of the sufferers, he did not go quite to theirlengths. He sometimes, indeed, was impelled to strip himself partially. Thus he pulled off his shoes and walked barefoot through Lichfield, crying, "Woe to the bloody city. " [36] But it does not appear that heever thought it his duty to appear before the public without that decentgarment from which his popular appellation was derived. 

If we form our judgment of George Fox simply by looking at his ownactions and writings, we shall see no reason for placing him, morallyor intellectually, above Ludowick Muggleton or Joanna Southcote. But itwould be most unjust to rank the sect which regards him as its founderwith the Muggletonians or the Southcotians. It chanced that amongthe thousands whom his enthusiasm infected were a few persons whoseabilities and attainments were of a very different order from his own. Robert Barclay was a man of considerable parts and learning. WilliamPenn, though inferior to Barclay in both natural and acquired abilities, was a gentleman and a scholar. That such men should have become thefollowers of George Fox ought not to astonish any person who rememberswhat quick, vigorous and highly cultivated intellects were in our owntimes duped by the unknown tongues. The truth is that no powers of mindconstitute a security against errors of this description. Touching Godand His ways with man, the highest human faculties can discover littlemore than the meanest. In theology the interval is small indeed betweenAristotle and a child, between Archimedes and a naked savage. It is notstrange, therefore, that wise men, weary of investigation, tormented byuncertainty, longing to believe something, and yet seeing objections toevery thing, should submit themselves absolutely to teachers who, withfirm and undoubting faith, lay claim to a supernatural commission. Thuswe frequently see inquisitive and restless spirits take refuge fromtheir own scepticism in the bosom of a church which pretends toinfallibility, and, after questioning the existence of a Deity, bringthemselves to worship a wafer. And thus it was that Fox made someconverts to whom he was immeasurably inferior in every thing except theenergy of his convictions. By these converts his rude doctrines werepolished into a form somewhat less shocking to good sense and goodtaste. No proposition which he had laid down was retracted. No indecentor ridiculous act which he had done or approved was condemned; but whatwas most grossly absurd in his theories and practices was softened down, or at least not obtruded on the public; whatever could be made to appearspecious was set in the fairest light; his gibberish was translated intoEnglish; meanings which he would have been quite unable to comprehendwere put on his phrases; and his system, so much improved that he wouldnot have known it again, was defended by numerous citations from Paganphilosophers and Christian fathers whose names he had never heard. [37] Still, however, those who had remodelled his theology continuedto profess, and doubtless to feel, profound reverence for him; and hiscrazy epistles were to the last received and read with respect in Quakermeetings all over the country. His death produced a sensation which wasnot confined to his own disciples. On the morning of the funeral agreat multitude assembled round the meeting house in Gracechurch Street. Thence the corpse was borne to the burial ground of the sect nearBunhill Fields. Several orators addressed the crowd which filled thecemetery. Penn was conspicuous among those disciples who committed thevenerable corpse to the earth. The ceremony had scarcely been finishedwhen he learned that warrants were out against him. He instantly tookflight, and remained many months concealed from the public eye. [38]

A short time after his disappearance, Sidney received from him a strangecommunication. Penn begged for an interview, but insisted on a promisethat he should be suffered to return unmolested to his hiding place. Sidney obtained the royal permission to make an appointment on theseterms. Penn came to the rendezvous, and spoke at length in his owndefence. He declared that he was a faithful subject of King William andQueen Mary, and that, if he knew of any design against them, he woulddiscover it. Departing from his Yea and Nay, he protested, as in thepresence of God, that he knew of no plot, and that he did not believethat there was any plot, unless the ambitious projects of the Frenchgovernment might be called plots. Sidney, amazed probably by hearinga person, who had such an abhorrence of lies that he would not use thecommon forms of civility, and such an abhorrence of oaths that he wouldnot kiss the book in a court of justice, tell something very like a lie, and confirm it by something very like an oath, asked how, if there werereally no plot, the letters and minutes which had been found on Ashtonwere to be explained. This question Penn evaded. "If, " he said, "I couldonly see the King, I would confess every thing to him freely. I wouldtell him much that it would be important for him to know. It is onlyin that way that I can be of service to him. A witness for the Crown Icannot be for my conscience will not suffer me to be sworn. " He assuredSidney that the most formidable enemies of the government were thediscontented Whigs. "The Jacobites are not dangerous. There is not a manamong them who has common understanding. Some persons who came over fromHolland with the King are much more to be dreaded. " It does not appearthat Penn mentioned any names. He was suffered to depart in safety. Noactive search was made for him. He lay hid in London during some months, and then stole down to the coast of Sussex and made his escape toFrance. After about three years of wandering and lurking he, by themediation of some eminent men, who overlooked his faults for the sakeof his good qualities, made his peace with the government, and againventured to resume his ministrations. The return which he made for thelenity with which he had been treated does not much raise his character. Scarcely had he again begun to harangue in public about the unlawfulnessof war, when he sent a message earnestly exhorting James to make animmediate descent on England with thirty thousand men. [39]

Some months passed before the fate of Preston was decided. After severalrespites, the government, convinced that, though he had told much, hecould tell more, fixed a day for his execution, and ordered the sheriffsto have the machinery of death in readiness. [40] But he was againrespited, and, after a delay of some weeks, obtained a pardon, which, however, extended only to his life, and left his property subject to allthe consequences of his attainder. As soon as he was set at libertyhe gave new cause of offence and suspicion, and was again arrested, examined and sent to prison. [41] At length he was permitted to retire, pursued by the hisses and curses of both parties, to a lonely manorhouse in the North Riding of Yorkshire. There, at least, he had not toendure the scornful looks of old associates who had once thought hima man of dauntless courage and spotless honour, but who now pronouncedthat he was at best a meanspirited coward, and hinted their suspicionsthat he had been from the beginning a spy and a trepan. [42] He employedthe short and sad remains of his life in turning the Consolationof Boethius into English. The translation was published after thetranslator's death. It is remarkable chiefly on account of some veryunsuccessful attempts to enrich our versification with new metres, andon account of the allusions with which the preface is filled. Undera thin veil of figurative language, Preston exhibited to the publiccompassion or contempt his own blighted fame and broken heart. Hecomplained that the tribunal which had sentenced him to death had dealtwith him more leniently than his former friends, and that many, whohad never been tried by temptations like his, had very cheaply earneda reputation for courage by sneering at his poltroonery, and by biddingdefiance at a distance to horrors which, when brought near, subdue evena constant spirit. 

The spirit of the Jacobites, which had been quelled for a time by thedetection of Preston's plot, was revived by the fall of Mons. The joy ofthe whole party was boundless. The nonjuring priests ran backwards andforwards between Sam's Coffee House and Westminster Hall, spreadingthe praises of Lewis, and laughing at the miserable issue of thedeliberations of the great Congress. In the Park the malecontents woretheir biggest looks, and talked sedition in their loudest tones. Themost conspicuous among these swaggerers was Sir John Fenwick, who had, in the late reign, been high in favour and in military command, andwas now an indefatigable agitator and conspirator. In his exultation heforgot the courtesy which man owes to woman. He had more than oncemade himself conspicuous by his impertinence to the Queen. He nowostentatiously put himself in her way when she took her airing; and, while all around him uncovered and bowed low, gave her a rude stareand cocked his hat in her face. The affront was not only brutal, butcowardly. For the law had provided no punishment for mere impertinence, however gross; and the King was the only gentleman and soldier in thekingdom who could not protect his wife from contumely with his sword. All that the Queen could do was to order the parkkeepers not to admitSir John again within the gates. But, long after her death, a day camewhen he had reason to wish that he had restrained his insolence. Hefound, by terrible proof, that of all the Jacobites, the most desperateassassins not excepted, he was the only one for whom William felt anintense personal aversion. [43]

A few days after this event the rage of the malecontents began toflame more fiercely than ever. The detection of the conspiracy of whichPreston was the chief had brought on a crisis in ecclesiasticalaffairs. The nonjuring bishops had, during the year which followed theirdeprivation, continued to reside in the official mansions which hadonce been their own. Burnet had, at Mary's request, laboured to effecta compromise. His direct interference would probably have done more harmthan good. He therefore judiciously employed the agency of Rochester, who stood higher in the estimation of the nonjurors than any statesmanwho was not a nonjuror, and of Trevor, who, worthless as he was, hadconsiderable influence with the High Church party. Sancroft and hisbrethren were informed that, if they would consent to perform theirspiritual duty, to ordain, to institute, to confirm, and to watch overthe faith and the morality of the priesthood, a bill should be broughtinto Parliament to excuse them from taking the oaths. [44] This offerwas imprudently liberal; but those to whom it was made could notconsistently accept it. For in the ordination service, and indeed inalmost every service of the Church, William and Mary were designatedas King and Queen. The only promise that could be obtained from thedeprived prelates was that they would live quietly; and even thispromise they had not all kept. One of them at least had been guilty oftreason aggravated by impiety. He had, under the strong fear of beingbutchered by the populace, declared that he abhorred the thoughtof calling in the aid of France, and had invoked God to attest thesincerity of this declaration. Yet, a short time after, he had beendetected in plotting to bring a French army into England; and he hadwritten to assure the Court of Saint Germains that he was acting inconcert with his brethren, and especially with Sancroft. The Whigscalled loudly for severity. Even the Tory counsellors of William ownedthat indulgence had been carried to the extreme point. They made, however, a last attempt to mediate. "Will you and your brethren, " saidTrevor to Lloyd, the nonjuring Bishop of Norwich, "disown all connectionwith Doctor Turner, and declare that what he has in his letters imputedto you is false?" Lloyd evaded the question. It was now evident thatWilliam's forbearance had only emboldened the adversaries whom he hadhoped to conciliate. Even Caermarthen, even Nottingham, declared that itwas high time to fill the vacant sees. [45]

Tillotson was nominated to the Archbishopric, and was consecratedon Whitsunday, in the church of St. Mary Le Bow. Compton, cruellymortified, refused to bear any part in the ceremony. His place wassupplied by Mew, Bishop of Winchester, who was assisted by Burnet, Stillingfleet and Hough. The congregation was the most splendid thathad been seen in any place of worship since the coronation. The Queen'sdrawingroom was, on that day, deserted. Most of the peers who were intown met in the morning at Bedford House, and went thence in processionto Cheapside. Norfolk, Caermarthen and Dorset were conspicuous in thethrong. Devonshire, who was impatient to see his woods at Chatsworthin their summer beauty, had deferred his departure in order to mark hisrespect for Tillotson. The crowd which lined the streets greeted the newPrimate warmly. For he had, during many years, preached in the City; andhis eloquence, his probity and the singular gentleness of his temperand manners, had made him the favourite of the Londoners. [46] But thecongratulations and applauses of his friends could not drown the roar ofexecration which the Jacobites set up. According to them, he was a thiefwho had not entered by the door, but had climbed over the fences. He wasa hireling whose own the sheep were not, who had usurped the crook ofthe good shepherd, and who might well be expected to leave the flockat the mercy of every wolf. He was an Arian, a Socinian, a Deist, anAtheist. He had cozened the world by fine phrases, and by a show ofmoral goodness: but he was in truth a far more dangerous enemy of theChurch than he could have been if he had openly proclaimed himself adisciple of Hobbes, and had lived as loosely as Wilmot. He had taughtthe fine gentlemen and ladies who admired his style, and who wereconstantly seen round his pulpit, that they might be very goodChristians, and yet might believe the account of the Fall in the bookof Genesis to be allegorical. Indeed they might easily be as goodChristians as he; for he had never been christened; his parents wereAnabaptists; he had lost their religion when he was a boy; and he hadnever found another. In ribald lampoons he was nicknamed Undipped John. The parish register of his baptism was produced in vain. His enemiesstill continued to complain that they had lived to see fathers of theChurch who never were her children. They made up a story that the Queenhad felt bitter remorse for the great crime by which she had obtained athrone, that in her agony she had applied to Tillotson, and that he hadcomforted her by assuring her that the punishment of the wicked ina future state would not be eternal. [47] The Archbishop's mind wasnaturally of almost feminine delicacy, and had been rather softened thanbraced by the habits of a long life, during which contending sects andfactions had agreed in speaking of his abilities with admiration and ofhis character with esteem. The storm of obloquy which he had to face forthe first time at more than sixty years of age was too much for him. Hisspirits declined; his health gave way; yet he neither flinched from hisduty nor attempted to revenge himself on his persecutors. A few daysafter his consecration, some persons were seized while dispersing libelsin which he was reviled. The law officers of the Crown proposed toinstitute prosecutions; but he insisted that nobody should be punishedon his account. [48] Once, when he had company with him, a sealed packetwas put into his hands; he opened it; and out fell a mask. His friendswere shocked and incensed by this cowardly insult; but the Archbishop, trying to conceal his anguish by a smile, pointed to the pamphlets whichcovered his table, and said that the reproach which the emblem of themask was intended to convey might be called gentle when compared withother reproaches which he daily had to endure. After his death a bundleof the savage lampoons which the nonjurors had circulated against himwas found among his papers with this indorsement: "I pray God forgivethem; I do. " [49]

The temper of the deposed primate was very different. He seems to havebeen under a complete delusion as to his own importance. The immensepopularity which he had enjoyed three years before, the prayers andtears of the multitudes who had plunged into the Thames to implore hisblessing, the enthusiasm with which the sentinels of the Tower had drunkhis health under the windows of his prison, the mighty roar of joywhich had risen from Palace Yard on the morning of his acquittal, the triumphant night when every window from Hyde Park to Mile End hadexhibited seven candles, the midmost and tallest emblematical of him, were still fresh in his recollection; nor had he the wisdom to perceivethat all this homage had been paid, not to his person, but to thatreligion and to those liberties of which he was, for a moment, therepresentative. The extreme tenderness with which the new government hadlong persisted in treating him seems to have confirmed him in hiserror. That a succession of conciliatory messages was sent to him fromKensington, that he was offered terms so liberal as to be scarcelyconsistent with the dignity of the Crown and the welfare of the State, that his cold and uncourteous answers could not tire out the royalindulgence, that, in spite of the loud clamours of the Whigs, and ofthe provocations daily given by the Jacobites, he was residing, fifteenmonths after deprivation, in the metropolitan palace, these thingsseemed to him to indicate not the lenity but the timidity of the rulingpowers. He appears to have flattered himself that they would not dare toeject him. The news, therefore, that his see had been filled threw himinto a passion which lasted as long as his life, and which hurried himinto many foolish and unseemly actions. Tillotson, as soon as hewas appointed, went to Lambeth in the hope that he might be able, bycourtesy and kindness, to soothe the irritation of which he was theinnocent cause. He stayed long in the antechamber, and sent in his nameby several servants; but Sancroft would not even return an answer. [50] Three weeks passed; and still the deprived Archbishop showed nodisposition to move. At length he received an order intimating to himthe royal pleasure that he should quit the dwelling which had longceased to be his own, and in which he was only a guest. He resented thisorder bitterly, and declared that he would not obey it. He would staytill he was pulled out by the Sheriff's officers. He would defendhimself at law as long as he could do so without putting in any pleaacknowledging the authority of the usurpers. [51] The case was so clearthat he could not, by any artifice of chicanery, obtain more than ashort delay. When judgment had been given against him, he left thepalace, but directed his steward to retain possession. The consequencewas that the steward was taken into custody and heavily fined. Tillotsonsent a kind message to assure his predecessor that the fine should notbe exacted. But Sancroft was determined to have a grievance, and wouldpay the money. [52]

From that time the great object of the narrowminded and peevish oldman was to tear in pieces the Church of which he had been the chiefminister. It was in vain that some of those nonjurors, whose virtue, ability and learning were the glory of their party, remonstrated againsthis design. "Our deprivation, "--such was the reasoning of Ken, --"is, in the sight of God, a nullity. We are, and shall be, till we die orresign, the true Bishops of our sees. Those who assume our titles andfunctions will incur the guilt of schism. But with us, if we act asbecomes us, the schism will die; and in the next generation the unity ofthe Church will be restored. On the other hand, if we consecrate Bishopsto succeed us, the breach may last through ages, and we shall be justlyheld accountable, not indeed for its origin, but for its continuance. "These considerations ought, on Sancroft's own principles, to have haddecisive weight with him; but his angry passions prevailed. Ken quietlyretired from the venerable palace of Wells. He had done, he said, withstrife, and should henceforth vent his feelings not in disputes but inhymns. His charities to the unhappy of all persuasions, especially tothe followers of Monmouth and to the persecuted Huguenots, had been solarge that his whole private fortune consisted of seven hundred pounds, and of a library which he could not bear to sell. But Thomas Thynne, Viscount Weymouth, though not a nonjuror, did himself honour by offeringto the most virtuous of the nonjurors a tranquil and dignified asylum inthe princely mansion of Longleat. There Ken passed a happy and honouredold age, during which he never regretted the sacrifice which he had madeto what he thought his duty, and yet constantly became more and moreindulgent to those whose views of duty differed from his. [53]

Sancroft was of a very different temper. He had, indeed, as little tocomplain of as any man whom a revolution has ever hurled down from anexalted station. He had at Fressingfield, in Suffolk, a patrimonialestate, which, together with what he had saved during a primacy oftwelve years, enabled him to live, not indeed as he had lived when hewas the first peer of Parliament, but in the style of an opulent countrygentleman. He retired to his hereditary abode; and there he passedthe rest of his life in brooding over his wrongs. Aversion to theEstablished Church became as strong a feeling in him as it had been inMartin Marprelate. He considered all who remained in communion with heras heathens and publicans. He nicknamed Tillotson the Mufti. In the roomwhich was used as a chapel at Fressingfield no person who had takenthe oaths, or who attended the ministry of any divine who had takenthe oaths, was suffered to partake of the sacred bread and wine. Adistinction, however, was made between two classes of offenders. Alayman who remained in communion with the Church was permitted to bepresent while prayers were read, and was excluded only from the highestof Christian mysteries. But with clergymen who had sworn allegiance tothe Sovereigns in possession Sancroft would not even pray. He took carethat the rule which he had laid down should be widely known, and, bothby precept and by example, taught his followers to look on the mostorthodox, the most devout, the most virtuous of those who acknowledgedWilliam's authority with a feeling similar to that with which theJew regarded the Samaritan. [54] Such intolerance would have beenreprehensible, even in a man contending for a great principle. ButSancroft was contending merely for a name. He was the author of thescheme of Regency. He was perfectly willing to transfer the whole kinglypower from James to William. The question which, to this smallest andsourest of minds, seemed important enough to justify the excommunicatingof ten thousand priests and of five millions of laymen was, whether themagistrate to whom the whole kingly power was transferred should assumethe kingly title. Nor could Sancroft bear to think that the animositywhich he had excited would die with himself. Having done all that hecould to make the feud bitter, he determined to make it eternal. A listof the divines who had been ejected from their benefices was sent by himto Saint Germains with a request that James would nominate two who mightkeep up the episcopal succession. James, well pleased, doubtless, to seeanother sect added to that multitude of sects which he had been taughtto consider as the reproach of Protestantism, named two fierce anduncompromising nonjurors, Hickes and Wagstaffe, the former recommendedby Sancroft, the latter recommended by Lloyd, the ejected Bishop ofNorwich. [55] Such was the origin of a schismatical hierarchy, which, having, during a short time, excited alarm, soon sank into obscurity andcontempt, but which, in obscurity and contempt, continued to drag on alanguid existence during several generations. The little Church, withouttemples, revenues or dignities, was even more distracted by internaldisputes than the great Church, which retained possession of cathedrals, tithes and peerages. Some nonjurors leaned towards the ceremonial ofRome; others would not tolerate the slightest departure from the Bookof Common Prayer. Altar was set up against altar. One phantom prelatepronounced the consecration of another phantom prelate uncanonical. Atlength the pastors were left absolutely without flocks. One of theseLords spiritual very wisely turned surgeon; another left what he hadcalled his see, and settled in Ireland; and at length, in 1805, the lastBishop of that society which had proudly claimed to be the only trueChurch of England dropped unnoticed into the grave. [56]

The places of the bishops who had been ejected with Sancroft were filledin a manner creditable to the government. Patrick succeeded the traitorTurner. Fowler went to Gloucester. Richard Cumberland, an aged divine, who had no interest at Court, and whose only recommendations were hispiety and erudition, was astonished by learning from a newsletter whichhe found on the table of a coffeehouse that he had been nominated tothe See of Peterborough. [57] Beveridge was selected to succeed Ken;he consented; and the appointment was actually announced in the LondonGazette. But Beveridge, though an honest, was not a strongminded man. Some Jacobites expostulated with him; some reviled him; his heartfailed him; and he retracted. While the nonjurors were rejoicing inthis victory, he changed his mind again; but too late. He had by hisirresolution forfeited the favour of William, and never obtained a mitretill Anne was on the throne. [58] The bishopric of Bath and Wellswas bestowed on Richard Kidder, a man of considerable attainments andblameless character, but suspected of a leaning towards Presbyterianism. About the same time Sharp, the highest churchman that had been zealousfor the Comprehension, and the lowest churchman that felt a scrupleabout succeeding a deprived prelate, accepted the Archbishopric of York, vacant by the death of Lamplugh. [59]

In consequence of the elevation of Tillotson to the See of Canterbury, the Deanery of Saint Paul's became vacant. As soon as the name ofthe new Dean was known, a clamour broke forth such as perhaps noecclesiastical appointment has ever produced, a clamour made up of yellsof hatred, of hisses of contempt, and of shouts of triumphant and halfinsulting welcome; for the new Dean was William Sherlock. 

The story of his conversion deserves to be fully told; for it throwsgreat light on the character of the parties which then divided theChurch and the State. Sherlock was, in influence and reputation, thoughnot in rank, the foremost man among the nonjurors. His authority andexample had induced some of his brethren, who had at first wavered, to resign their benefices. The day of suspension came; the day ofdeprivation came; and still he was firm. He seemed to have found, in theconsciousness of rectitude, and in meditation on the invisible world, ample compensation for all his losses. While excluded from the pulpitwhere his eloquence had once delighted the learned and polite inmatesof the Temple, he wrote that celebrated Treatise on Death which, duringmany years, stood next to the Whole Duty of Man in the bookcases ofserious Arminians. Soon, however, it began to be suspected that hisresolution was giving way. He declared that he would be no party toa schism; he advised those who sought his counsel not to leave theirparish churches; nay, finding that the law which had ejected him fromhis cure did not interdict him from performing divine service, heofficiated at Saint Dunstan's, and there prayed for King William andQueen Mary. The apostolical injunction, he said, was that prayers shouldbe made for all in authority, and William and Mary were visibly inauthority. His Jacobite friends loudly blamed his inconsistency. How, they asked, if you admit that the Apostle speaks in this passage ofactual authority, can you maintain that, in other passages of a similarkind, he speaks only of legitimate authority? Or how can you, withoutsin, designate as King, in a solemn address to God, one whom youcannot, without sin, promise to obey as King? These reasonings wereunanswerable; and Sherlock soon began to think them so; but theconclusion to which they led him was diametrically opposed to theconclusion to which they were meant to lead him. He hesitated, however, till a new light flashed on his mind from a quarter from which there waslittle reason to expect any thing but tenfold darkness. In the reign ofJames the First, Doctor John Overall, Bishop of Exeter, had written anelaborate treatise on the rights of civil and ecclesiastical governors. This treatise had been solemnly approved by the Convocationsof Canterbury and York, and might therefore be considered as anauthoritative exposition of the doctrine of the Church of England. Acopy of the manuscript was in Sancroft's possession; and he, soon afterthe Revolution, sent it to the press. He hoped, doubtless, that thepublication would injure the new government; but he was lamentablydisappointed. The book indeed condemned all resistance in terms asstrong as he could himself have used; but one passage which had escapedhis notice was decisive against himself and his fellow schismatics. Overall, and the two Convocations which had given their sanction toOverall's teaching, pronounced that a government, which had originatedin rebellion, ought, when thoroughly settled, to be considered asordained by God and to be obeyed by Christian men. [60] Sherlock read, and was convinced. His venerable mother the Church had spoken; and he, with the docility of a child, accepted her decree. The government whichhad sprung from the Revolution might, at least since the battle of theBoyne and the flight of James from Ireland, be fairly called a settledgovernment, and ought therefore to be passively obeyed till it shouldbe subverted by another revolution and succeeded by another settledgovernment. 

Sherlock took the oaths, and speedily published, in justification of hisconduct, a pamphlet entitled The Case of Allegiance to Sovereign Powersstated. The sensation produced by this work was immense. Dryden's Hindand Panther had not raised so great an uproar. Halifax's Letter toa Dissenter had not called forth so many answers. The replies to theDoctor, the vindications of the Doctor, the pasquinades on the Doctor, would fill a library. The clamour redoubled when it was known that theconvert had not only been reappointed Master of the Temple, but hadaccepted the Deanery of Saint Paul's, which had become vacant inconsequence of the deprivation of Sancroft and the promotion ofTillotson. The rage of the nonjurors amounted almost to frenzy. Was itnot enough, they asked, to desert the true and pure Church, in this herhour of sorrow and peril, without also slandering her? It was easy tounderstand why a greedy, cowardly hypocrite should refuse to take theoaths to the usurper as long as it seemed probable that the rightfulKing would be restored, and should make haste to swear after the battleof the Boyne. Such tergiversation in times of civil discord was nothingnew. What was new was that the turncoat should try to throw his ownguilt and shame on the Church of England, and should proclaim that shehad taught him to turn against the weak who were in the right, and tocringe to the powerful who were in the wrong. Had such indeed beenher doctrine or her practice in evil days? Had she abandoned her RoyalMartyr in the prison or on the scaffold? Had she enjoined her childrento pay obedience to the Rump or to the Protector? Yet was the governmentof the Rump or of the Protector less entitled to be called a settledgovernment than the government of William and Mary? Had not the battleof Worcester been as great a blow to the hopes of the House of Stuart asthe battle of the Boyne? Had not the chances of a Restoration seemed assmall in 1657 as they could seem to any judicious man in 1691? In spiteof invectives and sarcasms, however, there was Overall's treatise; therewere the approving votes of the two Convocations; and it was much easierto rail at Sherlock than to explain away either the treatise or thevotes. One writer maintained that by a thoroughly settled governmentmust have been meant a government of which the title was uncontested. Thus, he said, the government of the United Provinces became asettled government when it was recognised by Spain, and, but for thatrecognition, would never have been a settled government to the endof time. Another casuist, somewhat less austere, pronounced that agovernment, wrongful in its origin, might become a settled governmentafter the lapse of a century. On the thirteenth of February 1789, therefore, and not a day earlier, Englishmen would be at liberty toswear allegiance to a government sprung from the Revolution. The historyof the chosen people was ransacked for precedents. Was Eglon's a settledgovernment when Ehud stabbed him? Was Joram's a settled government whenJehe shot him? But the leading case was that of Athaliah. It was indeeda case which furnished the malecontents with many happy and pungentallusions; a kingdom treacherously seized by an usurper near in bloodto the throne; the rightful prince long dispossessed; a part of thesacerdotal order true, through many disastrous years, to the RoyalHouse; a counterrevolution at length effected by the High Priest at thehead of the Levites. Who, it was asked, would dare to blame the heroicpontiff who had restored the heir of David? Yet was not the governmentof Athaliah as firmly settled as that of the Prince of Orange?

Hundreds of pages written at this time about the rights of Joash and thebold enterprise of Jehoiada are mouldering in the ancient bookcases ofOxford and Cambridge. While Sherlock was thus fiercely attacked byhis old friends, he was not left unmolested by his old enemies. Somevehement Whigs, among whom Julian Johnson was conspicuous, declared thatJacobitism itself was respectable when compared with the vile doctrinewhich had been discovered in the Convocation Book. That passiveobedience was due to Kings was doubtless an absurd and perniciousnotion. Yet it was impossible not to respect the consistency andfortitude of men who thought themselves bound to bear true allegiance, at all hazards, to an unfortunate, a deposed, an exiled oppressor. Butthe theory which Sherlock had learned from Overall was unmixed basenessand wickedness. A cause was to be abandoned, not because it was unjust, but because it was unprosperous. Whether James had been a tyrant or hadbeen the father of his people was quite immaterial. If he had won thebattle of the Boyne we should have been bound as Christians to be hisslaves. He had lost it; and we were bound as Christians to be his foes. Other Whigs congratulated the proselyte on having come, by whateverroad, to a right practical conclusion, but could not refrain fromsneering at the history which he gave of his conversion. He was, theysaid, a man of eminent learning and abilities. He had studied thequestion of allegiance long and deeply. He had written much about it. Several months had been allowed him for reading, prayer and reflectionbefore he incurred suspension, several months more before he incurreddeprivation. He had formed an opinion for which he had declared himselfready to suffer martyrdom; he had taught that opinion to others; and hehad then changed that opinion solely because he had discovered that ithad been, not refuted, but dogmatically pronounced erroneous by the twoConvocations more than eighty years before. Surely, this was to renounceall liberty of private judgment, and to ascribe to the Synods ofCanterbury and York an infallibility which the Church of England haddeclared that even Oecumenical Councils could not justly claim. If, itwas sarcastically said, all our notions of right and wrong, in mattersof vital importance to the well being of society, are to be suddenlyaltered by a few lines of manuscript found in a corner of the library atLambeth, it is surely much to be wished, for the peace of mind of humbleChristians, that all the documents to which this sort of authoritybelongs should be rummaged out and sent to the press as soon aspossible; for, unless this be done, we may all, like the Doctor when herefused the oaths last year, be committing sins in the full persuasionthat we are discharging duties. In truth, it is not easy to believethat the Convocation Book furnished Sherlock with any thing more than apretext for doing what he had made up his mind to do. The united forceof reason and interest had doubtless convinced him that his passions andprejudices had led him into a great error. That error he determined torecant; and it cost him less to say that his opinion had been changed bynewly discovered evidence, than that he had formed a wrong judgment withall the materials for the forming of a right judgment before him. Thepopular belief was that his retractation was the effect of the tears, expostulations and reproaches of his wife. The lady's spirit was high;her authority in the family was great; and she cared much more about herhouse and her carriage, the plenty of her table and the prospects of herchildren, than about the patriarchal origin of government or the meaningof the word Abdication. She had, it was asserted, given her husband nopeace by day or by night till he had got over his scruples. In letters, fables, songs, dialogues without number, her powers of seduction andintimidation were malignantly extolled. She was Xanthippe pouring wateron the head of Socrates. She was Dalilah shearing Samson. She was Eveforcing the forbidden fruit into Adam's mouth. She was Job's wife, imploring her ruined lord, who sate scraping himself among the ashes, not to curse and die, but to swear and live. While the ballad makerscelebrated the victory of Mrs. Sherlock, another class of assailantsfell on the theological reputation of her spouse. Till he took theoaths, he had always been considered as the most orthodox of divines. But the captious and malignant criticism to which his writings were nowsubjected would have found heresy in the Sermon on the Mount; and he, unfortunately, was rash enough to publish, at the very moment when theoutcry against his political tergiversation was loudest, his thoughtson the mystery of the Trinity. It is probable that, at another time, hiswork would have been hailed by good Churchmen as a triumphant answerto the Socinians and Sabellians. But, unhappily, in his zeal againstSocinians and Sabellians, he used expressions which might be construedinto Tritheism. Candid judges would have remembered that the true pathwas closely pressed on the right and on the left by error, and that itwas scarcely possible to keep far enough from danger on one side withoutgoing very close to danger on the other. But candid judges Sherlock wasnot likely to find among the Jacobites. His old allies affirmed that hehad incurred all the fearful penalties denounced in the Athanasian Creedagainst those who divide the substance. Bulky quartos were written toprove that he held the existence of three distinct Deities; and somefacetious malecontents, who troubled themselves very little about theCatholic verity, amused the town by lampoons in English and Latin on hisheterodoxy. "We, " said one of these jesters, "plight our faith to oneKing, and call one God to attest our promise. We cannot think it strangethat there should be more than one King to whom the Doctor has swornallegiance, when we consider that the Doctor has more Gods than one toswear by. " [61]

Sherlock would, perhaps, have doubted whether the government to which hehad submitted was entitled to be called a settled government, if he hadknown all the dangers by which it was threatened. Scarcely had Preston'splot been detected; when a new plot of a very different kind was formedin the camp, in the navy, in the treasury, in the very bedchamber ofthe King. This mystery of iniquity has, through five generations, beengradually unveiling, but is not yet entirely unveiled. Some parts whichare still obscure may possibly, by the discovery of letters or diariesnow reposing under the dust of a century and a half, be made clear toour posterity. The materials, however, which are at present accessible, are sufficient for the construction of a narrative not to be readwithout shame and loathing. [62]

We have seen that, in the spring of 1690, Shrewsbury, irritated byfinding his counsels rejected, and those of his Tory rivals followed, suffered himself, in a fatal hour, to be drawn into a correspondencewith the banished family. We have seen also by what cruel sufferings ofbody and mind he expiated his fault. Tortured by remorse, and by diseasethe effect of remorse, he had quitted the Court; but he had left behindhim men whose principles were not less lax than his, and whose heartswere far harder and colder. 

Early in 1691, some of these men began to hold secret communication withSaint Germains. Wicked and base as their conduct was, there was in itnothing surprising. They did after their kind. The times were troubled. A thick cloud was upon the future. The most sagacious and experiencedpolitician could not see with any clearness three months before him. To a man of virtue and honour, indeed, this mattered little. Hisuncertainty as to what the morrow might bring forth might make himanxious, but could not make him perfidious. Though left in utterdarkness as to what concerned his interests, he had the sure guidanceof his principles. But, unhappily, men of virtue and honour were notnumerous among the courtiers of that age. Whitehall had been, duringthirty years, a seminary of every public and private vice, andswarmed with lowminded, doubledealing, selfseeking politicians. Thesepoliticians now acted as it was natural that men profoundly immoralshould act at a crisis of which none could predict the issue. Someof them might have a slight predilection for William; others a slightpredilection for James; but it was not by any such predilection that theconduct of any of the breed was guided. If it had seemed certain thatWilliam would stand, they would all have been for William. If it hadseemed certain that James would be restored, they would all have beenfor James. But what was to be done when the chances appeared to bealmost exactly balanced? There were honest men of one party who wouldhave answered, To stand by the true King and the true Church, and, ifnecessary, to die for them like Laud. There were honest men of the otherparty who would have answered, To stand by the liberties of England andthe Protestant religion, and, if necessary, to die for them like Sidney. But such consistency was unintelligible to many of the noble and thepowerful. Their object was to be safe in every event. They thereforeopenly took the oath of allegiance to one King, and secretly plightedtheir word to the other. They were indefatigable in obtainingcommissions, patents of peerage, pensions, grants of crown land, underthe great seal of William; and they had in their secret drawers promisesof pardon in the handwriting of James. 

Among those who were guilty of this wickedness three men standpreeminent, Russell, Godolphin and Marlborough. No three men couldbe, in head and heart, more unlike to one another; and the peculiarqualities of each gave a peculiar character to his villany. The treasonof Russell is to be attributed partly to fractiousness; the treason ofGodolphin is to be attributed altogether to timidity; the treason ofMarlborough was the treason of a man of great genius and boundlessambition. 

It may be thought strange that Russell should have been out of humour. He had just accepted the command of the united naval forces of Englandand Holland with the rank of Admiral of the Fleet. He was Treasurerof the Navy. He had a pension of three thousand pounds a year. Crownproperty near Charing Cross, to the value of eighteen thousand pounds, had been bestowed on him. His indirect gains must have been immense. But he was still dissatisfed. In truth, with undaunted courage, withconsiderable talents both for war and for administration, and with acertain public spirit, which showed itself by glimpses even in thevery worst parts of his life, he was emphatically a bad man, insolent, malignant, greedy, faithless. He conceived that the great services whichhe had performed at the time of the Revolution had not been adequatelyrewarded. Every thing that was given to others seemed to him to bepillaged from himself. A letter is still extant which he wrote toWilliam about this time. It is made up of boasts, reproaches and sneers. The Admiral, with ironical professions of humility and loyalty, beginsby asking permission to put his wrongs on paper, because his bashfulnesswould not suffer him to explain himself by word of mouth. His grievanceswere intolerable. Other people got grants of royal domains; but he couldget scarcely any thing. Other people could provide for their dependants;but his recommendations were uniformly disregarded. The income whichhe derived from the royal favour might seem large; but he had poorrelations; and the government, instead of doing its duty by them, hadmost unhandsomely left them to his care. He had a sister who ought tohave a pension; for, without one, she could not give portions to herdaughters. He had a brother who, for want of a place, had been reducedto the melancholy necessity of marrying an old woman for her money. Russell proceeded to complain bitterly that the Whigs were neglected, that the Revolution had aggrandised and enriched men who had made thegreatest efforts to avert it. And there is reason to believe that thiscomplaint came from his heart. For, next to his own interests, thoseof his party were dear to him; and, even when he was most inclined tobecome a Jacobite, he never had the smallest disposition to become aTory. In the temper which this letter indicates, he readily listenedto the suggestions of David Lloyd, one of the ablest and most activeemissaries who at this time were constantly plying between France andEngland. Lloyd conveyed to James assurances that Russell would, when afavourable opportunity should present itself, try to effect by means ofthe fleet what Monk had effected in the preceding generation by meansof the army. [63] To what extent these assurances were sincere was aquestion about which men who knew Russell well, and who were minutelyinformed as to his conduct, were in doubt. It seems probable that, during many months, he did not know his own mind. His interest was tostand well, as long as possible, with both Kings. His irritable andimperious nature was constantly impelling him to quarrel with both. Hisspleen was excited one week by a dry answer from William, and thenext week by an absurd proclamation from James. Fortunately the mostimportant day of his life, the day from which all his subsequent yearstook their colour, found him out of temper with the banished King. 

Godolphin had not, and did not pretend to have, any cause of complaintagainst the government which he served. He was First Commissioner of theTreasury. He had been protected, trusted, caressed. Indeed the favourshown to him had excited many murmurs. Was it fitting, the Whigs hadindignantly asked, that a man who had been high in office through thewhole of the late reign, who had promised to vote for the Indulgence, who had sate in the Privy Council with a Jesuit, who had sate at theBoard of Treasury with two Papists, who had attended an idolatress toher altar, should be among the chief ministers of a Prince whose titleto the throne was derived from the Declaration of Rights? But on Williamthis clamour had produced no effect; and none of his English servantsseems to have had at this time a larger share of his confidence thanGodolphin. 

Nevertheless, the Jacobites did not despair. One of the most zealousamong them, a gentleman named Bulkeley, who had formerly been on termsof intimacy with Godolphin, undertook to see what could be done. Hecalled at the Treasury, and tried to draw the First Lord into politicaltalk. This was no easy matter; for Godolphin was not a man to puthimself lightly into the power of others. His reserve was proverbial;and he was especially renowned for the dexterity with which he, throughlife, turned conversation away from matters of state to a main of cocksor the pedigree of a racehorse. The visit ended without his uttering aword indicating that he remembered the existence of King James. 

Bulkeley, however, was not to be so repulsed. He came again, andintroduced the subject which was nearest his heart. Godolphin then askedafter his old master and mistress in the mournful tone of a man whodespaired of ever being reconciled to them. Bulkeley assured him thatKing James was ready to forgive all the past. "May I tell His Majestythat you will try to deserve his favour?" At this Godolphin rose, saidsomething about the trammels of office and his wish to be released fromthem, and put an end to the interview. 

Bulkeley soon made a third attempt. By this time Godolphin hadlearned some things which shook his confidence in the stability of thegovernment which he served. He began to think, as he would himself haveexpressed it, that he had betted too deep on the Revolution, and thatit was time to hedge. Evasions would no longer serve his turn. It wasnecessary to speak out. He spoke out, and declared himself a devotedservant of King James. "I shall take an early opportunity of resigningmy place. But, till then, I am under a tie. I must not betray my trust. "To enhance the value of the sacrifice which he proposed to make, heproduced a most friendly and confidential letter which he had latelyreceived from William. "You see how entirely the Prince of Orange trustsme. He tells me that he cannot do without me, and that there is noEnglishman for whom he has so great a kindness; but all this weighsnothing with me in comparison of my duty to my lawful King. "

If the First Lord of the Treasury really had scruples about betrayinghis trust, those scruples were soon so effectually removed that hevery complacently continued, during six years, to eat the bread of onemaster, while secretly sending professions of attachment and promises ofservice to another. 

The truth is that Godolphin was under the influence of a mind far morepowerful and far more depraved than his own. His perplexities hadbeen imparted to Marlborough, to whom he had long been bound by suchfriendship as two very unprincipled men are capable of feeling for eachother, and to whom he was afterwards bound by close domestic ties. 

Marlborough was in a very different situation from that of William'sother servants. Lloyd might make overtures to Russell, and Bulkeley toGodolphin. But all the agents of the banished Court stood aloof fromthe traitor of Salisbury. That shameful night seemed to have for everseparated the perjured deserter from the Prince whom he had ruined. James had, even in the last extremity, when his army was in fullretreat, when his whole kingdom had risen against him, declared thathe would never pardon Churchill, never, never. By all the Jacobites thename of Churchill was held in peculiar abhorrence; and, in the prose andverse which came forth daily from their secret presses, a precedence ininfamy, among all the many traitors of the age, was assigned to him. Inthe order of things which had sprung from the Revolution, he was one ofthe great men of England, high in the state, high in the army. Hehad been created an Earl. He had a large share in the militaryadministration. The emoluments, direct and indirect, of the placesand commands which he held under the Crown were believed at the DutchEmbassy to amount to twelve thousand pounds a year. In the event of acounterrevolution it seemed that he had nothing in prospect but a garretin Holland, or a scaffold on Tower Hill. It might therefore have beenexpected that he would serve his new master with fidelity, notindeed with the fidelity of Nottingham, which was the fidelity ofconscientiousness, not with the fidelity of Portland, which was thefidelity of affection, but with the not less stubborn fidelity ofdespair. 

Those who thought thus knew but little of Marlborough. Confident in hisown powers of deception, he resolved, since the Jacobite agents wouldnot seek him, to seek them. He therefore sent to beg an interview withColonel Edward Sackville. 

Sackville was astonished and not much pleased by the message. He was asturdy Cavalier of the old school. He had been persecuted in the days ofthe Popish plot for manfully saying what he thought, and what every bodynow thinks, about Oates and Bedloe. [64] Since the Revolution he hadput his neck in peril for King James, had been chased by officers withwarrants, and had been designated as a traitor in a proclamation towhich Marlborough himself had been a party. [65] It was not withoutreluctance that the stanch royalist crossed the hated threshold of thedeserter. He was repaid for his effort by the edifying spectacle of suchan agony of repentance as he had never before seen. "Will you, " saidMarlborough, "be my intercessor with the King? Will you tell him whatI suffer? My crimes now appear to me in their true light; and I shrinkwith horror from the contemplation. The thought of them is with me dayand night. I sit down to table; but I cannot eat. I throw myself on mybed; but I cannot sleep. I am ready to sacrifice every thing, to braveevery thing, to bring utter ruin on my fortunes, if only I may be freefrom the misery of a wounded spirit. " If appearances could be trusted, this great offender was as true a penitent as David or as Peter. Sackville reported to his friends what had passed. They could not butacknowledge that, if the arch traitor, who had hitherto opposed toconscience and to public opinion the same cool and placid hardihoodwhich distinguished him on fields of battle, had really begun to feelremorse, it would be absurd to reject, on account of his unworthiness, the inestimable services which it was in his power to render to thegood cause. He sate in the interior council; he held high command inthe army; he had been recently entrusted, and would doubtless again beentrusted, with the direction of important military operations. It wastrue that no man had incurred equal guilt; but it was true also that noman had it in his power to make equal reparation. If he was sincere, he might doubtless earn the pardon which he so much desired. But was hesincere? Had he not been just as loud in professions of loyalty on thevery eve of his crime? It was necessary to put him to the test. Severaltests were applied by Sackville and Lloyd. Marlborough was required tofurnish full information touching the strength and the distribution ofall the divisions of the English army; and he complied. He was requiredto disclose the whole plan of the approaching campaign; and he did so. The Jacobite leaders watched carefully for inaccuracies in his reports, but could find none. It was thought a still stronger proof of hisfidelity that he gave valuable intelligence about what was doing in theoffice of the Secretary of State. A deposition had been sworn againstone zealous royalist. A warrant was preparing against another. Theseintimations saved several of the malecontents from imprisonment, ifnot from the gallows; and it was impossible for them not to feel somerelenting towards the awakened sinner to whom they owed so much. 

He however, in his secret conversations with his new allies, laid noclaim to merit. He did not, he said, ask for confidence. How could he, after the villanies which he had committed against the best of Kings, hope ever to be trusted again? It was enough for a wretch like him to bepermitted to make, at the cost of his life, some poor atonement to thegracious master, whom he had indeed basely injured, but whom he hadnever ceased to love. It was not improbable that, in the summer, hemight command the English forces in Flanders. Was it wished that heshould bring them over in a body to the French camp? If such were theroyal pleasure, he would undertake that the thing should be done. Buton the whole he thought that it would be better to wait till the nextsession of Parliament. And then he hinted at a plan which he afterwardsmore fully matured, for expelling the usurper by means of the Englishlegislature and the English army. In the meantime he hoped that Jameswould command Godolphin not to quit the Treasury. A private man coulddo little for the good cause. One who was the director of the nationalfinances, and the depository of the gravest secrets of state, mightrender inestimable services. 

Marlborough's pretended repentance imposed so completely on those whomanaged the affairs of James in London that they sent Lloyd to France, with the cheering intelligence that the most depraved of all rebels hadbeen wonderfully transformed into a loyal subject. The tidings filledJames with delight and hope. Had he been wise, they would have excitedin him only aversion and distrust. It was absurd to imagine that a manreally heartbroken by remorse and shame for one act of perfidy woulddetermine to lighten his conscience by committing a second act ofperfidy as odious and as disgraceful as the first. The promisedatonement was so wicked and base that it never could be made by any mansincerely desirous to atone for past wickedness and baseness. The truthwas that, when Marlborough told the Jacobites that his sense of guiltprevented him from swallowing his food by day and taking his rest atnight, he was laughing at them. The loss of half a guinea would havedone more to spoil his appetite and to disturb his slumbers than all theterrors of an evil conscience. What his offers really proved was thathis former crime had sprung, not from an ill regulated zeal for theinterests of his country and his religion, but from a deep and incurablemoral disease which had infected the whole man. James, however, partlyfrom dulness and partly from selfishness, could never see any immoralityin any action by which he was benefited. To conspire against him, tobetray him, to break an oath of allegiance sworn to him, were crimes forwhich no punishment here or hereafter could be too severe. But to murderhis enemies, to break faith with his enemies was not only innocent butlaudable. The desertion at Salisbury had been the worst of crimes;for it had ruined him. A similar desertion in Flanders would be anhonourable exploit; for it might restore him. 

The penitent was informed by his Jacobite friends that he was forgiven. The news was most welcome; but something more was necessary to restorehis lost peace of mind. Might he hope to have, in the royal handwriting, two lines containing a promise of pardon? It was not, of course, forhis own sake that he asked this. But he was confident that, with sucha document in his hands, he could bring back to the right path somepersons of great note who adhered to the usurper, only because theyimagined that they had no mercy to expect from the legitimate King. Theywould return to their duty as soon as they saw that even the worst ofall criminals had, on his repentance, been generously forgiven. Thepromise was written, sent, and carefully treasured up. Marlborough hadnow attained one object, an object which was common to him with Russelland Godolphin. But he had other objects which neither Russell norGodolphin had ever contemplated. There is, as we shall hereaftersee, strong reason to believe that this wise, brave, wicked man, wasmeditating a plan worthy of his fertile intellect and daring spirit, andnot less worthy of his deeply corrupted heart, a plan which, if it hadnot been frustrated by strange means, would have ruined William withoutbenefiting James, and would have made the successful traitor master ofEngland and arbiter of Europe. 

Thus things stood, when, in May 1691, William, after a short and busysojourn in England, set out again for the Continent, where the regularcampaign was about to open. He took with him Marlborough, whoseabilities he justly appreciated, and of whose recent negotiations withSaint Germains he had not the faintest suspicion. At the Hague severalimportant military and political consultations were held; and, on everyoccasion, the superiority of the accomplished Englishman was felt bythe most distinguished soldiers and statesmen of the United Provinces. Heinsius, long after, used to relate a conversation which took place atthis time between William and the Prince of Vaudemont, one of the ablestcommanders in the Dutch service. Vaudemont spoke well of severalEnglish officers, and among them of Talmash and Mackay, but pronouncedMarlborough superior beyond comparison to the rest. "He has everyquality of a general. His very look shows it. He cannot fail to achievesomething great. " "I really believe, cousin, " answered the King, "thatmy Lord will make good every thing that you have said of him. "

There was still a short interval before the commencement of militaryoperations. William passed that interval in his beloved park at Loo. Marlborough spent two or three days there, and was then despatched toFlanders with orders to collect all the English forces, to form a campin the neighbourhood of Brussels, and to have every thing in readinessfor the King's arrival. 

And now Marlborough had an opportunity of proving the sincerity of thoseprofessions by which he had obtained from a heart, well described byhimself as harder than a marble chimneypiece, the pardon of an offencesuch as might have moved even a gentle nature to deadly resentment. Hereceived from Saint Germains a message claiming the instant performanceof his promise to desert at the head of his troops. He was told thatthis was the greatest service which he could render to the Crown. Hisword was pledged; and the gracious master who had forgiven all pasterrors confidently expected that it would be redeemed. The hypocriteevaded the demand with characteristic dexterity. In the most respectfuland affectionate language he excused himself for not immediately obeyingthe royal commands. The promise which he was required to fulfil had notbeen quite correctly understood. There had been some misapprehensionon the part of the messengers. To carry over a regiment or two woulddo more harm than good. To carry over a whole army was a business whichwould require much time and management. [66] While James was murmuringover these apologies, and wishing that he had not been quite soplacable, William arrived at the head quarters of the allied forces, andtook the chief command. 

The military operations in Flanders recommenced early in June andterminated at the close of September. No important action took place. The two armies marched and countermarched, drew near and receded. Duringsome time they confronted each other with less than a league betweenthem. But neither William nor Luxemburg would fight except at anadvantage; and neither gave the other any advantage. Languid as thecampaign was, it is on one account remarkable. During more than acentury our country had sent no great force to make war by land out ofthe British isles. Our aristocracy had therefore long ceased to bea military class. The nobles of France, of Germany, of Holland, weregenerally soldiers. It would probably have been difficult to find in thebrilliant circle which surrounded Lewis at Versailles a single Marquessor Viscount of forty who had not been at some battle or siege. But theimmense majority of our peers, baronets and opulent esquires had neverserved except in the trainbands, and had never borne a part in anymilitary exploit more serious than that of putting down a riot or ofkeeping a street clear for a procession. The generation which had foughtat Edgehill and Lansdowne had nearly passed away. The wars of Charlesthe Second had been almost entirely maritime. During his reign thereforethe sea service had been decidedly more the mode than the land service;and, repeatedly, when our fleet sailed to encounter the Dutch, suchmultitudes of men of fashion had gone on board that the parks and thetheatres had been left desolate. In 1691 at length, for the first timesince Henry the Eighth laid siege to Boulogne, an English army appearedon the Continent under the command of an English king. A camp, which wasalso a court, was irresistibly attractive to many young patriciansfull of natural intrepidity, and ambitious of the favour which menof distinguished bravery have always found in the eyes of women. Tovolunteer for Flanders became the rage among the fine gentlemen whocombed their flowing wigs and exchanged their richly perfumed snuffs atthe Saint James's Coffeehouse. William's headquarters were enlivenedby a crowd of splendid equipages and by a rapid succession of sumptuousbanquets. For among the high born and high spirited youths who repairedto his standard were some who, though quite willing to face a battery, were not at all disposed to deny themselves the luxuries with which theyhad been surrounded in Soho Square. In a few months Shadwell broughtthese valiant fops and epicures on the stage. The town was made merrywith the character of a courageous but prodigal and effeminate coxcomb, who is impatient to cross swords with the best men in the Frenchhousehold troops, but who is much dejected by learning that he may findit difficult to have his champagne iced daily during the summer. Hecarries with him cooks, confectioners and laundresses, a waggonload ofplate, a wardrobe of laced and embroidered suits, and much rich tentfurniture, of which the patterns have been chosen by a committee of fineladies. [67]

While the hostile armies watched each other in Flanders, hostilitieswere carried on with somewhat more vigour in other parts of Europe. The French gained some advantages in Catalonia and in Piedmont. TheirTurkish allies, who in the east menaced the dominions of the Emperor, were defeated by Lewis of Baden in a great battle. But nowhere were theevents of the summer so important as in Ireland. 

From October 1690 till May 1691, no military operation on a large scalewas attempted in that kingdom. The area of the island was, during thewinter and spring, not unequally divided between the contending races. The whole of Ulster, the greater part of Leinster and about one thirdof Munster had submitted to the English. The whole of Connaught, thegreater part of Munster, and two or three counties of Leinster were heldby the Irish. The tortuous boundary formed by William's garrisons ranin a north eastern direction from the bay of Castlehaven to Mallow, andthen, inclining still further eastward, proceeded to Cashel. FromCashel the line went to Mullingar, from Mullingar to Longford, and fromLongford to Cavan, skirted Lough Erne on the west, and met the oceanagain at Ballyshannon. [68]

On the English side of this pale there was a rude and imperfect order. Two Lords Justices, Coningsby and Porter, assisted by a Privy Council, represented King William at Dublin Castle. Judges, Sheriffs andJustices of the Peace had been appointed; and assizes were, after a longinterval, held in several county towns. The colonists had meanwhilebeen formed into a strong militia, under the command of officers who hadcommissions from the Crown. The trainbands of the capital consisted oftwo thousand five hundred foot, two troops of horse and two troopsof dragoons, all Protestants and all well armed and clad. [69] On thefourth of November, the anniversary of William's birth, and on thefifth, the anniversary of his landing at Torbay, the whole of this forceappeared in all the pomp of war. The vanquished and disarmed nativesassisted, with suppressed grief and anger, at the triumph of thecaste which they had, five months before, oppressed and plundered withimpunity. The Lords Justices went in state to Saint Patrick's Cathedral;bells were rung; bonfires were lighted; hogsheads of ale and claret wereset abroach in the streets; fireworks were exhibited on College Green; agreat company of nobles and public functionaries feasted at the Castle;and, as the second course came up, the trumpets sounded, and Ulster Kingat Arms proclaimed, in Latin, French and English, William and Mary, bythe grace of God, King and Queen of Great Britain, France, and Ireland. [70]

Within the territory where the Saxon race was dominant, trade andindustry had already begun to revive. The brazen counters which bore theimage and superscription of James gave place to silver. The fugitiveswho had taken refuge in England came back in multitudes; and, by theirintelligence, diligence and thrift, the devastation caused by two yearsof confusion and robbery was soon in part repaired. Merchantmen heavilyladen were constantly passing and repassing Saint George's Channel. The receipts of the custom houses on the eastern coast, from Cork toLondonderry, amounted in six months to sixty-seven thousand five hundredpounds, a sum such as would have been thought extraordinary even in themost prosperous times. [71]

The Irish who remained within the English pale were, one and all, hostile to the English domination. They were therefore subjected toa rigorous system of police, the natural though lamentable effect ofextreme danger and extreme provocation. A Papist was not permitted tohave a sword or a gun. He was not permitted to go more than three milesout of his parish except to the market town on the market day. Lest heshould give information or assistance to his brethren who occupied thewestern half of the island, he was forbidden to live within ten miles ofthe frontier. Lest he should turn his house into a place of resortfor malecontents, he was forbidden to sell liquor by retail. Oneproclamation announced that, if the property of any Protestant should beinjured by marauders, his loss should be made good at the expense of hisPopish neighbours. Another gave notice that, if any Papist who had notbeen at least three months domiciled in Dublin should be found there, heshould be treated as a spy. Not more than five Papists were to assemblein the capital or its neighbourhood on any pretext. Without a protectionfrom the government no member of the Church of Rome was safe; and thegovernment would not grant a protection to any member of the Church ofRome who had a son in the Irish army. [72]

In spite of all precautions and severities, however, the Celt found manyopportunities of taking a sly revenge. Houses and barns were frequentlyburned; soldiers were frequently murdered; and it was scarcely possibleto obtain evidence against the malefactors, who had with them thesympathies of the whole population. On such occasions the governmentsometimes ventured on acts which seemed better suited to a Turkish thanto an English administration. One of these acts became a favourite themeof Jacobite pamphleteers, and was the subject of a serious parliamentaryinquiry at Westminster. Six musketeers were found butchered only a fewmiles from Dublin. The inhabitants of the village where the crime hadbeen committed, men, women, and children, were driven like sheep intothe Castle, where the Privy Council was sitting. The heart of one of theassassins, named Gafney, failed him. He consented to be a witness, wasexamined by the Board, acknowledged his guilt, and named some of hisaccomplices. He was then removed in custody; but a priest obtainedaccess to him during a few minutes. What passed during those few minutesappeared when he was a second time brought before the Council. He hadthe effrontery to deny that he had owned any thing or accused any body. His hearers, several of whom had taken down his confession in writing, were enraged at his impudence. The Lords justices broke out; "You area rogue; You are a villain; You shall be hanged; Where is the ProvostMarshal?" The Provost Marshal came. "Take that man, " said Coningsby, pointing to Gafney; "take that man, and hang him. " There was no gallowsready; but the carriage of a gun served the purpose; and the prisonerwas instantly tied up without a trial, without even a written order forthe execution; and this though the courts of law were sitting at thedistance of only a few hundred yards. The English House of Commons, someyears later, after a long discussion, resolved, without a division, thatthe order for the execution of Gafney was arbitrary and illegal, butthat Coningsby's fault was so much extenuated by the circumstances inwhich he was placed that it was not a proper subject for impeachment. [73]

It was not only by the implacable hostility of the Irish that the Saxonof the pale was at this time harassed. His allies caused him almost asmuch annoyance as his helots. The help of troops from abroad was indeednecessary to him; but it was dearly bought. Even William, in whomthe whole civil and military authority was concentrated, had found itdifficult to maintain discipline in an army collected from many lands, and composed in great part of mercenaries accustomed to live at freequarters. The powers which had been united in him were now divided andsubdivided. The two Lords justices considered the civil administrationas their province, and left the army to the management of Ginkell, whowas General in Chief. Ginkell kept excellent order among the auxiliariesfrom Holland, who were under his more immediate command. But hisauthority over the English and the Danes was less entire; andunfortunately their pay was, during part of the winter, in arrear. Theyindemnified themselves by excesses and exactions for the want of thatwhich was their due; and it was hardly possible to punish men withseverity for not choosing to starve with arms in their hands. At lengthin the spring large supplies of money and stores arrived; arrearswere paid up; rations were plentiful; and a more rigid discipline wasenforced. But too many traces of the bad habits which the soldiers hadcontracted were discernible till the close of the war. [74]

In that part of Ireland, meanwhile, which still acknowledged James asKing, there could hardly be said to be any law, any property, or anygovernment. The Roman Catholics of Ulster and Leinster had fled westwardby tens of thousands, driving before them a large part of the cattlewhich had escaped the havoc of two terrible years. The influx of foodinto the Celtic region, however, was far from keeping pace with theinflux of consumers. The necessaries of life were scarce. Conveniencesto which every plain farmer and burgess in England was accustomed couldhardly be procured by nobles and generals. No coin was to be seen exceptlumps of base metal which were called crowns and shillings. Nominalprices were enormously high. A quart of ale cost two and sixpence, aquart of brandy three pounds. The only towns of any note on the westerncoast were Limerick and Galway; and the oppression which the shopkeepersof those towns underwent was such that many of them stole away with theremains of their stocks to the English territory, where a Papist, thoughhe had to endure much restraint and much humiliation, was allowed toput his own price on his goods, and received that price in silver. Those traders who remained within the unhappy region were ruined. Every warehouse that contained any valuable property was broken open byruffians who pretended that they were commissioned to procure stores forthe public service; and the owner received, in return for bales of clothand hogsheads of sugar, some fragments of old kettles and saucepans, which would not in London or Paris have been taken by a beggar. 

As soon as a merchant ship arrived in the bay of Galway or in theShannon, she was boarded by these robbers. The cargo was carried away;and the proprietor was forced to content himself with such a quantityof cowhides, of wool and of tallow as the gang which had plundered himchose to give him. The consequence was that, while foreign commoditieswere pouring fast into the harbours of Londonderry, Carrickfergus, Dublin, Waterford and Cork, every mariner avoided Limerick and Galway asnests of pirates. [75]

The distinction between the Irish foot soldier and the Irish Rappareehad never been very strongly marked. It now disappeared. Great part ofthe army was turned loose to live by marauding. An incessant predatorywar raged along the line which separated the domain of William fromthat of James. Every day companies of freebooters, sometimes wrapped intwisted straw which served the purpose of armour, stole into the Englishterritory, burned, sacked, pillaged, and hastened back to theirown ground. To guard against these incursions was not easy; for thepeasantry of the plundered country had a strong fellow feeling with theplunderers. To empty the granary, to set fire to the dwelling, to driveaway the cows, of a heretic was regarded by every squalid inhabitantof a mud cabin as a good work. A troop engaged in such a work mightconfidently expect to fall in, notwithstanding all the proclamationsof the Lords justices, with some friend who would indicate the richestbooty, the shortest road, and the safest hiding place. The Englishcomplained that it was no easy matter to catch a Rapparee. Sometimes, when he saw danger approaching, he lay down in the long grass of thebog; and then it was as difficult to find him as to find a hare sitting. Sometimes he sprang into a stream, and lay there, like an otter, withonly his mouth and nostrils above the water. Nay, a whole gang ofbanditti would, in the twinkling of an eye, transform itself into acrowd of harmless labourers. Every man took his gun to pieces, hid thelock in his clothes, stuck a cork in the muzzle, stopped the touch holewith a quill, and threw the weapon into the next pond. Nothing was to beseen but a train of poor rustics who had not so much as a cudgel amongthem, and whose humble look and crouching walk seemed to show that theirspirit was thoroughly broken to slavery. When the peril was over, whenthe signal was given, every man flew to the place where he had hid hisarms; and soon the robbers were in full march towards some Protestantmansion. One band penetrated to Clonmel, another to the vicinity ofMaryborough; a third made its den in a woody islet of firm ground, surrounded by the vast bog of Allen, harried the county of Wicklow, andalarmed even the suburbs of Dublin. Such expeditions indeed were notalways successful. Sometimes the plunderers fell in with parties ofmilitia or with detachments from the English garrisons, in situations inwhich disguise, flight and resistance were alike impossible. When thishappened every kerne who was taken was hanged, without any ceremony, onthe nearest tree. [76]

At the head quarters of the Irish army there was, during the winter, noauthority capable of exacting obedience even within a circle of a mile. Tyrconnel was absent at the Court of France. He had left the supremegovernment in the hands of a Council of Regency composed of twelvepersons. The nominal command of the army he had confided to Berwick; butBerwick, though, as was afterwards proved, a man of no common courageand capacity, was young and inexperienced. His powers were unsuspectedby the world and by himself; [77] and he submitted without reluctanceto the tutelage of a Council of War nominated by the Lord Lieutenant. Neither the Council of Regency nor the Council of War was popular atLimerick. The Irish complained that men who were not Irish had beenentrusted with a large share in the administration. The cry was loudestagainst an officer named Thomas Maxwell. For it was certain that he wasa Scotchman; it was doubtful whether he was a Roman Catholic; and he hadnot concealed the dislike which he felt for that Celtic Parliament whichhad repealed the Act of Settlement and passed the Act of Attainder. [78] The discontent, fomented by the arts of intriguers, among whomthe cunning and unprincipled Henry Luttrell seems to have been the mostactive, soon broke forth into open rebellion. A great meeting was held. Many officers of the army, some peers, some lawyers of high note andsome prelates of the Roman Catholic Church were present. It was resolvedthat the government set up by the Lord Lieutenant was unknown to theconstitution. Ireland, it was said, could be legally governed, in theabsence of the King, only by a Lord Lieutenant, by a Lord Deputy or byLords Justices. The King was absent. The Lord Lieutenant was absent. There was no Lord Deputy. There were no Lords Justices. The Act bywhich Tyrconnel had delegated his authority to a junto composed of hiscreatures was a mere nullity. The nation was therefore left without anylegitimate chief, and might, without violating the allegiance due tothe Crown, make temporary provision for its own safety. A deputation wassent to inform Berwick that he had assumed a power to which he hadno right, but that nevertheless the army and people of Ireland wouldwillingly acknowledge him as their head if he would consent to govern bythe advice of a council truly Irish. Berwick indignantly expressed hiswonder that military men should presume to meet and deliberate withoutthe permission of their general. They answered that there was nogeneral, and that, if His Grace did not choose to undertake theadministration on the terms proposed, another leader would easily befound. Berwick very reluctantly yielded, and continued to be a puppet ina new set of hands. [79]

Those who had effected this revolution thought it prudent to send adeputation to France for the purpose of vindicating their proceedings. Of the deputation the Roman Catholic Bishop of Cork and the twoLuttrells were members. In the ship which conveyed them from Limerickto Brest they found a fellow passenger whose presence was by no meansagreeable to them, their enemy, Maxwell. They suspected, and not withoutreason, that he was going, like them, to Saint Germains, but on a verydifferent errand. The truth was that Berwick had sent Maxwell to watchtheir motions and to traverse their designs. Henry Luttrell, the leastscrupulous of men, proposed to settle the matter at once by tossing theScotchman into the sea. But the Bishop, who was a man of conscience, and Simon Luttrell, who was a man of honour, objected to this expedient. [80]

Meanwhile at Limerick the supreme power was in abeyance. Berwick, finding that he had no real authority, altogether neglected business, and gave himself up to such pleasures as that dreary place of banishmentafforded. There was among the Irish chiefs no man of sufficient weightand ability to control the rest. Sarsfield for a time took the lead. ButSarsfield, though eminently brave and active in the field, was littleskilled in the administration of war, and still less skilled in civilbusiness. Those who were most desirous to support his authority wereforced to own that his nature was too unsuspicious and indulgent fora post in which it was hardly possible to be too distrustful or toosevere. He believed whatever was told him. He signed whatever was setbefore him. The commissaries, encouraged by his lenity, robbed andembezzled more shamelessly than ever. They sallied forth daily, guardedby pikes and firelocks, to seize, nominally for the public service, butreally for themselves, wool, linen, leather, tallow, domestic utensils, instruments of husbandry, searched every pantry, every wardrobe, everycellar, and even laid sacrilegious hands on the property of priests andprelates. [81]

Early in the spring the government, if it is to be so called, ofwhich Berwick was the ostensible head, was dissolved by the return ofTyrconnel. The Luttrells had, in the name of their countrymen, imploredJames not to subject so loyal a people to so odious and incapable aviceroy. Tyrconnel, they said, was old; he was infirm; he needed muchsleep; he knew nothing of war; he was dilatory; he was partial; he wasrapacious; he was distrusted and hated by the whole nation. The Irish, deserted by him, had made a gallant stand, and had compelled thevictorious army of the Prince of Orange to retreat. They hoped soon totake the field again, thirty thousand strong; and they adjured theirKing to send them some captain worthy to command such a force. Tyrconneland Maxwell, on the other hand, represented the delegates as mutineers, demagogues, traitors, and pressed James to send Henry Luttrell tokeep Mountjoy company in the Bastille. James, bewildered by thesecriminations and recriminations, hesitated long, and at last, withcharacteristic wisdom, relieved himself from trouble by giving all thequarrellers fair words and by sending them all back to have their fightout in Ireland. Berwick was at the same time recalled to France. [82]

Tyrconnel was received at Limerick, even by his enemies, with decentrespect. Much as they hated him, they could not question the validityof his commission; and, though they still maintained that they hadbeen perfectly justified in annulling, during his absence, theunconstitutional arrangements which he had made, they acknowledged that, when he was present, he was their lawful governor. He was not altogetherunprovided with the means of conciliating them. He brought many graciousmessages and promises, a patent of peerage for Sarsfield, somemoney which was not of brass, and some clothing, which was even moreacceptable than money. The new garments were not indeed very fine. Buteven the generals had long been out at elbows; and there were few of thecommon men whose habiliments would have been thought sufficient to dressa scarecrow in a more prosperous country. Now, at length, for the firsttime in many months, every private soldier could boast of a pair ofbreeches and a pair of brogues. The Lord Lieutenant had also beenauthorised to announce that he should soon be followed by several ships, laden with provisions and military stores. This announcement was mostwelcome to the troops, who had long been without bread, and who hadnothing stronger than water to drink. [83]

During some weeks the supplies were impatiently expected. At last, Tyrconnel was forced to shut himself up; for, whenever he appeared inpublic, the soldiers ran after him clamouring for food. Even the beefand mutton, which, half raw, half burned, without vegetables, withoutsalt, had hitherto supported the army, had become scarce; and the commonmen were on rations of horseflesh when the promised sails were seen inthe mouth of the Shannon. [84]

A distinguished French general, named Saint Ruth, was on board with hisstaff. He brought a commission which appointed him commander in chief ofthe Irish army. The commission did not expressly declare that he was tobe independent of the viceregal authority; but he had been assured byJames that Tyrconnel should have secret instructions not to intermeddlein the conduct of the war. Saint Ruth was assisted by another generalofficer named D'Usson. The French ships brought some arms, someammunition, and a plentiful supply of corn and flour. The spirits of theIrish rose; and the Te Deum was chaunted with fervent devotion in thecathedral of Limerick. [85]

Tyrconnel had made no preparations for the approaching campaign. ButSaint Ruth, as soon as he had landed, exerted himself strenuously toredeem the time which had been lost. He was a man of courage, activityand resolution, but of a harsh and imperious nature. In his own countryhe was celebrated as the most merciless persecutor that had everdragooned the Huguenots to mass. It was asserted by English Whigs thathe was known in France by the nickname of the Hangman; that, at Rome, the very cardinals had shown their abhorrence of his cruelty; andthat even Queen Christina, who had little right to be squeamish aboutbloodshed, had turned away from him with loathing. He had recently helda command in Savoy. The Irish regiments in the French service had formedpart of his army, and had behaved extremely well. It was thereforesupposed that he had a peculiar talent for managing Irish troops. Butthere was a wide difference between the well clad, well armed and welldrilled Irish, with whom he was familiar, and the ragged marauders whomhe found swarming in the alleys of Limerick. Accustomed to the splendourand the discipline of French camps and garrisons, he was disgusted byfinding that, in the country to which he had been sent, a regiment ofinfantry meant a mob of people as naked, as dirty and as disorderlyas the beggars, whom he had been accustomed to see on the Continentbesieging the door of a monastery or pursuing a diligence up him. Withill concealed contempt, however, he addressed himself vigorously to thetask of disciplining these strange soldiers, and was day and night inthe saddle, galloping from post to post, from Limerick to Athlone, fromAthlone to the northern extremity of Lough Rea, and from Lough Rea backto Limerick. [86]

It was indeed necessary that he should bestir himself; for, a few daysafter his arrival, he learned that, on the other side of the Pale, all was ready for action. The greater part of the English force wascollected, before the close of May, in the neighbourhood of Mullingar. Ginkell commanded in chief. He had under him the two best officers, after Marlborough, of whom our island could then boast, Talmash andMackay. The Marquess of Ruvigny, the hereditary chief of the refugees, and elder brother of the brave Caillemot, who had fallen at the Boyne, had joined the army with the rank of major general. The Lord JusticeConingsby, though not by profession a soldier, came down from Dublin, toanimate the zeal of the troops. The appearance of the camp showed thatthe money voted by the English Parliament had not been spared. Theuniforms were new; the ranks were one blaze of scarlet; and the train ofartillery was such as had never before been seen in Ireland. [87]

On the sixth of June Ginkell moved his head quarters from Mullingar. Onthe seventh he reached Ballymore. At Ballymore, on a peninsula almostsurrounded by something between a swamp and a lake, stood an ancientfortress, which had recently been fortified under Sarsfield's direction, and which was defended by above a thousand men. The English guns wereinstantly planted. In a few hours the besiegers had the satisfaction ofseeing the besieged running like rabbits from one shelter to another. The governor, who had at first held high language, begged piteously forquarter, and obtained it. The whole garrison were marched off to Dublin. Only eight of the conquerors had fallen. [88]

Ginkell passed some days in reconstructing the defences of Ballymore. This work had scarcely been performed when he was joined by the Danishauxiliaries under the command of the Duke of Wirtemberg. The whole armythen moved westward, and, on the nineteenth of June, appeared before thewalls of Athlone. [89]

Athlone was perhaps, in a military point of view, the most importantplace in the island. Rosen, who understood war well, had alwaysmaintained that it was there that the Irishry would, with mostadvantage, make a stand against the Englishry. [90] The town, which wassurrounded by ramparts of earth, lay partly in Leinster and partlyin Connaught. The English quarter, which was in Leinster, had onceconsisted of new and handsome houses, but had been burned by the Irishsome months before, and now lay in heaps of ruin. The Celtic quarter, which was in Connaught, was old and meanly built. [91] The Shannon, which is the boundary of the two provinces, rushed through Athlone ina deep and rapid stream, and turned two large mills which rose on thearches of a stone bridge. Above the bridge, on the Connaught side, a castle, built, it was said, by King John, towered to the height ofseventy feet, and extended two hundred feet along the river. Fifty orsixty yards below the bridge was a narrow ford. [92]

During the night of the nineteenth the English placed their cannon. Onthe morning of the twentieth the firing began. At five in the afternoonan assault was made. A brave French refugee with a grenade in his handwas the first to climb the breach, and fell, cheering his countrymen tothe onset with his latest breath. Such were the gallant spirits whichthe bigotry of Lewis had sent to recruit, in the time of his utmostneed, the armies of his deadliest enemies. The example was not lost. Thegrenades fell thick. The assailants mounted by hundreds. The Irish gaveway and ran towards the bridge. There the press was so great that someof the fugitives were crushed to death in the narrow passage, and otherswere forced over the parapets into the waters which roared among themill wheels below. In a few hours Ginkell had made himself master of theEnglish quarter of Athlone; and this success had cost him only twentymen killed and forty wounded. [93]

But his work was only begun. Between him and the Irish town the Shannonran fiercely. The bridge was so narrow that a few resolute men mightkeep it against an army. The mills which stood on it were stronglyguarded; and it was commanded by the guns of the castle. That part ofthe Connaught shore where the river was fordable was defended by works, which the Lord Lieutenant had, in spite of the murmurs of a powerfulparty, forced Saint Ruth to entrust to the care of Maxwell. Maxwell hadcome back from France a more unpopular man than he had been when hewent thither. It was rumoured that he had, at Versailles, spokenopprobriously of the Irish nation; and he had, on this account, been, only a few days before, publicly affronted by Sarsfield. [94] On thetwenty-first of June the English were busied in flinging up batteriesalong the Leinster bank. On the twenty-second, soon after dawn, thecannonade began. The firing continued all that day and all the followingnight. When morning broke again, one whole side of the castle had beenbeaten down; the thatched lanes of the Celtic town lay in ashes; and oneof the mills had been burned with sixty soldiers who defended it. [95]

Still however the Irish defended the bridge resolutely. During severaldays there was sharp fighting hand to hand in the strait passage. Theassailants gained ground, but gained it inch by inch. The courage of thegarrison was sustained by the hope of speedy succour. Saint Ruth had atlength completed his preparations; and the tidings that Athlone wasin danger had induced him to take the field in haste at the head of anarmy, superior in number, though inferior in more important elements ofmilitary strength, to the army of Ginkell. The French general seems tohave thought that the bridge and the ford might easily be defended, tillthe autumnal rains and the pestilence which ordinarily accompanied themshould compel the enemy to retire. He therefore contented himself withsending successive detachments to reinforce the garrison. The immediateconduct of the defence he entrusted to his second in command, D'Usson, and fixed his own head quarters two or three miles from the town. Heexpressed his astonishment that so experienced a commander as Ginkellshould persist in a hopeless enterprise. "His master ought to hang himfor trying to take Athlone; and mine ought to hang me if I lose it. "[96]

Saint Ruth, however, was by no means at ease. He had found, to his greatmortification, that he had not the full authority which the promisesmade to him at Saint Germains had entitled him to expect. The LordLieutenant was in the camp. His bodily and mental infirmities hadperceptibly increased within the last few weeks. The slow and uncertainstep with which he, who had once been renowned for vigour and agility, now tottered from his easy chair to his couch, was no unapt type of thesluggish and wavering movement of that mind which had once pursued itsobjects with a vehemence restrained neither by fear nor by pity, neitherby conscience nor by shame. Yet, with impaired strength, both physicaland intellectual, the broken old man clung pertinaciously to power. Ifhe had received private orders not to meddle with the conduct of thewar, he disregarded them. He assumed all the authority of a sovereign, showed himself ostentatiously to the troops as their supreme chief, andaffected to treat Saint Ruth as a lieutenant. Soon the interference ofthe Viceroy excited the vehement indignation of that powerful party inthe army which had long hated him. Many officers signed an instrument bywhich they declared that they did not consider him as entitled to theirobedience in the field. Some of them offered him gross personal insults. He was told to his face that, if he persisted in remaining where he wasnot wanted, the ropes of his pavilion should be cut. He, on the otherhand, sent his emissaries to all the camp fires, and tried to make aparty among the common soldiers against the French general. [97]

The only thing in which Tyrconnel and Saint Ruth agreed was in dreadingand disliking Sarsfield. Not only was he popular with the great bodyof his countrymen; he was also surrounded by a knot of retainers whosedevotion to him resembled the devotion of the Ismailite murderers tothe Old Man of the Mountain. It was known that one of these fanatics, acolonel, had used language which, in the mouth of an officer so high inrank, might well cause uneasiness. "The King, " this man had said, "isnothing to me. I obey Sarsfield. Let Sarsfield tell me to kill anyman in the whole army; and I will do it. " Sarsfield was, indeed, toohonourable a gentleman to abuse his immense power over the minds ofhis worshippers. But the Viceroy and the Commander in Chief might notunnaturally be disturbed by the thought that Sarsfield's honour wastheir only guarantee against mutiny and assassination. The consequencewas that, at the crisis of the fate of Ireland, the services of thefirst of Irish soldiers were not used, or were used with jealouscaution, and that, if he ventured to offer a suggestion, it was receivedwith a sneer or a frown. [98]

A great and unexpected disaster put an end to these disputes. On thethirtieth of June Ginkell called a council of war. Forage began to bescarce; and it was absolutely necessary that the besiegers should eitherforce their way across the river or retreat. The difficulty of effectinga passage over the shattered remains of the bridge seemed almostinsuperable. It was proposed to try the ford. The Duke of Wirtemberg, Talmash, and Ruvigny gave their voices in favour of this plan; andGinkell, with some misgivings, consented. [99]

It was determined that the attempt should be made that very afternoon. The Irish, fancying that the English were about to retreat, kept guardcarelessly. Part of the garrison was idling, part dosing. D'Usson was attable. Saint Ruth was in his tent, writing a letter to his master filledwith charges against Tyrconnel. Meanwhile, fifteen hundred grenadiers;each wearing in his hat a green bough, were mustered on the Leinsterbank of the Shannon. Many of them doubtless remembered that on that dayyear they had, at the command of King William, put green boughs in theirhats on the banks of the Boyne. Guineas had been liberally scatteredamong these picked men; but their alacrity was such as gold cannotpurchase. Six battalions were in readiness to support the attack. Mackay commanded. He did not approve of the plan; but he executed it aszealously and energetically as if he had himself been the author of it. The Duke of Wirtemberg, Talmash, and several other gallant officers, towhom no part in the enterprise had been assigned, insisted on servingthat day as private volunteers; and their appearance in the ranksexcited the fiercest enthusiasm among the soldiers. 

It was six o'clock. A peal from the steeple of the church gave thesignal. Prince George of Hesse Darmstadt, and Gustavus Hamilton, thebrave chief of the Enniskilleners, descended first into the Shannon. Then the grenadiers lifted the Duke of Wirtemberg on their shoulders, and, with a great shout, plunged twenty abreast up to their cravats inwater. The stream ran deep and strong; but in a few minutes the head ofthe column reached dry land. Talmash was the fifth man that set footon the Connaught shore. The Irish, taken unprepared, fired one confusedvolley and fled, leaving their commander, Maxwell, a prisoner. Theconquerors clambered up the bank over the remains of walls shattered bya cannonade of ten days. Mackay heard his men cursing and swearing asthey stumbled among the rubbish. "My lads, " cried the stout old Puritanin the midst of the uproar, "you are brave fellows; but do not swear. We have more reason to thank God for the goodness which He has shownus this day than to take His name in vain. " The victory was complete. Planks were placed on the broken arches of the bridge and pontoonslaid on the river, without any opposition on the part of the terrifiedgarrison. With the loss of twelve men killed and about thirty woundedthe English had, in a few minutes, forced their way into Connaught. [100]

At the first alarm D'Usson hastened towards the river; but he wasmet, swept away, trampled down, and almost killed by the torrent offugitives. He was carried to the camp in such a state that it wasnecessary to bleed him. "Taken!" cried Saint Ruth, in dismay. "It cannotbe. A town taken, and I close by with an army to relieve it!" Cruellymortified, he struck his tents under cover of the night, and retreatedin the direction of Galway. At dawn the English saw far off, from thetop of King John's ruined castle, the Irish army moving through thedreary region which separates the Shannon from the Suck. Before noon therearguard had disappeared. [101]

Even before the loss of Athlone the Celtic camp had been distracted byfactions. It may easily be supposed, therefore, that, after so great adisaster, nothing was to be heard but crimination and recrimination. Theenemies of the Lord Lieutenant were more clamorous than ever. He and hiscreatures had brought the kingdom to the verge of perdition. He wouldmeddle with what he did not understand. He would overrule the plans ofmen who were real soldiers. He would entrust the most important of allposts to his tool, his spy, the wretched Maxwell, not a born Irishman, not a sincere Catholic, at best a blunderer, and too probably a traitor. Maxwell, it was affirmed, had left his men unprovided with ammunition. When they had applied to him for powder and ball, he had asked whetherthey wanted to shoot larks. Just before the attack he had told them togo to their supper and to take their rest, for that nothing more wouldbe done that day. When he had delivered himself up a prisoner, he haduttered some words which seemed to indicate a previous understandingwith the conquerors. The Lord Lieutenant's few friends told a verydifferent story. According to them, Tyrconnel and Maxwell had suggestedprecautions which would have made a surprise impossible. The FrenchGeneral, impatient of all interference, had omitted to take thoseprecautions. Maxwell had been rudely told that, if he was afraid, he hadbetter resign his command. He had done his duty bravely. He had stoodwhile his men fled. He had consequently fallen into the hands of theenemy; and he was now, in his absence, slandered by those to whom hiscaptivity was justly imputable. [102] On which side the truth lay itis not easy, at this distance of time, to pronounce. The cry againstTyrconnel was, at the moment, so loud, that he gave way and sullenlyretired to Limerick. D'Usson, who had not yet recovered from the hurtsinflicted by his own runaway troops, repaired to Galway. [103]

Saint Ruth, now left in undisputed possession of the supreme command, was bent on trying the chances of a battle. Most of the Irish officers, with Sarsfield at their head, were of a very different mind. It was, they said, not to be dissembled that, in discipline, the army of Ginkellwas far superior to theirs. The wise course, therefore, evidently wasto carry on the war in such a manner that the difference between thedisciplined and the undisciplined soldier might be as small as possible. It was well known that raw recruits often played their part well in aforay, in a street fight or in the defence of a rampart; but that, on apitched field, they had little chance against veterans. "Let most of ourfoot be collected behind the walls of Limerick and Galway. Let the rest, together with our horse, get in the rear of the enemy, and cut off hissupplies. If he advances into Connaught, let us overrun Leinster. If hesits down before Galway, which may well be defended, let us make a pushfor Dublin, which is altogether defenceless. " [104] Saint Ruth might, perhaps, have thought this advice good, if his judgment had notbeen biassed by his passions. But he was smarting from the pain of ahumiliating defeat. In sight of his tent, the English had passed a rapidriver, and had stormed a strong town. He could not but feel that, thoughothers might have been to blame, he was not himself blameless. He had, to say the least, taken things too easily. Lewis, accustomed to beserved during many years by commanders who were not in the habit ofleaving to chance any thing which could be made secure by wisdom, wouldhardly think it a sufficient excuse that his general had not expectedthe enemy to make so bold and sudden an attack. The Lord Lieutenantwould, of course, represent what had passed in the most unfavourablemanner; and whatever the Lord Lieutenant said James would echo. Asharp reprimand, a letter of recall, might be expected. To returnto Versailles a culprit; to approach the great King in an agony ofdistress; to see him shrug his shoulders, knit his brow and turn hisback; to be sent, far from courts and camps, to languish at some dullcountry seat; this was too much to be borne; and yet this might wellbe apprehended. There was one escape; to fight, and to conquer or toperish. 

In such a temper Saint Ruth pitched his camp about thirty miles fromAthlone on the road to Galway, near the ruined castle of Aghrim, anddetermined to await the approach of the English army. 

His whole deportment was changed. He had hitherto treated the Irishsoldiers with contemptuous severity. But now that he had resolvedto stake life and fame on the valour of the despised race, he becameanother man. During the few days which remained to him he exertedhimself to win by indulgence and caresses the hearts of all who wereunder his command. [105] He, at the same time, administered to histroops moral stimulants of the most potent kind. He was a zealous RomanCatholic; and it is probable that the severity with which he had treatedthe Protestants of his own country ought to be partly ascribed to thehatred which he felt for their doctrines. He now tried to give to thewar the character of a crusade. The clergy were the agents whom heemployed to sustain the courage of his soldiers. The whole camp was ina ferment with religious excitement. In every regiment priests werepraying, preaching, shriving, holding up the host and the cup. While thesoldiers swore on the sacramental bread not to abandon their colours, the General addressed to the officers an appeal which might have movedthe most languid and effeminate natures to heroic exertion. They werefighting, he said, for their religion, their liberty and their honour. Unhappy events, too widely celebrated, had brought a reproach on thenational character. Irish soldiership was every where mentioned with asneer. If they wished to retrieve the fame of their country, this wasthe time and this the place. [106]

The spot on which he had determined to bring the fate of Ireland toissue seems to have been chosen with great judgment. His army was drawnup on the slope of a hill, which was almost surrounded by red bog. Infront, near the edge of the morass, were some fences out of which abreastwork was without difficulty constructed. 

On the eleventh of July, Ginkell, having repaired the fortificationsof Athlone and left a garrison there, fixed his headquarters atBallinasloe, about four miles from Aghrim, and rode forward to take aview of the Irish position. On his return he gave orders that ammunitionshould be served out, that every musket and bayonet should be got readyfor action, and that early on the morrow every man should be under armswithout beat of drum. Two regiments were to remain in charge of thecamp; the rest, unincumbered by baggage, were to march against theenemy. 

Soon after six, the next morning, the English were on the way to Aghrim. But some delay was occasioned by a thick fog which hung till noonover the moist valley of the Suck; a further delay was caused by thenecessity of dislodging the Irish from some outposts; and the afternoonwas far advanced when the two armies at length confronted each otherwith nothing but the bog and the breastwork between them. The Englishand their allies were under twenty thousand; the Irish above twenty-fivethousand. 

Ginkell held a short consultation with his principal officers. Shouldhe attack instantly, or wait till the next morning? Mackay was forattacking instantly; and his opinion prevailed. At five the battlebegan. The English foot, in such order as they could keep on treacherousand uneven ground, made their way, sinking deep in mud at every step, tothe Irish works. But those works were defended with a resolution such asextorted some words of ungracious eulogy even from men who entertainedthe strongest prejudices against the Celtic race. [107] Again and againthe assailants were driven back. Again and again they returned to thestruggle. Once they were broken, and chased across the morass; butTalmash rallied them, and forced the pursuers to retire. The fight hadlasted two hours; the evening was closing in; and still the advantagewas on the side of the Irish. Ginkell began to meditate a retreat. Thehopes of Saint Ruth rose high. "The day is ours, my boys, " he cried, waving his hat in the air. "We will drive them before us to the walls ofDublin. " But fortune was already on the turn. Mackay and Ruvigny, withthe English and Huguenot cavalry, had succeeded in passing the bog ata place where two horsemen could scarcely ride abreast. Saint Ruth atfirst laughed when he saw the Blues, in single file, struggling throughthe morass under a fire which every moment laid some gallant hat andfeather on the earth. "What do they mean?" he asked; and then heswore that it was pity to see such fine fellows rushing to certaindestruction. "Let them cross, however;" he said. "The more they are, the more we shall kill. " But soon he saw them laying hurdles on thequagmire. A broader and safer path was formed; squadron after squadronreached firm ground: the flank of the Irish army was speedily turned. The French general was hastening to the rescue when a cannon ballcarried off his head. Those who were about him thought that it wouldbe dangerous to make his fate known. His corpse was wrapped in a cloak, carried from the field, and laid, with all secresy, in the sacred groundamong the ruins of the ancient monastery of Loughrea. Till the fight wasover neither army was aware that he was no more. To conceal his deathfrom the private soldiers might perhaps have been prudent. To conceal itfrom his lieutenants was madness. The crisis of the battle had arrived;and there was none to give direction. Sarsfield was in command of thereserve. But he had been strictly enjoined by Saint Ruth not to stirwithout orders; and no orders came. Mackay and Ruvigny with their horsecharged the Irish in flank. Talmash and his foot returned to the attackin front with dogged determination. The breastwork was carried. TheIrish, still fighting, retreated from inclosure to inclosure. But, asinclosure after inclosure was forced, their efforts became fainterand fainter. At length they broke and fled. Then followed a horriblecarnage. The conquerors were in a savage mood. For a report had beenspread among them that, during the early part of the battle, someEnglish captives who had been admitted to quarter had been put to thesword. Only four hundred prisoners were taken. The number of the slainwas, in proportion to the number engaged, greater than in any otherbattle of that age. But for the coming on of a moonless night, madedarker by a misty rain, scarcely a man would have escaped. The obscurityenabled Sarsfield, with a few squadrons which still remained unbroken, to cover the retreat. Of the conquerors six hundred were killed, andabout a thousand wounded. 

The English slept that night on the field of battle. On the followingday they buried their companions in arms, and then marched westward. The vanquished were left unburied, a strange and ghastly spectacle. Fourthousand Irish corpses were counted on the field of battle. A hundredand fifty lay in one small inclosure, a hundred and twenty in another. But the slaughter had not been confined to the field of battle. One whowas there tells us that, from the top of the hill on which the Celticcamp had been pitched, he saw the country, to the distance of near fourmiles, white with the naked bodies of the slain. The plain looked, hesaid, like an immense pasture covered by flocks of sheep. As usual, different estimates were formed even by eyewitnesses. But it seemsprobable that the number of the Irish who fell was not less than seventhousand. Soon a multitude of dogs came to feast on the carnage. Thesebeasts became so fierce, and acquired such a taste for human flesh, that it was long dangerous for men to travel this road otherwise than incompanies. [108]

The beaten army had now lost all the appearance of an army, andresembled a rabble crowding home from a fair after a faction fight. Onegreat stream of fugitives ran towards Galway, another towards Limerick. The roads to both cities were covered with weapons which had been flungaway. Ginkell offered sixpence for every musket. In a short time so manywaggon loads were collected that he reduced the price to twopence; andstill great numbers of muskets came in. [109]

The conquerors marched first against Galway. D'Usson was there, andhad under him seven regiments, thinned by the slaughter of Aghrim andutterly disorganized and disheartened. The last hope of the garrisonand of the Roman Catholic inhabitants was that Baldearg O'Donnel, thepromised deliverer of their race, would come to the rescue. But BaldeargO'Donnel was not duped by the superstitious veneration of which hewas the object. While there remained any doubt about the issue of theconflict between the Englishry and the Irishry, he had stood aloof. On the day of the battle he had remained at a safe distance with histumultuary army; and, as soon as he had learned that his countrymen hadbeen put to rout, he fled, plundering and burning all the way, to themountains of Mayo. Thence he sent to Ginkell offers of submissionand service. Ginkell gladly seized the opportunity of breaking upa formidable band of marauders, and of turning to good account theinfluence which the name of a Celtic dynasty still exercised over theCeltic race. The negotiation however was not without difficulties. Thewandering adventurer at first demanded nothing less than an earldom. After some haggling he consented to sell the love of a whole people, andhis pretensions to regal dignity, for a pension of five hundred pounds ayear. Yet the spell which bound his followers to hire was not altogetherbroken. Some enthusiasts from Ulster were willing to fight under theO'Donnel against their own language and their own religion. With a smallbody of these devoted adherents, he joined a division of the Englisharmy, and on several occasions did useful service to William. [110]

When it was known that no succour was to be expected from the hero whoseadvent had been foretold by so many seers, the Irish who were shut up inGalway lost all heart. D'Usson had returned a stout answer to thefirst summons of the besiegers; but he soon saw that resistance wasimpossible, and made haste to capitulate. The garrison was sufferedto retire to Limerick with the honours of war. A full amnesty for pastoffences was granted to the citizens; and it was stipulated that, withinthe walls, the Roman Catholic priests should be allowed to performin private the rites of their religion. On these terms the gates werethrown open. Ginkell was received with profound respect by the Mayor andAldermen, and was complimented in a set speech by the Recorder. D'Usson, with about two thousand three hundred men, marched unmolested toLimerick. [111]

At Limerick, the last asylum of the vanquished race, the authority ofTyrconnel was supreme. There was now no general who could pretend thathis commission made him independent of the Lord Lieutenant; nor was theLord Lieutenant now so unpopular as he had been a fortnight earlier. Since the battle there had been a reflux of public feeling. No part ofthat great disaster could be imputed to the Viceroy. His opinion indeedhad been against trying the chances of a pitched field, and he couldwith some plausibility assert that the neglect of his counsels hadcaused the ruin of Ireland. [112]

He made some preparations for defending Limerick, repaired thefortifications, and sent out parties to bring in provisions. Thecountry, many miles round, was swept bare by these detachments, anda considerable quantity of cattle and fodder was collected within thewalls. There was also a large stock of biscuit imported from France. The infantry assembled at Limerick were about fifteen thousand men. The Irish horse and dragoons, three or four thousand in number, wereencamped on the Clare side of the Shannon. The communication betweentheir camp and the city was maintained by means of a bridge called theThomond Bridge, which was protected by a fort. These means of defencewere not contemptible. But the fall of Athlone and the slaughter ofAghrim had broken the spirit of the army. A small party, at the head ofwhich were Sarsfield and a brave Scotch officer named Wauchop, cherisheda hope that the triumphant progress of Ginkell might be stopped by thosewalls from which William had, in the preceding year, been forced toretreat. But many of the Irish chiefs loudly declared that it wastime to think of capitulating. Henry Luttrell, always fond of dark andcrooked politics, opened a secret negotiation with the English. One ofhis letters was intercepted; and he was put under arrest; but manywho blamed his perfidy agreed with him in thinking that it was idle toprolong the contest. Tyrconnel himself was convinced that all was lost. His only hope was that he might be able to prolong the struggle tillhe could receive from Saint Germains permission to treat. He wrote torequest that permission, and prevailed, with some difficulty, on hisdesponding countrymen to bind themselves by an oath not to capitulatetill an answer from James should arrive. [113]

A few days after the oath had been administered, Tyrconnel was no more. On the eleventh of August he dined with D'Usson. The party was gay. TheLord Lieutenant seemed to have thrown off the load which had bowed downhis body and mind; he drank; he jested; he was again the Dick Talbotwho had diced and revelled with Grammont. Soon after he had risen fromtable, an apoplectic stroke deprived him of speech and sensation. On thefourteenth he breathed his last. The wasted remains of that form whichhad once been a model for statuaries were laid under the pavement of theCathedral; but no inscription, no tradition, preserves the memory of thespot. [114]

As soon as the Lord Lieutenant was no more, Plowden, who hadsuperintended the Irish finances while there were any Irish finances tosuperintend, produced a commission under the great seal of James. Thiscommission appointed Plowden himself, Fitton and Nagle, Lords justicesin the event of Tyrconnel's death. There was much murmuring when thenames were made known. For both Plowden and Fitton were Saxons. Thecommission, however, proved to be a mere nullity. For it was accompaniedby instructions which forbade the Lords justices to interfere in theconduct of the war; and, within the narrow space to which the dominionsof James were now reduced, war was the only business. The governmentwas, therefore, really in the hands of D'Usson and Sarsfield. [115]

On the day on which Tyrconnel died, the advanced guard of the Englisharmy came within sight of Limerick. Ginkell encamped on the same groundwhich William had occupied twelve months before. The batteries, on whichwere planted guns and bombs, very different from those which William hadbeen forced to use, played day and night; and soon roofs were blazingand walls crashing in every corner of the city. Whole streets werereduced to ashes. Meanwhile several English ships of war came up theShannon and anchored about a mile below the city. [116]

Still the place held out; the garrison was, in numerical strength, little inferior to the besieging army; and it seemed not impossiblethat the defence might be prolonged till the equinoctial rains should asecond time compel the English to retire. Ginkell determined on strikinga bold stroke. No point in the whole circle of the fortifications wasmore important, and no point seemed to be more secure, than the ThomondBridge, which joined the city to the camp of the Irish horse on theClare bank of the Shannon. The Dutch General's plan was to separate theinfantry within the ramparts from the cavalry without; and this plan heexecuted with great skill, vigour and success. He laid a bridge oftin boats on the river, crossed it with a strong body of troops, drovebefore him in confusion fifteen hundred dragoons who made a faint showof resistance, and marched towards the quarters of the Irish horse. TheIrish horse sustained but ill on this day the reputation which they hadgained at the Boyne. Indeed, that reputation had been purchased bythe almost entire destruction of the best regiments. Recruits had beenwithout much difficulty found. But the loss of fifteen hundred excellentsoldiers was not to be repaired. The camp was abandoned without a blow. Some of the cavalry fled into the city. The rest, driving before themas many cattle as could be collected in that moment of panic, retired tothe hills. Much beef, brandy and harness was found in the magazines; andthe marshy plain of the Shannon was covered with firelocks and grenadeswhich the fugitives had thrown away. [117]

The conquerors returned in triumph to their camp. But Ginkell was notcontent with the advantage which he had gained. He was bent on cuttingoff all communication between Limerick and the county of Clare. In afew days, therefore, he again crossed the river at the head of severalregiments, and attacked the fort which protected the Thomond Bridge. Ina short time the fort was stormed. The soldiers who had garrisoned itfled in confusion to the city. The Town Major, a French officer, whocommanded at the Thomond Gate, afraid that the pursuers would enter withthe fugitives, ordered that part of the bridge which was nearest to thecity to be drawn up. Many of the Irish went headlong into the stream andperished there. Others cried for quarter, and held up handkerchiefsin token of submission. But the conquerors were mad with rage; theircruelty could not be immediately restrained; and no prisoners were madetill the heaps of corpses rose above the parapets. The garrison of thefort had consisted of about eight hundred men. Of these only a hundredand twenty escaped into Limerick. [118]

This disaster seemed likely to produce a general mutiny in the besiegedcity. The Irish clamoured for the blood of the Town Major whohad ordered the bridge to be drawn up in the face of their flyingcountrymen. His superiors were forced to promise that he should bebrought before a court martial. Happily for him, he had received amortal wound, in the act of closing the Thomond Gate, and was saved bya soldier's death from the fury of the multitude. [119] The cry forcapitulation became so loud and importunate that the generals could notresist it. D'Usson informed his government that the fight at thebridge had so effectually cowed the spirit of the garrison that it wasimpossible to continue the struggle. [120] Some exception may perhapsbe taken to the evidence of D'Usson; for undoubtedly he, like everyFrenchman who had held any command in the Irish army, was weary of hisbanishment, and impatient to see Paris again. But it is certain thateven Sarsfield had lost heart. Up to this time his voice had been forstubborn resistance. He was now not only willing, but impatient totreat. [121] It seemed to him that the city was doomed. There was nohope of succour, domestic or foreign. In every part of Ireland theSaxons had set their feet on the necks of the natives. Sligo had fallen. Even those wild islands which intercept the huge waves of the Atlanticfrom the bay of Galway had acknowledged the authority of William. Themen of Kerry, reputed the fiercest and most ungovernable part of theaboriginal population, had held out long, but had at length been routed, and chased to their woods and mountains. [122] A French fleet, if aFrench fleet were now to arrive on the coast of Munster, would findthe mouth of the Shannon guarded by English men of war. The stock ofprovisions within Limerick was already running low. If the siege wereprolonged, the town would, in all human probability, be reduced eitherby force or by blockade. And, if Ginkell should enter through thebreach, or should be implored by a multitude perishing with hungerto dictate his own terms, what could be expected but a tyranny moreinexorably severe than that of Cromwell? Would it not then be wiseto try what conditions could be obtained while the victors had stillsomething to fear from the rage and despair of the vanquished; whilethe last Irish army could still make some show of resistance behind thewalls of the last Irish fortress?

On the evening of the day which followed the fight at the ThomondGate, the drums of Limerick beat a parley; and Wauchop, from one of thetowers, hailed the besiegers, and requested Ruvigny to grant Sarsfieldan interview. The brave Frenchman who was an exile on account of hisattachment to one religion, and the brave Irishman who was aboutto become an exile on account of his attachment to another, met andconferred, doubtless with mutual sympathy and respect. [123] Ginkell, to whom Ruvigny reported what had passed, willingly consented to anarmistice. For, constant as his success had been, it had not made himsecure. The chances were greatly on his side. Yet it was possible thatan attempt to storm the city might fail, as a similar attempt had failedtwelve months before. If the siege should be turned into a blockade, it was probable that the pestilence which had been fatal to the army ofSchomberg, which had compelled William to retreat, and which had all butprevailed even against the genius and energy of Marlborough, might soonavenge the carnage of Aghrim. The rains had lately been heavy. The wholeplain might shortly be an immense pool of stagnant water. It might benecessary to move the troops to a healthier situation than the bankof the Shannon, and to provide for them a warmer shelter than that oftents. The enemy would be safe till the spring. In the spring a Frencharmy might land in Ireland; the natives might again rise in arms fromDonegal to Kerry; and the war, which was now all but extinguished, mightblaze forth fiercer than ever. 

A negotiation was therefore opened with a sincere desire on both sidesto put an end to the contest. The chiefs of the Irish army held severalconsultations at which some Roman Catholic prelates and some eminentlawyers were invited to assist. A preliminary question, which perplexedtender consciences, was submitted by the Bishops. The late LordLieutenant had persuaded the officers of the garrison to swear that theywould not surrender Limerick till they should receive an answer to theletter in which their situation had been explained to James. The Bishopsthought that the oath was no longer binding. It had been taken at a timewhen the communications with France were open, and in the full beliefthat the answer of James would arrive within three weeks. More thantwice that time had elapsed. Every avenue leading to the city wasstrictly guarded by the enemy. His Majesty's faithful subjects, byholding out till it had become impossible for him to signify hispleasure to them, had acted up to the spirit of their promise. [124]

The next question was what terms should be demanded. A paper, containingpropositions which statesmen of our age will think reasonable, but whichto the most humane and liberal English Protestants of the seventeenthcentury appeared extravagant, was sent to the camp of the besiegers. What was asked was that all offences should be covered with oblivion, that perfect freedom of worship should be allowed to the nativepopulation, that every parish should have its priest, and that IrishRoman Catholics should be capable of holding all offices, civil andmilitary, and of enjoying all municipal privileges. [125]

Ginkell knew little of the laws and feelings of the English; but hehad about him persons who were competent to direct him. They had a weekbefore prevented him from breaking a Rapparee on the wheel; and they nowsuggested an answer to the propositions of the enemy. "I am a strangerhere, " said Ginkell; "I am ignorant of the constitution of thesekingdoms; but I am assured that what you ask is inconsistent withthat constitution; and therefore I cannot with honour consent. " Heimmediately ordered a new battery to be thrown up, and guns and mortarsto be planted on it. But his preparations were speedily interrupted byanother message from the city. The Irish begged that, since he could notgrant what they had demanded, he would tell them what he was willing togrant. He called his advisers round him, and, after some consultation, sent back a paper containing the heads of a treaty, such as he hadreason to believe that the government which he served would approve. What he offered was indeed much less than what the Irish desired, butwas quite as much as, when they considered their situation and thetemper of the English nation, they could expect. They speedily notifiedtheir assent. It was agreed that there should be a cessation of arms, not only by land, but in the ports and bays of Munster, and that a fleetof French transports should be suffered to come up the Shannon in peaceand to depart in peace. The signing of the treaty was deferred tillthe Lords justices, who represented William at Dublin, should arriveat Ginkell's quarters. But there was during some days a relaxation ofmilitary vigilance on both sides. Prisoners were set at liberty. Theoutposts of the two armies chatted and messed together. The Englishofficers rambled into the town. The Irish officers dined in the camp. Anecdotes of what passed at the friendly meetings of these men, who hadso lately been mortal enemies, were widely circulated. One story, inparticular, was repeated in every part of Europe. "Has not this lastcampaign, " said Sarsfield to some English officers, "raised your opinionof Irish soldiers?" "To tell you the truth, " answered an Englishman, "wethink of them much as we always did. " "However meanly you may think ofus, " replied Sarsfield, "change Kings with us, and we will willingly tryour luck with you again. " He was doubtless thinking of the day on whichhe had seen the two Sovereigns at the head of two great armies, Williamforemost in the charge, and James foremost in the flight. [126]

On the first of October, Coningsby and Porter arrived at the Englishheadquarters. On the second the articles of capitulation were discussedat great length and definitely settled. On the third they were signed. They were divided into two parts, a military treaty and a civil treaty. The former was subscribed only by the generals on both sides. The Lordsjustices set their names to the latter. [127]

By the military treaty it was agreed that such Irish officers andsoldiers as should declare that they wished to go to France should beconveyed thither, and should, in the meantime, remain under the commandof their own generals. Ginkell undertook to furnish a considerablenumber of transports. French vessels were also to be permitted to passand repass freely between Britanny and Munster. Part of Limerick was tobe immediately delivered up to the English. But the island on which theCathedral and the Castle stand was to remain, for the present, in thekeeping of the Irish. 

The terms of the civil treaty were very different from those whichGinkell had sternly refused to grant. It was not stipulated that theRoman Catholics of Ireland should be competent to hold any political ormilitary office, or that they should be admitted into any corporation. But they obtained a promise that they should enjoy such privileges inthe exercise of their religion as were consistent with the law, or asthey had enjoyed in the reign of Charles the Second. 

To all inhabitants of Limerick, and to all officers and soldiers inthe Jacobite army, who should submit to the government and notify theirsubmission by taking the oath of allegiance, an entire amnesty waspromised. They were to retain their property; they were to be allowedto exercise any profession which they had exercised before the troubles;they were not to be punished for any treason, felony, or misdemeanourcommitted since the accession of the late King; nay, they were not tobe sued for damages on account of any act of spoliation or outrage whichthey might have committed during the three years of confusion. This wasmore than the Lords justices were constitutionally competent togrant. It was therefore added that the government would use its utmostendeavours to obtain a Parliamentary ratification of the treaty. [128]

As soon as the two instruments had been signed, the English entered thecity, and occupied one quarter of it. A narrow, but deep branch ofthe Shannon separated them from the quarter which was still in thepossession of the Irish. [129]

In a few hours a dispute arose which seemed likely to produce a renewalof hostilities. Sarsfield had resolved to seek his fortune in theservice of France, and was naturally desirous to carry with him to theContinent such a body of troops as would be an important addition to thearmy of Lewis. Ginkell was as naturally unwilling to send thousandsof men to swell the forces of the enemy. Both generals appealed to thetreaty. Each construed it as suited his purpose, and each complainedthat the other had violated it. Sarsfield was accused of putting one ofhis officers under arrest for refusing to go to the Continent. Ginkell, greatly excited, declared that he would teach the Irish to play trickswith him, and began to make preparations for a cannonade. Sarsfieldcame to the English camp, and tried to justify what he had done. Thealtercation was sharp. "I submit, " said Sarsfield, at last: "I am inyour power. " "Not at all in my power, " said Ginkell, "go back and doyour worst. " The imprisoned officer was liberated; a sanguinary contestwas averted; and the two commanders contented themselves with a war ofwords. [130] Ginkell put forth proclamations assuring the Irish that, ifthey would live quietly in their own land, they should be protected andfavoured, and that if they preferred a military life, they should beadmitted into the service of King William. It was added that no man, who chose to reject this gracious invitation and to become a soldier ofLewis, must expect ever again to set foot on the island. Sarsfield andWauchop exerted their eloquence on the other side. The present aspectof affairs, they said, was doubtless gloomy; but there was bright skybeyond the cloud. The banishment would be short. The return would betriumphant. Within a year the French would invade England. In suchan invasion the Irish troops, if only they remained unbroken, wouldassuredly bear a chief part. In the meantime it was far better for themto live in a neighbouring and friendly country, under the parental careof their own rightful King, than to trust the Prince of Orange, whowould probably send them to the other end of the world to fight for hisally the Emperor against the Janissaries. 

The help of the Roman Catholic clergy was called in. On the day onwhich those who had made up their minds to go to France were requiredto announce their determination, the priests were indefatigable inexhorting. At the head of every regiment a sermon was preached on theduty of adhering to the cause of the Church, and on the sin and dangerof consorting with unbelievers. [131] Whoever, it was said, should enterthe service of the usurpers would do so at the peril of his soul. Theheretics affirmed that, after the peroration, a plentiful allowance ofbrandy was served out to the audience, and that, when the brandy hadbeen swallowed, a Bishop pronounced a benediction. Thus duly preparedby physical and moral stimulants, the garrison, consisting of aboutfourteen thousand infantry, was drawn up in the vast meadow which layon the Clare bank of the Shannon. Here copies of Ginkell's proclamationwere profusely scattered about; and English officers went through theranks imploring the men not to ruin themselves, and explaining to themthe advantages which the soldiers of King William enjoyed. At length thedecisive moment came. The troops were ordered to pass in review. Those who wished to remain in Ireland were directed to file off ata particular spot. All who passed that spot were to be considered ashaving made their choice for France. Sarsfield and Wauchop on one side, Porter, Coningsby and Ginkell on the other, looked on with painfulanxiety. D'Usson and his countrymen, though not uninterested in thespectacle, found it hard to preserve their gravity. The confusion, the clamour, the grotesque appearance of an army in which there couldscarcely be seen a shirt or a pair of pantaloons, a shoe or a stocking, presented so ludicrous a contrast to the orderly and brilliantappearance of their master's troops, that they amused themselves bywondering what the Parisians would say to see such a force mustered onthe plain of Grenelle. [132]

First marched what was called the Royal regiment, fourteen hundredstrong. All but seven went beyond the fatal point. Ginkell's countenanceshowed that he was deeply mortified. He was consoled, however, by seeingthe next regiment, which consisted of natives of Ulster, turn off to aman. There had arisen, notwithstanding the community of blood, languageand religion, an antipathy between the Celts of Ulster and those ofthe other three provinces; nor is it improbable that the example andinfluence of Baldearg O'Donnel may have had some effect on the people ofthe land which his forefathers had ruled. [133] In most of the regimentsthere was a division of opinion; but a great majority declared forFrance. Henry Luttrell was one of those who turned off. He was rewardedfor his desertion, and perhaps for other services, with a grant of thelarge estate of his elder brother Simon, who firmly adhered to the causeof James, with a pension of five hundred pounds a year from the Crown, and with the abhorrence of the Roman Catholic population. After livingin wealth, luxury and infamy, during a quarter of a century, HenryLuttrell was murdered while going through Dublin in his sedan chair;and the Irish House of Commons declared that there was reason to suspectthat he had fallen by the revenge of the Papists. [134] Eighty yearsafter his death his grave near Luttrellstown was violated by thedescendants of those whom he had betrayed, and his skull was brokento pieces with a pickaxe. [135] The deadly hatred of which he was theobject descended to his son and to his grandson; and, unhappily, nothingin the character either of his son or of his grandson tended to mitigatethe feeling which the name of Luttrell excited. [136]

When the long procession had closed, it was found that about a thousandmen had agreed to enter into William's service. About two thousandaccepted passes from Ginkell, and went quietly home. About eleventhousand returned with Sarsfield to the city. A few hours after thegarrison had passed in review, the horse, who were encamped some milesfrom the town, were required to make their choice; and most of themvolunteered for France. [137]

Sarsfield considered the troops who remained with him as under anirrevocable obligation to go abroad; and, lest they should be tempted toretract their consent, he confined them within the ramparts, and orderedthe gates to be shut and strongly guarded. Ginkell, though in hisvexation he muttered some threats, seems to have felt that he could notjustifiably interfere. But the precautions of the Irish general werefar from being completely successful. It was by no means strange that asuperstitious and excitable kerne, with a sermon and a dram in his head, should be ready to promise whatever his priests required; neither was itstrange that, when he had slept off his liquor, and when anathemas wereno longer ringing in his ears, he should feel painful misgivings. Hehad bound himself to go into exile, perhaps for life, beyond that drearyexpanse of waters which impressed his rude mind with mysterious terror. His thoughts ran on all that he was to leave, on the well known peatstack and potatoe ground, and on the mud cabin, which, humble as it was, was still his home. He was never again to see the familiar faces roundthe turf fire, or to hear the familiar notes of the old Celtic songs. The ocean was to roll between him and the dwelling of his greyheadedparents and his blooming sweetheart. Here were some who, unable to bearthe misery of such a separation, and, finding it impossible to pass thesentinels who watched the gates, sprang into the river and gained theopposite bank. The number of these daring swimmers, however, was notgreat; and the army would probably have been transported almost entireif it had remained at Limerick till the day of embarkation. But many ofthe vessels in which the voyage was to be performed lay at Cork; andit was necessary that Sarsfield should proceed thither with some of hisbest regiments. It was a march of not less than four days through awild country. To prevent agile youths, familiar with all the shifts ofa vagrant and predatory life, from stealing off to the bogs, and woodsunder cover of the night, was impossible. 

Indeed, many soldiers had the audacity to run away by broad daylightbefore they were out of sight of Limerick Cathedral. The Royal regiment, which had, on the day of the review, set so striking an example offidelity to the cause of James, dwindled from fourteen hundred men tofive hundred. Before the last ships departed, news came that those whohad sailed by the first ships had been ungraciously received at Brest. They had been scantily fed; they had been able to obtain neither pay norclothing; though winter was setting in, they slept in the fields with nocovering but the hedges. Many had been heard to say that it would havebeen far better to die in old Ireland than to live in the inhospitablecountry to which they had been banished. The effect of those reports wasthat hundreds, who had long persisted in their intention of emigrating, refused at the last moment to go on board, threw down their arms, andreturned to their native villages. [138]

Sarsfield perceived that one chief cause of the desertion which wasthinning his army was the natural unwillingness of the men to leavetheir families in a state of destitution. Cork and its neighbourhoodwere filled with the kindred of those who were going abroad. Greatnumbers of women, many of them leading, carrying, suckling theirinfants, covered all the roads which led to the place of embarkation. The Irish general, apprehensive of the effect which the entreaties andlamentations of these poor creatures could not fail to produce, putforth a proclamation, in which he assured his soldiers that they shouldbe permitted to carry their wives and families to France. It would beinjurious to the memory of so brave and loyal a gentleman to supposethat when he made this promise he meant to break it. It is much moreprobable that he had formed an erroneous estimate of the number of thosewho would demand a passage, and that he found himself, when it wastoo late to alter his arrangements, unable to keep his word. After thesoldiers had embarked, room was found for the families of many. Butstill there remained on the water side a great multitude clamouringpiteously to be taken on board. As the last boats put off there was arush into the surf. Some women caught hold of the ropes, were draggedout of their depth, clung till their fingers were cut through, andperished in the waves. The ships began to move. A wild and terrible wailrose from the shore, and excited unwonted compassion in hearts steeledby hatred of the Irish race and of the Romish faith. Even the sternCromwellian, now at length, after a desperate struggle of three years, left the undisputed lord of the bloodstained and devastated island, could not hear unmoved that bitter cry, in which was poured forth allthe rage and all the sorrow of a conquered nation. [139]

The sails disappeared. The emaciated and brokenhearted crowd of thosewhom a stroke more cruel than that of death had made widows and orphansdispersed, to beg their way home through a wasted land, or to lie downand die by the roadside of grief and hunger. The exiles departed, tolearn in foreign camps that discipline without which natural courage isof small avail, and to retrieve on distant fields of battle the honourwhich had been lost by a long series of defeats at home. In Irelandthere was peace. The domination of the colonists was absolute. Thenative population was tranquil with the ghastly tranquillity ofexhaustion and of despair. There were indeed outrages, robberies, fireraisings, assassinations. But more than a century passed awaywithout one general insurrection. During that century, two rebellionswere raised in Great Britain by the adherents of the House of Stuart. But neither when the elder Pretender was crowned at Scone, nor when theyounger held his court at Holyrood, was the standard of that House setup in Connaught or Munster. In 1745, indeed, when the Highlanders weremarching towards London, the Roman Catholics of Ireland were so quietthat the Lord Lieutenant could, without the smallest risk, send severalregiments across Saint George's Channel to recruit the army of the Dukeof Cumberland. Nor was this submission the effect of content, but ofmere stupefaction and brokenness of heart. The iron had entered into thesoul. The memory of past defeats, the habit of daily enduring insultand oppression, had cowed the spirit of the unhappy nation. There wereindeed Irish Roman Catholics of great ability, energy and ambition; butthey were to be found every where except in Ireland, at Versailles andat Saint Ildefonso, in the armies of Frederic and in the armies of MariaTheresa. One exile became a Marshal of France. Another became PrimeMinister of Spain. If he had staid in his native land he would have beenregarded as an inferior by all the ignorant and worthless squireens whodrank the glorious and immortal memory. In his palace at Madrid he hadthe pleasure of being assiduously courted by the ambassador of Georgethe Second, and of bidding defiance in high terms to the ambassador ofGeorge the Third. [140] Scattered over all Europe were to be foundbrave Irish generals, dexterous Irish diplomatists, Irish Counts, IrishBarons, Irish Knights of Saint Lewis and of Saint Leopold, of the WhiteEagle and of the Golden Fleece, who, if they had remained in the houseof bondage, could not have been ensigns of marching regiments or freemenof petty corporations. These men, the natural chiefs of their race, having been withdrawn, what remained was utterly helpless and passive. A rising of the Irishry against the Englishry was no more to beapprehended than a rising of the women and children against the men. [141]

There were indeed, in those days, fierce disputes between the mothercountry and the colony; but in those disputes the aboriginal populationhad no more interest than the Red Indians in the dispute between OldEngland and New England about the Stamp Act. The ruling few, even whenin mutiny against the government, had no mercy for any thing thatlooked like mutiny on the part of the subject many. None of those Romanpatriots, who poniarded Julius Caesar for aspiring to be a king, would have had the smallest scruple about crucifying a whole school ofgladiators for attempting to escape from the most odious and degradingof all kinds of servitude. None of those Virginian patriots, whovindicated their separation from the British empire by proclaiming it tobe a selfevident truth that all men were endowed by the Creator with anunalienable right to liberty, would have had the smallest scruple aboutshooting any negro slave who had laid claim to that unalienable right. 

And, in the same manner, the Protestant masters of Ireland, whileostentatiously professing the political doctrines of Locke and Sidney, held that a people who spoke the Celtic tongue and heard mass could haveno concern in those doctrines. Molyneux questioned the supremacy ofthe English legislature. Swift assailed, with the keenest ridicule andinvective, every part of the system of government. Lucas disquieted theadministration of Lord Harrington. Boyle overthrew the administrationof the Duke of Dorset. But neither Molyneux nor Swift, neither Lucas norBoyle, ever thought of appealing to the native population. They wouldas soon have thought of appealing to the swine. [142] At a later periodHenry Flood excited the dominant class to demand a Parliamentary reform, and to use even revolutionary means for the purpose of obtaining thatreform. But neither he, nor those who looked up to him as their chief, and who went close to the verge of treason at his bidding, would consentto admit the subject class to the smallest share of political power. Thevirtuous and accomplished Charlemont, a Whig of the Whigs, passed a longlife in contending for what he called the freedom of his country. Buthe voted against the law which gave the elective franchise to RomanCatholic freeholders; and he died fixed in the opinion that theParliament House ought to be kept pure from Roman Catholic members. Indeed, during the century which followed the Revolution, theinclination of an English Protestant to trample on the Irishry wasgenerally proportioned to the zeal which he professed for politicalliberty in the abstract. If he uttered any expression of compassion forthe majority oppressed by the minority, he might be safely set down as abigoted Tory and High Churchman. [143]

All this time hatred, kept down by fear, festered in the hearts of thechildren of the soil. They were still the same people that had sprungto arms in 1641 at the call of O'Neill, and in 1689 at the call ofTyrconnel. To them every festival instituted by the State was a day ofmourning, and every public trophy set up by the State was a memorial ofshame. We have never known, and can but faintly conceive, the feelingsof a nation doomed to see constantly in all its public places themonuments of its subjugation. Such monuments every where met the eyeof the Irish Roman Catholics. In front of the Senate House of theircountry, they saw the statue of their conqueror. If they entered, theysaw the walls tapestried with the defeats of their fathers. At length, after a hundred years of servitude, endured without one vigorous orcombined struggle for emancipation, the French revolution awakened awild hope in the bosoms of the oppressed. Men who had inherited all thepretensions and all the passions of the Parliament which James had heldat the Kings Inns could not hear unmoved of the downfall of a wealthyestablished Church, of the flight of a splendid aristocracy, of theconfiscation of an immense territory. Old antipathies, which had neverslumbered, were excited to new and terrible energy by the combinationof stimulants which, in any other society, would have counteracted eachother. The spirit of Popery and the spirit of Jacobinism, irreconcilableantagonists every where else, were for once mingled in an unnaturaland portentous union. Their joint influence produced the third andlast rising up of the aboriginal population against the colony. Thegreatgrandsons of the soldiers of Galmoy and Sarsfield were opposed tothe greatgrandsons of the soldiers of Wolseley and Mitchelburn. The Celtagain looked impatiently for the sails which were to bring succour fromBrest; and the Saxon was again backed by the whole power of England. Again the victory remained with the well educated and well organizedminority. But, happily, the vanquished people found protection ina quarter from which they would once have had to expect nothing butimplacable severity. By this time the philosophy of the eighteenthcentury had purifed English Whiggism from that deep taint of intolerancewhich had been contracted during a long and close alliance with thePuritanism of the seventeenth century. Enlightened men had begun to feelthat the arguments by which Milton and Locke, Tillotson and Burnet, hadvindicated the rights of conscience might be urged with not less forcein favour of the Roman Catholic than in favour of the Independent orthe Baptist. The great party which traces its descent through theExclusionists up to the Roundheads continued during thirty years, inspite of royal frowns and popular clamours, to demand a share in allthe benefits of our free constitution for those Irish Papists whom theRoundheads and the Exclusionists had considered merely as beasts ofchase or as beasts of burden. But it will be for some other historian torelate the vicissitudes of that great conflict, and the late triumph ofreason and humanity. Unhappily such a historian will have to relate thatthe triumph won by such exertions and by such sacrifices was immediatelyfollowed by disappointment; that it proved far less easy to eradicateevil passions than to repeal evil laws; and that, long after everytrace of national and religious animosity had been obliterated from theStatute Book, national and religious animosities continued to ranklein the bosoms of millions. May he be able also to relate that wisdom, justice and time gradually did in Ireland what they had done inScotland, and that all the races which inhabit the British isles were atlength indissolubly blended into one people!

CHAPTER XVIII

 Opening of the Parliament--Debates on the Salaries and Fees of Official Men--Act excluding Papists from Public Trust in Ireland--Debates on the East India Trade--Debates on the Bill for regulating Trials in Cases of High Treason--Plot formed by Marlborough against the Government of William--Marlborough's Plot disclosed by the Jacobites--Disgrace of Marlborough; Various Reports touching the Cause of Marlborough's Disgrace. --Rupture between Mary and Anne--Fuller's Plot--Close of the Session; Bill for ascertaining the Salaries of the Judges rejected--Misterial Changes in England--Ministerial Changes in Scotland--State of the Highlands--Breadalbane employed to negotiate with the Rebel Clans--Glencoe--William goes to the Continent; Death of Louvois--The French Government determines to send an Expedition against England--James believes that the English Fleet is friendly to him--Conduct of Russell--A Daughter born to James--Preparations made in England to repel Invasion--James goes down to his Army at La Hogue--James's Declaration--Effect produced by James's Declaration--The English and Dutch Fleets join; Temper of the English Fleet--Battle of La Hogue--Rejoicings in England--Young's Plot

ON the nineteenth of October 1691, William arrived at Kensington fromthe Netherlands. [144] Three days later he opened the Parliament. Theaspect of affairs was, on the whole, cheering. By land there had beengains and losses; but the balance was in favour of England. Against thefall of Mons might well be set off the taking of Athlone, the victoryof Aghrim, the surrender of Limerick and the pacification of Ireland. Atsea there had been no great victory; but there had been a great displayof power and of activity; and, though many were dissatisfied becausemore had not been done, none could deny that there had been a change forthe better. The ruin caused by the foibles and vices of Torrington hadbeen repaired; the fleet had been well equipped; the rations had beenabundant and wholesome; and the health of the crews had consequentlybeen, for that age, wonderfully good. Russell, who commanded the navalforces of the allies, had in vain offered battle to the French. Thewhite flag, which, in the preceding year, had ranged the Channelunresisted from the Land's End to the Straits of Dover, now, as soon asour topmasts were descried twenty leagues off, abandoned the open sea, and retired into the depths of the harbour of Brest. The appearance ofan English squadron in the estuary of the Shannon had decided the fateof the last fortress which had held out for King James; and a fleetof merchantmen from the Levant, valued at four millions sterling, had, through dangers which had caused many sleepless nights to theunderwriters of Lombard Street, been convoyed safe into the Thames. [145] The Lords and Commons listened with signs of satisfaction to aspeech in which the King congratulated them on the event of the warin Ireland, and expressed his confidence that they would continue tosupport him in the war with France. He told them that a great navalarmament would be necessary, and that, in his opinion, the conflictby land could not be effectually maintained with less than sixty-fivethousand men. [146]

He was thanked in affectionate terms; the force which he asked wasvoted; and large supplies were granted with little difficulty. But whenthe Ways and Means were taken into consideration, symptoms of discontentbegan to appear. Eighteen months before, when the Commons had beenemployed in settling the Civil List, many members had shown a verynatural disposition to complain of the amount of the salaries and feesreceived by official men. Keen speeches had been made, and, what wasmuch less usual, had been printed; there had been much excitement out ofdoors; but nothing had been done. The subject was now revived. A reportmade by the Commissioners who had been appointed in the precedingyear to examine the public accounts disclosed some facts which excitedindignation, and others which raised grave suspicion. The House seemedfully determined to make an extensive reform; and, in truth, nothingcould have averted such a reform except the folly and violence of thereformers. That they should have been angry is indeed not strange. Theenormous gains, direct and indirect, of the servants of the public wenton increasing, while the gains of every body else were diminishing. Rents were falling; trade was languishing; every man who lived either onwhat his ancestors had left him or on the fruits of his own industrywas forced to retrench. The placeman alone throve amidst the generaldistress. "Look, " cried the incensed squires, "at the Comptroller of theCustoms. Ten years ago, he walked, and we rode. Our incomes have beencurtailed; his salary has been doubled; we have sold our horses; he hasbought them; and now we go on foot, and are splashed by his coach andsix. " Lowther vainly endeavoured to stand up against the storm. Hewas heard with little favour by the country gentlemen who had not longbefore looked up to him as one of their leaders. He had left them; hehad become a courtier; he had two good places, one in the Treasury, theother in the household. He had recently received from the King's ownhand a gratuity of two thousand guineas. [147] It seemed perfectlynatural that he should defend abuses by which he profited. The tauntsand reproaches with which he was assailed were insupportable to hissensitive nature. He lost his head, almost fainted away on the floorof the House, and talked about righting himself in another place. [148]Unfortunately no member rose at this conjuncture to propose that thecivil establishment of the kingdom should be carefully revised, thatsinecures should be abolished, that exorbitant official incomes shouldbe reduced, and that no servant of the State should be allowed to exact, under any pretence, any thing beyond his known and lawful remuneration. In this way it would have been possible to diminish the public burdens, and at the same time to increase the efficiency of every publicdepartment. But unfortunately those who were loudest in clamouringagainst the prevailing abuses were utterly destitute of the qualitiesnecessary for the work of reform. On the twelfth of December, somefoolish man, whose name has not come down to us, moved that no personemployed in any civil office, the Speaker, Judges and Ambassadorsexcepted, should receive more than five hundred pounds a year; and thismotion was not only carried, but carried without one dissentient voice. [149]

Those who were most interested in opposing it doubtless saw thatopposition would, at that moment, only irritate the majority, andreserved themselves for a more favourable time. The more favourabletime soon came. No man of common sense could, when his blood had cooled, remember without shame that he had voted for a resolution which made nodistinction between sinecurists and laborious public servants, betweenclerks employed in copying letters and ministers on whose wisdomand integrity the fate of the nation might depend. The salary of theDoorkeeper of the Excise Office had been, by a scandalous job, raisedto five hundred a year. It ought to have been reduced to fifty. On theother hand, the services of a Secretary of State who was well qualifiedfor his post would have been cheap at five thousand. If the resolutionof the Commons bad been carried into effect, both the salary which oughtnot to have exceeded fifty pounds, and the salary which might withoutimpropriety have amounted to five thousand, would have been fixed atfive hundred. Such absurdity must have shocked even the roughest andplainest foxhunter in the House. A reaction took place; and when, afteran interval of a few weeks, it was proposed to insert in a bill ofsupply a clause in conformity with the resolution of the twelfth ofDecember, the Noes were loud; the Speaker was of opinion that they hadit; the Ayes did not venture to dispute his opinion; the senselessplan which had been approved without a division was rejected without adivision; and the subject was not again mentioned. Thus a grievance soscandalous that none of those who profited by it dared to defend itwas perpetuated merely by the imbecility and intemperance of those whoattacked it. [150]

Early in the Session the Treaty of Limerick became the subject of agrave and earnest discussion. The Commons, in the exercise of thatsupreme power which the English legislature possessed over all thedependencies of England, sent up to the Lords a bill providing that noperson should sit in the Irish Parliament, should hold any Irish office, civil, military or ecclesiastical, or should practise law or medicinein Ireland, till he had taken the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy, andsubscribed the Declaration against Transubstantiation. The Lords werenot more inclined than the Commons to favour the Irish. No peer wasdisposed to entrust Roman Catholics with political power. Nay, it seemsthat no peer objected to the principle of the absurd and cruel rulewhich excluded Roman Catholics from the liberal professions. But it wasthought that this rule, though unobjectionable in principle, would, if adopted without some exceptions, be a breach of a positive compact. Their Lordships called for the Treaty of Limerick, ordered it to be readat the table, and proceeded to consider whether the law framed bythe Lower House was consistent with the engagements into which thegovernment had entered. One discrepancy was noticed. It was stipulatedby the second civil article, that every person actually residing in anyfortress occupied by an Irish garrison, should be permitted, on takingthe Oath of Allegiance, to resume any calling which he had exercisedbefore the Revolution. It would, beyond all doubt, have been a violationof this covenant to require that a lawyer or a physician, who had beenwithin the walls of Limerick during the siege, should take the Oathof Supremacy and subscribe the Declaration against Transubstantiation, before he could receive fees. Holt was consulted, and was directed toprepare clauses in conformity with the terms of the capitulation. 

The bill, as amended by Holt, was sent back to the Commons. They atfirst rejected the amendment, and demanded a conference. The conferencewas granted. Rochester, in the Painted Chamber, delivered to themanagers of the Lower House a copy of the Treaty of Limerick, andearnestly represented the importance of preserving the public faithinviolate. This appeal was one which no honest man, though inflamed bynational and religious animosity, could resist. The Commons reconsideredthe subject, and, after hearing the Treaty read, agreed, with someslight modifications, to what the Lords had proposed. [151]

The bill became a law. It attracted, at the time, little notice, butwas, after the lapse of several generations, the subject of a veryacrimonious controversy. Many of us can well remember how strongly thepublic mind was stirred, in the days of George the Third and George theFourth, by the question whether Roman Catholics should be permitted tosit in Parliament. It may be doubted whether any dispute has producedstranger perversions of history. The whole past was falsified forthe sake of the present. All the great events of three centuries longappeared to us distorted and discoloured by a mist sprung from our owntheories and our own passions. Some friends of religious liberty, notcontent with the advantage which they possessed in the fair conflictof reason with reason, weakened their case by maintaining that the lawwhich excluded Irish Roman Catholics from Parliament was inconsistentwith the civil Treaty of Limerick. The First article of that Treaty, itwas said, guaranteed to the Irish Roman Catholic such privileges in theexercise of his religion as he had enjoyed in the time of Charlesthe Second. In the time of Charles the Second no test excluded RomanCatholics from the Irish Parliament. Such a test could not therefore, it was argued, be imposed without a breach of public faith. In the year1828, especially, this argument was put forward in the House of Commonsas if it had been the main strength of a cause which stood in need of nosuch support. The champions of Protestant ascendency were well pleasedto see the debate diverted from a political question about which theywere in the wrong, to a historical question about which they were inthe right. They had no difficulty in proving that the first article, as understood by all the contracting parties, meant only that the RomanCatholic worship should be tolerated as in time past. That article wasdrawn up by Ginkell; and, just before he drew it up, he had declaredthat he would rather try the chance of arms than consent that IrishPapists should be capable of holding civil and military offices, ofexercising liberal professions, and of becoming members of municipalcorporations. How is it possible to believe that he would, of his ownaccord, have promised that the House of Lords and the House of Commonsshould be open to men to whom he would not open a guild of skinners ora guild of cordwainers? How, again, is it possible to believe that theEnglish Peers would, while professing the most punctilious respectfor public faith, while lecturing the Commons on the duty of observingpublic faith, while taking counsel with the most learned and uprightjurist of the age as to the best mode of maintaining public faith, havecommitted a flagrant violation of public faith and that not a singlelord should have been so honest or so factious as to protest againstan act of monstrous perfidy aggravated by hypocrisy? Or, if we couldbelieve this, how can we believe that no voice would have been raised inany part of the world against such wickedness; that the Court of SaintGermains and the Court of Versailles would have remained profoundlysilent; that no Irish exile, no English malecontent, would have uttereda murmur; that not a word of invective or sarcasm on so inviting asubject would have been found in the whole compass of the Jacobiteliterature; and that it would have been reserved for politicians of thenineteenth century to discover that a treaty made in the seventeenthcentury had, a few weeks after it had been signed, been outrageouslyviolated in the sight of all Europe? [152]

On the same day on which the Commons read for the first time the billwhich subjected Ireland to the absolute dominion of the Protestantminority, they took into consideration another matter of highimportance. Throughout the country, but especially in the capital, in the seaports and in the manufacturing towns, the minds of men weregreatly excited on the subject of the trade with the East Indies; afierce paper war had during some time been raging; and several gravequestions, both constitutional and commercial, had been raised, whichthe legislature only could decide. 

It has often been repeated, and ought never to be forgotten, that ourpolity differs widely from those politics which have, during the lasteighty years, been methodically constructed, digested into articles, andratified by constituent assemblies. It grew up in a rude age. It is notto be found entire in any formal instrument. All along the line whichseparates the functions of the prince from those of the legislator therewas long a disputed territory. Encroachments were perpetually committed, and, if not very outrageous, were often tolerated. Trespass, merely astrespass, was commonly suffered to pass unresented. It was only when thetrespass produced some positive damage that the aggrieved party stood onhis right, and demanded that the frontier should be set out by metesand bounds, and that the landmarks should thenceforward be punctiliouslyrespected. 

Many of those points which had occasioned the most violent disputesbetween our Sovereigns and their Parliaments had been finally decided bythe Bill of Rights. But one question, scarcely less important thanany of the questions which had been set at rest for ever, was stillundetermined. Indeed, that question was never, as far as can now beascertained, even mentioned in the Convention. The King had undoubtedly, by the ancient laws of the realm, large powers for the regulation oftrade; but the ablest judge would have found it difficult to say whatwas the precise extent of those powers. It was universally acknowledgedthat it belonged to the King to prescribe weights and measures, and tocoin money; that no fair or market could be held without authority fromhim; that no ship could unload in any bay or estuary which he had notdeclared to be a port. In addition to his undoubted right to grantspecial commercial privileges to particular places, he long claimed aright to grant special commercial privileges to particular societies andto particular individuals; and our ancestors, as usual, did not thinkit worth their while to dispute this claim, till it produced seriousinconvenience. At length, in the reign of Elizabeth, the power ofcreating monopolies began to be grossly abused; and, as soon as itbegan to be grossly abused, it began to be questioned. The Queen wiselydeclined a conflict with a House of Commons backed by the whole nation. She frankly acknowledged that there was reason for complaint; shecancelled the patents which had excited the public clamours; and herpeople, delighted by this concession, and by the gracious manner inwhich it had been made, did not require from her an express renunciationof the disputed prerogative. 

The discontents which her wisdom had appeased were revived by thedishonest and pusillanimous policy which her successor called Kingcraft. He readily granted oppressive patents of monopoly. When he needed thehelp of his Parliament, he as readily annulled them. As soon as theParliament had ceased to sit, his Great Seal was put to instrumentsmore odious than those which he had recently cancelled. At length thatexcellent House of Commons which met in 1623 determined to apply astrong remedy to the evil. The King was forced to give his assent to alaw which declared monopolies established by royal authority to be nulland void. Some exceptions, however, were made, and, unfortunately, werenot very clearly defined. It was especially provided that every Societyof Merchants which had been instituted for the purpose of carrying onany trade should retain all its legal privileges. [153] The questionwhether a monopoly granted by the Crown to such a company were or werenot a legal privilege was left unsettled, and continued to exercise, during many years, the ingenuity of lawyers. [154] The nation, however, relieved at once from a multitude of impositions and vexations whichwere painfully felt every day at every fireside, was in no humour todispute the validity of the charters under which a few companies toLondon traded with distant parts of the world. 

Of these companies by far the most important was that which had been, onthe last day of the sixteenth century, incorporated by Queen Elizabethunder the name of the Governor and Company of Merchants of Londontrading to the East Indies. When this celebrated body began to exist, the Mogul monarchy was at the zenith of power and glory. Akbar, theablest and best of the princes of the House of Tamerlane, had justbeen borne, full of years and honours, to a mausoleum surpassing inmagnificence any that Europe could show. He had bequeathed to hisposterity an empire containing more than twenty times the population andyielding more than twenty times the revenue of the England which, underour great Queen, held a foremost place among European powers. It iscurious and interesting to consider how little the two countries, destined to be one day so closely connected, were then known to eachother. The most enlightened Englishmen looked on India with ignorantadmiration. The most enlightened natives of India were scarcely awarethat England existed. Our ancestors had a dim notion of endless bazaars, swarming with buyers and sellers, and blazing with cloth of gold, withvariegated silks and with precious stones; of treasuries where diamondswere piled in heaps and sequins in mountains; of palaces, compared withwhich Whitehall and Hampton Court were hovels; of armies ten times asnumerous as that which they had seen assembled at Tilbury to repelthe Armada. On the other hand, it was probably not known to one of thestatesmen in the Durbar of Agra that there was near the setting sun agreat city of infidels, called London, where a woman reigned, andthat she had given to an association of Frank merchants the exclusiveprivilege of freighting ships from her dominions to the Indian seas. That this association would one day rule all India, from the ocean tothe everlasting snow, would reduce to profound obedience great provinceswhich had never submitted to Akbar's authority, would send LieutenantGovernors to preside in his capital, and would dole out a monthlypension to his heir, would have seemed to the wisest of European orof Oriental politicians as impossible as that inhabitants of our globeshould found an empire in Venus or Jupiter. 

Three generations passed away; and still nothing indicated that the EastIndia Company would ever become a great Asiatic potentate. The Mogulempire, though undermined by internal causes of decay, and totteringto its fall, still presented to distant nations the appearance ofundiminished prosperity and vigour. Aurengzebe, who, in the samemonth in which Oliver Cromwell died, assumed the magnificent title ofConqueror of the World, continued to reign till Anne had been long onthe English throne. He was the sovereign of a larger territory thanhad obeyed any of his predecessors. His name was great in the farthestregions of the West. Here he had been made by Dryden the hero of atragedy which would alone suffice to show how little the English of thatage knew about the vast empire which their grandchildren were to conquerand to govern. The poet's Mussulman princes make love in the styleof Amadis, preach about the death of Socrates, and embellish theirdiscourse with allusions to the mythological stories of Ovid. TheBrahminical metempyschosis is represented as an article of the Mussulmancreed; and the Mussulman Sultanas burn themselves with their husbandsafter the Brahminical fashion. This drama, once rapturously applauded bycrowded theatres, and known by heart to fine gentlemen and fine ladies, is now forgotten. But one noble passage still lives, and is repeated bythousands who know not whence it comes. [155]

Though nothing yet indicated the high political destiny of the EastIndia Company, that body had a great sway in the City of London. Theoffices, which stood on a very small part of the ground which thepresent offices cover, had escaped the ravages of the fire. The IndiaHouse of those days was a building of timber and plaster, rich withthe quaint carving and lattice-work of the Elizabethan age. Above thewindows was a painting which represented a fleet of merchantmen tossingon the waves. The whole edifice was surmounted by a colossal woodenseaman, who, from between two dolphins, looked down on the crowds ofLeadenhall Street. [156] In this abode, narrow and humble indeed whencompared with the vast labyrinth of passages and chambers which nowbears the same name, the Company enjoyed, during the greater part of thereign of Charles the Second, a prosperity to which the history of tradescarcely furnishes any parallel, and which excited the wonder, thecupidity and the envious animosity of the whole capital. Wealth andluxury were then rapidly increasing. The taste for the spices, thetissues and the jewels of the East became stronger day by day. Tea, which, at the time when Monk brought the army of Scotland to London, hadbeen handed round to be stared at and just touched with the lips, as agreat rarity from China, was, eight years later, a regular article ofimport, and was soon consumed in such quantities that financiers beganto consider it as a fit subject for taxation. The progress which wasmaking in the art of war had created an unprecedented demand for theingredients of which gunpowder is compounded. It was calculated that allEurope would hardly produce in a year saltpetre enough for the siegeof one town fortified on the principles of Vauban. [157] But for thesupplies from India, it was said, the English government would be unableto equip a fleet without digging up the cellars of London in orderto collect the nitrous particles from the walls. [158] Before theRestoration scarcely one ship from the Thames had ever visited the Deltaof the Ganges. But, during the twenty-three years which followed theRestoration, the value of the annual imports from that rich and populousdistrict increased from eight thousand pounds to three hundred thousand. 

The gains of the body which had the exclusive possession of thisfast growing trade were almost incredible. The capital which had beenactually paid up did not exceed three hundred and seventy thousandpounds; but the Company could, without difficulty, borrow money at sixper cent. , and the borrowed money, thrown into the trade, produced, it was rumoured, thirty per cent. The profits were such that, in 1676, every proprietor received as a bonus a quantity of stock equal to thatwhich he held. On the capital, thus doubled, were paid, during fiveyears, dividends amounting on an average to twenty per cent. Annually. There had been a time when a hundred pounds of the stock could bepurchased for sixty. Even in 1664 the price in the market was onlyseventy. But in 1677 the price had risen to two hundred and forty-five;in 1681 it was three hundred; it subsequently rose to three hundred andsixty; and it is said that some sales were effected at five hundred. [159]

The enormous gains of the Indian trade might perhaps have excited littlemurmuring if they had been distributed among numerous proprietors. But while the value of the stock went on increasing, the number ofstockholders went on diminishing. At the time when the prosperity of theCompany reached the highest point, the management was entirely in thehands of a few merchants of enormous wealth. A proprietor then had avote for every five hundred pounds of stock that stood in his name. Itis asserted in the pamphlets of that age that five persons had a sixthpart, and fourteen persons a third part of the votes. [160] More thanone fortunate speculator was said to derive an annual income of tenthousand pounds from the monopoly; and one great man was pointed out onthe Royal Exchange as having, by judicious or lucky purchases of stock, created in no long time an estate of twenty thousand a year. Thiscommercial grandee, who in wealth and in the influence which attendswealth vied with the greatest nobles of his time, was Sir Josiah Child. There were those who still remembered him an apprentice, sweeping oneof the counting houses of the City. But from a humble position hisabilities had raised him rapidly to opulence, power and fame. At thetime of the Restoration he was highly considered in the mercantileworld. Soon after that event he published his thoughts on the philosophyof trade. His speculations were not always sound; but they were thespeculations of an ingenious and reflecting man. Into whatever errorshe may occasionally have fallen as a theorist, it is certain that, asa practical man of business, he had few equals. Almost as soon as hebecame a member of the committee which directed the affairs of theCompany, his ascendency was felt. Soon many of the most important posts, both in Leadenhall Street and in the factories of Bombay and Bengal, were filled by his kinsmen and creatures. His riches, though expendedwith ostentatious profusion, continued to increase and multiply. Heobtained a baronetcy; he purchased a stately seat at Wanstead; and therehe laid out immense sums in excavating fishponds, and in planting wholesquare miles of barren land with walnut trees. He married his daughterto the eldest son of the Duke of Beaufort, and paid down with her aportion of fifty thousand pounds. [161]

But this wonderful prosperity was not uninterrupted. Towards the closeof the reign of Charles the Second the Company began to be fiercelyattacked from without, and to be at the same time distracted by internaldissensions. The profits of the Indian trade were so tempting, thatprivate adventurers had often, in defiance of the royal charter, fittedout ships for the Eastern seas. But the competition of these interlopersdid not become really formidable till the year 1680. The nation was thenviolently agitated by the dispute about the Exclusion Bill. Timid menwere anticipating another civil war. The two great parties, newly namedWhigs and Tories, were fiercely contending in every county and town ofEngland; and the feud soon spread to every corner of the civilised worldwhere Englishmen were to be found. 

The Company was popularly considered as a Whig body. Among the membersof the directing committee were some of the most vehement Exclusionistsin the City. Indeed two of them, Sir Samuel Barnardistone and ThomasPapillon, drew on themselves a severe persecution by their zeal againstPopery and arbitrary power. [162] Child had been originally brought intothe direction by these men; he had long acted in concert with them; andhe was supposed to hold their political opinions. He had, during manyyears, stood high in the esteem of the chiefs of the parliamentaryopposition, and had been especially obnoxious to the Duke of York. [163]The interlopers therefore determined to affect the character of loyalmen, who were determined to stand by the throne against the insolenttribunes of the City. They spread, at all the factories in the East, reports that England was in confusion, that the sword had been drawnor would immediately be drawn, and that the Company was forward in therebellion against the Crown. These rumours, which, in truth, were notimprobable, easily found credit among people separated from London bywhat was then a voyage of twelve months. Some servants of the Companywho were in ill humour with their employers, and others who were zealousroyalists, joined the private traders. At Bombay, the garrison and thegreat body of the English inhabitants declared that they would no longerobey any body who did not obey the King; they imprisoned the DeputyGovernor; and they proclaimed that they held the island for the Crown. At Saint Helena there was a rising. The insurgents took the name ofKing's men, and displayed the royal standard. They were, not withoutdifficulty, put down; and some of them were executed by martial law. [164]

If the Company had still been a Whig Company when the news of thesecommotions reached England, it is probable that the government wouldhave approved of the conduct of the mutineers, and that the charter onwhich the monopoly depended would have had the fate which about the sametime befell so many other charters. But while the interlopers were, ata distance of many thousands of miles, making war on the Company in thename of the King, the Company and the King had been reconciled. When theOxford Parliament had been dissolved, when many signs indicated thata strong reaction in favour of prerogative was at hand, when all thecorporations which had incurred the royal displeasure were beginning totremble for their franchises, a rapid and complete revolution took placeat the India House. Child, who was then Governor, or, in the modernphrase, Chairman, separated himself from his old friends, excludedthem from the direction, and negotiated a treaty of peace and of closealliance with the Court. [165] It is not improbable that the nearconnection into which he had just entered with the great Tory house ofBeaufort may have had something to do with this change in his politics. Papillon, Barnardistone, and their adherents, sold their stock; theirplaces in the committee were supplied by persons devoted to Child; andhe was thenceforth the autocrat of the Company. The treasures of theCompany were absolutely at his disposal. The most important papersof the Company were kept, not in the muniment room of the office inLeadenhall Street, but in his desk at Wanstead. The boundless powerwhich he exercised at the India House enabled him to become a favouriteat Whitehall; and the favour which he enjoyed at Whitehall confirmedhis power at the India House. A present of ten thousand guineas wasgraciously received from him by Charles. Ten thousand more were acceptedby James, who readily consented to become a holder of stock. All whocould help or hurt at Court, ministers, mistresses, priests, were keptin good humour by presents of shawls and silks, birds' nests and atarof roses, bulses of diamonds and bags of guineas. [166] Of what theDictator expended no account was asked by his colleagues; and in truthhe seems to have deserved the confidence which they reposed in him. His bribes, distributed with judicious prodigality, speedily produced alarge return. Just when the Court became all powerful in the State, he became all powerful at the Court. Jeffreys pronounced a decision infavour of the monopoly, and of the strongest acts which had been donein defence of the monopoly. James ordered his seal to be put to a newcharter which confirmed and extended all the privileges bestowed onthe Company by his predecessors. All captains of Indiamen receivedcommissions from the Crown, and were permitted to hoist the royalensigns. [167] John Child, brother of Sir Josiah, and Governor ofBombay, was created a baronet by the style of Sir John Child of Surat:he was declared General of all the English forces in the East; and hewas authorised to assume the title of Excellency. The Company, on theother hand, distinguished itself among many servile corporations byobsequious homage to the throne, and set to all the merchants of thekingdom the example of readily and even eagerly paying those customswhich James, at the commencement of his reign, exacted without theauthority of Parliament. [168]

It seemed that the private trade would now be utterly crushed, and thatthe monopoly, protected by the whole strength of the royal prerogative, would be more profitable than ever. But unfortunately just at thismoment a quarrel arose between the agents of the Company in Indiaand the Mogul Government. Where the fault lay is a question which wasvehemently disputed at the time, and which it is now impossible todecide. The interlopers threw all the blame on the Company. The Governorof Bombay, they affirmed, had always been grasping and violent; but hisbaronetcy and his military commission had completely turned his head. The very natives who were employed about the factory had noticed thechange, and had muttered, in their broken English, that there must besome strange curse attending the word Excellency; for that, ever sincethe chief of the strangers was called Excellency, every thing had goneto ruin. Meanwhile, it was said, the brother in England had sanctionedall the unjust and impolitic acts of the brother in India, till atlength insolence and rapine, disgraceful to the English nation and tothe Christian religion, had roused the just resentment of the nativeauthorities. The Company warmly recriminated. The story told atthe India House was that the quarrel was entirely the work of theinterlopers, who were now designated not only as interlopers but astraitors. They had, it was alleged, by flattery, by presents, and byfalse accusations, induced the viceroys of the Mogul to oppress andpersecute the body which in Asia represented the English Crown. Andindeed this charge seems not to have been altogether without foundation. It is certain that one of the most pertinacious enemies of the Childswent up to the Court of Aurengzebe, took his station at the palace gate, stopped the Great King who was in the act of mounting on horseback, and, lifting a petition high in the air, demanded justice in the name of thecommon God of Christians and Mussulmans. [169] Whether Aurengzebe paidmuch attention to the charges brought by infidel Franks against eachother may be doubted. But it is certain that a complete rupture tookplace between his deputies and the servants of the Company. On thesea the ships of his subjects were seized by the English. On land theEnglish settlements were taken and plundered. The trade was suspended;and, though great annual dividends were still paid in London, they wereno longer paid out of annual profits. 

Just at this conjuncture, while every Indiaman that arrived in theThames was bringing unwelcome news from the East, all the politics ofSir Josiah were utterly confounded by the Revolution. He had flatteredhimself that he had secured the body of which he was the chief againstthe machinations of interlopers, by uniting it closely with thestrongest government that had existed within his memory. That governmenthad fallen; and whatever had leaned on the ruined fabric began tototter. The bribes had been thrown away. The connections which had beenthe strength and boast of the corporation were now its weakness and itsshame. The King who had been one of its members was an exile. Thejudge by whom all its most exorbitant pretensions had been pronouncedlegitimate was a prisoner. All the old enemies of the Company, reinforced by those great Whig merchants whom Child had expelled fromthe direction, demanded justice and vengeance from the Whig House ofCommons, which had just placed William and Mary on the throne. No voicewas louder in accusation than that of Papillon, who had, some yearsbefore, been more zealous for the charter than any man in London. [170]The Commons censured in severe terms the persons who had inflicted deathby martial law at Saint Helena, and even resolved that some of thoseoffenders should be excluded from the Act of Indemnity. [171] The greatquestion, how the trade with the East should for the future be carriedon, was referred to a Committee. The report was to have been made onthe twenty-seventh of January 1690; but on that very day the Parliamentceased to exist. 

The first two sessions of the succeeding Parliament were so short andso busy that little was said about India in either House. But, outof Parliament, all the arts both of controversy and of intrigue wereemployed on both sides. Almost as many pamphlets were published aboutthe India trade as about the oaths. The despot of Leadenhall Street waslibelled in prose and verse. Wretched puns were made on his name. He wascompared to Cromwell, to the King of France, to Goliath of Gath, to theDevil. It was vehemently declared to be necessary that, in any Act whichmight be passed for the regulation of our traffic with the Eastern seas, Sir Josiah should be by name excluded from all trust. [172]

There were, however, great differences of opinion among those who agreedin hating Child and the body of which he was the head. The manufacturersof Spitalfields, of Norwich, of Yorkshire, and of the Western counties, considered the trade with the Eastern seas as rather injurious thanbeneficial to the kingdom. The importation of Indian spices, indeed, wasadmitted to be harmless, and the importation of Indian saltpetre to benecessary. But the importation of silks and of Bengals, as shawls werethen called, was pronounced to be a curse to the country. The effect ofthe growing taste for such frippery was that our gold and silver wentabroad, and that much excellent English drapery lay in our warehousestill it was devoured by the moths. Those, it was said, were happy daysfor the inhabitants both of our pasture lands and of our manufacturingtowns, when every gown, every hanging, every bed, was made of materialswhich our own flocks had furnished to our own looms. Where were nowthe brave old hangings of arras which had adorned the walls of lordlymansions in the days of Elizabeth? And was it not a shame to see agentleman, whose ancestors had worn nothing but stuffs made by Englishworkmen out of English fleeces, flaunting in a calico shirt and a pairof silk stockings? Clamours such as these had, a few years before, extorted from Parliament the Act which required that the dead shouldbe wrapped in woollen; and some sanguine clothiers hoped that thelegislature would, by excluding all Indian textures from our ports, impose the same necessity on the living. [173]

But this feeling was confined to a minority. The public was, indeed, inclined rather to overrate than to underrate the benefits which mightbe derived by England from the Indian trade. What was the most effectualmode of extending that trade was a question which excited generalinterest, and which was answered in very different ways. 

A small party, consisting chiefly of merchants resident at Bristol andother provincial seaports, maintained that the best way to extend tradewas to leave it free. They urged the well known arguments which provethat monopoly is injurious to commerce; and, having fully establishedthe general law, they asked why the commerce between England and Indiawas to be considered as an exception to that law. Any trader ought, theysaid, to be permitted to send from any port a cargo to Surat or Cantonas freely as he now sent a cargo to Hamburg or Lisbon. [174] In our timethese doctrines may probably be considered, not only as sound, butas trite and obvious. In the seventeenth century, however, they werethought paradoxical. It was then generally held to be a certain, andindeed an almost selfevident truth, that our trade with the countrieslying beyond the Cape of Good Hope could be advantageously carried ononly by means of a great Joint Stock Company. There was no analogy, it was said, between our European trade and our Indian trade. Ourgovernment had diplomatic relations with the European States. Ifnecessary, a maritime force could easily be sent from hence to the mouthof the Elbe or of the Tagus. But the English Kings had no envoy at theCourt of Agra or Pekin. There was seldom a single English man of warwithin ten thousand miles of the Bay of Bengal or of the Gulf of Siam. As our merchants could not, in those remote seas, be protected bytheir Sovereign, they must protect themselves, and must, for thatend, exercise some of the rights of sovereignty. They must have forts, garrisons and armed ships. They must have power to send and receiveembassies, to make a treaty of alliance with one Asiatic prince, to wagewar on another. It was evidently impossible that every merchant shouldhave this power independently of the rest. The merchants trading toIndia must therefore be joined together in a corporation which could actas one man. In support of these arguments the example of the Dutch wascited, and was generally considered as decisive. For in that age theimmense prosperity of Holland was every where regarded with admiration, not the less earnest because it was largely mingled with envy andhatred. In all that related to trade, her statesmen were considered asoracles, and her institutions as models. 

The great majority, therefore, of those who assailed the Companyassailed it, not because it traded on joint funds and possessedexclusive privileges, but because it was ruled by one man, and becausehis rule had been mischievous to the public, and beneficial only tohimself and his creatures. The obvious remedy, it was said, for theevils which his maladministration had produced was to transfer themonopoly to a new corporation so constituted as to be in no danger offalling under the dominion either of a despot or of a narrow oligarchy. Many persons who were desirous to be members of such a corporation, formed themselves into a society, signed an engagement, and entrustedthe care of their interests to a committee which contained some of thechief traders of the City. This society, though it had, in the eye ofthe law, no personality, was early designated, in popular speech, asthe New Company; and the hostilities between the New Company and the OldCompany soon caused almost as much excitement and anxiety, at leastin that busy hive of which the Royal Exchange was the centre, as thehostilities between the Allies and the French King. The headquarters ofthe younger association were in Dowgate; the Skinners lent their statelyhall; and the meetings were held in a parlour renowned for the fragrancewhich exhaled from a magnificent wainscot of cedar. [175]

While the contention was hottest, important news arrived from India, and was announced in the London Gazette as in the highest degreesatisfactory. Peace had been concluded between the great Mogul and theEnglish. That mighty potentate had not only withdrawn his troops fromthe factories, but had bestowed on the Company privileges such as it hadnever before enjoyed. Soon, however, appeared a very different versionof the story. The enemies of Child had, before this time, accused himof systematically publishing false intelligence. He had now, they said, outlied himself. They had obtained a true copy of the Firman which hadput an end to the war; and they printed a translation of it. Itappeared that Aurengzebe had contemptuously granted to the English, inconsideration of their penitence and of a large tribute, his forgivenessfor their past delinquency, had charged them to behave themselves betterfor the future, and had, in the tone of a master, laid on them hiscommands to remove the principal offender, Sir John Child, from powerand trust. The death of Sir John occurred so seasonably that thesecommands could not be obeyed. But it was only too evident that thepacification which the rulers of the India House had representedas advantageous and honourable had really been effected on termsdisgraceful to the English name. [176]

During the summer of 1691, the controversy which raged on this subjectbetween the Leadenhall Street Company and the Dowgate Company kept theCity in constant agitation. In the autumn, the Parliament had no soonermet than both the contending parties presented petitions to the Houseof Commons. [177] The petitions were immediately taken into seriousconsideration, and resolutions of grave importance were passed. Thefirst resolution was that the trade with the East Indies was beneficialto the kingdom; the second was that the trade with the East Indieswould be best carried on by a joint stock company possessed ofexclusive privileges. [178] It was plain, therefore, that neither thosemanufacturers who wished to prohibit the trade, nor those merchants atthe outports who wished to throw it open, had the smallest chance ofattaining their objects. The only question left was the questionbetween the Old and the New Company. Seventeen years elapsed before thatquestion ceased to disturb both political and commercial circles. It wasfatal to the honour and power of one great minister, and to the peaceand prosperity of many private families. The tracts which the rivalbodies put forth against each other were innumerable. If the drama ofthat age may be trusted, the feud between the India House and Skinners'Hall was sometimes as serious an impediment to the course of true lovein London as the feud of the Capulets and Montagues had been at Verona. [179] Which of the two contending parties was the stronger it is noteasy to say. The New Company was supported by the Whigs, the Old Companyby the Tories. The New Company was popular; for it promised largely, and could not be accused of having broken its promises; it made nodividends, and therefore was not envied; it had no power to oppress, and had therefore been guilty of no oppression. The Old Company, thoughgenerally regarded with little favour by the public, had the immenseadvantage of being in possession, and of having only to stand on thedefensive. The burden of framing a plan for the regulation of the Indiatrade, and of proving that plan to be better than the plan hithertofollowed, lay on the New Company. The Old Company had merely to findobjections to every change that was proposed; and such objections therewas little difficulty in finding. The members of the New Company wereill provided with the means of purchasing support at Court and inParliament. They had no corporate existence, no common treasury. Ifany of them gave a bribe, he gave it out of his own pocket, with littlechance of being reimbursed. But the Old Company, though surroundedby dangers, still held its exclusive privileges, and still made itsenormous profits. Its stock had indeed gone down greatly in value sincethe golden days of Charles the Second; but a hundred pounds still soldfor a hundred and twenty-two. [180] After a large dividend had been paidto the proprietors, a surplus remained amply sufficient, in thosedays, to corrupt half a cabinet; and this surplus was absolutely at thedisposal of one able, determined and unscrupulous man, who maintainedthe fight with wonderful art and pertinacity. 

The majority of the Commons wished to effect a compromise, to retain theOld Company, but to remodel it, to impose on it new conditions, and toincorporate with it the members of the New Company. With this view itwas, after long and vehement debates and close divisions, resolved thatthe capital should be increased to a million and a half. In order toprevent a single person or a small junto from domineering over the wholesociety, it was determined that five thousand pounds of stock shouldbe the largest quantity that any single proprietor could hold, and thatthose who held more should be required to sell the overplus at any pricenot below par. In return for the exclusive privilege of trading to theEastern seas, the Company was to be required to furnish annually fivehundred tons of saltpetre to the Crown at a low price, and to exportannually English manufactures to the value of two hundred thousandpounds. [181]

A bill founded on these resolutions was brought in, read twice, andcommitted, but was suffered to drop in consequence of the positiverefusal of Child and his associates to accept the offered terms. Heobjected to every part of the plan; and his objections are highlycurious and amusing. The great monopolist took his stand on theprinciples of free trade. In a luminous and powerfully written paper heexposed the absurdity of the expedients which the House of Commons haddevised. To limit the amount of stock which might stand in a single namewould, he said, be most unreasonable. Surely a proprietor whose wholefortune was staked on the success of the Indian trade was far morelikely to exert all his faculties vigorously for the promotion of thattrade than a proprietor who had risked only what it would be no greatdisaster to lose. The demand that saltpetre should be furnished to theCrown for a fixed sum Child met by those arguments, familiar to ourgeneration, which prove that prices should be left to settle themselves. To the demand that the Company should bind itself to export annually twohundred thousand pounds' worth of English manufactures he very properlyreplied that the Company would most gladly export two millions' worthif the market required such a supply, and that, if the market wereoverstocked, it would be mere folly to send good cloth half round theworld to be eaten by white ants. It was never, he declared with muchspirit, found politic to put trade into straitlaced bodices, which, instead of making it grow upright and thrive, must either kill it orforce it awry. 

The Commons, irritated by Child's obstinacy, presented an addressrequesting the King to dissolve the Old Company, and to grant a charterto a new Company on such terms as to His Majesty's wisdom might seemfit. [182] It is plainly implied in the terms of this address thatthe Commons thought the King constitutionally competent to grant anexclusive privilege of trading to the East Indies. 

The King replied that the subject was most important, that he wouldconsider it maturely, and that he would, at a future time, give theHouse a more precise answer. [183] In Parliament nothing more was saidon the subject during that session; but out of Parliament the war wasfiercer than ever; and the belligerents were by no means scrupulousabout the means which they employed. The chief weapons of the NewCompany were libels; the chief weapons of the Old Company were bribes. 

In the same week in which the bill for the regulation of the Indiantrade was suffered to drop, another bill which had produced greatexcitement and had called forth an almost unprecedented display ofparliamentary ability, underwent the same fate. 

During the eight years which preceded the Revolution, the Whigs hadcomplained bitterly, and not more bitterly than justly, of the hardmeasure dealt out to persons accused of political offences. Was it notmonstrous, they asked, that a culprit should be denied a sight of hisindictment? Often an unhappy prisoner had not known of what he wasaccused till he had held up his hand at the bar. The crime imputed tohim might be plotting to shoot the King; it might be plotting to poisonthe King. The more innocent the defendant was, the less likely he wasto guess the nature of the charge on which he was to be tried; and howcould he have evidence ready to rebut a charge the nature of whichhe could not guess? The Crown had power to compel the attendance ofwitnesses. The prisoner had no such power. If witnesses voluntarily cameforward to speak in his favour, they could not be sworn. Their testimonytherefore made less impression on a jury than the testimony of thewitnesses for the prosecution, whose veracity was guaranteed by the mostsolemn sanctions of law and of religion. The juries, carefully selectedby Sheriffs whom the Crown had named, were men animated by the fiercestparty spirit, men who had as little tenderness for an Exclusionist of aDissenter as for a mad dog. The government was served by a band of able, experienced and unprincipled lawyers, who could, by merely glancing overa brief, distinguish every weak and every strong point of a case, whose presence of mind never failed them, whose flow of speech wasinexhaustible, and who had passed their lives in dressing up the worsereason so as to make it appear the better. Was it not horrible to seethree or four of these shrewd, learned and callous orators arrayedagainst one poor wretch who had never in his life uttered a word inpublic, who was ignorant of the legal definition of treason and of thefirst principles of the law of evidence, and whose intellect, unequalat best to a fencing match with professional gladiators, was confused bythe near prospect of a cruel and ignominious death? Such however was therule; and even for a man so much stupefied by sickness that he could nothold up his hand or make his voice heard, even for a poor old woman whounderstood nothing of what was passing except that she was going to beroasted alive for doing an act of charity, no advocate was suffered toutter a word. That a state trial so conducted was little better than ajudicial murder had been, during the proscription of the Whig party, afundamental article of the Whig creed. The Tories, on the otherhand, though they could not deny that there had been some hard cases, maintained that, on the whole, substantial justice had been done. Perhaps a few seditious persons who had gone very near to the frontierof treason, but had not actually passed that frontier, might havesuffered as traitors. But was that a sufficient reason for enabling thechiefs of the Rye House Plot and of the Western Insurrection to elude, by mere chicanery, the punishment of their guilt? On what principlewas the traitor to have chances of escape which were not allowed to thefelon? The culprit who was accused of larceny was subject to all thesame disadvantages which, in the case of regicides and rebels, werethought so unjust; ye nobody pitied him. Nobody thought it monstrousthat he should not have time to study a copy of his indictment, that hiswitnesses should be examined without being sworn, that he should beleft to defend himself, without the help of counsel against the bestabilities which the Inns of Court could furnish. The Whigs, it seemed, reserved all their compassion for those crimes which subvert governmentand dissolve the whole frame of human society. Guy Faux was to betreated with an indulgence which was not to be extended to a shoplifter. Bradshaw was to have privileges which were refused to a boy who hadrobbed a henroost. 

The Revolution produced, as was natural, some change in the sentimentsof both the great parties. In the days when none but Roundheads andNonconformists were accused of treason, even the most humane and uprightCavaliers were disposed to think that the laws which were the safeguardof the throne could hardly be too severe. But, as soon as loyal Torygentlemen and venerable fathers of the Church were in danger of beingcalled in question for corresponding with Saint Germains, a new lightflashed on many understandings which had been unable to discover thesmallest injustice in the proceedings against Algernon Sidney and AliceLisle. It was no longer thought utterly absurd to maintain that someadvantages which were withheld from a man accused of felony mightreasonably be allowed to a man accused of treason. What probabilitywas there that any sheriff would pack a jury, that any barrister wouldemploy all the arts of sophistry and rhetoric, that any judge wouldstrain law and misrepresent evidence, in order to convict an innocentperson of burglary or sheep stealing? But on a trial for high treasona verdict of acquittal must always be considered as a defeat ofthe government; and there was but too much reason to fear that manysheriffs, barristers and judges might be impelled by party spirit, or bysome baser motive, to do any thing which might save the government fromthe inconvenience and shame of a defeat. The cry of the whole bodyof Tories was that the lives of good Englishmen who happened to beobnoxious to the ruling powers were not sufficiently protected; andthis cry was swelled by the voices of some lawyers who had distinguishedthemselves by the malignant zeal and dishonest ingenuity with which theyhad conducted State prosecutions in the days of Charles and James. 

The feeling of the Whigs, though it had not, like the feeling of theTories, undergone a complete change, was yet not quite what it had been. Some, who had thought it most unjust that Russell should have no counseland that Cornish should have no copy of his indictment, now began tomutter that the times had changed; that the dangers of the State wereextreme; that liberty, property, religion, national independence, wereall at stake; that many Englishmen were engaged in schemes of which theobject was to make England the slave of France and of Rome; and thatit would be most unwise to relax, at such a moment, the laws againstpolitical offences. It was true that the injustice with which, in thelate reigns, State trials had been conducted, had given great scandal. But this injustice was to be ascribed to the bad kings and bad judgeswith whom the nation had been cursed. William was now on the throne;Holt was seated for life on the bench; and William would never exact, nor would Holt ever perform, services so shameful and wicked as thosefor which the banished tyrant had rewarded Jeffreys with riches andtitles. This language however was at first held but by few. The Whigs, as a party, seem to have felt that they could not honourably defend, inthe season of their prosperity, what, in the time of their adversity, they had always designated as a crying grievance. A bill for regulatingtrials in cases of high treason was brought into the House of Commons, and was received with general applause. Treby had the courage to makesome objections; but no division took place. The chief enactments werethat no person should be convicted of high treason committed more thanthree years before the indictment was found; that every person indictedfor high treason should be allowed to avail himself of the assistance ofcounsel, and should be furnished, ten days before the trial, with a copyof the indictment, and with a list of the freeholders from among whomthe jury was to be taken; that his witnesses should be sworn, and thatthey should be cited by the same process by which the attendance of thewitnesses against him was secured. 

The Bill went to the Upper House, and came back with an importantamendment. The Lords had long complained of the anomalous and iniquitousconstitution of that tribunal which had jurisdiction over them in casesof life and death. When a grand jury has found a bill of indictmentagainst a temporal peer for any offence higher than a misdemeanour, theCrown appoints a Lord High Steward; and in the Lord High Steward'sCourt the case is tried. This Court was anciently composed in two verydifferent ways. It consisted, if Parliament happened to be sitting, ofall the members of the Upper House. When Parliament was not sitting, theLord High Steward summoned any twelve or more peers at his discretionto form a jury. The consequence was that a peer accused of high treasonduring a recess was tried by a jury which his prosecutors had packed. The Lords now demanded that, during a recess as well as during asession, every peer accused of high treason should be tried by the wholebody of the peerage. 

The demand was resisted by the House of Commons with a vehemence andobstinacy which men of the present generation may find it difficult tounderstand. The truth is that some invidious privileges of peeragewhich have since been abolished, and others which have since falleninto entire desuetude, were then in full force, and were daily used. No gentleman who had had a dispute with a nobleman could think, withoutindignation, of the advantages enjoyed by the favoured caste. If HisLordship were sued at law, his privilege enabled him to impede thecourse of justice. If a rude word were spoken of him, such a word ashe might himself utter with perfect impunity, he might vindicate hisinsulted dignity both by civil and criminal proceedings. If a barrister, in the discharge of his duty to a client, spoke with severity of theconduct of a noble seducer, if an honest squire on the racecourseapplied the proper epithets to the tricks of a noble swindler, theaffronted patrician had only to complain to the proud and powerful bodyof which he was a member. His brethren made his cause their own. Theoffender was taken into custody by Black Rod, brought to the bar, flunginto prison, and kept there till he was glad to obtain forgiveness bythe most degrading submissions. Nothing could therefore be more naturalthan that an attempt of the Peers to obtain any new advantage for theirorder should be regarded by the Commons with extreme jealousy. There isstrong reason to suspect that some able Whig politicians, who thought itdangerous to relax, at that moment, the laws against political offences, but who could not, without incurring the charge of inconsistency, declare themselves adverse to any relaxation, had conceived a hope thatthey might, by fomenting the dispute about the Court of the Lord HighSteward, defer for at least a year the passing of a bill which theydisliked, and yet could not decently oppose. If this really was theirplan, it succeeded perfectly. The Lower House rejected the amendment;the Upper House persisted; a free conference was held; and the questionwas argued with great force and ingenuity on both sides. 

The reasons in favour of the amendment are obvious, and indeed at firstsight seem unanswerable. It was surely difficult to defend a systemunder which the Sovereign nominated a conclave of his own creatures todecide the fate of men whom he regarded as his mortal enemies. And couldany thing be more absurd than that a nobleman accused of high treasonshould be entitled to be tried by the whole body of his peers if hisindictment happened to be brought into the House of Lords the minutebefore a prorogation, but that, if the indictment arrived a minute afterthe prorogation, he should be at the mercy of a small junto named by thevery authority which prosecuted him? That any thing could have been saidon the other side seems strange; but those who managed the conferencefor the Commons were not ordinary men, and seem on this occasion to haveput forth all their powers. Conspicuous among them was Charles Montague, who was rapidly attaining a foremost rank among the orators of that age. To him the lead seems on this occasion to have been left; and to his penwe owe an account of the discussion, which gives a very high notionof his talents for debate. "We have framed"--such was in substance hisreasoning, --"we have framed a law which has in it nothing exclusive, a law which will be a blessing to every class, from the highest tothe lowest. The new securities, which we propose to give to innocenceoppressed by power, are common between the premier peer and the humblestday labourer. The clause which establishes a time of limitation forprosecutions protects us all alike. To every Englishman accused ofthe highest crime against the state, whatever be his rank, we give theprivilege of seeing his indictment, the privilege of being defendedby counsel, the privilege of having his witnesses summoned by writ ofsubpoena and sworn on the Holy Gospels. Such is the bill which we sentup to your Lordships; and you return it to us with a clause of which theeffect is to give certain advantages to your noble order at the expenseof the ancient prerogatives of the Crown. Surely before we consent totake away from the King any power which his predecessors have possessedfor ages, and to give it to your Lordships, we ought to be satisfiedthat you are more likely to use it well than he. Something we must risk;somebody we must trust; and; since we are forced, much against our will, to institute what is necessarily an invidious comparison, we must ownourselves unable to discover any reason for believing that a prince isless to be trusted than an aristocracy. 

"Is it reasonable, you ask, that you should be tried for your livesbefore a few members of your House, selected by the Crown? Is itreasonable, we ask in our turn, that you should have the privilege ofbeing tried by all the members of your House, that is to say, by yourbrothers, your uncles, your first cousins, your second cousins, yourfathers in law, your brothers in law, your most intimate friends? Youmarry so much into each other's families, you live so much in eachother's society, that there is scarcely a nobleman who is not connectedby consanguinity or affinity with several others, and who is not onterms of friendship with several more. There have been great menwhose death put a third or fourth part of the baronage of England intomourning. Nor is there much danger that even those peers who may beunconnected with an accused lord will be disposed to send him to theblock if they can with decency say 'Not Guilty, upon my honour. ' Forthe ignominious death of a single member of a small aristocratical bodynecessarily leaves a stain on the reputation of his fellows. If, indeed, your Lordships proposed that every one of your body should be compelledto attend and vote, the Crown might have some chance of obtainingjustice against a guilty peer, however strongly connected. But youpropose that attendance shall be voluntary. Is it possible to doubt whatthe consequence will be? All the prisoner's relations and friends willbe in their places to vote for him. Good nature and the fear of makingpowerful enemies will keep away many who, if they voted at all, wouldbe forced by conscience and honour to vote against him. The new systemwhich you propose would therefore evidently be unfair to the Crown; andyou do not show any reason for believing that the old system has beenfound in practice unfair to yourselves. We may confidently affirm that, even under a government less just and merciful than that under which wehave the happiness to live, an innocent peer has little to fear fromany set of peers that can be brought together in Westminster Hall totry him. How stands the fact? In what single case has a guiltless headfallen by the verdict of this packed jury? It would be easy to make outa long list of squires, merchants, lawyers, surgeons, yeomen, artisans, ploughmen, whose blood, barbarously shed during the late evil times, cries for vengeance to heaven. But what single member of your House, in our days, or in the days of our fathers, or in the days of ourgrandfathers, suffered death unjustly by sentence of the Court ofthe Lord High Steward? Hundreds of the common people were sent tothe gallows by common juries for the Rye House Plot and the WesternInsurrection. One peer, and one alone, my Lord Delamere, was broughtat that time before the Court of the Lord High Steward; and he wasacquitted. But, it is said, the evidence against him was legallyinsufficient. Be it so. So was the evidence against Sidney, againstCornish, against Alice Lisle; yet it sufficed to destroy them. But, it is said, the peers before whom my Lord Delamere was brought wereselected with shameless unfairness by King James and by Jeffreys. Be itso. But this only proves that, under the worst possible King, and underthe worst possible High Steward, a lord tried by lords has a betterchance for life than a commoner who puts himself on his country. Wecannot, therefore, under the mild government which we now possess, feelmuch apprehension for the safety of any innocent peer. Would that wefelt as little apprehension for the safety of that government! But it isnotorious that the settlement with which our liberties are inseparablybound up is attacked at once by foreign and by domestic enemies. Wecannot consent at such a crisis to relax the restraints which have, itmay well be feared, already proved too feeble to prevent some men ofhigh rank from plotting the ruin of their country. To sum up the whole, what is asked of us is that we will consent to transfer a certain powerfrom their Majesties to your Lordships. Our answer is that, at thistime, in our opinion, their Majesties have not too much power, and yourLordships have quite power enough. "

These arguments, though eminently ingenious, and not without real force, failed to convince the Upper House. The Lords insisted that every peershould be entitled to be a Trier. The Commons were with difficultyinduced to consent that the number of Triers should never be less thanthirty-six, and positively refused to make any further concession. Thebill was therefore suffered to drop. [184]

It is certain that those who in the conference on this bill representedthe Commons, did not exaggerate the dangers to which the government wasexposed. While the constitution of the Court which was to try peers fortreason was under discussion, a treason planned with rare skill by apeer was all but carried into execution. 

Marlborough had never ceased to assure the Court of Saint Germains thatthe great crime which he had committed was constantly present to histhoughts, and that he lived only for the purpose of repentance andreparation. Not only had he been himself converted; he had alsoconverted the Princess Anne. In 1688, the Churchills had, with littledifficulty, induced her to fly from her father's palace. In 1691, they, with as little difficulty, induced her to copy out and sign a letterexpressing her deep concern for his misfortunes and her earnest wish toatone for her breach of duty. [185] At the same time Marlborough heldout hopes that it might be in his power to effect the restoration ofhis old master in the best possible way, without the help of a singleforeign soldier or sailor, by the votes of the English Lords andCommons, and by the support of the English army. We are not fullyinformed as to all the details of his plan. But the outline is known tous from a most interesting paper written by James, of which one copy isin the Bodleian Library, and another among the archives of the FrenchForeign Office. 

The jealousy with which the English regarded the Dutch was at this timeintense. There had never been a hearty friendship between the nations. They were indeed near of kin to each other. They spoke two dialects ofone widespread language. Both boasted of their political freedom. Bothwere attached to the reformed faith. Both were threatened by the sameenemy, and would be safe only while they were united. Yet there was nocordial feeling between them. They would probably have loved each othermore, if they had, in some respects, resembled each other less. Theywere the two great commercial nations, the two great maritime nations. In every sea their flags were found together, in the Baltic and in theMediterranean, in the Gulf of Mexico and in the Straits of Malacca. Every where the merchant of London and the merchant of Amsterdam weretrying to forestall each other and to undersell each other. In Europethe contest was not sanguinary. But too often, in barbarous countries, where there was no law but force, the competitors had met, burning withcupidity, burning with animosity, armed for battle, each suspectingthe other of hostile designs and each resolved to give the other noadvantage. In such circumstances it is not strange that many violentand cruel acts should have been perpetrated. What had been done in thosedistant regions could seldom be exactly known in Europe. Every thingwas exaggerated and distorted by vague report and by national prejudice. Here it was the popular belief that the English were always blameless, and that every quarrel was to be ascribed to the avarice and inhumanityof the Dutch. Lamentable events which had taken place in the SpiceIslands were repeatedly brought on our stage. The Englishmen wereall saints and heroes; the Dutchmen all fiends in human shape, lying, robbing, ravishing, murdering, torturing. The angry passions which thesepieces indicated had more than once found vent in war. Thrice in thelifetime of one generation the two nations had contended, with equalcourage and with various fortune, for the sovereignty of the GermanOcean. The tyranny of James, as it had reconciled Tories to Whigs andChurchmen to Nonconformists, had also reconciled the English to theDutch. While our ancestors were looking to the Hague for deliverance, the massacre of Amboyna and the great humiliation of Chatham had seemedto be forgotten. But since the Revolution the old feeling had revived. Though England and Holland were now closely bound together by treaty, they were as far as ever from being bound together by affection. Once, just after the battle of Beachy Head, our countrymen had seemed disposedto be just; but a violent reaction speedily followed. Torrington, whodeserved to be shot, became a popular favourite; and the allies whomhe had shamefully abandoned were accused of persecuting him without acause. The partiality shown by the King to the companions of his youthwas the favourite theme of the sewers of sedition. The most lucrativeposts in his household, it was said, were held by Dutchmen; the Houseof Lords was fast filling with Dutchmen; the finest manors of the Crownwere given to Dutchmen; the army was commanded by Dutchmen. That itwould have been wise in William to exhibit somewhat less obtrusively hislaudable fondness for his native country, and to remunerate his earlyfriends somewhat more sparingly, is perfectly true. But it will not beeasy to prove that, on any important occasion during his whole reign, he sacrificed the interests of our island to the interests of the UnitedProvinces. The English, however, were on this subject prone to fits ofjealousy which made them quite incapable of listening to reason. One ofthe sharpest of those fits came on in the autumn of 1691. The antipathyto the Dutch was at that time strong in all classes, and nowherestronger than in the Parliament and in the army. [186]

Of that antipathy Marlborough determined to avail himself for thepurpose, as he assured James and James's adherents, of effecting arestoration. The temper of both Houses was such that they might notimprobably be induced by skilful management to present a joint addressrequesting that all foreigners might be dismissed from the service oftheir Majesties. Marlborough undertook to move such an address in theLords; and there would have been no difficulty in finding some gentlemanof great weight to make a similar motion in the Commons. 

If the address should be carried, what could William do? Would he yield?Would he discard all his dearest, his oldest, his most trusty friends?It was hardly possible to believe that he would make so painful, sohumiliating a concession. If he did not yield, there would be a rupturebetween him and the Parliament; and the Parliament would be backed bythe people. Even a King reigning by a hereditary title might well shrinkfrom such a contest with the Estates of the Realm. But to a King whosetitle rested on a resolution of the Estates of the Realm such a contestmust almost necessarily be fatal. The last hope of William would be inthe army. The army Marlborough undertook to manage; and it is highlyprobable that what he undertook he could have performed. His courage, his abilities, his noble and winning manners, the splendid success whichhad attended him on every occasion on which he had been in command, hadmade him, in spite of his sordid vices, a favourite with his brethrenin arms. They were proud of having one countryman who had shown that hewanted nothing but opportunity to vie with the ablest Marshal of France. The Dutch were even more disliked by the English troops than by theEnglish nation generally. Had Marlborough therefore, after securing thecooperation of some distinguished officers, presented himself at thecritical moment to those regiments which he had led to victory inFlanders and in Ireland, had he called on them to rally round him, toprotect the Parliament, and to drive out the aliens, there is strongreason to think that the call would have been obeyed. He would then havehad it in his power to fulfil the promises which he had so solemnly madeto his old master. 

Of all the schemes ever formed for the restoration of James or of hisdescendants, this scheme promised the fairest. That national pride, thathatred of arbitrary power, which had hitherto been on William's side, would now be turned against him. Hundreds of thousands who would haveput their lives in jeopardy to prevent a French army from imposing agovernment on the English, would have felt no disposition to prevent anEnglish army from driving out the Dutch. Even the Whigs could scarcely, without renouncing their old doctrines, support a prince who obstinatelyrefused to comply with the general wish of his people signified to himby his Parliament. The plot looked well. An active canvass was made. Many members of the House of Commons, who did not at all suspect thatthere was any ulterior design, promised to vote against the foreigners. Marlborough was indefatigable in inflaming the discontents of the army. His house was constantly filled with officers who heated each other intofury by talking against the Dutch. But, before the preparationswere complete, a strange suspicion rose in the minds of some of theJacobites. That the author of this bold and artful scheme wished to pulldown the existing government there could be little doubt. But was itquite certain what government he meant to set up? Might he not deposeWilliam without restoring James? Was it not possible that a man so wise, so aspiring, and so wicked, might be meditating a double treason, suchas would have been thought a masterpiece of statecraft by the greatItalian politicians of the fifteenth century, such as Borgia would haveenvied, such as Machiavel would have extolled to the skies?

What if this consummate dissembler should cheat both the rival kings?What if, when he found himself commander of the army and protector ofthe Parliament, he should proclaim Queen Anne? Was it not possiblethat the weary and harassed nation might gladly acquiesce in such asettlement? James was unpopular because he was a Papist, influencedby Popish priests. William was unpopular because he was a foreigner, attached to foreign favourites. Anne was at once a Protestant and anEnglishwoman. Under her government the country would be in no danger ofbeing overrun either by Jesuits or by Dutchmen. That Marlborough had thestrongest motives for placing her on the throne was evident. He couldnever, in the court of her father, be more than a repentant criminal, whose services were overpaid by a pardon. In her court the husband ofher adored friend would be what Pepin Heristal and Charles Martel hadbeen to the Chilperics and Childeberts. He would be the chief directorof the civil and military government. He would wield the whole powerof England. He would hold the balance of Europe. Great kings andcommonwealths would bid against each other for his favour, and exhausttheir treasuries in the vain hope of satiating his avarice. Thepresumption was, therefore, that, if he had the English crown in hishands, he would put in on the head of the Princess. What evidence therewas to confirm this presumption is not known; but it is certain thatsomething took place which convinced some of the most devoted friendsof the exiled family that he was meditating a second perfidy, surpassingeven the feat which he had performed at Salisbury. They were afraidthat if, at that moment, they succeeded in getting rid of William, thesituation of James would be more hopeless than ever. So fully werethey persuaded of the duplicity of their accomplice, that they not onlyrefused to proceed further in the execution of the plan which he hadformed, but disclosed his whole scheme to Portland. 

William seems to have been alarmed and provoked by this intelligenceto a degree very unusual with him. In general he was indulgent, nay, wilfully blind to the baseness of the English statesmen whom heemployed. He suspected, indeed he knew, that some of his servants werein correspondence with his competitor; and yet he did not punish them, did not disgrace them, did not even frown on them. He thought meanly, and he had but too good reason for thinking meanly, of the whole of thatbreed of public men which the Restoration had formed and had bequeathedto the Revolution. He knew them too well to complain because he did notfind in them veracity, fidelity, consistency, disinterestedness. Thevery utmost that he expected from them was that they would serve him asfar as they could serve him without serious danger to themselves. If helearned that, while sitting in his council and enriched by his bounty, they were trying to make for themselves at Saint Germains an interestwhich might be of use to them in the event of a counterrevolution he wasmore inclined to bestow on them the contemptuous commendation which wasbestowed of old on the worldly wisdom of the unjust steward than to callthem to a severe account. But the crime of Marlborough was of a verydifferent kind. His treason was not that of a fainthearted man desirousto keep a retreat open for himself in every event, but that of a man ofdauntless courage, profound policy and measureless ambition. William wasnot prone to fear; but, if there was anything on earth that he feared, it was Marlborough. To treat the criminal as he deserved was indeedimpossible; for those by whom his designs had been made known to thegovernment would never have consented to appear against him in thewitness box. But to permit him to retain high command in that army whichhe was then engaged in seducing would have been madness. 

Late in the evening of the ninth of January the Queen had a painfulexplanation with the Princess Anne. Early the next morning Marlboroughwas informed that their Majesties had no further occasion for hisservices, and that he must not presume to appear in the royal presence. He had been loaded with honours, and with what he loved better, riches. All was at once taken away. 

The real history of these events was known to very few. Evelyn, whohad in general excellent sources of information, believed that thecorruption and extortion of which Marlborough was notoriously guilty hadroused the royal indignation. The Dutch ministers could only tellthe States General that six different stories were spread abroad byMarlborough's enemies. Some said that he had indiscreetly sufferedan important military secret to escape him; some that he had spokendisrespectfully of their Majesties; some that he had done ill officesbetween the Queen and the Princess; some that he had been forming cabalsin the army; some that he had carried on an unauthorised correspondencewith the Danish government about the general politics of Europe; andsome that he had been trafficking with the agents of the Court of SaintGermains. [187] His friends contradicted every one of these stories, andaffirmed that his only crime was his dislike of the foreigners who werelording it over his countrymen, and that he had fallen a victim to themachinations of Portland, whom he was known to dislike, and whom he hadnot very politely described as a wooden fellow. The mystery, which fromthe first overhung the story of Marlborough's disgrace, was darkened, after the lapse of fifty years, by the shameless mendacity of his widow. The concise narrative of James dispels the mystery, and makes it clear, not only why Marlborough was disgraced, but also how several of thereports about the cause of his disgrace originated. [188]

Though William assigned to the public no reason for exercising hisundoubted prerogative by dismissing his servant, Anne had been informedof the truth; and it had been left to her to judge whether an officerwho had been guilty of a foul treason was a fit inmate of the palace. Three weeks passed. Lady Marlborough still retained her post and herapartments at Whitehall. Her husband still resided with her; and stillthe King and Queen gave no sign of displeasure. At length the haughtyand vindictive Countess, emboldened by their patience, determined tobrave them face to face, and accompanied her mistress one evening to thedrawingroom at Kensington. This was too much even for the gentle Mary. She would indeed have expressed her indignation before the crowd whichsurrounded the card tables, had she not remembered that her sister wasin a state which entitles women to peculiar indulgence. Nothing wassaid that night; but on the following day a letter from the Queen wasdelivered to the Princess. Mary declared that she was unwilling to givepain to a sister whom she loved, and in whom she could easily pass overany ordinary fault; but this was a serious matter. Lady Marlborough mustbe dismissed. While she lived at Whitehall her lord would live there. Was it proper that a man in his situation should be suffered to make thepalace of his injured master his home? Yet so unwilling was His Majestyto deal severely with the worst offenders, that even this had beenborne, and might have been borne longer, had not Anne brought theCountess to defy the King and Queen in their own presence chamber. "Itwas unkind, " Mary wrote, "in a sister; it would have been uncivil in anequal; and I need not say that I have more to claim. " The Princess, in her answer, did not attempt to exculpate or excuse Marlborough, butexpressed a firm conviction that his wife was innocent, and imploredthe Queen not to insist on so heartrending a separation. "There is nomisery, " Anne wrote, "that I cannot resolve to suffer rather than thethoughts of parting from her. "

The Princess sent for her uncle Rochester, and implored him to carry herletter to Kensington, and to be her advocate there. Rochester declinedthe office of messenger, and, though he tried to restore harmony betweenhis kinswomen, was by no means disposed to plead the cause of theChurchills. He had indeed long seen with extreme uneasiness the absolutedominion exercised over his younger niece by that unprincipled pair. Anne's expostulation was sent to the Queen by a servant. The onlyreply was a message from the Lord Chamberlain, Dorset, commanding LadyMarlborough to leave the palace. Mrs. Morley would not be separated fromMrs. Freeman. As to Mr. Morley, all places where he could have his threecourses and his three bottles were alike to him. The Princess and herwhole family therefore retired to Sion House, a villa belonging to theDuke of Somerset, and situated on the margin of the Thames. In Londonshe occupied Berkeley House, which stood in Piccadilly, on the sitenow covered by Devonshire House. [189] Her income was secured by Act ofParliament; but no punishment which it was in the power of the Crownto inflict on her was spared. Her guard of honour was taken away. Theforeign ministers ceased to wait upon her. When she went to Bath theSecretary of State wrote to request the Mayor of that city not toreceive her with the ceremonial with which royal visitors were usuallywelcomed. When she attended divine service at Saint James's Church shefound that the rector had been forbidden to show her the customary marksof respect, to bow to her from his pulpit, and to send a copy of histext to be laid on her cushion. Even the bellman of Piccadilly, it wassaid, perhaps falsely, was ordered not to chaunt her praises in hisdoggrel verse under the windows of Berkeley House. [190]

That Anne was in the wrong is clear; but it is not equally clear thatthe King and Queen were in the right. They should have either dissembledtheir displeasure, or openly declared the true reasons for it. Unfortunately, they let every body see the punishment, and they letscarcely any body know the provocation. They should have rememberedthat, in the absence of information about the cause of a quarrel, thepublic is naturally inclined to side with the weaker party, and thatthis inclination is likely to be peculiarly strong when a sister is, without any apparent reason, harshly treated by a sister. They shouldhave remembered, too, that they were exposing to attack what wasunfortunately the one vulnerable part of Mary's character. A cruel fatehad put enmity between her and her father. Her detractors pronouncedher utterly destitute of natural affection; and even her eulogists, when they spoke of the way in which she had discharged the duties of thefilial relation, were forced to speak in a subdued and apologetic tone. Nothing therefore could be more unfortunate than that she should asecond time appear unmindful of the ties of consanguinity. She was nowat open war with both the two persons who were nearest to her in blood. Many who thought that her conduct towards her parent was justified bythe extreme danger which had threatened her country and her religion, were unable to defend her conduct towards her sister. While Mary, whowas really guilty in this matter of nothing more than imprudence, wasregarded by the world as an oppressor, Anne, who was as culpable as hersmall faculties enabled her to be, assumed the interesting character ofa meek, resigned sufferer. In those private letters, indeed, to whichthe name of Morley was subscribed, the Princess expressed the sentimentsof a fury in the style of a fishwoman, railed savagely at the wholeDutch nation, and called her brother in law sometimes the abortion, sometimes the monster, sometimes Caliban. [191] But the nation heardnothing of her language and saw nothing of her deportment but what wasdecorous and submissive. The truth seems to have been that the rancorousand coarseminded Countess gave the tone to Her Highness's confidentialcorrespondence, while the graceful, serene and politic Earl was sufferedto prescribe the course which was to be taken before the public eye. During a short time the Queen was generally blamed. But the charm of hertemper and manners was irresistible; and in a few months she regainedthe popularity which she had lost. [192]

It was a most fortunate circumstance for Marlborough that, just at thevery time when all London was talking about his disgrace, and trying toguess at the cause of the King's sudden anger against one who hadalways seemed to be a favourite, an accusation of treason was brought byWilliam Fuller against many persons of high consideration, was strictlyinvestigated, and was proved to be false and malicious. The consequencewas that the public, which rarely discriminates nicely, could not, atthat moment, be easily brought to believe in the reality of any Jacobiteconspiracy. 

That Fuller's plot is less celebrated than the Popish plot is rather thefault of the historians than of Fuller, who did all that man could doto secure an eminent place among villains. Every person well read inhistory must have observed that depravity has its temporary modes, whichcome in and go out like modes of dress and upholstery. It may be doubtedwhether, in our country, any man ever before the year 1678 invented andrelated on oath a circumstantial history, altogether fictitious, ofa treasonable plot, for the purpose of making himself important bydestroying men who had given him no provocation. But in the year 1678this execrable crime became the fashion, and continued to be so duringthe twenty years which followed. Preachers designated it as our peculiarnational sin, and prophesied that it would draw on us some awfulnational judgment. Legislators proposed new punishments of terribleseverity for this new atrocity. [193] It was not however found necessaryto resort to those punishments. The fashion changed; and during the lastcentury and a half there has perhaps not been a single instance of thisparticular kind of wickedness. 

The explanation is simple. Oates was the founder of a school. Hissuccess proved that no romance is too wild to be received with faith byunderstandings which fear and hatred have disordered. His slanders weremonstrous; but they were well timed; he spoke to a people made credulousby their passions; and thus, by impudent and cruel lying, he raisedhimself in a week from beggary and obscurity to luxury, renown andpower. He had once eked out the small tithes of a miserable vicarage bystealing the pigs and fowls of his parishioners. [194] He was now lodgedin a palace; he was followed by admiring crowds; he had at his mercythe estates and lives of Howards and Herberts. A crowd of imitatorsinstantly appeared. It seemed that much more might be got, and thatmuch less was risked, by testifying to an imaginary conspiracy than byrobbing on the highway or clipping the coin. Accordingly the Bedloes, Dangerfields, Dugdales, Turberviles, made haste to transfer theirindustry to an employment at once more profitable and less perilous thanany to which they were accustomed. Till the dissolution of the OxfordParliament Popish plots were the chief manufacture. Then, during sevenyears, Whig plots were the only plots which paid. After the RevolutionJacobite plots came in; but the public had become cautious; and thoughthe new false witnesses were in no respect less artful than theirpredecessors, they found much less encouragement. The history of thefirst great check given to the practices of this abandoned race of menwell deserves to be circumstantially related. 

In 1689, and in the beginning of 1690, William Fuller had rendered tothe government service such as the best governments sometimes require, and such as none but the worst men ever perform. His useful treacheryhad been rewarded by his employers, as was meet, with money and withcontempt. Their liberality enabled him to live during some months likea fine gentleman. He called himself a Colonel, hired servants, clothedthem in gorgeous liveries, bought fine horses, lodged in Pall Mall, andshowed his brazen forehead, overtopped by a wig worth fifty guineas, inthe antechambers of the palace and in the stage box at the theatre. He even gave himself the airs of a favourite of royalty, and, as if hethought that William could not live without him, followed His Majestyfirst to Ireland, and then to the Congress of Princes at the Hague. Fuller afterwards boasted that, at the Hague, he appeared with a retinuefit for an ambassador, that he gave ten guineas a week for an apartment, and that the worst waistcoat which he condescended to wear was of silverstuff at forty shillings a yard. Such profusion, of course, brought himto poverty. Soon after his return to England he took refuge from thebailiffs in Axe Yard, a place lying within the verge of Whitehall. Hisfortunes were desperate; he owed great sums; on the government he had noclaim; his past services had been overpaid; no future service was to beexpected from him having appeared in the witness box as evidence for theCrown, he could no longer be of any use as a spy on the Jacobites; andby all men of virtue and honour, to whatever party they might belong, hewas abhorred and shunned. 

Just at this time, when he was in the frame of mind in which men areopen to the worst temptations, he fell in with the worst of tempters, in truth, with the Devil in human shape. Oates had obtained his liberty, his pardon, and a pension which made him a much richer man than nineteentwentieths of the members of that profession of which he was thedisgrace. But he was still unsatisfied. He complained that he had nowless than three hundred a year. In the golden days of the Plot he hadbeen allowed three times as much, had been sumptuously lodged in thepalace, had dined on plate and had been clothed in silk. He clamouredfor an increase of his stipend. Nay, he was even impudent enough toaspire to ecclesiastical preferment, and thought it hard that, while somany mitres were distributed, he could not get a deanery, a prebend, oreven a living. He missed no opportunity of urging his pretensions. Hehaunted the public offices and the lobbies of the Houses of Parliament. He might be seen and heard every day, hurrying, as fast as his unevenlegs would carry him, between Charing Cross and Westminster Hall, puffing with haste and self importance, chattering about what he haddone for the good cause, and reviling, in the style of the boatmen onthe river, all the statesmen and divines whom he suspected of doing himill offices at Court, and keeping him back from a bishopric. When hefound that there was no hope for him in the Established Church, heturned to the Baptists. They, at first, received him very coldly; buthe gave such touching accounts of the wonderful work of grace which hadbeen wrought in his soul, and vowed so solemnly, before Jehovah and theholy angels, to be thenceforth a burning and shining light, that it wasdifficult for simple and well meaning people to think him altogetherinsincere. He mourned, he said, like a turtle. On one Lord's day hethought he should have died of grief at being shut out from fellowshipwith the saints. He was at length admitted to communion; but beforehe had been a year among his new friends they discovered his truecharacter, and solemnly cast him out as a hypocrite. Thenceforth hebecame the mortal enemy of the leading Baptists, and persecuted themwith the same treachery, the same mendacity, the same effrontery, thesame black malice which had many years before wrought the destructionof more celebrated victims. Those who had lately been edified by hisaccount of his blessed experiences stood aghast to hear him crying outthat he would be revenged, that revenge was God's own sweet morsel, that the wretches who had excommunicated him should be ruined, that theyshould be forced to fly their country, that they should be stripped tothe last shilling. His designs were at length frustrated by a righteousdecree of the Court of Chancery, a decree which would have left adeep stain on the character of an ordinary man, but which makes noperceptible addition to the infamy of Titus Oates. [195] Through allchanges, however, he was surrounded by a small knot of hotheaded andfoulmouthed agitators, who, abhorred and despised by every respectableWhig, yet called themselves Whigs, and thought themselves injuredbecause they were not rewarded for scurrility and slander with the bestplaces under the Crown. 

In 1691, Titus, in order to be near the focal point of politicalintrigue and faction, had taken a house within the precinct ofWhitehall. To this house Fuller, who lived hard by, found admission. Theevil work which had been begun in him, when he was still a child, by thememoirs of Dangerfield, was now completed by the conversation of Oates. The Salamanca Doctor was, as a witness, no longer formidable; but he wasimpelled, partly by the savage malignity which he felt towards all whomhe considered as his enemies, and partly by mere monkeylike restlessnessand love of mischief, to do, through the instrumentality of others, what he could no longer do in person. In Fuller he had found the corruptheart, the ready tongue and the unabashed front which are the firstqualifications for the office of a false accuser. A friendship, if thatword may be so used, sprang up between the pair. Oates opened his houseand even his purse to Fuller. The veteran sinner, both directly andthrough the agency of his dependents, intimated to the novice thatnothing made a man so important as the discovering of a plot, and thatthese were times when a young fellow who would stick at nothing andfear nobody might do wonders. The Revolution, --such was the languageconstantly held by Titus and his parasites, --had produced little good. The brisk boys of Shaftesbury had not been recompensed according totheir merits. Even the Doctor, such was the ingratitude of men, waslooked on coldly at the new Court. Tory rogues sate at the councilboard, and were admitted to the royal closet. It would be a noble featto bring their necks to the block. Above all, it would be delightfulto see Nottingham's long solemn face on Tower Hill. For the hatred withwhich these bad men regarded Nottingham had no bounds, and was probablyexcited less by his political opinions, in which there was doubtlessmuch to condemn, than by his moral character, in which the closestscrutiny will detect little that is not deserving of approbation. Oates, with the authority which experience and success entitle a preceptor toassume, read his pupil a lecture on the art of bearing false witness. "You ought, " he said, with many oaths and curses, "to have made more, much more, out of what you heard and saw at Saint Germains. Never wasthere a finer foundation for a plot. But you are a fool; you are acoxcomb; I could beat you; I would not have done so. I used to go toCharles and tell him his own. I called Lauderdale rogue to his face. Imade King, Ministers, Lords, Commons, afraid of me. But you young menhave no spirit. " Fuller was greatly edified by these exhortations. Itwas, however, hinted to him by some of his associates that, if he meantto take up the trade of swearing away lives, he would do well not toshow himself so often at coffeehouses in the company of Titus. "TheDoctor, " said one of the gang, "is an excellent person, and has donegreat things in his time; but many people are prejudiced against him;and, if you are really going to discover a plot, the less you are seenwith him the better. " Fuller accordingly ceased to frequent Oates'shouse, but still continued to receive his great master's instructions inprivate. 

To do Fuller justice, he seems not to have taken up the trade of a falsewitness till he could no longer support himself by begging or swindling. He lived for a time on the charity of the Queen. He then leviedcontributions by pretending to be one of the noble family of Sidney. Hewheedled Tillotson out of some money, and requited the good Archbishop'skindness by passing himself off as His Grace's favourite nephew. Butin the autumn of 1691 all these shifts were exhausted. After lying inseveral spunging houses, Fuller was at length lodged in the King's Benchprison, and he now thought it time to announce that he had discovered aplot. [196]

He addressed himself first to Tillotson and Portland; but both Tillotsonand Portland soon perceived that he was lying. What he said was, however, reported to the King, who, as might have been expected, treatedthe information and the informant with cold contempt. All that remainedwas to try whether a flame could be raised in the Parliament. 

Soon after the Houses met, Fuller petitioned the Commons to hear what hehad to say, and promised to make wonderful disclosures. He was broughtfrom his prison to the bar of the House; and he there repeated a longromance. James, he said, had delegated the regal authority to sixcommissioners, of whom Halifax was first. More than fifty lords andgentlemen had signed an address to the French King, imploring him tomake a great effort for the restoration of the House of Stuart. Fullerdeclared that he had seen this address, and recounted many of the namesappended to it. Some members made severe remarks on the improbability ofthe story and on the character of the witness. He was, they said, one ofthe greatest rogues on the face of the earth; and he told such thingsas could scarcely be credited if he were an angel from heaven. Fulleraudaciously pledged himself to bring proofs which would satisfy the mostincredulous. He was, he averred, in communication with some agents ofJames. Those persons were ready to make reparation to their country. Their testimony would be decisive; for they were in possession ofdocumentary evidence which would confound the guilty. They held backonly because they saw some of the traitors high in office and near theroyal person, and were afraid of incurring the enmity of men so powerfuland so wicked. Fuller ended by asking for a sum of money, and byassuring the Commons that he would lay it out to good account. [197]Had his impudent request been granted, he would probably have paid hisdebts, obtained his liberty, and absconded; but the House very wiselyinsisted on seeing his witnesses first. He then began to shuffle. The gentlemen were on the Continent, and could not come over withoutpassports. Passports were delivered to him; but he complained that theywere insufficient. At length the Commons, fully determined to get at thetruth, presented an address requesting the King to send Fuller a blanksafe conduct in the largest terms. [198] The safe conduct was sent. Sixweeks passed, and nothing was heard of the witnesses. The friends of thelords and gentlemen who had been accused represented strongly thatthe House ought not to separate for the summer without coming to somedecision on charges so grave. Fuller was ordered to attend. He pleadedsickness, and asserted, not for the first time, that the Jacobiteshad poisoned him. But all his plans were confounded by the laudablepromptitude and vigour with which the Commons acted. A Committee wassent to his bedside, with orders to ascertain whether he really hadany witnesses, and where those witnesses resided. The members who weredeputed for this purpose went to the King's Bench prison, and found himsuffering under a disorder, produced, in all probability, by some emeticwhich he had swallowed for the purpose of deceiving them. In answer totheir questions he said that two of his witnesses, Delaval and Hayes, were in England, and were lodged at the house of a Roman Catholicapothecary in Holborn. The Commons, as soon as the Committee hadreported, sent some members to the house which he had indicated. Thathouse and all the neighbouring houses were searched. Delaval and Hayeswere not to be found, nor had any body in the vicinity ever seen suchmen or heard of them. The House, therefore, on the last day of thesession, just before Black Rod knocked at the door, unanimously resolvedthat William Fuller was a cheat and a false accuser; that he hadinsulted the Government and the Parliament; that he had calumniatedhonourable men, and that an address should be carried up to the throne, requesting that he might be prosecuted for his villany. [199] He wasconsequently tried, convicted, and sentenced to fine, imprisonment andthe pillory. The exposure, more terrible than death to a mind not lostto all sense of shame, he underwent with a hardihood worthy of histwo favourite models, Dangerfield and Oates. He had the impudence topersist, year after year, in affirming that he had fallen a victim tothe machinations of the late King, who had spent six thousand poundsin order to ruin him. Delaval and Hayes--so this fable ran--had beeninstructed by James in person. They had, in obedience to his orders, induced Fuller to pledge his word for their appearance, and had thenabsented themselves, and left him exposed to the resentment of the Houseof Commons. [200] The story had the reception which it deserved, andFuller sank into an obscurity from which he twice or thrice, at longintervals, again emerged for a moment into infamy. 

On the twenty-fourth of February 1692, about an hour after the Commonshad voted Fuller an impostor, they were summoned to the chamber of theLords. The King thanked the Houses for their loyalty and liberality, informed them that he must soon set out for the Continent, and commandedthem to adjourn themselves. He gave his assent on that day to manybills, public and private; but when the title of one bill, which hadpassed the Lower House without a single division and the Upper Housewithout a single protest, had been read by the Clerk of the Crown, theClerk of the Parliaments declared, according to the ancient form, thatthe King and the Queen would consider of the matter. Those words hadvery rarely been pronounced before the accession of William. They havebeen pronounced only once since his death. But by him the power ofputting a Veto on laws which had been passed by the Estates of the Realmwas used on several important occasions. His detractors truly assertedthat he rejected a greater number of important bills than all the Kingsof the House of Stuart put together, and most absurdly inferred that thesense of the Estates of the Realm was much less respected by him than byhis uncles and his grandfather. A judicious student of history willhave no difficulty in discovering why William repeatedly exercised aprerogative to which his predecessors very seldom had recourse, andwhich his successors have suffered to fall into utter desuetude. 

His predecessors passed laws easily because they broke laws easily. Charles the First gave his assent to the Petition of Right, andimmediately violated every clause of that great statute. Charles theSecond gave his assent to an Act which provided that a Parliament shouldbe held at least once in three years; but when he died the country hadbeen near four years without a Parliament. The laws which abolishedthe Court of High Commission, the laws which instituted the SacramentalTest, were passed without the smallest difficulty; but they didnot prevent James the Second from reestablishing the Court of HighCommission, and from filling the Privy Council, the public offices, thecourts of justice, and the municipal corporations with persons who hadnever taken the Test. Nothing could be more natural than that a Kingshould not think it worth while to withhold his assent from a statutewith which he could dispense whenever he thought fit. 

The situation of William was very different. He could not, like thosewho had ruled before him, pass an Act in the spring and violate itin the summer. He had, by assenting to the Bill of Rights, solemnlyrenounced the dispensing power; and he was restrained, by prudence aswell as by conscience and honour, from breaking the compact under whichhe held his crown. A law might be personally offensive to him; it mightappear to him to be pernicious to his people; but, as soon as he hadpassed it, it was, in his eyes, a sacred thing. He had therefore amotive, which preceding Kings had not, for pausing before he passed sucha law. They gave their word readily, because they had no scruple aboutbreaking it. He gave his word slowly, because he never failed to keepit. 

But his situation, though it differed widely from that of the princes ofthe House of Stuart, was not precisely that of the princes of the Houseof Brunswick. A prince of the House of Brunswick is guided, as to theuse of every royal prerogative, by the advice of a responsible ministry;and this ministry must be taken from the party which predominates in thetwo Houses, or, at least, in the Lower House. It is hardly possible toconceive circumstances in which a Sovereign so situated can refuseto assent to a bill which has been approved by both branches of thelegislature. Such a refusal would necessarily imply one of two things, that the Sovereign acted in opposition to the advice of the ministry, orthat the ministry was at issue, on a question of vital importance, witha majority both of the Commons and of the Lords. On either suppositionthe country would be in a most critical state, in a state which, iflong continued, must end in a revolution. But in the earlier part ofthe reign of William there was no ministry. The heads of the executivedepartments had not been appointed exclusively from either party. Some were zealous Whigs, others zealous Tories. The most enlightenedstatesmen did not hold it to be unconstitutional that the King shouldexercise his highest prerogatives on the most important occasionswithout any other guidance than that of his own judgment. His refusal, therefore, to assent to a bill which had passed both Houses indicated, not, as a similar refusal would now indicate, that the whole machineryof government was in a state of fearful disorder, but merely that therewas a difference of opinion between him and the two other branchesof the legislature as to the expediency of a particular law. Such adifference of opinion might exist, and, as we shall hereafter see, actually did exist, at a time when he was, not merely on friendly, buton most affectionate terms with the Estates of the Realm. 

The circumstances under which he used his Veto for the first time havenever yet been correctly stated. A well meant but unskilful attempthad been made to complete a reform which the Bill of Rights had leftimperfect. That great law had deprived the Crown of the power ofarbitrarily removing the judges, but had not made them entirelyindependent. They were remunerated partly by fees and partly bysalaries. Over the fees the King had no control; but the salaries he hadfull power to reduce or to withhold. That William had ever abused thispower was not pretended; but it was undoubtedly a power which no princeought to possess; and this was the sense of both Houses. A bill wastherefore brought in by which a salary of a thousand a year was strictlysecured to each of the twelve judges. Thus far all was well. Butunfortunately the salaries were made a charge on the hereditary revenue. No such proposition would now be entertained by the House of Commons, without the royal consent previously signified by a Privy Councillor. But this wholesome rule had not then been established; and William coulddefend the proprietary rights of the Crown only by putting his negativeon the bill. At the time there was, as far as can now be ascertained, nooutcry. Even the Jacobite libellers were almost silent. It was not tillthe provisions of the bill had been forgotten, and till nothing but itstitle was remembered, that William was accused of having been influencedby a wish to keep the judges in a state of dependence. [201]

The Houses broke up; and the King prepared to set out for the Continent. Before his departure he made some changes in his household and inseveral departments of the government; changes, however, which did notindicate a very decided preference for either of the great politicalparties. Rochester was sworn of the Council. It is probable that hehad earned this mark of royal favour by taking the Queen's side in theunhappy dispute between her and her sister. Pembroke took charge of thePrivy Seal, and was succeeded at the Board of Admiralty by Charles LordCornwallis, a moderate Tory; Lowther accepted a seat at the same board, and was succeeded at the Treasury by Sir Edward Seymour. Many Torycountry gentlemen, who had looked on Seymour as their leader in the waragainst placemen and Dutchmen, were moved to indignation by learningthat he had become a courtier. They remembered that he had voted fora Regency, that he had taken the oaths with no good grace, that he hadspoken with little respect of the Sovereign whom he was now ready toserve for the sake of emoluments hardly worthy of the acceptance of aman of his wealth and parliamentary interest. It was strange that thehaughtiest of human beings should be the meanest, that one who seethedto reverence nothing on earth but himself should abase himself for thesake of quarter day. About such reflections he troubled himself verylittle. He found, however, that there was one disagreeable circumstanceconnected with his new office. At the Board of Treasury he must sitbelow the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The First Lord, Godolphin, was apeer of the realm; and his right to precedence, according to the rulesof the heralds, could not be questioned. But every body knew who was thefirst of English commoners. What was Richard Hampden that he shouldtake the place of a Seymour, of the head of the Seymours? With muchdifficulty, the dispute was compromised. Many concessions were madeto Sir Edward's punctilious pride. He was sworn of the Council. Hewas appointed one of the Cabinet. The King took him by the hand andpresented him to the Queen. "I bring you, " said William, "a gentlemanwho will in my absence be a valuable friend. " In this way Sir Edward wasso much soothed and flattered that he ceased to insist on his rightto thrust himself between the First Lord and the Chancellor of theExchequer. 

In the same Commission of Treasury in which the name of Seymourappeared, appeared also the name of a much younger politician, who hadduring the late session raised himself to high distinction in the Houseof Commons, Charles Montague. This appointment gave great satisfactionto the Whigs, in whose esteem Montague now stood higher than theirveteran chiefs Sacheverell and Littleton, and was indeed second toSomers alone. 

Sidney delivered up the seals which he had held during more than a year, and was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Some months elapsed beforethe place which he had quitted was filled up; and during this intervalthe whole business which had ordinarily been divided between twoSecretaries of State was transacted by Nottingham. [202]

While these arrangements were in progress, events had taken place in adistant part of the island which were not, till after the lapse ofmany months, known in the best informed circles of London, but whichgradually obtained a fearful notoriety, and which, after the lapse ofmore than a hundred and sixty years, are never mentioned without horror. 

Soon after the Estates of Scotland had separated in the autumn of 1690, a change was made in the administration of that kingdom. William wasnot satisfied with the way in which he had been represented in theParliament House. He thought that the rabbled curates had been hardlytreated. He had very reluctantly suffered the law which abolishedpatronage to be touched with his sceptre. But what especially displeasedhim was that the Acts which established a new ecclesiastical polity hadnot been accompanied by an Act granting liberty of conscience to thosewho were attached to the old ecclesiastical polity. He had directed hisCommissioner Melville to obtain for the Episcopalians of Scotland anindulgence similar to that which Dissenters enjoyed in England. [203]But the Presbyterian preachers were loud and vehement against lenityto Amalekites. Melville, with useful talents, and perhaps with fairintentions, had neither large views nor an intrepid spirit. He shrankfrom uttering a word so hateful to the theological demagogues of hiscountry as Toleration. By obsequiously humouring their prejudices hequelled the clamour which was rising at Edinburgh; but the effect of histimid caution was that a far more formidable clamour soon rose inthe south of the island against the bigotry of the schismatics whodomineered in the north, and against the pusillanimity of the governmentwhich had not dared to withstand that bigotry. On this subject the HighChurchman and the Low Churchman were of one mind, or rather the LowChurchman was the more angry of the two. A man like South, who hadduring many years been predicting that, if ever the Puritans ceased tobe oppressed, they would become oppressors, was at heart not ill pleasedto see his prophecy fulfilled. But in a man like Burnet, the greatobject of whose life had been to mitigate the animosity which theministers of the Anglican Church felt towards the Presbyterians, theintolerant conduct of the Presbyterians could awaken no feeling butindignation, shame and grief. There was, therefore, at the English Courtnobody to speak a good word for Melville. It was impossible that insuch circumstances he should remain at the head of the Scottishadministration. He was, however, gently let down from his high position. He continued during more than a year to be Secretary of State; butanother Secretary was appointed, who was to reside near the King, and tohave the chief direction of affairs. The new Prime Minister for Scotlandwas the able, eloquent and accomplished Sir John Dalrymple. His father, the Lord President of the Court of Session, had lately been raised tothe peerage by the title of Viscount Stair; and Sir John Dalrymple wasconsequently, according to the ancient usage of Scotland, designatedas the Master of Stair. In a few months Melville resigned hissecretaryship, and accepted an office of some dignity and emolument, butof no political importance. [204]

The Lowlands of Scotland were, during the year which followed theparliamentary session of 1690, as quiet as they had ever been within thememory of man; but the state of the Highlands caused much anxiety to thegovernment. The civil war in that wild region, after it had ceased toflame, had continued during some time to smoulder. At length, early inthe year 1691, the rebel chiefs informed the Court of Saint Germainsthat, pressed as they were on every side, they could hold out no longerwithout succour from France. James had sent them a small quantity ofmeal, brandy and tobacco, and had frankly told them that he could donothing more. Money was so scarce among them that six hundred poundssterling would have been a most acceptable addition to their funds, but even such a sum he was unable to spare. He could scarcely, in suchcircumstances, expect them to defend his cause against a governmentwhich had a regular army and a large revenue. He therefore informed themthat he should not take it ill of them if they made their peace withthe new dynasty, provided always that they were prepared to rise ininsurrection as soon as he should call on them to do so. [205]

Meanwhile it had been determined at Kensington, in spite of theopposition of the Master of Stair, to try the plan which Tarbet hadrecommended two years before, and which, if it had been tried whenhe recommended it, would probably have prevented much bloodshed andconfusion. It was resolved that twelve or fifteen thousand pounds shouldbe laid out in quieting the Highlands. This was a mass of treasure whichto an inhabitant of Appin or Lochaber seemed almost fabulous, and whichindeed bore a greater proportion to the income of Keppoch or Glengarrythan fifteen hundred thousand pounds bore to the income of Lord Bedfordor Lord Devonshire. The sum was ample; but the King was not fortunate inthe choice of an agent. [206]

John Earl of Breadalbane, the head of a younger branch of the greatHouse of Campbell, ranked high among the petty princes of the mountains. He could bring seventeen hundred claymores into the field; and, tenyears before the Revolution, he had actually marched into the Lowlandswith this great force for the purpose of supporting the prelaticaltyranny. [207] In those days he had affected zeal for monarchy andepiscopacy; but in truth he cared for no government and no religion. He seems to have united two different sets of vices, the growth oftwo different regions, and of two different stages in the progress ofsociety. In his castle among the hills he had learned the barbarianpride and ferocity of a Highland chief. In the Council Chamber atEdinburgh he had contracted the deep taint of treachery and corruption. After the Revolution he had, like too many of his fellow nobles, joinedand betrayed every party in turn, had sworn fealty to William and Mary, and had plotted against them. To trace all the turns and doublings ofhis course, during the year 1689 and the earlier part of 1690, wouldbe wearisome. [208] That course became somewhat less tortuous when thebattle of the Boyne had cowed the spirit of the Jacobites. It now seemedprobable that the Earl would be a loyal subject of their Majesties, tillsome great disaster should befall them. Nobody who knew him could trusthim; but few Scottish statesmen could then be trusted; and yet Scottishstatesmen must be employed. His position and connections marked him outas a man who might, if he would, do much towards the work of quietingthe Highlands; and his interest seemed to be a guarantee for his zeal. He had, as he declared with every appearance of truth, strong personalreasons for wishing to see tranquillity restored. His domains were sosituated that, while the civil war lasted, his vassals could not tendtheir herds or sow their oats in peace. His lands were daily ravaged;his cattle were daily driven away; one of his houses had been burneddown. It was probable, therefore, that he would do his best to put anend to hostilities. [209]

He was accordingly commissioned to treat with the Jacobite chiefs, andwas entrusted with the money which was to be distributed among them. Heinvited them to a conference at his residence in Glenorchy. They came;but the treaty went on very slowly. Every head of a tribe asked for alarger share of the English gold than was to be obtained. Breadalbanewas suspected of intending to cheat both the clans and the King. Thedispute between the rebels and the government was complicated withanother dispute still more embarrassing. The Camerons and Macdonaldswere really at war, not with William, but with Mac Callum More; andno arrangement to which Mac Callum More was not a party could reallyproduce tranquillity. A grave question therefore arose, whetherthe money entrusted to Breadalbane should be paid directly to thediscontented chiefs, or should be employed to satisfy the claimswhich Argyle had upon them. The shrewdness of Lochiel and the arrogantpretensions of Glengarry contributed to protract the discussions. Butno Celtic potentate was so impracticable as Macdonald of Glencoe, knownamong the mountains by the hereditary appellation of Mac Ian. [210]

Mac Ian dwelt in the mouth of a ravine situated not far from thesouthern shore of Lochleven, an arm of the sea which deeply indents thewestern coast of Scotland, and separates Argyleshire from Invernesshire. Near his house were two or three small hamlets inhabited by his tribe. The whole population which he governed was not supposed to exceed twohundred souls. In the neighbourhood of the little cluster of villageswas some copsewood and some pasture land; but a little further up thedefile no sign of population or of fruitfulness was to be seen. In theGaelic tongue Glencoe signifies the Glen of Weeping; and in truth thatpass is the most dreary and melancholy of all the Scottish passes, the very Valley of the Shadow of Death. Mists and storms brood over itthrough the greater part of the finest summer; and even on those raredays when the sun is bright, and when there is no cloud in the sky, theimpression made by the landscape is sad and awful. The path lies alonga stream which issues from the most sullen and gloomy of mountain pools. Huge precipices of naked stone frown on both sides. Even in July thestreaks of snow may often be discerned in the rifts near the summits. All down the sides of the crags heaps of ruin mark the headlong paths ofthe torrents. Mile after mile the traveller looks in vain for the smokeof one hut, for one human form wrapped in plaid, and listens in vain forthe bark of a shepherd's dog or the bleat of a lamb. Mile after mile theonly sound that indicates life is the faint cry of a bird of prey fromsome stormbeaten pinnacle of rock. The progress of civilisation, whichhas turned so many wastes into fields yellow with harvests or gay withapple blossoms, has only made Glencoe more desolate. All the scienceand industry of a peaceful age can extract nothing valuable from thatwilderness; but, in an age of violence and rapine, the wilderness itselfwas valued on account of the shelter which it afforded to the plundererand his plunder. Nothing could be more natural than that the clan towhich this rugged desert belonged should have been noted for predatoryhabits. For, among the Highlanders generally, to rob was thought atleast as honourable an employment as to cultivate the soil; and, ofall the Highlanders, The Macdonalds of Glencoe had the least productivesoil, and the most convenient and secure den of robbers. Successivegovernments had tried to punish this wild race; but no large forcehad ever been employed for that purpose; and a small force was easilyresisted or eluded by men familiar with every recess and every outlet ofthe natural fortress in which they had been born and bred. The people ofGlencoe would probably have been less troublesome neighbours if theyhad lived among their own kindred. But they were an outpost of theClan Donald, separated from every other branch of their own family, andalmost surrounded by the domains of the hostile race of Diarmid. [211]They were impelled by hereditary enmity, as well as by want, to liveat the expense of the tribe of Campbell. Breadalbane's property hadsuffered greatly from their depredations; and he was not of a temper toforgive such injuries. When, therefore, the Chief of Glencoe made hisappearance at the congress in Glenorchy, he was ungraciously received. The Earl, who ordinarily bore himself with the solemn dignity of aCastilian grandee, forgot, in his resentment, his wonted gravity, forgothis public character, forgot the laws of hospitality, and, with angryreproaches and menaces, demanded reparation for the herds which hadbeen driven from his lands by Mac Ian's followers. Mac Ian was seriouslyapprehensive of some personal outrage, and was glad to get safe back tohis own glen. [212] His pride had been wounded; and the promptings ofinterest concurred with those of pride. As the head of a people wholived by pillage, he had strong reasons for wishing that the countrymight continue to be in a perturbed state. He had little chance ofreceiving one guinea of the money which was to be distributed amongthe malecontents. For his share of that money would scarcely meetBreadalbane's demands for compensation; and there could be littledoubt that, whoever might be unpaid, Breadalbane would take care topay himself. Mac Ian therefore did his best to dissuade his allies fromaccepting terms from which he could himself expect no benefit; and hisinfluence was not small. His own vassals, indeed, were few in number;but he came of the best blood of the Highlands; he had kept up a closeconnection with his more powerful kinsmen; nor did they like himthe less because he was a robber; for he never robbed them; and thatrobbery, merely as robbery, was a wicked and disgraceful act, had neverentered into the mind of any Celtic chief. Mac Ian was therefore held inhigh esteem by the confederates. His age was venerable; his aspect wasmajestic; and he possessed in large measure those intellectual qualitieswhich, in rude societies, give men an ascendency over their fellows. Breadalbane found himself, at every step of the negotiation, thwartedby the arts of his old enemy, and abhorred the name of Glencoe more andmore every day. [213]

But the government did not trust solely to Breadalbane's diplomaticskill. The authorities at Edinburgh put forth a proclamation exhortingthe clans to submit to King William and Queen Mary, and offering pardonto every rebel who, on or before the thirty-first of December 1691, should swear to live peaceably under the government of their Majesties. It was announced that those who should hold out after that day would betreated as enemies and traitors. [214] Warlike preparations were made, which showed that the threat was meant in earnest. The Highlanders werealarmed, and, though the pecuniary terms had not been satisfactorilysettled, thought it prudent to give the pledge which was demanded ofthem. No chief, indeed, was willing to set the example of submission. Glengarry blustered, and pretended to fortify his house. [215] "I willnot, " said Lochiel, "break the ice. That is a point of honour with me. But my tacksmen and people may use their freedom. " [216] His tacksmenand people understood him, and repaired by hundreds to the Sheriff totake the oaths. The Macdonalds of Sleat, Clanronald, Keppoch, andeven Glengarry, imitated the Camerons; and the chiefs, after trying tooutstay each other as long as they durst, imitated their vassals. 

The thirty-first of December arrived; and still the Macdonalds ofGlencoe had not come in. The punctilious pride of Mac Ian was doubtlessgratified by the thought that he had continued to defy the governmentafter the boastful Glengarry, the ferocious Keppoch, the magnanimousLochiel had yielded: but he bought his gratification dear. 

At length, on the thirty-first of December, he repaired to Fort William, accompanied by his principal vassals, and offered to take the oaths. Tohis dismay he found that there was in the fort no person competent toadminister them. Colonel Hill, the Governor, was not a magistrate;nor was there any magistrate nearer than Inverary. Mac Ian, now fullysensible of the folly of which he had been guilty in postponing to thevery last moment an act on which his life and his estate depended, setoff for Inverary in great distress. He carried with him a letter fromHill to the Sheriff of Argyleshire, Sir Colin Campbell of Ardkinglass, arespectable gentleman, who, in the late reign, had suffered severely forhis Whig principles. In this letter the Colonel expressed a goodnaturedhope that, even out of season, a lost sheep, and so fine a lost sheep, would be gladly received. Mac Ian made all the haste in his power, anddid not stop even at his own house, though it lay nigh to the road. Butat that time a journey through Argyleshire in the depth of winter wasnecessarily slow. The old man's progress up steep mountains and alongboggy valleys was obstructed by snow storms; and it was not tillthe sixth of January that he presented himself before the Sheriff atInverary. The Sheriff hesitated. His power, he said, was limited by theterms of the proclamation, and he did not see how he could swear arebel who had not submitted within the prescribed time. Mac Ian beggedearnestly and with tears that he might be sworn. His people, he said, would follow his example. If any of them proved refractory, he wouldhimself send the recusant to prison, or ship him off for Islanders. Hisentreaties and Hill's letter overcame Sir Colin's scruples. The oathwas administered; and a certificate was transmitted to the Council atEdinburgh, setting forth the special circumstances which had induced theSheriff to do what he knew not to be strictly regular. [217]

The news that Mac Ian had not submitted within the prescribed time wasreceived with cruel joy by three powerful Scotchmen who were then at theEnglish Court. Breadalbane had gone up to London at Christmas in orderto give an account of his stewardship. There he met his kinsman Argyle. Argyle was, in personal qualities, one of the most insignificant ofthe long line of nobles who have borne that great name. He was thedescendant of eminent men, and the parent of eminent men. He was thegrandson of one of the ablest of Scottish politicians; the son of one ofthe bravest and most truehearted of Scottish patriots; the father of oneMac Callum More renowned as a warrior and as an orator, as the model ofevery courtly grace, and as the judicious patron of arts and letters, and of another Mac Callum More distinguished by talents for business andcommand, and by skill in the exact sciences. Both of such an ancestryand of such a progeny Argyle was unworthy. He had even been guiltyof the crime, common enough among Scottish politicians, but in himsingularly disgraceful, of tampering with the agents of James whileprofessing loyalty to William. Still Argyle had the importanceinseparable from high rank, vast domains, extensive feudal rights, and almost boundless patriarchal authority. To him, as to his cousinBreadalbane, the intelligence that the tribe of Glencoe was out of theprotection of the law was most gratifying; and the Master of Stair morethan sympathized with them both. 

The feeling of Argyle and Breadalbane is perfectly intelligible. They were the heads of a great clan; and they had an opportunity ofdestroying a neighbouring clan with which they were at deadly feud. Breadalbane had received peculiar provocation. His estate had beenrepeatedly devastated; and he had just been thwarted in a negotiationof high moment. Unhappily there was scarcely any excess of ferocityfor which a precedent could not be found in Celtic tradition. Among allwarlike barbarians revenge is esteemed the most sacred of duties and themost exquisite of pleasures; and so it had long been esteemed among theHighlanders. The history of the clans abounds with frightful tales, some perhaps fabulous or exaggerated, some certainly true, of vindictivemassacres and assassinations. The Macdonalds of Glengarry, for example, having been affronted by the people of Culloden, surrounded Cullodenchurch on a Sunday, shut the doors, and burned the whole congregationalive. While the flames were raging, the hereditary musician of themurderers mocked the shrieks of the perishing crowd with the notes ofhis bagpipe. [218] A band of Macgregors, having cut off the head of anenemy, laid it, the mouth filled with bread and cheese, on his sister'stable, and had the satisfaction of seeing her go mad with horror at thesight. They then carried the ghastly trophy in triumph to their chief. The whole clan met under the roof of an ancient church. Every one inturn laid his hand on the dead man's scalp, and vowed to defend theslayers. [219] The inhabitants of Eigg seized some Macleods, bound themhand and foot, and turned them adrift in a boat to be swallowed up bythe waves or to perish of hunger. The Macleods retaliated by driving thepopulation of Eigg into a cavern, lighting a fire at the entrance, andsuffocating the whole race, men, women and children. [220] It is muchless strange that the two great Earls of the house of Campbell, animatedby the passions of Highland chieftains, should have planned a Highlandrevenge, than that they should have found an accomplice, and somethingmore than an accomplice, in the Master of Stair. 

The Master of Stair was one of the first men of his time, a jurist, astatesman, a fine scholar, an eloquent orator. His polished manners andlively conversation were the delight of aristocratical societies; andnone who met him in such societies would have thought it possible thathe could bear the chief part in any atrocious crime. His politicalprinciples were lax, yet not more lax than those of most Scotchpoliticians of that age. Cruelty had never been imputed to him. Thosewho most disliked him did him the justice to own that, where his schemesof policy were not concerned, he was a very goodnatured man. [221] Thereis not the slightest reason to believe that he gained a single poundScots by the act which has covered his name with infamy. He had nopersonal reason to wish the Glencoe men ill. There had been no feudbetween them and his family. His property lay in a district where theirtartan was never seen. Yet he hated them with a hatred as fierce andimplacable as if they had laid waste his fields, burned his mansion, murdered his child in the cradle. 

To what cause are we to ascribe so strange an antipathy? This questionperplexed the Master's contemporaries; and any answer which may now beoffered ought to be offered with diffidence. [222] The most probableconjecture is that he was actuated by an inordinate, an unscrupulous, aremorseless zeal for what seemed to him to be the interest of the state. This explanation may startle those who have not considered how large aproportion of the blackest crimes recorded in history is to be ascribedto ill regulated public spirit. We daily see men do for their party, fortheir sect, for their country, for their favourite schemes of politicaland social reform, what they would not do to enrich or to avengethemselves. At a temptation directly addressed to our private cupidityor to our private animosity, whatever virtue we have takes the alarm. But, virtue itself may contribute to the fall of him who imagines thatit is in his power, by violating some general rule of morality, toconfer an important benefit on a church, on a commonwealth, on mankind. He silences the remonstrances of conscience, and hardens his heartagainst the most touching spectacles of misery, by repeating to himselfthat his intentions are pure, that his objects are noble, that he isdoing a little evil for the sake of a great good. By degrees he comesaltogether to forget the turpitude of the means in the excellence of theend, and at length perpetrates without one internal twinge acts whichwould shock a buccaneer. There is no reason to believe that Dominicwould, for the best archbishopric in christendom, have incitedferocious marauders to plunder and slaughter a peaceful and industriouspopulation, that Everard Digby would for a dukedom have blown a largeassembly of people into the air, or that Robespierre would have murderedfor hire one of the thousands whom he murdered from philanthropy. 

The Master of Stair seems to have proposed to himself a truly great andgood end, the pacification and civilisation of the Highlands. He was, bythe acknowledgment of those who most hated him, a man of large views. Hejustly thought it monstrous that a third part of Scotland should be ina state scarcely less savage than New Guinea, that letters of fireand sword should, through a third part of Scotland, be, century aftercentury, a species of legal process, and that no attempt should be madeto apply a radical remedy to such evils. The independence affected by acrowd of petty sovereigns, the contumacious resistance which they werein the habit of offering to the authority of the Crown and of the Courtof Session, their wars, their robberies, their fireraisings, theirpractice of exacting black mail from people more peaceable and moreuseful than themselves, naturally excited the disgust and indignation ofan enlightened and politic gownsman, who was, both by the constitutionof his mind and by the habits of his profession, a lover of lawand order. His object was no less than a complete dissolution andreconstruction of society in the Highlands, such a dissolution andreconstruction as, two generations later, followed the battle ofCulloden. In his view the clans, as they existed, were the plagues ofthe kingdom; and of all the clans, the worst was that which inhabitedGlencoe. He had, it is said, been particularly struck by a frightfulinstance of the lawlessness and ferocity of those marauders. One ofthem, who had been concerned in some act of violence or rapine, hadgiven information against his companions. He had been bound to a treeand murdered. The old chief had given the first stab; and scoresof dirks had then been plunged into the wretch's body. [223] By themountaineers such an act was probably regarded as a legitimate exerciseof patriarchal jurisdiction. To the Master of Stair it seemed thatpeople among whom such things were done and were approved ought to betreated like a pack of wolves, snared by any device, and slaughteredwithout mercy. He was well read in history, and doubtless knew how greatrulers had, in his own and other countries, dealt with such banditti. He doubtless knew with what energy and what severity James the Fifth hadput down the mosstroopers of the border, how the chief of Henderland hadbeen hung over the gate of the castle in which he had prepared a banquetfor the King; how John Armstrong and his thirty-six horsemen, when theycame forth to welcome their sovereign, had scarcely been allowed timeto say a single prayer before they were all tied up and turned off. Norprobably was the Secretary ignorant of the means by which Sixtus theFifth had cleared the ecclesiastical state of outlaws. The eulogistsof that great pontiff tell us that there was one formidable gang whichcould not be dislodged from a stronghold among the Apennines. Beasts ofburden were therefore loaded with poisoned food and wine, and sent by aroad which ran close to the fastness. The robbers sallied forth, seizedthe prey, feasted and died; and the pious old Pope exulted greatly whenhe heard that the corpses of thirty ruffians, who had been the terrorof many peaceful villages, had been found lying among the mules andpackages. The plans of the Master of Stair were conceived in the spiritof James and of Sixtus; and the rebellion of the mountaineers furnishedwhat seemed to be an excellent opportunity for carrying those plansinto effect. Mere rebellion, indeed, he could have easily pardoned. OnJacobites, as Jacobites, he never showed any inclination to bear hard. He hated the Highlanders, not as enemies of this or that dynasty, but asenemies of law, of industry and of trade. In his private correspondencehe applied to them the short and terrible form of words in which theimplacable Roman pronounced the doom of Carthage. His project was noless than this, that the whole hill country from sea to sea, and theneighbouring islands, should be wasted with fire and sword, that theCamerons, the Macleans, and all the branches of the race of Macdonald, should be rooted out. He therefore looked with no friendly eye onschemes of reconciliation, and, while others were hoping that a littlemoney would set everything right, hinted very intelligibly his opinionthat whatever money was to be laid out on the clans would be best laidout in the form of bullets and bayonets. To the last moment he continuedto flatter himself that the rebels would be obstinate, and would thusfurnish him with a plea for accomplishing that great social revolutionon which his heart was set. [224] The letter is still extant in whichhe directed the commander of the forces in Scotland how to act if theJacobite chiefs should not come in before the end of December. There issomething strangely terrible in the calmness and conciseness with whichthe instructions are given. "Your troops will destroy entirely thecountry of Lochaber, Lochiel's lands, Keppoch's, Glengarry's andGlencoe's. Your power shall be large enough. I hope the soldiers willnot trouble the government with prisoners. " [225]

This despatch had scarcely been sent off when news arrived in Londonthat the rebel chiefs, after holding out long, had at last appearedbefore the Sheriffs and taken the oaths. Lochiel, the most eminent manamong them, had not only declared that he would live and die a truesubject to King William, but had announced his intention of visitingEngland, in the hope of being permitted to kiss His Majesty's hand. InLondon it was announced exultingly that every clan, without exception, had submitted in time; and the announcement was generally thought mostsatisfactory. [226] But the Master of Stair was bitterly disappointed. The Highlands were then to continue to be what they had been, the shameand curse of Scotland. A golden opportunity of subjecting them to thelaw had been suffered to escape, and might never return. If only theMacdonalds would have stood out, nay, if an example could but have beenmade of the two worst Macdonalds, Keppoch and Glencoe, it would havebeen something. But it seemed that even Keppoch and Glencoe, marauderswho in any well governed country would have been hanged thirty yearsbefore, were safe. [227] While the Master was brooding over thoughtslike these, Argyle brought him some comfort. The report that Mac Ian hadtaken the oaths within the prescribed time was erroneous. The Secretarywas consoled. One clan, then, was at the mercy of the government, andthat clan the most lawless of all. One great act of justice, nay ofcharity, might be performed. One terrible and memorable example might begiven. [228]

Yet there was a difficulty. Mac Ian had taken the oaths. He had takenthem, indeed, too late to be entitled to plead the letter of the royalpromise; but the fact that he had taken them was one which evidentlyought not to have been concealed from those who were to decide his fate. By a dark intrigue, of which the history is but imperfectly known, butwhich was, in all probability, directed by the Master of Stair, theevidence of Mac Ian's tardy submission was suppressed. The certificatewhich the Sheriff of Argyleshire had transmitted to the Council atEdinburgh, was never laid before the board, but was privately submittedto some persons high in office, and particularly to Lord PresidentStair, the father of the Secretary. These persons pronounced thecertificate irregular, and, indeed, absolutely null; and it wascancelled. 

Meanwhile the Master of Stair was forming, in concert with Breadalbaneand Argyle, a plan for the destruction of the people of Glencoe. It wasnecessary to take the King's pleasure, not, indeed, as to the detailsof what was to be done, but as to the question whether Mac Ian and hispeople should or should not be treated as rebels out of the pale ofthe ordinary law. The Master of Stair found no difficulty in the royalcloset. William had, in all probability, never heard the Glencoe menmentioned except as banditti. He knew that they had not come in by theprescribed day. That they had come in after that day he did not know. Ifhe paid any attention to the matter, he must have thought that so fairan opportunity of putting an end to the devastations and depredationsfrom which a quiet and industrious population had suffered so much oughtnot to be lost. 

An order was laid before him for signature. He signed it, but, if Burnetmay be trusted, did not read it. Whoever has seen anything of publicbusiness knows that princes and ministers daily sign, and indeedmust sign, documents which they have not read; and of all documentsa document relating to a small tribe of mountaineers, living in awilderness not set down in any map, was least likely to interest aSovereign whose mind was full of schemes on which the fate of Europemight depend. [229] But, even on the supposition that he read the orderto which he affixed his name, there seems to be no reason for blaminghim. That order, directed to the Commander of the Forces in Scotland, runs thus: "As for Mac Ian of Glencoe and that tribe, if they can bewell distinguished from the other Highlanders, it will be proper, forthe vindication of public justice, to extirpate that set of thieves. "These words naturally bear a sense perfectly innocent, and would, butfor the horrible event which followed, have been universally understoodin that sense. It is undoubtedly one of the first duties of everygovernment to extirpate gangs of thieves. This does not mean that everythief ought to be treacherously assassinated in his sleep, or even thatevery thief ought to be publicly executed after a fair trial, butthat every gang, as a gang, ought to be completely broken up, and thatwhatever severity is indispensably necessary for that end ought to beused. If William had read and weighed the words which were submittedto him by his Secretary, he would probably have understood them tomean that Glencoe was to be occupied by troops, that resistance, ifresistance were attempted, was to be put down with a strong hand, thatsevere punishment was to be inflicted on those leading members of theclan who could be proved to have been guilty of great crimes, that someactive young freebooters, who were more used to handle the broad swordthan the plough, and who did not seem likely to settle down into quietlabourers, were to be sent to the army in the Low Countries, that otherswere to be transported to the American plantations, and that thoseMacdonalds who were suffered to remain in their native valley were to bedisarmed and required to give hostages for good behaviour. A plan verynearly resembling this had, we know, actually been the subject of muchdiscussion in the political circles of Edinburgh. [230] There can belittle doubt that William would have deserved well of his people if hehad, in this manner, extirpated not only the tribe of Mac Ian, but everyHighland tribe whose calling was to steal cattle and burn houses. 

The extirpation planned by the Master of Stair was of a different kind. His design was to butcher the whole race of thieves, the whole damnablerace. Such was the language in which his hatred vented itself. Hestudied the geography of the wild country which surrounded Glencoe, andmade his arrangements with infernal skill. If possible, the blow mustbe quick, and crushing, and altogether unexpected. But if Mac Ian shouldapprehend danger and should attempt to take refuge in the territories ofhis neighbours, he must find every road barred. The pass of Rannoch mustbe secured. The Laird of Weems, who was powerful in Strath Tay, mustbe told that, if he harbours the outlaws, he does so at his peril. Breadalbane promised to cut off the retreat of the fugitives on oneside, Mac Callum More on another. It was fortunate, the Secretary wrote, that it was winter. This was the time to maul the wretches. The nightswere so long, the mountain tops so cold and stormy, that even thehardiest men could not long bear exposure to the open air without a roofor a spark of fire. That the women and the children could find shelterin the desert was quite impossible. While he wrote thus, no thought thathe was committing a great wickedness crossed his mind. He was happy inthe approbation of his own conscience. Duty, justice, nay charity andmercy, were the names under which he disguised his cruelty; nor is it byany means improbable that the disguise imposed upon himself. [231]

Hill, who commanded the forces assembled at Fort William, was notentrusted with the execution of the design. He seems to have been ahumane man; he was much distressed when he learned that the governmentwas determined on severity; and it was probably thought that his heartmight fail him in the most critical moment. He was directed to put astrong detachment under the orders of his second in command, LieutenantColonel Hamilton. To Hamilton a significant hint was conveyed that hehad now an excellent opportunity of establishing his character in theestimation of those who were at the head of affairs. Of the troopsentrusted to him a large proportion were Campbells, and belonged to aregiment lately raised by Argyle, and called by Argyle's name, It wasprobably thought that, on such an occasion, humanity might provetoo strong for the mere habit of military obedience, and that littlereliance could be placed on hearts which had not been ulcerated by afeud such as had long raged between the people of Mac Ian and the peopleof Mac Callum More. 

Had Hamilton marched openly against the Glencoe men and put them to theedge of the sword, the act would probably not have wanted apologists, and most certainly would not have wanted precedents. But the Master ofStair had strongly recommended a different mode of proceeding. If theleast alarm were given, the nest of robbers would be found empty; andto hunt them down in so wild a region would, even with all the help thatBreadalbane and Argyle could give, be a long and difficult business. "Better, " he wrote, "not meddle with them than meddle to no purpose. When the thing is resolved, let it be secret and sudden. " [232] He wasobeyed; and it was determined that the Glencoe men should perish, notby military execution, but by the most dastardly and perfidious form ofassassination. 

On the first of February a hundred and twenty soldiers of Argyle'sregiment, commanded by a captain named Campbell and a lieutenant namedLindsay, marched to Glencoe. Captain Campbell was commonly called inScotland Glenlyon, from the pass in which his property lay. He had everyqualification for the service on which he was employed, an unblushingforehead, a smooth lying tongue, and a heart of adamant. He was also oneof the few Campbells who were likely to be trusted and welcomed by theMacdonalds; for his niece was married to Alexander, the second son ofMac Ian. 

The sight of the red coats approaching caused some anxiety among thepopulation of the valley. John, the eldest son of the Chief, came, accompanied by twenty clansmen, to meet the strangers, and asked whatthis visit meant. Lieutenant Lindsay answered that the soldiers came asfriends, and wanted nothing but quarters. They were kindly received, andwere lodged under the thatched roofs of the little community. Glenlyonand several of his men were taken into the house of a tacksman who wasnamed, from the cluster of cabins over which he exercised authority, Inverriggen. Lindsay was accommodated nearer to the abode of the oldchief. Auchintriater, one of the principal men of the clan, who governedthe small hamlet of Auchnaion, found room there for a party commanded bya serjeant named Barbour. Provisions were liberally supplied. There wasno want of beef, which had probably fattened in distant pastures; norwas any payment demanded; for in hospitality, as in thievery, the Gaelicmarauders rivalled the Bedouins. During twelve days the soldiers livedfamiliarly with the people of the glen. Old Mac Ian, who had before feltmany misgivings as to the relation in which he stood to the government, seems to have been pleased with the visit. The officers passed much oftheir time with him and his family. The long evenings were cheerfullyspent by the peat fire with the help of some packs of cards which hadfound their way to that remote corner of the world, and of some Frenchbrandy which was probably part of James's farewell gift to his Highlandsupporters. Glenlyon appeared to be warmly attached to his niece and herhusband Alexander. Every day he came to their house to take his morningdraught. Meanwhile he observed with minute attention all the avenues bywhich, when the signal for the slaughter should be given, the Macdonaldsmight attempt to escape to the hills; and he reported the result of hisobservations to Hamilton. 

Hamilton fixed five o'clock in the morning of the thirteenth of Februaryfor the deed. He hoped that, before that time, he should reach Glencoewith four hundred men, and should have stopped all the earths in whichthe old fox and his two cubs, -so Mac Ian and his sons were nicknamedby the murderers, --could take refuge. But, at five precisely, whetherHamilton had arrived or not, Glenlyon was to fall on, and to slay everyMacdonald under seventy. 

The night was rough. Hamilton and his troops made slow progress, andwere long after their time. While they were contending with the wind andsnow, Glenlyon was supping and playing at cards with those whom hemeant to butcher before daybreak. He and Lieutenant Lindsay had engagedthemselves to dine with the old Chief on the morrow. 

Late in the evening a vague suspicion that some evil was intendedcrossed the mind of the Chief's eldest son. The soldiers were evidentlyin a restless state; and some of them uttered strange cries. Two men, it is said, were overheard whispering. "I do not like this job;" one ofthem muttered, "I should be glad to fight the Macdonalds. But to killmen in their beds--" "We must do as we are bid, " answered another voice. "If there is any thing wrong, our officers must answer for it. " JohnMacdonald was so uneasy that, soon after midnight, he went to Glenlyon'squarters. Glenlyon and his men were all up, and seemed to be gettingtheir arms ready for action. John, much alarmed, asked what thesepreparations meant. Glenlyon was profuse of friendly assurances. "Someof Glengarry's people have been harrying the country. We are gettingready to march against them. You are quite safe. Do you think that, ifyou were in any danger, I should not have given a hint to your brotherSandy and his wife?" John's suspicions were quieted. He returned to hishouse, and lay down to rest. 

It was five in the morning. Hamilton and his men were still some milesoff; and the avenues which they were to have secured were open. But theorders which Glenlyon had received were precise; and he began to executethem at the little village where he was himself quartered. His hostInverriggen and nine other Macdonalds were dragged out of their beds, bound hand and foot, and murdered. A boy twelve years old clung roundthe Captain's legs, and begged hard for life. He would do any thing;he would go any where; he would follow Glenlyon round the world. EvenGlenlyon, it is said, showed signs of relenting; but a ruffian namedDrummond shot the child dead. 

At Auchnaion the tacksman Auchintriater was up early that morning, andwas sitting with eight of his family round the fire, when a volleyof musketry laid him and seven of his companions dead or dying on thefloor. His brother, who alone had escaped unhurt, called to SerjeantBarbour, who commanded the slayers, and asked as a favour to be allowedto die in the open air. "Well, " said the Serjeant, "I will do you thatfavour for the sake of your meat which I have eaten. " The mountaineer, bold, athletic, and favoured by the darkness, came forth, rushed on thesoldiers who were about to level their pieces at him, flung his plaidover their faces, and was gone in a moment. 

Meanwhile Lindsay had knocked at the door of the old Chief and had askedfor admission in friendly language. The door was opened. Mac Ian, while putting on his clothes and calling to his servants to bring somerefreshment for his visitors, was shot through the head. Two of hisattendants were slain with him. His wife was already up and dressed insuch finery as the princesses of the rude Highland glens were accustomedto wear. The assassins pulled off her clothes and trinkets. The ringswere not easily taken from her fingers but a soldier tore them away withhis teeth. She died on the following day. 

The statesman, to whom chiefly this great crime is to be ascribed, hadplanned it with consummate ability: but the execution was complete innothing but in guilt and infamy. A succession of blunders saved threefourths of the Glencoe men from the fate of their chief. All the moralqualities which fit men to bear a part in a massacre Hamilton andGlenlyon possessed in perfection. But neither seems to have had muchprofessional skill; Hamilton had arranged his plan without makingallowance for bad weather, and this in a country and at a season whenthe weather was very likely to be bad. The consequence was that the foxearths, as he called them, were not stopped in time. Glenlyon and hismen committed the error of despatching their hosts with firearms insteadof using the cold steel. The peal and flash of gun after gun gavenotice, from three different parts of the valley at once; that murderwas doing. From fifty cottages the half naked peasantry fled under coverof the night to the recesses of their pathless glen. Even the sons ofMac Ian, who had been especially marked out for destruction, contrivedto escape. They were roused from sleep by faithful servants. John, who, by the death of his father, had become the patriarch of the tribe, quitted his dwelling just as twenty soldiers with fixed bayonets marchedup to it. It was broad day long before Hamilton arrived. He found thework not even half performed. About thirty corpses lay wallowing inblood on the dunghills before the doors. One or two women were seenamong the number, and, a yet more fearful and piteous sight, a littlehand, which had been lopped in the tumult of the butchery from someinfant. One aged Macdonald was found alive. He was probably too infirmto fly, and, as he was above seventy, was not included in the ordersunder which Glenlyon had acted. Hamilton murdered the old man in coldblood. The deserted hamlets were then set on fire; and the troopsdeparted, driving away with them many sheep and goats, nine hundredkine, and two hundred of the small shaggy ponies of the Highlands. 

It is said, and may but too easily be believed, that the sufferings ofthe fugitives were terrible. How many old men, how many women with babesin their arms, sank down and slept their last sleep in the snow; howmany, having crawled, spent with toil and hunger, into nooks among theprecipices, died in those dark holes, and were picked to the bone by themountain ravens, can never be known. But it is probable that those whoperished by cold, weariness and want were not less numerous than thosewho were slain by the assassins. When the troops had retired, theMacdonalds crept out of the caverns of Glencoe, ventured back to thespot where the huts had formerly stood, collected the scorchedcorpses from among the smoking ruins, and performed some rude rites ofsepulture. The tradition runs that the hereditary bard of the tribe tookhis seat on a rock which overhung the place of slaughter, and pouredforth a long lament over his murdered brethren, and his desolate home. Eighty years later that sad dirge was still repeated by the populationof the valley. [233]

The survivors might well apprehend that they had escaped the shotand the sword only to perish by famine. The whole domain was a waste. Houses, barns, furniture, implements of husbandry, herds, flocks, horses, were gone. Many months must elapse before the clan would beable to raise on its own ground the means of supporting even the mostmiserable existence. [234]

It may be thought strange that these events should not have beeninstantly followed by a burst of execration from every part of thecivilised world. The fact, however, is that years elapsed before thepublic indignation was thoroughly awakened, and that months elapsedbefore the blackest part of the story found credit even among theenemies of the government. That the massacre should not have beenmentioned in the London Gazettes, in the Monthly Mercuries which werescarcely less courtly than the Gazettes, or in pamphlets licensed byofficial censors, is perfectly intelligible. But that no allusion to itshould be found in private journals and letters, written by persons freefrom all restraint, may seem extraordinary. There is not a word on thesubject in Evelyn's Diary. In Narcissus Luttrell's Diary is a remarkableentry made five weeks after the butchery. The letters from Scotland, hesays, described that kingdom as perfectly tranquil, except that therewas still some grumbling about ecclesiastical questions. The Dutchministers regularly reported all the Scotch news to their government. They thought it worth while, about this time, to mention that a collierhad been taken by a privateer near Berwick, that the Edinburgh mail hadbeen robbed, that a whale, with a tongue seventeen feet long and sevenfeet broad, had been stranded near Aberdeen. But it is not hinted inany of their despatches that there was any rumour of any extraordinaryoccurrence in the Highlands. Reports that some of the Macdonalds hadbeen slain did indeed, in about three weeks, travel through Edinburgh upto London. But these reports were vague and contradictory; and the veryworst of them was far from coming up to the horrible truth. The Whigversion of the story was that the old robber Mac Ian had laid anambuscade for the soldiers, that he had been caught in his own snare, and that he and some of his clan had fallen sword in hand. The Jacobiteversion, written at Edinburgh on the twenty-third of March, appeared inthe Paris Gazette of the seventh of April. Glenlyon, it was said, hadbeen sent with a detachment from Argyle's regiment, under cover ofdarkness, to surprise the inhabitants of Glencoe, and had killedthirty-six men and boys and four women. [235] In this there was nothingvery strange or shocking. A night attack on a gang of freebootersoccupying a strong natural fortress may be a perfectly legitimatemilitary operation; and, in the obscurity and confusion of such anattack, the most humane man may be so unfortunate as to shoot a womanor a child. The circumstances which give a peculiar character to theslaughter of Glencoe, the breach of faith, the breach of hospitality, the twelve days of feigned friendship and conviviality, of morningcalls, of social meals, of healthdrinking, of cardplaying, were notmentioned by the Edinburgh correspondent of the Paris Gazette; and wemay therefore confidently infer that those circumstances were as yetunknown even to inquisitive and busy malecontents residing in theScottish capital within a hundred miles of the spot where the deed hadbeen done. In the south of the island the matter produced, as far ascan now be judged, scarcely any sensation. To the Londoner of those daysAppin was what Caffraria or Borneo is to us. He was not more moved byhearing that some Highland thieves had been surprised and killed than weare by hearing that a band of Amakosah cattle stealers has been cutoff, or that a bark full of Malay pirates has been sunk. He took it forgranted that nothing had been done in Glencoe beyond what was doing inmany other glens. There had been a night brawl, one of a hundred nightbrawls, between the Macdonalds and the Campbells; and the Campbells hadknocked the Macdonalds on the head. 

By slow degrees the whole truth came out. From a letter written atEdinburgh about two months after the crime had been committed, itappears that the horrible story was already current among the Jacobitesof that city. In the summer Argyle's regiment was quartered in the southof England, and some of the men made strange confessions, over theirale, about what they had been forced to do in the preceding winter. Thenonjurors soon got hold of the clue, and followed it resolutely; theirsecret presses went to work; and at length, near a year after the crimehad been committed, it was published to the world. [236] But the worldwas long incredulous. The habitual mendacity of the Jacobite libellershad brought on them an appropriate punishment. Now, when, for the firsttime, they told the truth, they were supposed to be romancing. Theycomplained bitterly that the story, though perfectly authentic, wasregarded by the public as a factious lie. [237] So late as the year1695, Hickes, in a tract in which he endeavoured to defend his darlingtale of the Theban legion against the unanswerable argument drawnfrom the silence of historians, remarked that it might well be doubtedwhether any historian would make mention of the massacre of Glencoe. There were in England, he said, many thousands of well educated men whohad never heard of that massacre, or who regarded it as a mere fable. [238]

Nevertheless the punishment of some of the guilty began very early. Hill, who indeed can hardly be called guilty, was much disturbed. Breadalbane, hardened as he was, felt the stings of conscience or thedread of retribution. A few days after the Macdonalds had returned totheir old dwellingplace, his steward visited the ruins of the house ofGlencoe, and endeavoured to persuade the sons of the murdered chief tosign a paper declaring that they held the Earl guiltless of the bloodwhich had been shed. They were assured that, if they would do this, allHis Lordship's great influence should be employed to obtain for themfrom the Crown a free pardon and a remission of all forfeitures. [239] Glenlyon did his best to assume an air of unconcern. He made hisappearance in the most fashionable coffeehouse at Edinburgh, and talkedloudly and self-complacently about the important service in which hehad been engaged among the mountains. Some of his soldiers, however, whoobserved him closely, whispered that all this bravery was put on. Hewas not the man that he had been before that night. The form of hiscountenance was changed. In all places, at all hours, whether he wakedor slept, Glencoe was for ever before him. [240]

But, whatever apprehensions might disturb Breadalbane, whatever spectresmight haunt Glenlyon, the Master of Stair had neither fear nor remorse. He was indeed mortified; but he was mortified only by the blunders ofHamilton and by the escape of so many of the damnable breed. "Do right, and fear nobody;" such is the language of his letters. "Can there bea more sacred duty than to rid the country of thieving? The only thingthat I regret is that any got away. " [241]

On the sixth of March, William, entirely ignorant, in all probability, of the details of the crime which has cast a dark shade over his glory, had set out for the Continent, leaving the Queen his viceregent inEngland. [242]

He would perhaps have postponed his departure if he had been awarethat the French Government had, during some time, been making greatpreparations for a descent on our island. [243] An event had taken placewhich had changed the policy of the Court of Versailles. Louvois wasno more. He had been at the head of the military administration of hiscountry during a quarter of a century; he had borne a chief part in thedirection of two wars which had enlarged the French territory, and hadfilled the world with the renown of the French arms; and he had livedto see the beginning of a third war which tasked his great powers to theutmost. Between him and the celebrated captains who carried his plansinto execution there was little harmony. His imperious temper andhis confidence in himself impelled him to interfere too much with theconduct of troops in the field, even when those troops were commandedby Conde, by Turenne or by Luxemburg. But he was the greatest AdjutantGeneral, the greatest Quartermaster General, the greatest CommissaryGeneral, that Europe had seen. He may indeed be said to have made arevolution in the art of disciplining, distributing, equipping andprovisioning armies. In spite, however, of his abilities and of hisservices, he had become odious to Lewis and to her who governed Lewis. On the last occasion on which the King and the minister transactedbusiness together, the ill humour on both sides broke violently forth. The servant, in his vexation, dashed his portfolio on the ground. Themaster, forgetting, what he seldom forgot, that a King should be agentleman, lifted his cane. Fortunately his wife was present. She, withher usual prudence, caught his arm. She then got Louvois out of theroom, and exhorted him to come back the next day as if nothing hadhappened. The next day he came; but with death in his face. The King, though full of resentment, was touched with pity, and advised Louvois togo home and take care of himself. That evening the great minister died. [244]

Louvois had constantly opposed all plans for the invasion of England. His death was therefore regarded at Saint Germains as a fortunate event. [245] It was however necessary to look sad, and to send a gentlemanto Versailles with some words of condolence. The messenger found thegorgeous circle of courtiers assembled round their master on the terraceabove the orangery. "Sir, " said Lewis, in a tone so easy and cheerfulthat it filled all the bystanders with amazement, "present mycompliments and thanks to the King and Queen of England, and tell themthat neither my affairs nor theirs will go on the worse by what hashappened. " These words were doubtless meant to intimate that theinfluence of Louvois had not been exerted in favour of the House ofStuart. [246] One compliment, however, a compliment which cost Francedear, Lewis thought it right to pay to the memory of his ablestservant. The Marquess of Barbesieux, son of Louvois, was placed, in histwenty-fifth year, at the head of the war department. The young man wasby no means deficient in abilities, and had been, during some years, employed in business of grave importance. But his passions were strong;his judgment was not ripe; and his sudden elevation turned his head. Hismanners gave general disgust. Old officers complained that he kept themlong in his antechamber while he was amusing himself with his spanielsand his flatterers. Those who were admitted to his presence went awaydisgusted by his rudeness and arrogance. As was natural at his age, hevalued power chiefly as the means of procuring pleasure. Millions ofcrowns were expended on the luxurious villa where he loved to forgetthe cares of office in gay conversation, delicate cookery and foamingchampagne. He often pleaded an attack of fever as an excuse for notmaking his appearance at the proper hour in the royal closet, whenin truth he had been playing truant among his boon companions andmistresses. "The French King, " said William, "has an odd taste. He chooses an old woman for his mistress, and a young man for hisminister. " [247]

There can be little doubt that Louvois, by pursuing that course whichhad made him odious to the inmates of Saint Germains, had deserved wellof his country. He was not maddened by Jacobite enthusiasm. He well knewthat exiles are the worst of all advisers. He had excellent information;he had excellent judgment; he calculated the chances; and he saw that adescent was likely to fail, and to fail disastrously and disgracefully. James might well be impatient to try the experiment, though the oddsshould be ten to one against him. He might gain; and he could not lose. His folly and obstinacy had left him nothing to risk. His food, hisdrink, his lodging, his clothes, he owed to charity. Nothing could bemore natural than that, for the very smallest chance of recovering thethree kingdoms which he had thrown away, he should be willing to stakewhat was not his own, the honour of the French arms, the grandeur andthe safety of the French monarchy. To a French statesman such a wagermight well appear in a different light. But Louvois was gone. Hismaster yielded to the importunity of James, and determined to send anexpedition against England. [248]

The scheme was, in some respects, well concerted. It was resolved thata camp should be formed on the coast of Normandy, and that in thiscamp all the Irish regiments which were in the French service should beassembled under their countryman Sarsfield. With them were to be joinedabout ten thousand French troops. The whole army was to be commanded byMarshal Bellefonds. 

A noble fleet of about eighty ships of the line was to convoy thisforce to the shores of England. In the dockyards both of Brittany and ofProvence immense preparations were made. Four and forty men of war, someof which were among the finest that had ever been built, were assembledin the harbour of Brest under Tourville. The Count of Estrees, withthirty-five more, was to sail from Toulon. Ushant was fixed for theplace of rendezvous. The very day was named. In order that there mightbe no want either of seamen or of vessels for the intended expedition, all maritime trade, all privateering was, for a time, interdicted by aroyal mandate. [249] Three hundred transports were collected near thespot where the troops were to embark. It was hoped that all would beready early in the spring, before the English ships were half rigged orhalf manned, and before a single Dutch man of war was in the Channel. [250]

James had indeed persuaded himself that, even if the English fleetshould fall in with him, it would not oppose him. He imagined thathe was personally a favourite with the mariners of all ranks. Hisemissaries had been busy among the naval officers, and had found somewho remembered him with kindness, and others who were out of humourwith the men now in power. All the wild talk of a class of people notdistinguished by taciturnity or discretion was reported to him withexaggeration, till he was deluded into a belief that he had more friendsthan enemies on board of the vessels which guarded our coasts. Yet heshould have known that a rough sailor, who thought himself ill used bythe Admiralty, might, after the third bottle, when drawn on by artfulcompanions, express his regret for the good old times, curse the newgovernment, and curse himself for being such a fool as to fight forthat government, and yet might be by no means prepared to go over to theFrench on the day of battle. Of the malecontent officers, who, as Jamesbelieved, were impatient to desert, the great majority had probablygiven no pledge of their attachment to him except an idle wordhiccoughed out when they were drunk, and forgotten when they were sober. One those from whom he expected support, Rear Admiral Carter, had indeedheard and perfectly understood what the Jacobite agents had to say, hadgiven them fair words, and had reported the whole to the Queen and herministers. [251]

But the chief dependence of James was on Russell. That false, arrogantand wayward politician was to command the Channel Fleet. He had neverceased to assure the Jacobite emissaries that he was bent on effectinga Restoration. Those emissaries fully reckoned, if not on his entirecooperation, yet at least on his connivance; and there could be no doubtthat, with his connivance, a French fleet might easily convoy an army toour shores. James flattered himself that, as soon as he had landed, heshould be master of the island. But in truth, when the voyage had ended, the difficulties of his enterprise would have been only beginning. Twoyears before he had received a lesson by which he should have profited. He had then deceived himself and others into the belief that the Englishwere regretting him, were pining for him, were eager to rise in armsby tens of thousands to welcome him. William was then, as now, at adistance. Then, as now, the administration was entrusted to a woman. Then, as now, there were few regular troops in England. Torrington hadthen done as much to injure the government which he served as Russellcould now do. The French fleet had then, after riding, during severalweeks, victorious and dominant in the Channel, landed some troops onthe southern coast. The immediate effect had been that whole counties, without distinction of Tory or Whig, Churchman or Dissenter, had risenup, as one man, to repel the foreigners, and that the Jacobite party, which had, a few days before, seemed to be half the nation, had croucheddown in silent terror, and had made itself so small that it had, duringsome time, been invisible. What reason was there for believing thatthe multitude who had, in 1690, at the first lighting of the beacons, snatched up firelocks, pikes, scythes, to defend, their native soilagainst the French, would now welcome the French as allies? And of thearmy by which James was now to be accompanied the French formed theleast odious part. More than half of that army was to consist of IrishPapists; and the feeling, compounded of hatred and scorn, with which theIrish Papists had long been regarded by the English Protestants, hadby recent events been stimulated to a vehemence before unknown. Thehereditary slaves, it was said, had been for a moment free; and thatmoment had sufficed to prove that they knew neither how to use nor howto defend their freedom. During their short ascendency they had donenothing but slay, and burn, and pillage, and demolish, and attaint, andconfiscate. In three years they had committed such waste on their nativeland as thirty years of English intelligence and industry would scarcelyrepair. They would have maintained their independence against the world, if they had been as ready to fight as they were to steal. But they hadretreated ignominiously from the walls of Londonderry. They had fledlike deer before the yeomanry of Enniskillen. The Prince whom theynow presumed to think that they could place, by force of arms, on theEnglish throne, had himself, on the morning after the rout of the Boyne, reproached them with their cowardice, and told them that he would neveragain trust to their soldiership. On this subject Englishmen were of onemind. Tories, Nonjurors, even Roman Catholics, were as loud as Whigs inreviling the ill fated race. It is, therefore, not difficult to guesswhat effect would have been produced by the appearance on our soil ofenemies whom, on their own soil, we had vanquished and trampled down. 

James, however, in spite of the recent and severe teaching ofexperience, believed whatever his correspondents in England told him;and they told him that the whole nation was impatiently expecting him, that both the West and the North were ready to rise, that he wouldproceed from the place of landing to Whitehall with as littleopposition as when, in old times, he returned from a progress. Fergusondistinguished himself by the confidence with which he predicted acomplete and bloodless victory. He and his printer, he was absurd enoughto write, would be the two first men in the realm to take horse for HisMajesty. Many other agents were busy up and down the country, during thewinter and the early part of the spring. It does not appear that theyhad much success in the counties south of Trent. But in the north, particularly in Lancashire, where the Roman Catholics were more numerousand more powerful than in any other part of the kingdom, and where thereseems to have been, even among the Protestant gentry, more than theordinary proportion of bigoted Jacobites, some preparations for aninsurrection were made. Arms were privately bought; officers wereappointed; yeomen, small farmers, grooms, huntsmen, were induced toenlist. Those who gave in their names were distributed into eightregiments of cavalry and dragoons, and were directed to hold themselvesin readiness to mount at the first signal. [252]

One of the circumstances which filled James, at this time, withvain hopes, was that his wife was pregnant and near her delivery. Heflattered himself that malice itself would be ashamed to repeat anylonger the story of the warming pan, and that multitudes whom that storyhad deceived would instantly return to their allegiance. He took, onthis occasion, all those precautions which, four years before, he hadfoolishly and perversely forborne to take. He contrived to transmit toEngland letters summoning many Protestant women of quality to assist atthe expected birth; and he promised, in the name of his dear brother theMost Christian King, that they should be free to come and go in safety. Had some of these witnesses been invited to Saint James's on the morningof the tenth of June 1688, the House of Stuart might, perhaps, now bereigning in our island. But it is easier to keep a crown than to regainone. It might be true that a calumnious fable had done much to bringabout the Revolution. But it by no means followed that the most completerefutation of that fable would bring about a Restoration. Not a singlelady crossed the sea in obedience to James's call. His Queen was safelydelivered of a daughter; but this event produced no perceptible effecton the state of public feeling in England. [253]

Meanwhile the preparations for his expedition were going on fast. Hewas on the point of setting out for the place of embarkation before theEnglish government was at all aware of the danger which was impending. It had been long known indeed that many thousands of Irish wereassembled in Normandy; but it was supposed that they had been assembledmerely that they might be mustered and drilled before they were sentto Flanders, Piedmont, and Catalonia. [254] Now, however, intelligence, arriving from many quarters, left no doubt that an invasion would bealmost immediately attempted. Vigorous preparations for defence weremade. The equipping and manning of the ships was urged forward withvigour. The regular troops were drawn together between London and thesea. A great camp was formed on the down which overlooks Portsmouth. Themilitia all over the kingdom was called out. Two Westminster regimentsand six City regiments, making up a force of thirteen thousand fightingmen, were arrayed in Hyde Park, and passed in review before the Queen. The trainbands of Kent, Sussex, and Surrey marched down to the coast. Watchmen were posted by the beacons. Some nonjurors were imprisoned, some disarmed, some held to bail. The house of the Earl of Huntingdon, anoted Jacobite, was searched. He had had time to burn his papers and tohide his arms; but his stables presented a most suspicious appearance. Horses enough to mount a whole troop of cavalry were at the mangers;and this evidence, though not legally sufficient to support a charge oftreason, was thought sufficient, at such a conjuncture, to justify thePrivy Council in sending him to the Tower. [255] Meanwhile James hadgone down to his army, which was encamped round the basin of LaHogue, on the northern coast of the peninsula known by the name of theCotentin. Before he quitted Saint Germains, he held a Chapter of theGarter for the purpose of admitting his son into the order. Two noblemenwere honoured with the same distinction, Powis, who, among his brotherexiles, was now called a Duke, and Melfort, who had returned from Rome, and was again James's Prime Minister. [256] Even at this moment, when itwas of the greatest importance to conciliate the members of the Churchof England, none but members of the Church of Rome were thought worthyof any mark of royal favour. Powis indeed was an eminent member of theEnglish aristocracy; and his countrymen disliked him as little as theydisliked any conspicuous Papist. But Melfort was not even an Englishman;he had never held office in England; he had never sate in the EnglishParliament; and he had therefore no pretensions to a dignity peculiarlyEnglish. He was moreover hated by all the contending factions of all thethree kingdoms. Royal letters countersigned by him had been sent both tothe Convention at Westminster and to the Convention at Edinburgh; and, both at Westminster and at Edinburgh, the sight of his odious name andhandwriting had made the most zealous friends of hereditary right hangdown their heads in shame. It seems strange that even James should havechosen, at such a conjuncture, to proclaim to the world that the menwhom his people most abhorred were the men whom he most delighted tohonour. 

Still more injurious to his interests was the Declaration in which heannounced his intentions to his subjects. Of all the State paperswhich were put forth even by him it was the most elaborately andostentatiously injudicious. When it had disgusted and exasperated allgood Englishmen of all parties, the Papists at Saint Germains pretendedthat it had been drawn up by a stanch Protestant, Edward Herbert, whohad been Chief Justice of the Common Pleas before the Revolution, andwho now bore the empty title of Chancellor. [257] But it is certain thatHerbert was never consulted about any matter of importance, and thatthe Declaration was the work of Melfort and of Melfort alone. [258]In truth, those qualities of head and heart which had made Melfort thefavourite of his master shone forth in every sentence. Not a word wasto be found indicating that three years of banishment had made the Kingwiser, that he had repented of a single error, that he took to himselfeven the smallest part of the blame of that revolution which haddethroned him, or that he purposed to follow a course in any respectdiffering from that which had already been fatal to him. All thecharges which had been brought against him he pronounced to be utterlyunfounded. Wicked men had put forth calumnies. Weak men had believedthose calumnies. He alone had been faultless. He held out no hope thathe would consent to any restriction of that vast dispensing power towhich he had formerly laid claim, that he would not again, in defianceof the plainest statutes, fill the Privy Council, the bench of justice, the public offices, the army, the navy, with Papists, that he would notreestablish the High Commission, that he would not appoint a new set ofregulators to remodel all the constituent bodies of the kingdom. He didindeed condescend to say that he would maintain the legal rights of theChurch of England; but he had said this before; and all men knew whatthose words meant in his mouth. Instead of assuring his people of hisforgiveness, he menaced them with a proscription more terrible than anywhich our island had ever seen. He published a list of persons who hadno mercy to expect. Among these were Ormond, Caermarthen, Nottingham, Tillotson and Burnet. After the roll of those who were doomed to deathby name, came a series of categories. First stood all the crowdof rustics who had been rude to His Majesty when he was stopped atSheerness in his flight. These poor ignorant wretches, some hundreds innumber, were reserved for another bloody circuit. Then came all personswho had in any manner borne a part in the punishment of any Jacobiteconspirator; judges, counsel, witnesses, grand jurymen, petty jurymen, sheriffs and undersheriffs, constables and turnkeys, in short, allthe ministers of justice from Holt down to Ketch. Then vengeance wasdenounced against all spies and all informers who had divulged to theusurpers the designs of the Court of Saint Germains. All justices ofthe peace who should not declare for their rightful Sovereign the momentthat they heard of his landing, all gaolers who should not instantly setpolitical prisoners at liberty, were to be left to the extreme rigour ofthe law. No exception was made in favour of a justice or of a gaolerwho might be within a hundred yards of one of William's regiments, anda hundred miles from the nearest place where there was a single Jacobitein arms. 

It might have been expected that James, after thus denouncing vengeanceagainst large classes of his subjects, would at least have offered ageneral amnesty to the rest. But of general amnesty he said not aword. He did indeed promise that any offender who was not in any of thecategories of proscription, and who should by any eminent service meritindulgence, should receive a special pardon. But, with this exception, all the offenders, hundreds of thousands in number, were merely informedthat their fate should be decided in Parliament. 

The agents of James speedily dispersed his Declaration over every partof the kingdom, and by doing so rendered a great service to William. The general cry was that the banished oppressor had at least givenEnglishmen fair warning, and that, if, after such a warning, theywelcomed him home, they would have no pretence for complaining, thoughevery county town should be polluted by an assize resembling thatwhich Jeffreys had held at Taunton. That some hundreds of people, --theJacobites put the number so low as five hundred, --were to be hangedwithout mercy was certain; and nobody who had concurred in theRevolution, nobody who had fought for the new government by sea orland, no soldier who had borne a part in the conquest of Ireland, noDevonshire ploughman or Cornish miner who had taken arms to defend hiswife and children against Tourville, could be certain that he shouldnot be hanged. How abject too, how spiteful, must be the nature of a manwho, engaged in the most momentous of all undertakings, and aspiring tothe noblest of all prizes, could not refrain from proclaiming that hethirsted for the blood of a multitude of poor fishermen, because, more than three years before, they had pulled him about and called himHatchetface. If, at the very moment when he had the strongest motivesfor trying to conciliate his people by the show of clemency, he couldnot bring himself to hold towards them any language but that of animplacable enemy, what was to be expected from him when he should beagain their master? So savage was his nature that, in a situationin which all other tyrants have resorted to blandishments and fairpromises, he could utter nothing but reproaches and threats. The onlywords in his Declaration which had any show of graciousness were thosein which he promised to send away the foreign troops as soon as hisauthority was reestablished; and many said that those words, whenexamined, would be found full of sinister meaning. He held out no hopethat he would send away Popish troops who were his own subjects. Hisintentions were manifest. The French might go; but the Irish wouldremain. The people of England were to be kept down by these thricesubjugated barbarians. No doubt a Rapparee who had run away at NewtonButler and the Boyne might find courage enough to guard the scaffolds onwhich his conquerors were to die, and to lay waste our country as he hadlaid waste his own. 

The Queen and her ministers, instead of attempting to suppress James'smanifesto, very wisely reprinted it, and sent it forth licensed by theSecretary of State, and interspersed with remarks by a shrewd and severecommentator. It was refuted in many keen pamphlets; it was turned intodoggrel rhymes; and it was left undefended even by the boldest and mostacrimonious libellers among the nonjurors. [259]

Indeed, some of the nonjurors were so much alarmed by observing theeffect which this manifesto produced, that they affected to treat it asspurious, and published as their master's genuine Declaration a paperfull of gracious professions and promises. They made him offer a freepardon to all his people with the exception of four great criminals. They made him hold out hopes of great remissions of taxation. Theymade him pledge his word that he would entrust the whole ecclesiasticaladministration to the nonjuring bishops. But this forgery imposed onnobody, and was important only as showing that even the Jacobites wereashamed of the prince whom they were labouring to restore. [260]

No man read the Declaration with more surprise and anger than Russell. Bad as he was, he was much under the influence of two feelings, which, though they cannot be called virtuous, have some affinity to virtue, andare respectable when compared with mere selfish cupidity. Professionalspirit and party spirit were strong in him. He might be false to hiscountry, but not to his flag; and, even in becoming a Jacobite, he hadnot ceased to be a Whig. In truth, he was a Jacobite only because he wasthe most intolerant and acrimonious of Whigs. He thought himself and hisfaction ungratefully neglected by William, and was for a time too muchblinded by resentment to perceive that it would be mere madness in theold Roundheads, the old Exclusionists, to punish William by recallingJames. The near prospect of an invasion, and the Declaration in whichEnglishmen were plainly told what they had to expect if that invasionshould be successful, produced, it should seem, a sudden and entirechange in Russell's feelings; and that change he distinctly avowed. "Iwish, " he said to Lloyd, "to serve King James. The thing might be done, if it were not his own fault. But he takes the wrong way with us. Lethim forget all the past; let him grant a general pardon; and then I willsee what I can do for him. " Lloyd hinted something about the honoursand rewards designed for Russell himself. But the Admiral, with a spiritworthy of a better man, cut him short. "I do not wish to hear anythingon that subject. My solicitude is for the public. And do not think thatI will let the French triumph over us in our own sea. Understand this, that if I meet them I fight them, ay, though His Majesty himself shouldbe on board. "

This conversation was truly reported to James; but it does not appear tohave alarmed him. He was, indeed, possessed with a belief that Russell, even if willing, would not be able to induce the officers and sailors ofthe English navy to fight against their old King, who was also their oldAdmiral. 

The hopes which James felt, he and his favourite Melfort succeeded inimparting to Lewis and to Lewis's ministers. [261] But for those hopes, indeed, it is probable that all thoughts of invading England in thecourse of that year would have been laid aside. For the extensive planwhich had been formed in the winter had, in the course of the spring, been disconcerted by a succession of accidents such as are beyond thecontrol of human wisdom. The time fixed for the assembling of all themaritime forces of France at Ushant had long elapsed; and not a singlesail had appeared at the place of rendezvous. The Atlantic squadron wasstill detained by bad weather in the port of Brest. The Mediterraneansquadron, opposed by a strong west wind, was vainly struggling to passthe pillars of Hercules. Two fine vessels had gone to pieces on therocks of Ceuta. [262] Meanwhile the admiralties of the allied powershad been active. Before the end of April the English fleet was ready tosail. Three noble ships, just launched from our dockyards, appearedfor the first time on the water. [263] William had been hastening themaritime preparations of the United Provinces; and his exertions hadbeen successful. On the twenty-ninth of April a fine squadron from theTexel appeared in the Downs. Soon came the North Holland squadron, the Maes squadron, the Zealand squadron. [264] The whole force of theconfederate powers was assembled at Saint Helen's in the second weekof May, more than ninety sail of the line, manned by between thirty andforty thousand of the finest seamen of the two great maritime nations. Russell had the chief command. He was assisted by Sir Ralph Delaval, Sir John Ashley, Sir Cloudesley Shovel, Rear Admiral Carter, and RearAdmiral Rooke. Of the Dutch officers Van Almonde was highest in rank. 

No mightier armament had ever appeared in the British Channel. There waslittle reason for apprehending that such a force could be defeated in afair conflict. Nevertheless there was great uneasiness in London. It wasknown that there was a Jacobite party in the navy. Alarming rumours hadworked their way round from France. It was said that the enemy reckonedon the cooperation of some of those officers on whose fidelity, in thiscrisis, the safety of the State might depend. Russell, as far as can nowbe discovered, was still unsuspected. But others, who were probably lesscriminal, had been more indiscreet. At all the coffee houses admiralsand captains were mentioned by name as traitors who ought to beinstantly cashiered, if not shot. It was even confidently affirmed thatsome of the guilty had been put under arrest, and others turned out ofthe service. The Queen and her counsellors were in a great strait. Itwas not easy to say whether the danger of trusting the suspected personsor the danger of removing them were the greater. Mary, with many painfulmisgivings, resolved, and the event proved that she resolved wisely, to treat the evil reports as calumnious, to make a solemn appeal to thehonour of the accused gentlemen, and then to trust the safety of herkingdom to their national and professional spirit. 

On the fifteenth of May a great assembly of officers was convoked atSaint Helen's on board the Britannia, a fine three decker, from whichRussell's flag was flying. The Admiral told them that he had received adespatch which he was charged to read to them. It was from Nottingham. The Queen, the Secretary wrote, had been informed that stories deeplyaffecting the character of the navy were in circulation. It hadeven been affirmed that she had found herself under the necessity ofdismissing many officers. But Her Majesty was determined to believenothing against those brave servants of the State. The gentlemen whohad been so foully slandered might be assured that she placed entirereliance on them. This letter was admirably calculated to work on thoseto whom it was addressed. Very few of them probably had been guilty ofany worse offence than rash and angry talk over their wine. They were asyet only grumblers. If they had fancied that they were marked men, theymight in selfdefence have become traitors. They became enthusiasticallyloyal as soon as they were assured that the Queen reposed entireconfidence in their loyalty. They eagerly signed an address inwhich they entreated her to believe that they would, with the utmostresolution and alacrity, venture their lives in defence of her rights, of English freedom and of the Protestant religion, against all foreignand Popish invaders. "God, " they added, "preserve your person, directyour counsels, and prosper your arms; and let all your people say Amen. "[265]

The sincerity of these professions was soon brought to the test. Afew hours after the meeting on board of the Britannia the mastsof Tourville's squadron were seen from the cliffs of Portland. Onemessenger galloped with the news from Weymouth to London, and rousedWhitehall at three in the morning. Another took the coast road, andcarried the intelligence to Russell. All was ready; and on the morningof the seventeenth of May the allied fleet stood out to sea. [266]

Tourville had with him only his own squadron, consisting of forty-fourships of the line. But he had received positive orders to protect thedescent on England, and not to decline a battle. Though these orders hadbeen given before it was known at Versailles that the Dutch andEnglish fleets had joined, he was not disposed to take on himself theresponsibility of disobedience. He still remembered with bitterness thereprimand which his extreme caution had drawn upon him after the fightof Beachy Head. He would not again be told that he was a timid andunenterprising commander, that he had no courage but the vulgar courageof a common sailor. He was also persuaded that the odds against him wererather apparent than real. He believed, on the authority of James andMelfort, that the English seamen, from the flag officers down to thecabin boys, were Jacobites. Those who fought would fight with halfa heart; and there would probably be numerous desertions at the mostcritical moment. Animated by such hopes he sailed from Brest, steeredfirst towards the north east, came in sight of the coast of Dorsetshire, and then struck across the Channel towards La Hogue, where the armywhich he was to convoy to England had already begun to embark on boardof the transports. He was within a few leagues of Barfleur when, beforedaybreak, on the morning of the nineteenth of May, he saw the greatarmament of the allies stretching along the eastern horizon. Hedetermined to bear down on them. By eight the two lines of battle wereformed; but it was eleven before the firing began. It soon became plainthat the English, from the Admiral downward, were resolved to do theirduty. Russell had visited all his ships, and exhorted all his crews. "If your commanders play false, " he said, "overboard with them, andwith myself the first. " There was no defection. There was no slackness. Carter was the first who broke the French line. He was struck by asplinter of one of his own yard arms, and fell dying on the deck. Hewould not be carried below. He would not let go his sword. "Fight theship, " were his last words: "fight the ship as long as she can swim. "The battle lasted till four in the afternoon. The roar of the gunswas distinctly heard more than twenty miles off by the army which wasencamped on the coast of Normandy. During the earlier part of the daythe wind was favourable to the French; they were opposed to half of theallied fleet; and against that half they maintained the conflict withtheir usual courage and with more than their usual seamanship. After ahard and doubtful fight of five hours, Tourville thought that enough hadbeen done to maintain the honour of the white flag, and began to drawoff. But by this time the wind had veered, and was with the allies. Theywere now able to avail themselves of their great superiority of force. They came on fast. The retreat of the French became a flight. Tourvillefought his own ship desperately. She was named, in allusion to Lewis'sfavourite emblem, the Royal Sun, and was widely renowned as the finestvessel in the world. It was reported among the English sailors that shewas adorned with an image of the Great King, and that he appeared there, as he appeared in the Place of Victories, with vanquished nations inchains beneath his feet. The gallant ship, surrounded by enemies, laylike a great fortress on the sea, scattering death on every side fromher hundred and four portholes. She was so formidably manned that allattempts to board her failed. Long after sunset, she got clear of herassailants, and, with all her scuppers spouting blood, made for thecoast of Normandy. She had suffered so much that Tourville hastilyremoved his flag to a ship of ninety guns which was named the Ambitious. By this time his fleet was scattered far over the sea. About twenty ofhis smallest ships made their escape by a road which was too perilousfor any courage but the courage of despair. In the double darkness ofnight and of a thick sea fog, they ran, with all their sails spread, through the boiling waves and treacherous rocks of the Race of Alderney, and, by a strange good fortune, arrived without a single disaster atSaint Maloes. The pursuers did not venture to follow the fugitives intothat terrible strait, the place of innumerable shipwrecks. [267]

Those French vessels which were too bulky to venture into the Race ofAlderney fled to the havens of the Cotentin. The Royal Sun and two otherthree deckers reached Cherburg in safety. The Ambitious, with twelveother ships, all first rates or second rates, took refuge in the Bay ofLa Hogue, close to the headquarters of the army of James. 

The three ships which had fled to Cherburg were closely chased by anEnglish squadron under the command of Delaval. He found them hauledup into shoal water where no large man of war could get at them. Hetherefore determined to attack them with his fireships and boats. Theservice was gallantly and successfully performed. In a short time theRoyal Sun and her two consorts were burned to ashes. Part of the crewsescaped to the shore; and part fell into the hands of the English. [268]

Meanwhile Russell with the greater part of his victorious fleet hadblockaded the Bay of La Hogue. Here, as at Cherburg, the French men ofwar had been drawn up into shallow water. They lay close to the campof the army which was destined for the invasion of England. Six of themwere moored under a fort named Lisset. The rest lay under the guns ofanother fort named Saint Vaast, where James had fixed his headquarters, and where the Union flag, variegated by the crosses of Saint Georgeand Saint Andrew, hung by the side of the white flag of France. MarshalBellefonds had planted several batteries which, it was thought, woulddeter the boldest enemy from approaching either Fort Lisset or FortSaint Vaast. James, however, who knew something of English seamen, wasnot perfectly at ease, and proposed to send strong bodies of soldiers onboard of the ships. But Tourville would not consent to put such a sluron his profession. 

Russell meanwhile was preparing for an attack. On the afternoon of thetwenty-third of May all was ready. A flotilla consisting of sloops, offireships, and of two hundred boats, was entrusted to the commandof Rooke. The whole armament was in the highest spirits. The rowers, flushed by success, and animated by the thought that they were goingto fight under the eyes of the French and Irish troops who had beenassembled for the purpose of subjugating England, pulled manfully andwith loud huzzas towards the six huge wooden castles which lay close toFort Lisset. The French, though an eminently brave people, have alwaysbeen more liable to sudden panics than their phlegmatic neighbours theEnglish and Germans. On this day there was a panic both in the fleet andin the army. Tourville ordered his sailors to man their boats, and wouldhave led them to encounter the enemy in the bay. But his example and hisexhortations were vain. His boats turned round and fled in confusion. The ships were abandoned. The cannonade from Fort Lisset was so feebleand ill directed that it did no execution. The regiments on the beach, after wasting a few musket shots, drew off. The English boarded themen of war, set them on fire, and having performed this great servicewithout the loss of a single life, retreated at a late hour with theretreating tide. The bay was in a blaze during the night; and now andthen a loud explosion announced that the flames had reached a powderroom or a tier of loaded guns. At eight the next morning the tide cameback strong; and with the tide came back Rooke and his two hundredboats. The enemy made a faint attempt to defend the vessels which werenear Fort Saint Vaast. During a few minutes the batteries did someexecution among the crews of our skiffs; but the struggle was soonover. The French poured fast out of their ships on one side; the Englishpoured in as fast on the other, and, with loud shouts, turned thecaptured guns against the shore. The batteries were speedily silenced. James and Melfort, Bellefonds and Tourville, looked on in helplessdespondency while the second conflagration proceeded. The conquerors, leaving the ships of war in flames, made their way into an inner basinwhere many transports lay. Eight of these vessels were set on fire. Several were taken in tow. The rest would have been either destroyed orcarried off, had not the sea again begun to ebb. It was impossible to domore, and the victorious flotilla slowly retired, insulting the hostilecamp with a thundering chant of "God save the King. "

Thus ended, at noon on the twenty-fourth of May, the great conflictwhich had raged during five days over a wide extent of sea and shore. One English fireship had perished in its calling. Sixteen French men ofwar, all noble vessels, and eight of them three-deckers, had been sunkor burned down to the keel. The battle is called, from the place whereit terminated, the battle of La Hogue. [269]

The news was received in London with boundless exultation. In the fighton the open sea, indeed, the numerical superiority of the allies hadbeen so great that they had little reason to boast of their success. Butthe courage and skill with which the crews of the English boats had, in a French harbour, in sight of a French army, and under the fire ofFrench batteries, destroyed a fine French fleet, amply justified thepride with which our fathers pronounced the name of La Hogue. That wemay fully enter into their feelings, we must remember that this wasthe first great check that had ever been given to the arms of Lewis theFourteenth, and the first great victory that the English had gained overthe French since the day of Agincourt. The stain left on our fame by theshameful defeat of Beachy Head was effaced. This time the glory was allour own. The Dutch had indeed done their duty, as they have always doneit in maritime war, whether fighting on our side or against us, whethervictorious or vanquished. But the English had borne the brunt of thefight. Russell who commanded in chief was an Englishman. Delaval whodirected the attack on Cherburg was an Englishman. Rooke who led theflotilla into the Bay of La Hogue was an Englishman. The only twoofficers of note who had fallen, Admiral Carter and Captain Hastings ofthe Sandwich, were Englishmen. Yet the pleasure with which the good newswas received here must not be ascribed solely or chiefly to nationalpride. The island was safe. The pleasant pastures, cornfields andcommons of Hampshire and Surrey would not be the seat of war. The housesand gardens, the kitchens and dairies, the cellars and plate chests, thewives and daughters of our gentry and clergy would not be at the mercyof Irish Rapparees, who had sacked the dwellings and skinned the cattleof the Englishry of Leinster, or of French dragoons accustomed to liveat free quarters on the Protestants of Auvergne. Whigs and Tories joinedin thanking God for this great deliverance; and the most respectablenonjurors could not but be glad at heart that the rightful King was notto be brought back by an army of foreigners. 

The public joy was therefore all but universal. During several days thebells of London pealed without ceasing. Flags were flying on all thesteeples. Rows of candles were in all the windows. Bonfires were atall the corners of the streets. [270] The sense which the governmententertained of the services of the navy was promptly, judiciously andgracefully manifested. Sidney and Portland were sent to meet the fleetat Portsmouth, and were accompanied by Rochester, as the representativeof the Tories. The three Lords took down with them thirty-seven thousandpounds in coin, which they were to distribute as a donative among thesailors. [271] Gold medals were given to the officers. [272] The remainsof Hastings and Carter were brought on shore with every mark of honour. Carter was buried at Portsmouth, with a great display of military pomp. [273] The corpse of Hastings was brought up to London, and laid, withunusual solemnity, under the pavement of Saint James's Church. Thefootguards with reversed arms escorted the hearse. Four royal statecarriages, each drawn by six horses, were in the procession; a crowdof men of quality in mourning cloaks filled the pews; and the Bishop ofLincoln preached the funeral sermon. [274] While such marks of respectwere paid to the slain, the wounded were not neglected. Fifty surgeons, plentifully supplied with instruments, bandages, and drugs, were sentdown in all haste from London to Portsmouth. [275] It is not easy for usto form a notion of the difficulty which there then was in providing atshort notice commodious shelter and skilful attendance for hundreds ofmaimed and lacerated men. At present every county, every large town, can boast of some spacious palace in which the poorest labourer who hasfractured a limb may find an excellent bed, an able medical attendant, acareful nurse, medicines of the best quality, and nourishment such as aninvalid requires. But there was not then, in the whole realm, a singleinfirmary supported by voluntary contribution. Even in the capital theonly edifices open to the wounded were the two ancient hospitals ofSaint Thomas and Saint Bartholomew. The Queen gave orders that in boththese hospitals arrangements should be made at the public charge forthe reception of patients from the fleet. [276] At the same time itwas announced that a noble and lasting memorial of the gratitude whichEngland felt for the courage and patriotism of her sailors would soonrise on a site eminently appropriate. Among the suburban residences ofour kings, that which stood at Greenwich had long held a distinguishedplace. Charles the Second liked the situation, and determined to rebuildthe house and to improve the gardens. Soon after his Restoration, hebegan to erect, on a spot almost washed by the Thames at high tide, amansion of vast extent and cost. Behind the palace were planted longavenues of trees which, when William reigned, were scarcely more thansaplings, but which have now covered with their massy shade the summerrambles of several generations. On the slope which has long been thescene of the holiday sports of the Londoners, were constructed flightsof terraces, of which the vestiges may still be discerned. The Queen nowpublicly declared, in her husband's name, that the building commenced byCharles should be completed, and should be a retreat for seamen disabledin the service of their country. [277]

One of the happiest effects produced by the good news was the calmingof the public mind. During about a month the nation had been hourlyexpecting an invasion and a rising, and had consequently been in anirritable and suspicious mood. In many parts of England a nonjuror couldnot show himself without great risk of being insulted. A report thatarms were hidden in a house sufficed to bring a furious mob to the door. The mansion of one Jacobite gentleman in Kent had been attacked, and, after a fight in which several shots were fired, had been stormed andpulled down. [278] Yet such riots were by no means the worst symptoms ofthe fever which had inflamed the whole society. The exposure of Fuller, in February, had, as it seemed, put an end to the practices of that viletribe of which Oates was the patriarch. During some weeks, indeed, theworld was disposed to be unreasonably incredulous about plots. But inApril there was a reaction. The French and Irish were coming. There wasbut too much reason to believe that there were traitors in the island. Whoever pretended that he could point out those traitors was sure to beheard with attention; and there was not wanting a false witness to availhimself of the golden opportunity. 

This false witness was named Robert Young. His history was in his ownlifetime so fully investigated, and so much of his correspondence hasbeen preserved, that the whole man is before us. His character is indeeda curious study. His birthplace was a subject of dispute among threenations. The English pronounced him Irish. The Irish, not beingambitious of the honour of having him for a countryman, affirmed that hewas born in Scotland. Wherever he may have been born, it is impossibleto doubt where he was bred; for his phraseology is precisely that ofthe Teagues who were, in his time, favourite characters on our stage. Hecalled himself a priest of the Established Church; but he was in truthonly a deacon; and his deacon's orders he had obtained by producingforged certificates of his learning and moral character. Long before theRevolution he held curacies in various parts of Ireland; but he didnot remain many days in any spot. He was driven from one place by thescandal which was the effect of his lawless amours. He rode away fromanother place on a borrowed horse, which he never returned. He settledin a third parish, and was taken up for bigamy. Some letters which hewrote on this occasion from the gaol of Cavan have been preserved. Heassured each of his wives, with the most frightful imprecations, thatshe alone was the object of his love; and he thus succeeded in inducingone of them to support him in prison, and the other to save his life byforswearing herself at the assizes. The only specimens which remain tous of his method of imparting religious instruction are to be found inthese epistles. He compares himself to David, the man after God's ownheart, who had been guilty both of adultery and murder. He declaresthat he repents; he prays for the forgiveness of the Almighty, and thenintreats his dear honey, for Christ's sake, to perjure herself. Havingnarrowly escaped the gallows, he wandered during several years aboutIreland and England, begging, stealing, cheating, personating, forging, and lay in many prisons under many names. In 1684 he was convicted atBury of having fraudulently counterfeited Sancroft's signature, and wassentenced to the pillory and to imprisonment. From his dungeon he wroteto implore the Primate's mercy. The letter may still be read with allthe original bad grammar and bad spelling. [279] The writer acknowledgedhis guilt, wished that his eyes were a fountain of water, declared thathe should never know peace till he had received episcopal absolution, and professed a mortal hatred of Dissenters. As all this contritionand all this orthodoxy produced no effect, the penitent, after swearingbitterly to be revenged on Sancroft, betook himself to another device. The Western Insurrection had just broken out. The magistrates all overthe country were but too ready to listen to any accusation that might bebrought against Whigs and Nonconformists. Young declared on oath that, to his knowledge, a design had been formed in Suffolk against the lifeof King James, and named a peer, several gentlemen, and ten Presbyterianministers, as parties to the plot. Some of the accused were brought totrial; and Young appeared in the witness box; but the story which hetold was proved by overwhelming evidence to be false. Soon after theRevolution he was again convicted of forgery, pilloried for the fourthor fifth time, and sent to Newgate. While he lay there, he determined totry whether he should be more fortunate as an accuser of Jacobites thanhe had been as an accuser of Puritans. He first addressed himself toTillotson. There was a horrible plot against their Majesties, a plot asdeep as hell; and some of the first men in England were concerned in it. Tillotson, though he placed little confidence in information comingfrom such a source, thought that the oath which he had taken as a PrivyCouncillor made it his duty to mention the subject to William. William, after his fashion, treated the matter very lightly. "I am confident, " hesaid, "that this is a villany; and I will have nobody disturbed on suchgrounds. " After this rebuff, Young remained some time quiet. But whenWilliam was on the Continent, and when the nation was agitated by theapprehension of a French invasion and of a Jacobite insurrection, afalse accuser might hope to obtain a favourable audience. The mere oathof a man who was well known to the turnkeys of twenty gaols was notlikely to injure any body. But Young was master of a weapon which is, ofall weapons, the most formidable to innocence. He had lived duringsome years by counterfeiting hands, and had at length attained suchconsummate skill in that bad art that even experienced clerks whowere conversant with manuscript could scarcely, after the most minutecomparison, discover any difference between his imitations and theoriginals. He had succeeded in making a collection of papers written bymen of note who were suspected of disaffection. Some autographs he hadstolen; and some he had obtained by writing in feigned names to askafter the characters of servants or curates. He now drew up a paperpurporting to be an Association for the Restoration of the banishedKing. This document set forth that the subscribers bound themselves inthe presence of God to take arms for His Majesty, and to seize on thePrince of Orange, dead or alive. To the Association Young appended thenames of Marlborough, of Cornbury, of Salisbury, of Sancroft, and ofSprat, Bishop of Rochester and Dean of Westminster. 

The next thing to be done was to put the paper into some hiding place inthe house of one of the persons whose signatures had been counterfeited. As Young could not quit Newgate, he was forced to employ a subordinateagent for this purpose. He selected a wretch named Blackhead, whohad formerly been convicted of perjury and sentenced to have his earsclipped. The selection was not happy; for Blackhead had none of thequalities which the trade of a false witness requires except wickedness. There was nothing plausible about him. His voice was harsh. Treacherywas written in all the lines of his yellow face. He had no invention, nopresence of mind, and could do little more than repeat by rote the liestaught him by others. 

This man, instructed by his accomplice, repaired to Sprat's palace atBromley, introduced himself there as the confidential servant of animaginary Doctor of Divinity, delivered to the Bishop, on bended knee, a letter ingeniously manufactured by Young, and received, with thesemblance of profound reverence, the episcopal benediction. The servantsmade the stranger welcome. He was taken to the cellar, drank theirmaster's health, and entreated them to let him see the house. They couldnot venture to show any of the private apartments. Blackhead, therefore, after begging importunately, but in vain, to be suffered to have onelook at the study, was forced to content himself with dropping theAssociation into a flowerpot which stood in a parlour near the kitchen. 

Every thing having been thus prepared, Young informed the ministers thathe could tell them something of the highest importance to the welfare ofthe State, and earnestly begged to be heard. His request reached themon perhaps the most anxious day of an anxious month. Tourville had juststood out to sea. The army of James was embarking. London was agitatedby reports about the disaffection of the naval officers. The Queen wasdeliberating whether she should cashier those who were suspected, or trythe effect of an appeal to their honour and patriotism. At such a momentthe ministers could not refuse to listen to any person who professedhimself able to give them valuable information. Young and his accomplicewere brought before the Privy Council. They there accused Marlborough, Cornbury, Salisbury, Sancroft and Sprat of high treason. These greatmen, Young said, had invited James to invade England, and had promisedto join him. The eloquent and ingenious Bishop of Rochester hadundertaken to draw up a Declaration which would inflame the nationagainst the government of King William. The conspirators were boundtogether by a written instrument. That instrument, signed by theirown hands, would be found at Bromley if careful search was made. Youngparticularly requested that the messengers might be ordered to examinethe Bishop's flowerpots. 

The ministers were seriously alarmed. The story was circumstantial; andpart of it was probable. Marlborough's dealings with Saint Germains werewell known to Caermarthen, to Nottingham, and to Sidney. Cornbury wasa tool of Marlborough, and was the son of a nonjuror and of a notoriousplotter. Salisbury was a Papist. Sancroft had, not many months before, been, with too much show of reason, suspected of inviting the French toinvade England. Of all the accused persons Sprat was the most unlikelyto be concerned in any hazardous design. He had neither enthusiasmnor constancy. Both his ambition and his party spirit had always beeneffectually kept in order by his love of ease and his anxiety for hisown safety. He had been guilty of some criminal compliances in the hopeof gaining the favour of James, had sate in the High Commission, hadconcurred in several iniquitous decrees pronounced by that court, andhad, with trembling hands and faltering voice, read the Declaration ofIndulgence in the choir of the Abbey. But there he had stopped. As soonas it began to be whispered that the civil and religious constitutionof England would speedily be vindicated by extraordinary means, he hadresigned the powers which he had during two years exercised in defianceof law, and had hastened to make his peace with his clerical brethren. He had in the Convention voted for a Regency; but he had taken the oathswithout hesitation; he had borne a conspicuous part in the coronation ofthe new Sovereigns; and by his skilful hand had been added to the Formof Prayer used on the fifth of November those sentences in which theChurch expresses her gratitude for the second great deliverance wroughton that day. [280] Such a man, possessed of a plentiful income, of aseat in the House of Lords, of one agreeable house among the elmsof Bromley, and of another in the cloisters of Westminster, was veryunlikely to run the risk of martyrdom. He was not, indeed, on perfectlygood terms with the government. For the feeling which, next tosolicitude for his own comfort and repose, seems to have had thegreatest influence on his public conduct, was his dislike ofthe Puritans; a dislike which sprang, not from bigotry, but fromEpicureanism. Their austerity was a reproach to his slothful andluxurious life; their phraseology shocked his fastidious taste; and, where they were concerned, his ordinary good nature forsook him. Loathing the nonconformists as he did, he was not likely to bevery zealous for a prince whom the nonconformists regarded as theirprotector. But Sprat's faults afforded ample security that he wouldnever, from spleen against William, engage in any plot to bring backJames. Why Young should have assigned the most perilous part in anenterprise full of peril to a man singularly pliant, cautious andselfindulgent, it is difficult to say. 

The first step which the ministers took was to send Marlborough to theTower. He was by far the most formidable of all the accused persons; andthat he had held a traitorous correspondence with Saint Germains was afact which, whether Young were perjured or not, the Queen and her chiefadvisers knew to be true. One of the Clerks of the Council and severalmessengers were sent down to Bromley with a warrant from Nottingham. Sprat was taken into custody. All the apartments in which it couldreasonably be supposed that he would have hidden an important documentwere searched, the library, the diningroom, the drawingroom, thebedchamber, and the adjacent closets. His papers were strictly examined. Much food prose was found, and probably some bad verse, but no treason. The messengers pried into every flowerpot that they could find, but tono purpose. It never occurred to them to look into the room in whichBlackhead had hidden the Association: for that room was near the officesoccupied by the servants, and was little used by the Bishop and hisfamily. The officers returned to London with their prisoner, but withoutthe document which, if it had been found, might have been fatal to him. 

Late at night he was brought to Westminster, and was suffered tosleep at his deanery. All his bookcases and drawers were examined; andsentinels were posted at the door of his bedchamber, but with strictorders to behave civilly and not to disturb the family. 

On the following day he was brought before the Council. The examinationwas conducted by Nottingham with great humanity and courtesy. TheBishop, conscious of entire innocence, behaved with temper and firmness. He made no complaints. "I submit, " he said, "to the necessities of Statein such a time of jealousy and danger as this. " He was asked whetherhe had drawn up a Declaration for King James, whether he had heldany correspondence with France, whether he had signed any treasonableassociation, and whether he knew of any such association. To all thesequestions he, with perfect truth, answered in the negative, on theword of a Christian and a Bishop. He was taken back to his deanery. Heremained there in easy confinement during ten days, and then, as nothingtending to criminate him had been discovered, was suffered to return toBromley. 

Meanwhile the false accusers had been devising a new scheme. Blackheadpaid another visit to Bromley, and contrived to take the forgedAssociation out of the place in which he had hid it, and to bringit back to Young. One of Young's two wives then carried it to theSecretary's Office, and told a lie, invented by her husband, to explainhow a paper of such importance had come into her hands. But it was notnow so easy to frighten the ministers as it had been a few days before. The battle of La Hogue had put an end to all apprehensions of invasion. Nottingham, therefore, instead of sending down a warrant to Bromley, merely wrote to beg that Sprat would call on him at Whitehall. Thesummons was promptly obeyed, and the accused prelate was brought faceto face with Blackhead before the Council. Then the truth came out fast. The Bishop remembered the villanous look and voice of the man who hadknelt to ask the episcopal blessing. The Bishop's secretary confirmedhis master's assertions. The false witness soon lost his presence ofmind. His cheeks, always sallow, grew frightfully livid. His voice, generally loud and coarse, sank into a whisper. The Privy Councillorssaw his confusion, and crossexamined him sharply. For a time he answeredtheir questions by repeatedly stammering out his original lie in theoriginal words. At last he found that he had no way of extricatinghimself but by owning his guilt. He acknowledged that he had given anuntrue account of his visit to Bromley; and, after much prevarication, he related how he had hidden the Association, and how he had removed itfrom its hiding place, and confessed that he had been set on by Young. 

The two accomplices were then confronted. Young, with unabashedforehead, denied every thing. He knew nothing about the flowerpots. "If so, " cried Nottingham and Sidney together, "why did you givesuch particular directions that the flowerpots at Bromley should besearched?" "I never gave any directions about the flowerpots, " saidYoung. Then the whole board broke forth. "How dare you say so? We allremember it. " Still the knave stood up erect, and exclaimed, with animpudence which Oates might have envied, "This hiding is all a trick gotup between the Bishop and Blackhead. The Bishop has taken Blackhead off;and they are both trying to stifle the plot. " This was too much. Therewas a smile and a lifting up of hands all round the board. "Man, " criedCaermarthen, "wouldst thou have us believe that the Bishop contrivedto have this paper put where it was ten to one that our messengers hadfound it, and where, if they had found it, it might have hanged him?"

The false accusers were removed in custody. The Bishop, after warmlythanking the ministers for their fair and honourable conduct, took hisleave of them. In the antechamber he found a crowd of people staring atYoung, while Young sate, enduring the stare with the serene fortitudeof a man who had looked down on far greater multitudes from half thepillories in England. "Young, " said Sprat, "your conscience must tellyou that you have cruelly wronged me. For your own sake I am sorry thatyou persist in denying what your associate has confessed. " "Confessed!"cried Young; "no, all is not confessed yet; and that you shall findto your sorrow. There is such a thing as impeachment, my Lord. WhenParliament sits you shall hear more of me. " "God give you repentance, "answered the Bishop. "For, depend upon it, you are in much more dangerof being damned than I of being impeached. " [281]

Forty-eight hours after the detection of this execrable fraud, Marlborough was admitted to bail. Young and Blackhead had done him aninestimable service. That he was concerned in a plot quite as criminalas that which they had falsely imputed to him, and that the governmentwas to possession of moral proofs of his guilt, is now certain. But hiscontemporaries had not, as we have, the evidence of his perfidy beforethem. They knew that he had been accused of an offence of which he wasinnocent, that perjury and forgery had been employed to ruin him, andthat, in consequence of these machinations, he had passed some weeks inthe Tower. There was in the public mind a very natural confusion betweenhis disgrace and his imprisonment. He had been imprisoned withoutsufficient cause. Might it not, in the absence of all information, bereasonably presumed that he had been disgraced without sufficient cause?It was certain that a vile calumny, destitute of all foundation, hadcaused him to be treated as a criminal in May. Was it not probable, then, that calumny might have deprived him of his master's favour inJanuary?

Young's resources were not yet exhausted. As soon as he had been carriedback from Whitehall to Newgate, he set himself to construct a newplot, and to find a new accomplice. He addressed himself to a man namedHolland, who was in the lowest state of poverty. Never, said Young, wasthere such a golden opportunity. A bold, shrewd, fellow might easilyearn five hundred pounds. To Holland five hundred pounds seemed fabulouswealth. What, he asked, was he to do for it? Nothing, he was told, but to speak the truth, that was to say, substantial truth, a littledisguised and coloured. There really was a plot; and this would havebeen proved if Blackhead had not been bought off. His desertion had madeit necessary to call in the help of fiction. "You must swear that youand I were in a back room upstairs at the Lobster in Southwark. Some mencame to meet us there. They gave a password before they were admitted. They were all in white camlet cloaks. They signed the Association in ourpresence. Then they paid each his shilling and went away. And you mustbe ready to identify my Lord Marlborough and the Bishop of Rochester astwo of these men. " "How can I identify them?" said Holland, "I never sawthem. " "You must contrive to see them, " answered the tempter, "as soonas you can. The Bishop will be at the Abbey. Anybody about the Courtwill point out my Lord Marlborough. " Holland immediately went toWhitehall, and repeated this conversation to Nottingham. The unluckyimitator of Oates was prosecuted, by order of the government, forperjury, subornation of perjury, and forgery. He was convicted andimprisoned, was again set in the pillory, and underwent, in addition tothe exposure, about which he cared little, such a pelting as had seldombeen known. [282] After his punishment, he was, during some years, lostin the crowd of pilferers, ringdroppers and sharpers who infested thecapital. At length, in the year 1700, he emerged from his obscurity, and excited a momentary interest. The newspapers announced that RobertYoung, Clerk, once so famous, had been taken up for coining, then thathe had been found guilty, then that the dead warrant had come down, andfinally that the reverend gentleman had been hanged at Tyburn, and hadgreatly edified a large assembly of spectators by his penitence. [283]

CHAPTER XIX

 Foreign Policy of William--The Northern Powers--The Pope--Conduct of the Allies--The Emperor--Spain--William succeeds in preventing the Dissolution of the Coalition--New Arrangements for the Government of the Spanish Netherlands--Lewis takes the Field--Siege of Namur--Lewis returns to Versailles--Luxemburg--Battle of Steinkirk--Conspiracy of Grandval--Return of William to England--Naval Maladministration--Earthquake at Port Royal--Distress in England; Increase of Crime--Meeting of Parliament; State of Parties--The King's Speech; Question of Privilege raised by the Lords--Debates on the State of the Nation--Bill for the Regulation of Trials in Cases of Treason--Case of Lord Mohun--Debates on the India Trade--Supply--Ways and Means; Land Tax--Origin of the National Debt--Parliamentary Reform--The Place Bill--The Triennial Bill--The First Parliamentary Discussion on the Liberty of the Press--State of Ireland--The King refuses to pass the Triennial Bill--Ministerial Arrangements--The King goes to Holland; a Session of Parliament in Scotland

WHILE England was agitated, first by the dread of an invasion, and thenby joy at the deliverance wrought for her by the valour of her seamen, important events were taking place on the Continent. On the sixth ofMarch the King had arrived at the Hague, and had proceeded to make hisarrangements for the approaching campaign. [284]

The prospect which lay before him was gloomy. The coalition of which hewas the author and the chief had, during some months, been in constantdanger of dissolution. By what strenuous exertions, by what ingeniousexpedients, by what blandishments, by what bribes, he succeeded inpreventing his allies from throwing themselves, one by one, at the feetof France, can be but imperfectly known. The fullest and most authenticrecord of the labours and sacrifices by which he kept together, duringeight years, a crowd of fainthearted and treacherous potentates, negligent of the common interest and jealous of each other, is tobe found in his correspondence with Heinsius. In that correspondenceWilliam is all himself. He had, in the course of his eventful life, tosustain some high parts for which he was not eminently qualified; and, in those parts, his success was imperfect. As Sovereign of England, heshowed abilities and virtues which entitle him to honourable mention inhistory; but his deficiencies were great. He was to the last a strangeramongst us, cold, reserved, never in good spirits, never at his ease. His kingdom was a place of exile. His finest palaces were prisons. Hewas always counting the days which must elapse before he shouldagain see the land of his birth, the clipped trees, the wings of theinnumerable windmills, the nests of the storks on the tall gables, andthe long lines of painted villas reflected in the sleeping canals. Hetook no pains to hide the preference which he felt for his native soiland for his early friends; and therefore, though he rendered greatservices to our country, he did not reign in our hearts. As a generalin the field, again, he showed rare courage and capacity; but, fromwhatever cause, he was, as a tactician, inferior to some of hiscontemporaries, who, in general powers of mind, were far inferior tohim. The business for which he was preeminently fitted was diplomacy, inthe highest sense of the word. It may be doubted whether he has ever hada superior in the art of conducting those great negotiations on whichthe welfare of the commonwealth of nations depends. His skill in thisdepartment of politics was never more severely tasked or more signallyproved than during the latter part of 1691 and the earlier part of 1692. 

One of his chief difficulties was caused by the sullen and menacingdemeanour of the Northern powers. Denmark and Sweden had at one timeseemed disposed to join the coalition; but they had early become cold, and were fast becoming hostile. From France they flattered themselvesthat they had little to fear. It was not very probable that her armieswould cross the Elbe, or that her fleets would force a passage throughthe Sound. But the naval strength of England and Holland united mightwell excite apprehension at Stockholm and Copenhagen. Soon arosevexatious questions of maritime right, questions such as, in almostevery extensive war of modern times, have arisen between belligerentsand neutrals. The Scandinavian princes complained that the legitimatetrade between the Baltic and France was tyrannically interrupted. Thoughthey had not in general been on very friendly terms with each other, they began to draw close together, intrigued at every petty Germancourt, and tried to form what William called a Third Party in Europe. The King of Sweden, who, as Duke of Pomerania, was bound to send threethousand men for the defence of the Empire, sent, instead of them, hisadvice that the allies would make peace on the best terms which theycould get. [285] The King of Denmark seized a great number of Dutchmerchantships, and collected in Holstein an army which caused no smalluneasiness to his neighbours. "I fear, " William wrote, in an hour ofdeep dejection, to Heinsius, "I fear that the object of this Third Partyis a peace which will bring in its train the slavery of Europe. The daywill come when Sweden and her confederates will know too late how greatan error they have committed. They are farther, no doubt, than we fromthe danger; and therefore it is that they are thus bent on working ourruin and their own. That France will now consent to reasonable termsis not to be expected; and it were better to fall sword in hand than tosubmit to whatever she may dictate. " [286]

While the King was thus disquieted by the conduct of the Northernpowers, ominous signs began to appear in a very different quarter. Ithad, from the first, been no easy matter to induce sovereigns who hated, and who, in their own dominions, persecuted, the Protestant religion, to countenance the revolution which had saved that religion from a greatperil. But happily the example and the authority of the Vatican hadovercome their scruples. Innocent the Eleventh and Alexander the Eighthhad regarded William with ill concealed partiality. He was not indeedtheir friend; but he was their enemy's enemy; and James had been, and, if restored, must again be, their enemy's vassal. To the heretic nephewtherefore they gave their effective support, to the orthodox uncle onlycompliments and benedictions. But Alexander the Eighth had occupied thepapal throne little more than fifteen months. His successor, AntonioPignatelli, who took the name of Innocent the Twelfth, was impatient tobe reconciled to Lewis. Lewis was now sensible that he had committeda great error when he had roused against himself at once the spirit ofProtestantism and the spirit of Popery. He permitted the French Bishopsto submit themselves to the Holy See. The dispute, which had, at onetime, seemed likely to end in a great Gallican schism, was accommodated;and there was reason to believe that the influence of the head of theChurch would be exerted for the purpose of severing the ties which boundso many Catholic princes to the Calvinist who had usurped the Britishthrone. 

Meanwhile the coalition, which the Third Party on one side and the Popeon the other were trying to dissolve, was in no small danger of fallingto pieces from mere rottenness. Two of the allied powers, and two only, were hearty in the common cause; England, drawing after her the otherBritish kingdoms; and Holland, drawing after her the other Bataviancommonwealths. England and Holland were indeed torn by internalfactions, and were separated from each other by mutual jealousiesand antipathies; but both were fully resolved not to submit to Frenchdomination; and both were ready to bear their share, and more thantheir share, of the charges of the contest. Most of the members of theconfederacy were not nations, but men, an Emperor, a King, Electors, Dukes; and of these men there was scarcely one whose whole soul was inthe struggle, scarcely one who did not hang back, who did not find someexcuse for omitting to fulfil his engagements, who did not expect to behired to defend his own rights and interests against the common enemy. But the war was the war of the people of England and of the people ofHolland. Had it not been so, the burdens which it made necessary wouldnot have been borne by either England or Holland during a single year. When William said that he would rather die sword in hand than humblehimself before France, he expressed what was felt, not by himself alone, but by two great communities of which he was the first magistrate. Withthose two communities, unhappily, other states had little sympathy. Indeed those two communities were regarded by other states as rich, plaindealing, generous dupes are regarded by needy sharpers. England andHolland were wealthy; and they were zealous. Their wealth excited thecupidity of the whole alliance; and to that wealth their zeal wasthe key. They were persecuted with sordid importunity by all theirconfederates, from Caesar, who, in the pride of his solitary dignity, would not honour King William with the title of Majesty, down to thesmallest Margrave who could see his whole principality from the crackedwindows of the mean and ruinous old house which he called his palace. Itwas not enough that England and Holland furnished much more than theircontingents to the war by land, and bore unassisted the whole charge ofthe war by sea. They were beset by a crowd of illustrious mendicants, some rude, some obsequious, but all indefatigable and insatiable. Oneprince came mumping to them annually with a lamentable story about hisdistresses. A more sturdy beggar threatened to join the Third Party, andto make a separate peace with France, if his demands were not granted. Every Sovereign too had his ministers and favourites; and theseministers and favourites were perpetually hinting that France waswilling to pay them for detaching their masters from the coalition, andthat it would be prudent in England and Holland to outbid France. 

Yet the embarrassment caused by the rapacity of the allied courts wasscarcely greater than the embarrassment caused by their ambition andtheir pride. This prince had set his heart on some childish distinction, a title or a cross, and would do nothing for the common cause till hiswishes were accomplished. That prince chose to fancy that he had beenslighted, and would not stir till reparation had been made to him. The Duke of Brunswick Lunenburg would not furnish a battalion for thedefence of Germany unless he was made an Elector. [287] The Electorof Brandenburg declared that he was as hostile as he had ever beento France; but he had been ill used by the Spanish government; and hetherefore would not suffer his soldiers to be employed in the defenceof the Spanish Netherlands. He was willing to bear his share of the war;but it must be in his own way; he must have the command of a distinctarmy; and he must be stationed between the Rhine and the Meuse. [288]The Elector of Saxony complained that bad winter quarters had beenassigned to his troops; he therefore recalled them just when they shouldhave been preparing to take the field, but very coolly offered to sendthem back if England and Holland would give him four hundred thousandrixdollars. [289]

It might have been expected that at least the two chiefs of the Houseof Austria would have put forth, at this conjuncture, all their strengthagainst the rival House of Bourbon. Unfortunately they could not beinduced to exert themselves vigorously even for their own preservation. They were deeply interested in keeping the French out of Italy. Yet theycould with difficulty be prevailed upon to lend the smallest assistanceto the Duke of Savoy. They seemed to think it the business of Englandand Holland to defend the passes of the Alps, and to prevent the armiesof Lewis from overflowing Lombardy. To the Emperor indeed the waragainst France was a secondary object. His first object was the waragainst Turkey. He was dull and bigoted. His mind misgave him thatthe war against France was, in some sense, a war against the Catholicreligion; and the war against Turkey was a crusade. His recent campaignon the Danube had been successful. He might easily have concluded anhonourable peace with the Porte, and have turned his arms westward. Buthe had conceived the hope that he might extend his hereditary dominionsat the expense of the Infidels. Visions of a triumphant entry intoConstantinople and of a Te Deum in Saint Sophia's had risen in hisbrain. He not only employed in the East a force more than sufficient tohave defended Piedmont and reconquered Loraine; but he seemed to thinkthat England and Holland were bound to reward him largely for neglectingtheir interests and pursuing his own. [290]

Spain already was what she continued to be down to our own time. Of theSpain which had domineered over the land and the ocean, over the Oldand the New World, of the Spain which had, in the short space of twelveyears, led captive a Pope and a King of France, a Sovereign of Mexicoand a Sovereign of Peru, of the Spain which had sent an army to thewalls of Paris and had equipped a mighty fleet to invade England, nothing remained but an arrogance which had once excited terror andhatred, but which could now excite only derision. In extent, indeed, thedominions of the Catholic King exceeded those of Rome when Rome wasat the zenith of power. But the huge mass lay torpid and helpless, andcould be insulted or despoiled with impunity. The whole administration, military and naval, financial and colonial, was utterly disorganized. Charles was a fit representative of his kingdom, impotent physically, intellectually and morally, sunk in ignorance, listlessness andsuperstition, yet swollen with a notion of his own dignity, and quick toimagine and to resent affronts. So wretched had his education been that, when he was told of the fall of Mons, the most important fortress inhis vast empire, he asked whether Mons was in England. [291] Among theministers who were raised up and pulled down by his sickly caprice, wasnone capable of applying a remedy to the distempers of the State. Intruth to brace anew the nerves of that paralysed body would have been ahard task even for Ximenes. No servant of the Spanish Crown occupied amore important post, and none was more unfit for an important post, thanthe Marquess of Gastanaga. He was Governor of the Netherlands; and inthe Netherlands it seemed probable that the fate of Christendom wouldbe decided. He had discharged his trust as every public trust wasthen discharged in every part of that vast monarchy on which it wasboastfully said that the sun never set. Fertile and rich as was thecountry which he ruled, he threw on England and Holland the whole chargeof defending it. He expected that arms, ammunition, waggons, provisions, every thing, would be furnished by the heretics. It had never occurredto him that it was his business, and not theirs, to put Mons in acondition to stand a siege. The public voice loudly accused him ofhaving sold that celebrated stronghold to France. But it is probablethat he was guilty of nothing worse than the haughty apathy andsluggishness characteristic of his nation. 

Such was the state of the coalition of which William was the head. Therewere moments when he felt himself overwhelmed, when his spiritssank, when his patience was wearied out, and when his constitutionalirritability broke forth. "I cannot, " he wrote, "offer a suggestionwithout being met by a demand for a subsidy. " [292] "I have refusedpoint blank, " he wrote on another occasion, when he had been importunedfor money, "it is impossible that the States General and England canbear the charge of the army on the Rhine, of the army in Piedmont, andof the whole defence of Flanders, to say nothing of the immense cost ofthe naval war. If our allies can do nothing for themselves, the soonerthe alliance goes to pieces the better. " [293] But, after every shortfit of despondency and ill humour, he called up all the force of hismind, and put a strong curb on his temper. Weak, mean, false, selfish, as too many of the confederates were, it was only by their help thathe could accomplish what he had from his youth up considered as hismission. If they abandoned him, France would be dominant without a rivalin Europe. Well as they deserved to be punished, he would not, to punishthem, acquiesce in the subjugation of the whole civilised world. He sethimself therefore to surmount some difficulties and to evade others. TheScandinavian powers he conciliated by waiving, reluctantly indeed, andnot without a hard internal struggle, some of his maritime rights. [294]At Rome his influence, though indirectly exercised, balanced that of thePope himself. Lewis and James found that they had not a friend at theVatican except Innocent; and Innocent, whose nature was gentle andirresolute, shrank from taking a course directly opposed to thesentiments of all who surrounded him. In private conversations withJacobite agents he declared himself devoted to the interests of theHouse of Stuart; but in his public acts he observed a strict neutrality. He sent twenty thousand crowns to Saint Germains; but he excused himselfto the enemies of France by protesting that this was not a subsidy forany political purpose, but merely an alms to be distributed among poorBritish Catholics. He permitted prayers for the good cause to be read inthe English College at Rome; but he insisted that those prayers shouldbe drawn up in general terms, and that no name should be mentioned. It was in vain that the ministers of the Houses of Stuart and Bourbonadjured him to take a more decided course. "God knows, " he exclaimed onone occasion, "that I would gladly shed my blood to restore the King ofEngland. But what can I do? If I stir, I am told that I am favouring theFrench, and helping them to set up an universal monarchy. I am notlike the old Popes. Kings will not listen to me as they listened tomy predecessors. There is no religion now, nothing but wicked, worldlypolicy. The Prince of Orange is master. He governs us all. He has gotsuch a hold on the Emperor and on the King of Spain that neither of themdares to displease him. God help us! He alone can help us. " And, as theold man spoke, he beat the table with his hand in an agony of impotentgrief and indignation. [295]

To keep the German princes steady was no easy task; but it wasaccomplished. Money was distributed among them, much less indeed thanthey asked, but much more than they had any decent pretence for asking. With the Elector of Saxony a composition was made. He had, together witha strong appetite for subsidies, a great desire to be a member of themost select and illustrious orders of knighthood. It seems that, insteadof the four hundred thousand rixdollars which he had demanded, heconsented to accept one hundred thousand and the Garter. [296] His primeminister Schoening, the most covetous and perfidious of mankind, was secured by a pension. [297] For the Duke of Brunswick Lunenburg, William, not without difficulty, procured the long desired title ofElector of Hanover. By such means as these the breaches which haddivided the coalition were so skilfully repaired that it appeared stillto present a firm front to the enemy. William had complained bitterly tothe Spanish government of the incapacity and inertness of Gastanaga. The Spanish government, helpless and drowsy as it was, could not bealtogether insensible to the dangers which threatened Flanders andBrabant. Gastanaga was recalled; and William was invited to take uponhimself the government of the Low Countries, with powers not less thanregal. Philip the Second would not easily have believed that, withina century after his death, his greatgrandson would implore thegreatgrandson of William the Silent to exercise the authority of asovereign at Brussels. [298]

The offer was in one sense tempting; but William was too wise to acceptit. He knew that the population of the Spanish Netherlands was firmlyattached to the Church of Rome. Every act of a Protestant ruler wascertain to be regarded with suspicion by the clergy and people of thosecountries. Already Gastanaga, mortified by his disgrace, had written toinform the Court of Rome that changes were in contemplation which wouldmake Ghent and Antwerp as heretical as Amsterdam and London. [299] Ithad doubtless also occurred to William that if, by governing mildlyand justly, and by showing a decent respect for the ceremonies and theministers of the Roman Catholic religion, he should succeed in obtainingthe confidence of the Belgians, he would inevitably raise againsthimself a storm of obloquy in our island. He knew by experience what itwas to govern two nations strongly attached to two different Churches. Alarge party among the Episcopalians of England could not forgive himfor having consented to the establishment of the presbyterian polity inScotland. A large party among the Presbyterians of Scotland blamed himfor maintaining the episcopal polity in England. If he now took underhis protection masses, processions, graven images, friaries, nunneries, and, worst of all, Jesuit pulpits, Jesuit confessionals and Jesuitcolleges, what could he expect but that England and Scotland would joinin one cry of reprobation? He therefore refused to accept the governmentof the Low Countries, and proposed that it should be entrusted to theElector of Bavaria. The Elector of Bavaria was, after the Emperor, themost powerful of the Roman Catholic potentates of Germany. He was young, brave, and ambitious of military distinction. The Spanish Court waswilling to appoint him, and he was desirous to be appointed; but muchdelay was caused by an absurd difficulty. The Elector thought it beneathhim to ask for what he wished to have. The formalists of the Cabinet ofMadrid thought it beneath the dignity of the Catholic King to give whathad not been asked. Mediation was necessary, and was at last successful. But much time was lost; and the spring was far advanced before the newGovernor of the Netherlands entered on his functions. [300]

William had saved the coalition from the danger of perishing bydisunion. But by no remonstrance, by no entreaty, by no bribe, couldhe prevail on his allies to be early in the field. They ought to haveprofited by the severe lesson which had been given them in the precedingyear. But again every one of them lingered, and wondered why the restwere lingering; and again he who singly wielded the whole power ofFrance was found, as his haughty motto had long boasted, a match fora multitude of adversaries. [301] His enemies, while still unready, learned with dismay that he had taken the field in person at the head ofhis nobility. On no occasion had that gallant aristocracy appeared withmore splendour in his train. A single circumstance may suffice to givea notion of the pomp and luxury of his camp. Among the musketeers of hishousehold rode, for the first time, a stripling of seventeen, who soonafterwards succeeded to the title of Duke of Saint Simon, and to whom weowe those inestimable memoirs which have preserved, for the delight andinstruction of many lands and of many generations, the vivid picture ofa France which has long passed away. Though the boy's family was at thattime very hard pressed for money, he travelled with thirty-five horsesand sumpter mules. The princesses of the blood, each surrounded by agroup of highborn and graceful ladies, accompanied the King; andthe smiles of so many charming women inspired the throng of vain andvoluptuous but highspirited gentlemen with more than common courage. Inthe brilliant crowd which surrounded the French Augustus appeared theFrench Virgil, the graceful, the tender, the melodious Racine. He had, in conformity with the prevailing fashion, become devout, had givenup writing for the theatre; and, having determined to apply himselfvigorously to the discharge of the duties which belonged to him ashistoriographer of France, he now came to see the great events whichit was his office to record. [302] In the neighbourhood of Mons, Lewisentertained the ladies with the most magnificent review that had everbeen seen in modern Europe. A hundred and twenty thousand of the finesttroops in the world were drawn up in a line eight miles long. It may bedoubted whether such an army had ever been brought together under theRoman eagles. The show began early in the morning, and was not overwhen the long summer day closed. Racine left the ground, astonished, deafened, dazzled, and tired to death. In a private letter he venturedto give utterance to an amiable wish which he probably took good carenot to whisper in the courtly circle: "Would to heaven that all thesepoor fellows were in their cottages again with their wives and theirlittle ones!" [303]

After this superb pageant Lewis announced his intention of attackingNamur. In five days he was under the walls of that city, at the headof more than thirty thousand men. Twenty thousand peasants, pressed inthose parts of the Netherlands which the French occupied, were compelledto act as pioneers. Luxemburg, with eighty thousand men, occupied astrong position on the road between Namur and Brussels, and was preparedto give battle to any force which might attempt to raise the siege. [304] This partition of duties excited no surprise. It had long beenknown that the great Monarch loved sieges, and that he did not lovebattles. He professed to think that the real test of military skill wasa siege. The event of an encounter between two armies on an open plainwas, in his opinion, often determined by chance; but only science couldprevail against ravelins and bastions which science had constructed. Hisdetractors sneeringly pronounced it fortunate that the department ofthe military art which His Majesty considered as the noblest was one inwhich it was seldom necessary for him to expose to serious risk a lifeinvaluable to his people. 

Namur, situated at the confluence of the Sambre and the Meuse, was oneof the great fortresses of Europe. The town lay in the plain, and hadno strength except what was derived from art. But art and nature hadcombined to fortify that renowned citadel which, from the summit of alofty rock, looks down on a boundless expanse of cornfields, woods andmeadows, watered by two fine rivers. The people of the city and of thesurrounding region were proud of their impregnable castle. Their boastwas that never, in all the wars which had devastated the Netherlands, had skill or valour been able to penetrate those walls. The neighbouringfastnesses, famed throughout the world for their strength, Antwerp andOstend, Ypres, Lisle and Tournay, Mons and Valenciennes, Cambray andCharleroi, Limburg and Luxemburg, had opened their gates to conquerors;but never once had the flag been pulled down from the battlements ofNamur. That nothing might be wanting to the interest of the siege, the two great masters of the art of fortification were opposed toeach other. Vauban had during many years been regarded as the first ofengineers; but a formidable rival had lately arisen, Menno, Baron ofCohorn, the ablest officer in the service of the States General. Thedefences of Namur had been recently strengthened and repaired underCohorn's superintendence; and he was now within the walls. Vauban was inthe camp of Lewis. It might therefore be expected that both the attackand the defence would be conducted with consummate ability. 

By this time the allied armies had assembled; but it was too late. [305]William hastened towards Namur. He menaced the French works, first fromthe west, then from the north, then from the east. But between him andthe lines of circumvallation lay the army of Luxemburg, turning as heturned, and always so strongly posted that to attack it would have beenthe height of imprudence. Meanwhile the besiegers, directed by the skillof Vauban and animated by the presence of Lewis, made rapid progress. There were indeed many difficulties to be surmounted and many hardshipsto be endured. The weather was stormy; and, on the eighth of June, the feast of Saint Medard, who holds in the French Calendar the sameinauspicious place which in our Calendar belongs to Saint Swithin, therain fell in torrents. The Sambre rose and covered many square miles onwhich the harvest was green. The Mehaigne whirled down its bridges tothe Meuse. All the roads became swamps. The trenches were so deep inwater and mire that it was the business of three days to move a gun fromone battery to another. The six thousand waggons which had accompaniedthe French army were useless. It was necessary that gunpowder, bullets, corn, hay, should be carried from place to place on the backs of the warhorses. Nothing but the authority of Lewis could, in such circumstances, have maintained order and inspired cheerfulness. His soldiers, in truth, showed much more reverence for him than for what their religion had madesacred. They cursed Saint Medard heartily, and broke or burned everyimage of him that could be found. But for their King there was nothingthat they were not ready to do and to bear. In spite of every obstaclethey constantly gained ground. Cohorn was severely wounded whiledefending with desperate resolution a fort which he had himselfconstructed, and of which he was proud. His place could not be supplied. The governor was a feeble man whom Gastanaga had appointed, and whomWilliam had recently advised the Elector of Bavaria to remove. Thespirit of the garrison gave way. The town surrendered on the eighth dayof the siege, the citadel about three weeks later. [306]

The history of the fall of Namur in 1692 bears a close resemblanceto the history of the fail of Mons in 1691. Both in 1691 and in 1692, Lewis, the sole and absolute master of the resources of his kingdom, wasable to open the campaign, before William, the captain of a coalition, had brought together his dispersed forces. In both years the advantageof having the first move decided the event of the game. At Namur, as atMons, Lewis, assisted by Vauban conducted the siege; Luxemburg coveredit; William vainly tried to raise it, and, with deep mortification, assisted as a spectator at the victory of his enemy. 

In one respect however the fate of the two fortresses was verydifferent. Mons was delivered up by its own inhabitants. Namur mightperhaps have been saved if the garrison had been as zealous anddetermined as the population. Strange to say, in this place, so longsubject to a foreign rule, there was found a patriotism resembling thatof the little Greek commonwealths. There is no reason to believe thatthe burghers cared about the balance of power, or had any preferencefor James or for William, for the Most Christian King or for the MostCatholic King. But every citizen considered his own honour as bound upwith the honour of the maiden fortress. It is true that the French didnot abuse their victory. No outrage was committed; the privileges of themunicipality were respected, the magistrates were not changed. Yet thepeople could not see a conqueror enter their hitherto unconquered castlewithout tears of rage and shame. Even the barefooted Carmelites, whohad renounced all pleasures, all property, all society, all domesticaffection, whose days were all fast days, who passed month after monthwithout uttering a word, were strangely moved. It was in vain that Lewisattempted to soothe them by marks of respect and by munificent bounty. Whenever they met a French uniform they turned their heads away with alook which showed that a life of prayer, of abstinence and of silencehad left one earthly feeling still unsubdued. [307]

This was perhaps the moment at which the arrogance of Lewis reached thehighest point. He had achieved the last and the most splendid militaryexploit of his life. His confederated foes, English, Dutch and German, had, in their own despite, swelled his triumph, and had been witnessesof the glory which made their hearts sick. His exultation was boundless. The inscriptions on the medals which he struck to commemorate hissuccess, the letters by which he enjoined the prelates of his kingdomto sing the Te Deum, were boastful and sarcastic. His people, a peopleamong whose many fine qualities moderation in prosperity cannot bereckoned, seemed for a time to be drunk with pride. Even Boileau, hurried along by the prevailing enthusiasm, forgot the good sense andgood taste to which he owed his reputation. He fancied himself a lyricpoet, and gave vent to his feelings in a hundred and sixty lines offrigid bombast about Alcides, Mars, Bacchus, Ceres, the lyre of Orpheus, the Thracian oaks and the Permessian nymphs. He wondered whether Namur, had, like Troy, been built by Apollo and Neptune. He asked what powercould subdue a city stronger than that before which the Greeks lay tenyears; and he returned answer to himself that such a miracle could bewrought only by Jupiter or by Lewis. The feather in the hat of Lewiswas the loadstar of victory. To Lewis all things must yield, princes, nations, winds, waters. In conclusion the poet addressed himself to thebanded enemies of France, and tauntingly bade them carry back to theirhomes the tidings that Namur had been taken in their sight. Before manymonths had elapsed both the boastful king and the boastful poet weretaught that it is prudent as well as graceful to be modest in the hourof victory. 

One mortification Lewis had suffered even in the midst of hisprosperity. While he lay before Namur, he heard the sounds of rejoicingfrom the distant camp of the allies. Three peals of thunder from ahundred and forty pieces of cannon were answered by three volleys fromsixty thousand muskets. It was soon known that these salutes were firedon account of the battle of La Hogue. The French King exerted himself toappear serene. "They make a strange noise, " he said, "about the burningof a few ships. " In truth he was much disturbed, and the more so becausea report had reached the Low Countries that there had been a sea fight, and that his fleet had been victorious. His good humour however was soonrestored by the brilliant success of those operations which were underhis own immediate direction. When the siege was over, he left Luxemburgin command of the army, and returned to Versailles. At Versaillesthe unfortunate Tourville soon presented himself, and was graciouslyreceived. As soon as he appeared in the circle, the King welcomed him ina loud voice. "I am perfectly satisfied with you and with my sailors. Wehave been beaten, it is true; but your honour and that of the nation areunsullied. " [308]

Though Lewis had quitted the Netherlands, the eyes of all Europe werestill fixed on that region. The armies there had been strengthened byreinforcements drawn from many quarters. Every where else the militaryoperations of the year were languid and without interest. The GrandVizier and Lewis of Baden did little more than watch each other on theDanube. Marshal Noailles and the Duke of Medina Sidonia did little morethan watch each other under the Pyrenees. On the Upper Rhine, andalong the frontier which separates France from Piedmont, an indecisivepredatory war was carried on, by which the soldiers suffered littleand the cultivators of the soil much. But all men looked, with anxiousexpectation of some great event, to the frontier of Brabant, whereWilliam was opposed to Luxemburg. 

Luxemburg, now in his sixty-sixth year, had risen, by slow degrees, and by the deaths of several great men, to the first place among thegenerals of his time. He was of that noble house of Montmorency whichunited many mythical and many historical titles to glory, which boastedthat it sprang from the first Frank who was baptized into the name ofChrist in the fifth century, and which had, since the eleventh century, given to France a long and splendid succession of Constables andMarshals. In valour and abilities Luxemburg was not inferior to any ofhis illustrious race. But, highly descended and highly gifted as he was, he had with difficulty surmounted the obstacles which impeded him in theroad to fame. If he owed much to the bounty of nature and fortune, hehad suffered still more from their spite. His features were frightfullyharsh, his stature was diminutive; a huge and pointed hump rose on hisback. His constitution was feeble and sickly. Cruel imputations had beenthrown on his morals. He had been accused of trafficking with sorcerersand with vendors of poison, had languished long in a dungeon, and had atlength regained his liberty without entirely regaining his honour. [309]He had always been disliked both by Louvois and by Lewis. Yet the waragainst the European coalition had lasted but a very short time whenboth the minister and the King felt that the general who was personallyodious to them was necessary to the state. Conde and Turenne were nomore; and Luxemburg was without dispute the first soldier that Francestill possessed. In vigilance, diligence and perseverance he wasdeficient. He seemed to reserve his great qualities for greatemergencies. It was on a pitched field of battle that he was allhimself. His glance was rapid and unerring. His judgment was clearestand surest when responsibility pressed heaviest on him and whendifficulties gathered thickest around him. To his skill, energy andpresence of mind his country owed some glorious days. But, thougheminently successful in battles, he was not eminently successful incampaigns. He gained immense renown at William's expense; and yet therewas, as respected the objects of the war, little to choose between thetwo commanders. Luxemburg was repeatedly victorious; but he had not theart of improving a victory. William was repeatedly defeated; but of allgenerals he was the best qualified to repair a defeat. 

In the month of July William's headquarters were at Lambeque. About sixmiles off, at Steinkirk, Luxemburg had encamped with the main bodyof his army; and about six miles further off lay a considerable forcecommanded by the Marquess of Boufflers, one of the best officers in theservice of Lewis. 

The country between Lambeque and Steinkirk was intersected byinnumerable hedges and ditches; and neither army could approach theother without passing through several long and narrow defiles. Luxemburghad therefore little reason to apprehend that he should be attacked inhis entrenchments; and he felt assured that he should have ample noticebefore any attack was made; for he had succeeded in corrupting anadventurer named Millevoix, who was chief musician and private secretaryof the Elector of Bavaria. This man regularly sent to the Frenchheadquarters authentic information touching the designs of the allies. 

The Marshal, confident in the strength of his position and in theaccuracy of his intelligence, lived in his tent as he was accustomedto live in his hotel at Paris. He was at once a valetudinarian and avoluptuary; and, in both characters, he loved his ease. He scarcely evermounted his horse. Light conversation and cards occupied most of hishours. His table was luxurious; and, when he had sate down to supper, itwas a service of danger to disturb him. Some scoffers remarked thatin his military dispositions he was not guided exclusively by militaryreasons, that he generally contrived to entrench himself in some placewhere the veal and the poultry were remarkably good, and that he wasalways solicitous to keep open such communications with the sea asmight ensure him, from September to April, a regular supply of Sandwichoysters. 

If there were any agreeable women in the neighbourhood of his camp, theywere generally to be found at his banquets. It may easily be supposedthat, under such a commander, the young princes and nobles of Francevied with one another in splendour and gallantry. [310]

While he was amusing himself after his wonted fashion, the confederateprinces discovered that their counsels were betrayed. A peasant pickedup a letter which had been dropped, and carried it to the Elector ofBavaria. It contained full proofs of the guilt of Millevoix. Williamconceived a hope that he might be able to take his enemies in the snarewhich they had laid for him. The perfidious secretary was summoned tothe royal presence and taxed with his crime. A pen was put into hishand; a pistol was held to his breast; and he was commanded to write onpain of instant death. His letter, dictated by William, was conveyed tothe French camp. It apprised Luxemburg that the allies meant to send outa strong foraging party on the next day. In order to protect this partyfrom molestation, some battalions of infantry, accompanied by artillery, would march by night to occupy the defiles which lay between the armies. The Marshal read, believed and went to rest, while William urged forwardthe preparations for a general assault on the French lines. 

The whole allied army was under arms while it was still dark. In thegrey of the morning Luxemburg was awakened by scouts, who broughttidings that the enemy was advancing in great force. He at first treatedthe news very lightly. His correspondent, it seemed, had been, as usual, diligent and exact. The Prince of Orange had sent out a detachment toprotect his foragers, and this detachment had been magnified by fearinto a great host. But one alarming report followed another fast. Allthe passes, it was said, were choked with multitudes of foot, horseand artillery, under the banners of England and of Spain, of theUnited Provinces and of the Empire; and every column was moving towardsSteinkirk. At length the Marshal rose, got on horseback, and rode out tosee what was doing. 

By this time the vanguard of the allies was close to his outposts. Abouthalf a mile in advance of his army was encamped a brigade named from theprovince of Bourbonnais. These troops had to bear the first brunt of theonset. Amazed and panicstricken, they were swept away in a moment, andran for their lives, leaving their tents and seven pieces of cannon tothe assailants. 

Thus far William's plans had been completely successful but now fortunebegan to turn against him. He had been misinformed as to the nature ofthe ground which lay between the station of the brigade of Bourbonnaisand the main encampment of the enemy. He had expected that he should beable to push forward without a moment's pause, that he should find theFrench army in a state of wild disorder, and that his victory would beeasy and complete. But his progress was obstructed by several fencesand ditches; there was a short delay; and a short delay sufficed tofrustrate his design. Luxemburg was the very man for such a conjuncture. He had committed great faults; he had kept careless guard; he hadtrusted implicitly to information which had proved false; he hadneglected information which had proved true; one of his divisions wasflying in confusion; the other divisions were unprepared for action. That crisis would have paralysed the faculties of an ordinary captain;it only braced and stimulated those of Luxemburg. His mind, nay hissickly and distorted body, seemed to derive health and vigour fromdisaster and dismay. In a short time he had disposed every thing. TheFrench army was in battle order. Conspicuous in that great array werethe household troops of Lewis, the most renowned body of fighting menin Europe; and at their head appeared, glittering in lace and embroideryhastily thrown on and half fastened, a crowd of young princes and lordswho had just been roused by the trumpet from their couches or theirrevels, and who had hastened to look death in the face with the gay andfestive intrepidity characteristic of French gentlemen. Highest inrank among these highborn warriors was a lad of sixteen, Philip Duke ofChartres, son of the Duke of Orleans, and nephew of the King of France. It was with difficulty and by importunate solicitation that the gallantboy had extorted Luxemburg's permission to be where the fire washottest. Two other youths of royal blood, Lewis Duke of Bourbon, andArmand Prince of Conti, showed a spirit worthy of their descent. Withthem was a descendant of one of the bastards of Henry the Fourth, LewisDuke of Vendome, a man sunk in indolence and in the foulest vice, yetcapable of exhibiting on a great occasion the qualities of a greatsoldier. Berwick, who was beginning to earn for himself an honourablename in arms, was there; and at his side rode Sarsfield, whose courageand ability earned, on that day, the esteem of the whole French army. Meanwhile Luxemburg had sent off a pressing message to summon Boufflers. But the message was needless. Boufflers had heard the firing, and, likea brave and intelligent captain, was already hastening towards the pointfrom which the sound came. 

Though the assailants had lost all the advantage which belongs to asurprise, they came on manfully. In the front of the battle were theBritish commanded by Count Solmes. The division which was to lead theway was Mackay's. He was to have been supported, according to William'splan, by a strong body of foot and horse. Though most of Mackay'smen had never before been under fire, their behaviour gave promise ofBlenheim and Ramilies. They first encountered the Swiss, who held adistinguished place in the French army. The fight was so close anddesperate that the muzzles of the muskets crossed. The Swiss were drivenback with fearful slaughter. More than eighteen hundred of them appearfrom the French returns to have been killed or wounded. Luxemburgafterwards said that he had never in his life seen so furious astruggle. He collected in haste the opinion of the generals whosurrounded him. All thought that the emergency was one which could bemet by no common means. The King's household must charge the English. The Marshal gave the word; and the household, headed by the princesof the blood, came on, flinging their muskets back on their shoulders. "Sword in hand, " was the cry through all the ranks of that terriblebrigade: "sword in hand. No firing. Do it with the cold steel. " Aftera long and desperate resistance the English were borne down. They neverceased to repeat that, if Solmes had done his duty by them, they wouldhave beaten even the household. But Solmes gave them no effectivesupport. He pushed forward some cavalry which, from the nature of theground, could do little or nothing. His infantry he would not suffer tostir. They could do no good, he said, and he would not send them tobe slaughtered. Ormond was eager to hasten to the assistance of hiscountrymen, but was not permitted. Mackay sent a pressing message torepresent that he and his men were left to certain destruction; but allwas vain. "God's will be done, " said the brave veteran. He died ashe had lived, like a good Christian and a good soldier. With him fellDouglas and Lanier, two generals distinguished among the conquerors ofIreland. Mountjoy too was among the slain. After languishing three yearsin the Bastile, he had just been exchanged for Richard Hamilton, and, having been converted to Whiggism by wrongs more powerful than all thearguments of Locke and Sidney, had instantly hastened to join William'scamp as a volunteer. [311] Five fine regiments were entirely cut topieces. No part of this devoted band would have escaped but for thecourage and conduct of Auverquerque, who came to the rescue in themoment of extremity with two fresh battalions. The gallant mannerin which he brought off the remains of Mackay's division was longremembered with grateful admiration by the British camp fires. Theground where the conflict had raged was piled with corpses; and thosewho buried the slain remarked that almost all the wounds had been givenin close fighting by the sword or the bayonet. 

It was said that William so far forgot his wonted stoicism as to uttera passionate exclamation at the way in which the English regimentshad been sacrificed. Soon, however, he recovered his equanimity, anddetermined to fall back. It was high time; for the French army was everymoment becoming stronger, as the regiments commanded by Boufflers cameup in rapid succession. The allied army returned to Lambeque unpursuedand in unbroken order. [312]

The French owned that they had about seven thousand men killed andwounded. The loss of the allies had been little, if at all, greater. Therelative strength of the armies was what it had been on the precedingday; and they continued to occupy their old positions. But the moraleffect of the battle was great. The splendour of William's fame grewpale. Even his admirers were forced to own that, in the field, hewas not a match for Luxemburg. In France the news was received withtransports of joy and pride. The Court, the Capital, even the peasantryof the remotest provinces, gloried in the impetuous valour which hadbeen displayed by so many youths, the heirs of illustrious names. It wasexultingly and fondly repeated all over the kingdom that the young Dukeof Chartres could not by any remonstrances be kept out of danger, thata ball had passed through his coat that he had been wounded in theshoulder. The people lined the roads to see the princes and nobles whoreturned from Steinkirk. The jewellers devised Steinkirk buckles; theperfumers sold Steinkirk powder. But the name of the field of battle waspeculiarly given to a new species of collar. Lace neckcloths were thenworn by men of fashion; and it had been usual to arrange them with greatcare. But at the terrible moment when the brigade of Bourbonnais wasflying before the onset of the allies, there was no time for foppery;and the finest gentlemen of the Court came spurring to the front of theline of battle with their rich cravats in disorder. It thereforebecame a fashion among the beauties of Paris to wear round their neckskerchiefs of the finest lace studiously disarranged; and these kerchiefswere called Steinkirks. [313]

In the camp of the allies all was disunion and discontent. Nationaljealousies and animosities raged without restraint or disguise. Theresentment of the English was loudly expressed. Solmes, though he wassaid by those who knew him well to have some valuable qualities, was nota man likely to conciliate soldiers who were prejudiced against him asa foreigner. His demeanour was arrogant, his temper ungovernable. Evenbefore the unfortunate day of Steinkirk the English officers did notwillingly communicate with him, and the private men murmured at hisharshness. But after the battle the outcry against him became furious. He was accused, perhaps unjustly, of having said with unfeeling levity, while the English regiments were contending desperately against greatodds, that he was curious to see how the bulldogs would come off. Would any body, it was asked, now pretend that it was on account of hissuperior skill and experience that he had been put over the heads of somany English officers? It was the fashion to say that those officershad never seen war on a large scale. But surely the merest novice wascompetent to do all that Solmes had done, to misunderstand orders, tosend cavalry on duty which none but infantry could perform, and to lookon at safe distance while brave men were cut to pieces. It was too muchto be at once insulted and sacrificed, excluded from the honours of war, yet pushed on all its extreme dangers, sneered at as raw recruits, andthen left to cope unsupported with the finest body of veterans in theworld. Such were the complains of the English army; and they were echoedby the English nation. 

Fortunately about this time a discovery was made which furnished boththe camp at Lambeque and the coffeehouses of London with a subject ofconversation much less agreeable to the Jacobites than the disaster ofSteinkirk. 

A plot against the life of William had been, during some months, maturing in the French War Office. It should seem that Louvois hadoriginally sketched the design, and had bequeathed it, still rude, tohis son and successor Barbesieux. By Barbesieux the plan was perfected. The execution was entrusted to an officer named Grandval. Grandval wasundoubtedly brave, and full of zeal for his country and his religion. He was indeed flighty and half witted, but not on that account the lessdangerous. Indeed a flighty and half witted man is the very instrumentgenerally preferred by cunning politicians when very hazardous work isto be done. No shrewd calculator would, for any bribe, however enormous, have exposed himself to the fate of Chatel, of Ravaillac, or of Gerarts. [314]

Grandval secured, as he conceived, the assistance of two adventurers, Dumont, a Walloon, and Leefdale, a Dutchman. In April, soon afterWilliam had arrived in the Low Countries, the murderers were directedto repair to their post. Dumont was then in Westphalia. Grandval andLeefdale were at Paris. Uden in North Brabant was fixed as the placewhere the three were to meet and whence they were to proceed togetherto the headquarters of the allies. Before Grandval left Paris he paida visit to Saint Germains, and was presented to James and to Mary ofModena. "I have been informed, " said James, "of the business. If you andyour companions do me this service, you shall never want. "

After this audience Grandval set out on his journey. He had not thefaintest suspicion that he had been betrayed both by the accomplice whoaccompanied him and by the accomplice whom he was going to meet. Dumont and Leefdale were not enthusiasts. They cared nothing for therestoration of James, the grandeur of Lewis, or the ascendency of theChurch of Rome. It was plain to every man of common sense that, whetherthe design succeeded or failed, the reward of the assassins wouldprobably be to be disowned, with affected abhorrence, by the Courtsof Versailles and Saint Germains, and to be torn with redhot pincers, smeared with melted lead, and dismembered by four horses. To vulgarnatures the prospect of such a martyrdom was not alluring. Both thesemen, therefore, had, almost at the same time, though, as far as appears, without any concert, conveyed to William, through different channels, warnings that his life was in danger. Dumont had acknowledged everything to the Duke of Zell, one of the confederate princes. Leefdalehad transmitted full intelligence through his relations who resided inHolland. Meanwhile Morel, a Swiss Protestant of great learning whowas then in France, wrote to inform Burnet that the weak and hotheadedGrandval had been heard to talk boastfully of the event which would soonastonish the world, and had confidently predicted that the Prince ofOrange would not live to the end of the next month. 

These cautions were not neglected. From the moment at which Grandvalentered the Netherlands, his steps were among snares. His movements werewatched; his words were noted; he was arrested, examined, confrontedwith his accomplices, and sent to the camp of the allies. About a weekafter the battle of Steinkirk he was brought before a Court Martial. Ginkell, who had been rewarded for his great services in Ireland withthe title of Earl of Athlone, presided; and Talmash was among thejudges. Mackay and Lanier had been named members of the board; but theywere no more; and their places were filled by younger officers. 

The duty of the Court Martial was very simple; for the prisonerattempted no defence. His conscience had, it should seem, been suddenlyawakened. He admitted, with expressions of remorse, the truth of allthe charges, made a minute, and apparently an ingenuous, confession, andowned that he had deserved death. He was sentenced to be hanged, drawnand quartered, and underwent his punishment with great fortitude andwith a show of piety. He left behind him a few lines, in which hedeclared that he was about to lose his life for having too faithfullyobeyed the injunctions of Barbesieux. 

His confession was immediately published in several languages, and wasread with very various and very strong emotions. That it was genuinecould not be doubted; for it was warranted by the signatures of some ofthe most distinguished military men living. That it was prompted by thehope of pardon could hardly be supposed; for William had taken pains todiscourage that hope. Still less could it be supposed that the prisonerhad uttered untruths in order to avoid the torture. For, though it wasthe universal practice in the Netherlands to put convicted assassins tothe rack in order to wring out from them the names of their employersand associates, William had given orders that, on this occasion, therack should not be used or even named. It should be added, that theCourt did not interrogate the prisoner closely, but suffered him to tellhis story in his own way. It is therefore reasonable to believe that hisnarrative is substantially true; and no part of it has a stronger air oftruth than his account of the audience with which James had honoured himat Saint Germains. 

In our island the sensation produced by the news was great. The Whigsloudly called both James and Lewis assassins. How, it was asked, was itpossible, without outraging common sense, to put an innocent meaning onthe words which Grandval declared that he had heard from the lips ofthe banished King of England? And who that knew the Court of Versailleswould believe that Barbesieux, a youth, a mere novice in politics, andrather a clerk than a minister, would have dared to do what he had donewithout taking his master's pleasure? Very charitable and very ignorantpersons might perhaps indulge a hope that Lewis had not been anaccessory before the fact. But that he was an accessory after the factno human being could doubt. He must have seen the proceedings of theCourt Martial, the evidence, the confession. If he really abhorredassassination as honest men abhor it, would not Barbesieux have beendriven with ignominy from the royal presence, and flung into theBastile? Yet Barbesieux was still at the War Office; and it was notpretended that he had been punished even by a word or a frown. It wasplain, then, that both Kings were partakers in the guilt of Grandval. And if it were asked how two princes who made a high profession ofreligion could have fallen into such wickedness, the answer was thatthey had learned their religion from the Jesuits. In reply to thesereproaches the English Jacobites said very little; and the Frenchgovernment said nothing at all. [315]

The campaign in the Netherlands ended without any other event deservingto be recorded. On the eighteenth of October William arrived in England. Late in the evening of the twentieth he reached Kensington, havingtraversed the whole length of the capital. His reception was cordial. The crowd was great; the acclamations were loud; and all the windowsalong his route, from Aldgate to Piccadilly, were lighted up. [316]

But, notwithstanding these favourable symptoms, the nation wasdisappointed and discontented. The war had been unsuccessful by land. By sea a great advantage had been gained, but had not been improved. Thegeneral expectation had been that the victory of May would be followedby a descent on the coast of France, that Saint Maloes would hebombarded, that the last remains of Tourville's squadron would bedestroyed, and that the arsenals of Brest and Rochefort would be laid inruins. This expectation was, no doubt, unreasonable. It did not follow, because Rooke and his seamen had silenced the batteries hastily thrownup by Bellefonds, that it would be safe to expose ships to the fire ofregular fortresses. The government, however, was not less sanguine thanthe nation. Great preparations were made. The allied fleet, having beenspeedily refitted at Portsmouth, stood out again to sea. Rooke was sentto examine the soundings and the currents along the shore of Brittany. [317] Transports were collected at Saint Helens. Fourteen thousandtroops were assembled on Portsdown under the command of MeinhartSchomberg, who had been rewarded for his father's services and hisown with the highest rank in the Irish peerage, and was now Duke ofLeinster. Under him were Ruvigny, who, for his good service at Aghrim, had been created Earl of Galway, La Melloniere and Cambon with theirgallant bands of refugees, and Argyle with the regiment which borehis name, and which, as it began to be rumoured, had last winter donesomething strange and horrible in a wild country of rocks and snow, never yet explored by any Englishman. 

On the twenty-sixth of July the troops were all on board. Thetransports sailed, and in a few hours joined the naval armament in theneighbourhood of Portland. On the twenty-eighth a general council of warwas held. All the naval commanders, with Russell at their head, declaredthat it would be madness to carry their ships within the range of theguns of Saint Maloes, and that the town must be reduced to straits byland before the men of war in the harbour could, with any chance ofsuccess, be attacked from the sea. The military men declared with equalunanimity that the land forces could effect nothing against the townwithout the cooperation of the fleet. It was then considered whether itwould be advisable to make an attempt on Brest or Rochefort. Russelland the other flag officers, among whom were Rooke, Shovel, Almondeand Evertsen, pronounced that the summer was too far spent for eitherenterprise. [318] We must suppose that an opinion in which so manydistinguished admirals, both English and Dutch, concurred, howeverstrange it may seem to us, was in conformity with what were then theestablished principles of the art of maritime war. But why all thesequestions could not have been fully discussed a week earlier, whyfourteen thousand troops should have been shipped and sent to sea, before it had been considered what they were to do, or whether it wouldbe possible for them to do any thing, we may reasonably wonder. Thearmament returned to Saint Helens, to the astonishment and disgustof the whole nation. [319] The ministers blamed the commanders; thecommanders blamed the ministers. The recriminations exchanged betweenNottingham and Russell were loud and angry. Nottingham, honest, industrious, versed in civil business, and eloquent in parliamentarydebate, was deficient in the qualities of a war minister, and was notat all aware of his deficiencies. Between him and the whole body ofprofessional sailors there was a feud of long standing. He had, sometime before the Revolution, been a Lord of the Admiralty; and his ownopinion was that he had then acquired a profound knowledge of maritimeaffairs. This opinion however he had very much to himself. Men whohad passed half their lives on the waves, and who had been in battles, storms and shipwrecks, were impatient of his somewhat pompous lecturesand reprimands, and pronounced him a mere pedant, who, with all his booklearning, was ignorant of what every cabin boy knew. Russell had alwaysbeen froward, arrogant and mutinous; and now prosperity and glorybrought out his vices in full strength. With the government which hehad saved he took all the liberties of an insolent servant who believeshimself to be necessary, treated the orders of his superiors withcontemptuous levity, resented reproof, however gentle, as an outrage, furnished no plan of his own, and showed a sullen determination toexecute no plan furnished by any body else. To Nottingham he had astrong and a very natural antipathy. They were indeed an ill matchedpair. Nottingham was a Tory; Russell was a Whig. Nottingham was aspeculative seaman, confident in his theories. Russell was a practicalseaman, proud of his achievements. The strength of Nottingham lay inspeech; the strength of Russell lay in action. Nottingham's demeanourwas decorous even to formality; Russell was passionate and rude. LastlyNottingham was an honest man; and Russell was a villain. They now becamemortal enemies. The Admiral sneered at the Secretary's ignorance ofnaval affairs; the Secretary accused the Admiral of sacrificing thepublic interests to mere wayward humour; and both were in the right. [320]

While they were wrangling, the merchants of all the ports in the kingdomraised a cry against the naval administration. The victory of which thenation was so proud was, in the City, pronounced to have been a positivedisaster. During some months before the battle all the maritimestrength of the enemy had been collected in two great masses, one inthe Mediterranean and one in the Atlantic. There had consequently beenlittle privateering; and the voyage to New England or Jamaica had beenalmost as safe as in time of peace. Since the battle, the remains ofthe force which had lately been collected under Tourville were dispersedover the ocean. Even the passage from England to Ireland was insecure. Every week it was announced that twenty, thirty, fifty vessels belongingto London or Bristol had been taken by the French. More than a hundredprices were carried during that autumn into Saint Maloes alone. Itwould have been far better, in the opinion of the shipowners and of theunderwriters, that the Royal Sun had still been afloat with her thousandfighting men on board than that she should be lying a heap of asheson the beach at Cherburg, while her crew, distributed among twentybrigantines, prowled for booty over the sea between Cape Finisterre andCape Clear. [321]

The privateers of Dunkirk had long been celebrated; and among them, JohnBart, humbly born, and scarcely able to sign his name, but eminentlybrave and active, had attained an undisputed preeminence. In the countryof Anson and Hawke, of Howe and Rodney, of Duncan, Saint Vincent andNelson, the name of the most daring and skilful corsair would havelittle chance of being remembered. But France, among whose manyunquestioned titles to glory very few are derived from naval war, stillranks Bart among her great men. In the autumn of 1692 this enterprisingfreebooter was the terror of all the English and Dutch merchants whotraded with the Baltic. He took and destroyed vessels close to theeastern coast of our island. He even ventured to land in Northumberland, and burned many houses before the trainbands could be collected tooppose him. The prizes which he carried back into his native port wereestimated at about a hundred thousand pounds sterling. [322] About thesame time a younger adventurer, destined to equal or surpass Bart, DuGuay Trouin, was entrusted with the command of a small armed vessel. Theintrepid boy, --for he was not yet twenty years old, --entered the estuaryof the Shannon, sacked a mansion in the county of Clare, and did notreimbark till a detachment from the garrison of Limerick marched againsthim. [323]

While our trade was interrupted and our shores menaced by these rovers, some calamities which no human prudence could have averted increased thepublic ill humour. An earthquake of terrible violence laid waste in lessthan three minutes the flourishing colony of Jamaica. Whole plantationschanged their place. Whole villages were swallowed up. Port Royal, thefairest and wealthiest city which the English had yet built in the NewWorld, renowned for its quays, for its warehouses, and for its statelystreets, which were said to rival Cheapside, was turned into a mass ofruins. Fifteen hundred of the inhabitants were buried under their owndwellings. The effect of this disaster was severely felt by many of thegreat mercantile houses of London and Bristol. [324]

A still heavier calamity was the failure of the harvest. The summer hadbeen wet all over Western Europe. Those heavy rains which had impededthe exertions of the French pioneers in the trenches of Namur had beenfatal to the crops. Old men remembered no such year since 1648. Nofruit ripened. The price of the quarter of wheat doubled. The evil wasaggravated by the state of the silver coin, which had been clipped tosuch an extent that the words pound and shilling had ceased to havea fixed meaning. Compared with France indeed England might well beesteemed prosperous. Here the public burdens were heavy; there they werecrushing. Here the labouring man was forced to husband his coarse barleyloaf; but there it not seldom happened that the wretched peasantwas found dead on the earth with halfchewed grass in his mouth. Ourancestors found some consolation in thinking that they were graduallywearing out the strength of their formidable enemy, and that hisresources were likely to be drained sooner than theirs. Still there wasmuch suffering and much repining. In some counties mobs attacked thegranaries. The necessity of retrenchment was felt by families of everyrank. An idle man of wit and pleasure, who little thought that hisbuffoonery would ever be cited to illustrate the history of his times, complained that, in this year, wine ceased to be put on many hospitabletables where he had been accustomed to see it, and that its place wassupplied by punch. [325]

A symptom of public distress much more alarming than the substitutionof brandy and lemons for claret was the increase of crime. Duringthe autumn of 1692 and the following winter, the capital was kept inconstant terror by housebreakers. One gang, thirteen strong, enteredthe mansion of the Duke of Ormond in Saint James's Square, and all butsucceeded in carrying off his magnificent plate and jewels. Another gangmade an attempt on Lambeth Palace. [326] When stately abodes, guarded bynumerous servants, were in such danger, it may easily be believed thatno shopkeeper's till or stock could be safe. From Bow to Hyde Park, fromThames Street to Bloomsbury, there was no parish in which some quietdwelling had not been sacked by burglars. [327] Meanwhile the greatroads were made almost impassable by freebooters who formed themselvesinto troops larger than had before been known. There was a swornfraternity of twenty footpads which met at an alehouse in Southwark. [328] But the most formidable band of plunderers consisted of two andtwenty horsemen. [329] It should seem that, at this time, a journey offifty miles through the wealthiest and most populous shires of Englandwas as dangerous as a pilgrimage across the deserts of Arabia. TheOxford stage coach was pillaged in broad day after a bloody fight. [330]A waggon laden with fifteen thousand pounds of public money was stoppedand ransacked. As this operation took some time, all the travellers whocame to the spot while the thieves were busy were seized and guarded. When the booty had been secured the prisoners were suffered to departon foot; but their horses, sixteen or eighteen in number, were shot orhamstringed, to prevent pursuit. [331] The Portsmouth mail was robbedtwice in one week by men well armed and mounted. [332] Some jovial Essexsquires, while riding after a hare, were themselves chased and run downby nine hunters of a different sort, and were heartily glad to findthemselves at home again, though with empty pockets. [333]

The friends of the government asserted that the marauders were allJacobites; and indeed there were some appearances which gave colour tothe assertion. For example, fifteen butchers, going on a market day tobuy beasts at Thame, were stopped by a large gang, and compelled firstto deliver their moneybags, and then to drink King James's health inbrandy. [334] The thieves, however, to do them justice, showed, inthe exercise of their calling, no decided preference for any politicalparty. Some of them fell in with Marlborough near Saint Albans, and, notwithstanding his known hostility to the Court and his recentimprisonment, compelled him to deliver up five hundred guineas, which hedoubtless never ceased to regret to the last moment of his long careerof prosperity and glory. [335]

When William, on his return from the Continent, learned to what anextent these outrages were carried, he expressed great indignation, andannounced his resolution to put down the malefactors with a strong hand. A veteran robber was induced to turn informer, and to lay before theKing a list of the chief highwaymen, and a full account of their habitsand of their favourite haunts. It was said that this list contained notless than eighty names. [336] Strong parties of cavalry were sent outto protect the roads; and this precaution, which would, in ordinarycircumstances, have excited much murmuring, seems to have been generallyapproved. A fine regiment, now called the Second Dragoon Guards, whichhad distinguished itself in Ireland by activity and success in theirregular war against the Rapparees, was selected to guard several ofthe great avenues of the capital. Blackheath, Barnet, Hounslow, becameplaces of arms. [337] In a few weeks the roads were as safe as usual. The executions were numerous for, till the evil had been suppressed, theKing resolutely refused to listen to any solicitations for mercy. [338]Among those who suffered was James Whitney, the most celebrated captainof banditti in the kingdom. He had been, during some months, the terrorof all who travelled from London either northward or westward, and wasat length with difficulty secured after a desperate conflict in whichone soldier was killed and several wounded. [339] The London Gazetteannounced that the famous highwayman had been taken, and invited allpersons who had been robbed by him to repair to Newgate and to seewhether they could identify him. To identify him should have been easy;for he had a wound in the face, and had lost a thumb. [340] He, however, in the hope of perplexing the witnesses for the Crown, expended ahundred pounds in procuring a sumptuous embroidered suit against theday of trial. This ingenious device was frustrated by his hardheartedkeepers. He was put to the bar in his ordinary clothes, convicted andsentenced to death. [341] He had previously tried to ransom himself byoffering to raise a fine troop of cavalry, all highwaymen, for servicein Flanders; but his offer had been rejected. [342] He had one resourcestill left. He declared that he was privy to a treasonable plot. SomeJacobite lords had promised him immense rewards if he would, at the headof his gang, fall upon the King at a stag hunt in Windsor Forest. Therewas nothing intrinsically improbable in Whitney's story. Indeed a designvery similar to that which he imputed to the malecontents was, onlythree years later, actually formed by some of them, and was all butcarried into execution. But it was far better that a few bad men shouldgo unpunished than that all honest men should live in fear of beingfalsely accused by felons sentenced to the gallows. Chief Justice Holtadvised the King to let the law take its course. William, never muchinclined to give credit to stories about conspiracies, assented. TheCaptain, as he was called, was hanged in Smithfield, and made a mostpenitent end. [343]

Meanwhile, in the midst of discontent, distress and disorder, had beguna session of Parliament singularly eventful, a session from which datesa new era in the history of English finance, a session in which somegrave constitutional questions, not yet entirely set at rest, were forthe first time debated. 

It is much to be lamented that any account of this session which canbe framed out of the scanty and dispersed materials now accessible mustleave many things obscure. The relations of the parliamentary factionswere, during this year, in a singularly complicated state. Each of thetwo Houses was divided and subdivided by several lines. To omit minordistinctions, there was the great line which separated the Whig partyfrom the Tory party; and there was the great line which separated theofficial men and their friends and dependents, who were sometimescalled the Court party, from those who were sometimes nicknamed theGrumbletonians and sometimes honoured with the appellation of theCountry party. And these two great lines were intersecting lines. Forof the servants of the Crown and of their adherents about one half wereWhigs and one half Tories. It is also to be remembered that there was, quite distinct from the feud between Whigs and Tories, quite distinctalso from the feud between those who were in and those who were out, afeud between the Lords as Lords and the Commons as Commons. The spiritboth of the hereditary and of the elective chamber had been thoroughlyroused in the preceding session by the dispute about the Court of theLord High Steward; and they met in a pugnacious mood. 

The speech which the King made at the opening of the session wasskilfully framed for the purpose of conciliating the Houses. He came, hetold them, to ask for their advice and assistance. He congratulated themon the victory of La Hogue. He acknowledged with much concern that theoperations of the allies had been less successful by land than by sea;but he warmly declared that, both by land and by sea, the valour of hisEnglish subjects had been preeminently conspicuous. The distress of hispeople, he said, was his own; his interest was inseparable from theirs;it was painful to him to call on them to make sacrifices; but fromsacrifices which were necessary to the safety of the English nation andof the Protestant religion no good Englishman and no good Protestantwould shrink. [344]

The Commons thanked the King in cordial terms for his gracious speech. [345] But the Lords were in a bad humour. Two of their body, Marlboroughand Huntingdon, had, during the recess, when an invasion and aninsurrection were hourly expected, been sent to the Tower, and werestill under recognisances. Had a country gentleman or a merchant beentaken up and held to bail on even slighter grounds at so alarming acrisis, the Lords would assuredly not have interfered. But they wereeasily moved to anger by any thing that looked like an indignity offeredto their own order. They not only crossexamined with great severityAaron Smith, the Solicitor of the Treasury, whose character, to say thetruth, entitled him to little indulgence, but passed; by thirty-fivevotes to twenty-eight, a resolution implying a censure on the judges ofthe King's Bench, men certainly not inferior in probity, and very farsuperior in legal learning, to any peer of the realm. The King thoughtit prudent to soothe the wounded pride of the nobility by ordering therecognisances to be cancelled; and with this concession the House wassatisfied, to the great vexation of the Jacobites, who had hoped thatthe quarrel would be prosecuted to some fatal issue, and who, findingthemselves disappointed, vented their spleen by railing at the tamenessof the degenerate barons of England. [346]

Both Houses held long and earnest deliberations on the state of thenation. The King, when he requested their advice, had, perhaps, notforeseen that his words would be construed into an invitation toscrutinise every part of the administration, and to offer suggestionstouching matters which parliaments have generally thought it expedientto leave entirely to the Crown. Some of the discontented peers proposedthat a Committee, chosen partly by the Lords and partly by the Commons, should be authorised to inquire into the whole management of publicaffairs. But it was generally apprehended that such a Committee wouldbecome a second and more powerful Privy Council, independent of theCrown, and unknown to the Constitution. The motion was thereforerejected by forty-eight votes to thirty-six. On this occasion theministers, with scarcely an exception, voted in the majority. A protestwas signed by eighteen of the minority, among whom were the bitterestWhigs and the bitterest Tories in the whole peerage. [347]

The Houses inquired, each for itself, into the causes of the publiccalamities. The Commons resolved themselves into a Grand Committeeto consider of the advice to be given to the King. From the conciseabstracts and fragments which have come down to us it seems that, inthis Committee, which continued to sit many days, the debates wanderedover a vast space. One member spoke of the prevalence of highwayrobbery; another deplored the quarrel between the Queen and thePrincess, and proposed that two or three gentlemen should be deputed towait on Her Majesty and try to make matters up. A third described themachinations of the Jacobites in the preceding spring. It was notorious, he said, that preparations had been made for a rising, and that arms andhorses had been collected; yet not a single traitor had been brought tojustice. [348]

The events of the war by land and sea furnished matter for severalearnest debates. Many members complained of the preference given toaliens over Englishmen. The whole battle of Steinkirk was fought overagain; and severe reflections were thrown on Solmes. "Let Englishsoldiers be commanded by none but English generals, " was the almostuniversal cry. Seymour, who had once been distinguished by his hatred ofthe foreigners, but who, since he had been at the Board of Treasury, had reconsidered his opinions, asked where English generals were tobe found. "I have no love for foreigners as foreigners; but we have nochoice. Men are not born generals; nay, a man may be a very valuablecaptain or major, and not be equal to the conduct of an army. Nothingbut experience will form great commanders. Very few of our countrymenhave that experience; and therefore we must for the present employstrangers. " Lowther followed on the same side. "We have had a longpeace; and the consequence is that we have not a sufficient supply ofofficers fit for high commands. The parks and the camp at Hounslow werevery poor military schools, when compared with the fields of battleand the lines of contravallation in which the great commanders of thecontinental nations have learned their art. " In reply to these argumentsan orator on the other side was so absurd as to declare that he couldpoint out ten Englishmen who, if they were in the French service, wouldbe made Marshals. Four or five colonels who had been at Steinkirk tookpart in the debate. It was said of them that they showed as much modestyin speech as they had shown courage in action; and, from the veryimperfect report which has come down to us, the compliment seems to havebeen not undeserved. They did not join in the vulgar cry against theDutch. They spoke well of the foreign officers generally, and did fulljustice to the valour and conduct with which Auverquerque had rescuedthe shattered remains of Mackay's division from what seemed certaindestruction. But in defence of Solmes not a word was said. His severity, his haughty manners, and, above all, the indifference with which he hadlooked on while the English, borne down by overwhelming numbers, werefighting hand to hand with the French household troops, had made him soodious that many members were prepared to vote for an address requestingthat he might be removed, and that his place might be filled by Talmash, who, since the disgrace of Marlborough, was universally allowed tobe the best officer in the army. But Talmash's friends judiciouslyinterfered. "I have, " said one of them, "a true regard for thatgentleman; and I implore you not to do him an injury under the notion ofdoing him a kindness. Consider that you are usurping what is peculiarlythe King's prerogative. You are turning officers out and puttingofficers in. " The debate ended without any vote of censure on Solmes. But a hope was expressed, in language not very parliamentary, that whathad been said in the Committee would be reported to the King, and thatHis Majesty would not disregard the general wish of the representativesof his people. [349]

The Commons next proceeded to inquire into the naval administration, andvery soon came to a quarrel with the Lords on that subject. That therehad been mismanagement somewhere was but too evident. It was hardlypossible to acquit both Russell and Nottingham; and each House stoodby its own member. The Commons had, at the opening of the session, unanimously passed a vote of thanks to Russell for his conduct atLa Hogue. They now, in the Grand Committee of Advice, took intoconsideration the miscarriages which had followed the battle. A motionwas made so vaguely worded that it could hardly be said to mean anything. It was understood however to imply a censure on Nottingham, andwas therefore strongly opposed by his friends. On the division the Ayeswere a hundred and sixty-five, the Noes a hundred and sixty-four. [350]

On the very next day Nottingham appealed to the Lords. He told his storywith all the skill of a practised orator, and with all the authoritywhich belongs to unblemished integrity. He then laid on the table agreat mass of papers, which he requested the House to read and consider. The Peers seem to have examined the papers seriously and diligently. Theresult of the examination was by no means favourable to Russell. Yetit was thought unjust to condemn him unheard; and it was difficult todevise any way in which their Lordships could hear him. At last it wasresolved to send the papers down to the Commons with a message whichimported that, in the opinion of the Upper House, there was a caseagainst the Admiral which he ought to be called upon to answer. With thepapers was sent an abstract of the contents. [351]

The message was not very respectfully received. Russell had, at thatmoment, a popularity which he little deserved, but which will notsurprise us when we remember that the public knew nothing of histreasons, and knew that he was the only living Englishman who had won agreat battle. The abstract of the papers was read by the clerk. Russellthen spoke with great applause; and his friends pressed for an immediatedecision. Sir Christopher Musgrave very justly observed that it wasimpossible to pronounce judgment on such a pile of despatches withoutperusing them; but this objection was overruled. The Whigs regarded theaccused member as one of themselves; many of the Tories were dazzled bythe splendour of his recent victory; and neither Whigs nor Tories weredisposed to show any deference for the authority of the Peers. TheHouse, without reading the papers, passed an unanimous resolutionexpressing warm approbation of Russell's whole conduct. The temper ofthe assembly was such that some ardent Whigs thought that they mightnow venture to propose a vote of censure on Nottingham by name. But theattempt failed. "I am ready, " said Lowther, --and he doubtless expressedwhat many felt, --"I am ready to support any motion that may do honour tothe Admiral; but I cannot join in an attack on the Secretary of State. For, to my knowledge, their Majesties have no more zealous, laboriousor faithful servant than my Lord Nottingham. " Finch exerted all hismellifluous eloquence in defence of his brother, and contrived, withoutdirectly opposing himself to the prevailing sentiment, to insinuatethat Russell's conduct had not been faultless. The vote of censure onNottingham was not pressed. The vote which pronounced Russell's conductto have been deserving of all praise was communicated to the Lords; andthe papers which they had sent down were very unceremoniously returned. [352] The Lords, much offended, demanded a free conference. It wasgranted; and the managers of the two Houses met in the Painted Chamber. Rochester, in the name of his brethren, expressed a wish to be informedof the grounds on which the Admiral had been declared faultless. To thisappeal the gentlemen who stood on the other side of the table answeredonly that they had not been authorised to give any explanation, but thatthey would report to those who had sent them what had been said. [353]

By this time the Commons were thoroughly tired of the inquiry into theconduct of the war. The members had got rid of much of the ill humourwhich they had brought up with them from their country seats by thesimple process of talking it away. Burnet hints that those arts of whichCaermarthen and Trevor were the great masters were employed for thepurpose of averting votes which would have seriously embarrassed thegovernment. But, though it is not improbable that a few noisy pretendersto patriotism may have been quieted with bags of guineas, it wouldbe absurd to suppose that the House generally was influenced in thismanner. Whoever has seen anything of such assemblies knows that thespirit with which they enter on long inquiries very soon flags, and thattheir resentment, if not kept alive by injudicious opposition, coolsfast. In a short time every body was sick of the Grand Committee ofAdvice. The debates had been tedious and desultory. The resolutionswhich had been carried were for the most part merely childish. The Kingwas to be humbly advised to employ men of ability and integrity. He wasto be humbly advised to employ men who would stand by him against James. The patience of the House was wearied out by long discussions ending inthe pompous promulgation of truisms like these. At last the explosioncame. One of the grumblers called the attention of the Grand Committeeto the alarming fact that two Dutchmen were employed in the Ordnancedepartment, and moved that the King should be humbly advised to dismissthem. The motion was received with disdainful mockery. It was remarkedthat the military men especially were loud in the expression ofcontempt. "Do we seriously think of going to the King and telling himthat, as he has condescended to ask our advice at this momentous crisis, we humbly advise him to turn a Dutch storekeeper out of the Tower?Really, if we have no more important suggestion to carry up to thethrone, we may as well go to our dinners. " The members generally wereof the same mind. The chairman was voted out of the chair, and was notdirected to ask leave to sit again. The Grand Committee ceased to exist. The resolutions which it had passed were formally reported to the House. One of them was rejected; the others were suffered to drop; and theCommons, after considering during several weeks what advice they shouldgive to the King, ended by giving him no advice at all. [354]

The temper of the Lords was different. From many circumstances itappears that there was no place where the Dutch were, at this time, somuch hated as in the Upper House. The dislike with which an Englishmanof the middle class regarded the King's foreign friends was merelynational. But the dislike with which an English nobleman regarded themwas personal. They stood between him and Majesty. They intercepted fromhim the rays of royal favour. The preference given to them wounded himboth in his interests and in his pride. His chance of the Garter wasmuch smaller since they had become his competitors. He might have beenMaster of the Horse but for Auverquerque, Master of the Robes but forZulestein, Groom of the Stole but for Bentinck. [355] The ill humour ofthe aristocracy was inflamed by Marlborough, who, at this time, affectedthe character of a patriot persecuted for standing up against the Dutchin defence of the interests of his native land, and who did not foreseethat a day would come when he would be accused of sacrificing theinterests of his native land to gratify the Dutch. The Peers determinedto present an address, requesting William not to place his Englishtroops under the command of a foreign general. They took up veryseriously that question which had moved the House of Commons tolaughter, and solemnly counselled their Sovereign not to employforeigners in his magazines. At Marlborough's suggestion they urged theKing to insist that the youngest English general should take precedenceof the oldest general in the service of the States General. It was, theysaid, derogatory to the dignity of the Crown, that an officer who helda commission from His Majesty should ever be commanded by an officerwho held a similar commission from a republic. To this advice, evidentlydictated by an ignoble malevolence to Holland, William, who troubledhimself little about votes of the Upper House which were not backed bythe Lower, returned, as might have been expected, a very short and dryanswer. [356]

While the inquiry into the conduct of the war was pending, the Commonsresumed the consideration of an important subject which had occupiedmuch of their attention in the preceding year. The Bill for theRegulation of Trials in cases of High Treason was again brought in, butwas strongly opposed by the official men, both Whigs and Tories. Somers, now Attorney General, strongly recommended delay. That the law, asit stood, was open to grave objections, was not denied; but it wascontended that the proposed reform would, at that moment, produce moreharm than good. Nobody would assert that, under the existing government, the lives of innocent subjects were in any danger. Nobody would denythat the government itself was in great danger. Was it the part of wisemen to increase the perils of that which was already in serious perilfor the purpose of giving new security to that which was alreadyperfectly secure? Those who held this language were twitted with theirinconsistency, and asked why they had not ventured to oppose the billin the preceding session. They answered very plausibly that the eventswhich had taken place during the recess had taught an important lessonto all who were capable of learning. The country had been threatened atonce with invasion and insurrection. No rational man doubted that manytraitors had made preparations for joining the French, and had collectedarms, ammunition and horses for that purpose. Yet, though there wasabundant moral evidence against these enemies of their country, it hadnot been possible to find legal evidence against a single one of them. The law of treason might, in theory, be harsh, and had undoubtedly, intimes past, been grossly abused. But a statesman who troubled himselfless about theory than about practice, and less about times past thanabout the time present, would pronounce that law not too stringent buttoo lax, and would, while the commonwealth remained in extreme jeopardy, refuse to consent to any further relaxation. In spite of all opposition, however, the principle of the bill was approved by one hundred andseventy-one votes to one hundred and fifty-two. But in the committee itwas moved and carried that the new rules of procedure should not comeinto operation till after the end of the war with France. When thereport was brought up the House divided on this amendment, and ratifiedit by a hundred and forty-five votes to a hundred and twenty-five. Thebill was consequently suffered to drop. [357] Had it gone up to thePeers it would in all probability have been lost after causing anotherquarrel between the Houses. For the Peers were fully determined thatno such bill should pass, unless it contained a clause altering theconstitution of the Lord High Steward's Court; and a clause alteringthe constitution of the Lord High Steward's Court would have been lesslikely than ever to find favour with the Commons. For in the course ofthis session an event took place which proved that the great were onlytoo well protected by the law as it stood, and which well deserves to berecorded as a striking illustration of the state of manners and moralsin that age. 

Of all the actors who were then on the English stage the most gracefulwas William Mountford. He had every physical qualification for hiscalling, a noble figure, a handsome face, a melodious voice. It was noteasy to say whether he succeeded better in heroic or in ludicrous parts. He was allowed to be both the best Alexander and the best Sir CourtlyNice that ever trod the boards. Queen Mary, whose knowledge was verysuperficial, but who had naturally a quick perception of what wasexcellent in art, admired him greatly. He was a dramatist as well as aplayer, and has left us one comedy which is not contemptible. [358]

The most popular actress of the time was Anne Bracegirdle. There were onthe stage many women of more faultless beauty, but none whose featuresand deportment had such power to fascinate the senses and the heartsof men. The sight of her bright black eyes and of her rich brown cheeksufficed to put the most turbulent audience into good humour. It wassaid of her that in the crowded theatre she had as many lovers as shehad male spectators. Yet no lover, however rich, however high in rank, had prevailed on her to be his mistress. Those who are acquainted withthe parts which she was in the habit of playing, and with the epilogueswhich it was her especial business to recite, will not easily give hercredit for any extraordinary measure of virtue or of delicacy. Sheseems to have been a cold, vain and interested coquette, who perfectlyunderstood how much the influence of her charms was increased by thefame of a severity which cost her nothing, and who could venture toflirt with a succession of admirers in the just confidence that no flamewhich she might kindle in them would thaw her own ice. [359] Among thosewho pursued her with an insane desire was a profligate captain in thearmy named Hill. With Hill was closely bound in a league of debaucheryand violence Charles Lord Mohun, a young nobleman whose life was onelong revel and brawl. Hill, finding that the beautiful brunette wasinvincible, took it into his head that he was rejected for a morefavoured rival, and that this rival was the brilliant Mountford. Thejealous lover swore over his wine at a tavern that he would stab thevillain. "And I, " said Mohun, "will stand by my friend. " From the tavernthe pair went, with some soldiers whose services Hill had secured, toDrury Lane where the lady resided. They lay some time in wait for her. As soon as she appeared in the street she was seized and hurried toa coach. She screamed for help; her mother clung round her; the wholeneighbourhood rose; and she was rescued. Hill and Mohun went away vowingvengeance. They swaggered sword in hand during two hours about thestreets near Mountford's dwelling. The watch requested them to put uptheir weapons. But when the young lord announced that he was a peer, and bade the constables touch him if they durst, they let him pass. Sostrong was privilege then; and so weak was law. Messengers were sent towarn Mountford of his danger; but unhappily they missed him. He came. Ashort altercation took place between him and Mohun; and, while they werewrangling, Hill ran the unfortunate actor through the body, and fled. 

The grand jury of Middlesex, consisting of gentlemen of note, found abill of murder against Hill and Mohun. Hill escaped. Mohun was taken. His mother threw herself at William's feet, but in vain. "It was a cruelact, " said the King; "I shall leave it to the law. " The trial came onin the Court of the Lord High Steward; and, as Parliament happened to besitting, the culprit had the advantage of being judged by the wholebody of the peerage. There was then no lawyer in the Upper House. Ittherefore became necessary, for the first time since Buckhurst hadpronounced sentence on Essex and Southampton, that a peer who had nevermade jurisprudence his special study should preside over that gravetribunal. Caermarthen, who, as Lord President, took precedence of allthe nobility, was appointed Lord High Steward. A full report of theproceedings has come down to us. No person, who carefully examines thatreport, and attends to the opinion unanimously given by the judges inanswer to a question which Nottingham drew up, and in which the factsbrought out by the evidence are stated with perfect fairness, can doubtthat the crime of murder was fully brought home to the prisoner. Suchwas the opinion of the King who was present during the trial; and suchwas the almost unanimous opinion of the public. Had the issue been triedby Holt and twelve plain men at the Old Bailey, there can be no doubtthat a verdict of Guilty would have been returned. The Peers, however, by sixty-nine votes to fourteen, acquitted their accused brother. Onegreat nobleman was so brutal and stupid as to say, "After all the fellowwas but a player; and players are rogues. " All the newsletters, all thecoffeehouse orators, complained that the blood of the poor was shed withimpunity by the great. Wits remarked that the only fair thing about thetrial was the show of ladies in the galleries. Letters and journalsare still extant in which men of all shades of opinion, Whigs, Tories, Nonjurors, condemn the partiality of the tribunal. It was not to beexpected that, while the memory of this scandal was fresh in the publicmind, the Commons would be induced to give any new advantage to accusedpeers. [360]

The Commons had, in the meantime, resumed the consideration of anotherhighly important matter, the state of the trade with India. They had, towards the close of the preceding session, requested the King todissolve the old Company and to constitute a new Company on such termsas he should think fit; and he had promised to take their request intohis serious consideration. He now sent a message to inform them thatit was out of his power to do what they had asked. He had referred thecharter of the old Company to the Judges, and the judges had pronouncedthat, under the provisions of that charter, the old Company could notbe dissolved without three years' notice, and must retain during thosethree years the exclusive privilege of trading to the East Indies. Headded that, being sincerely desirous to gratify the Commons, and findinghimself unable to do so in the way which they had pointed out, he hadtried to prevail on the old Company to agree to a compromise; but thatbody stood obstinately on its extreme rights; and his endeavours hadbeen frustrated. [361]

This message reopened the whole question. The two factions which dividedthe City were instantly on the alert. The debates in the House werelong and warm. Petitions against the old Company were laid on the table. Satirical handbills against the new Company were distributed in thelobby. At length, after much discussion, it was resolved to presentan address requesting the King to give the notice which the judges hadpronounced necessary. He promised to bear the subject in mind, and todo his best to promote the welfare of the kingdom. With this answer theHouse was satisfied, and the subject was not again mentioned till thenext session. [362]

The debates of the Commons on the conduct of the war, on the law oftreason and on the trade with India, occupied much time, and produced noimportant result. But meanwhile real business was doing in the Committeeof Supply and the Committee of Ways and Means. In the Committee ofSupply the estimates passed rapidly. A few members declared it tobe their opinion that England ought to withdraw her troops from theContinent, to carry on the war with vigour by sea, and to keep up onlysuch an army as might be sufficient to repel any invader who might eludethe vigilance of her fleets. But this doctrine, which speedily becameand long continued to be the badge of one of the great parties in thestate, was as yet professed only by a small minority which did notventure to call for a division. [363]

In the Committee of Ways and Means, it was determined that a great partof the charge of the year should be defrayed by means of an impost, which, though old in substance, was new in form. From a very earlyperiod to the middle of the seventeenth century, our Parliaments hadprovided for the extraordinary necessities of the government chiefly bygranting subsidies. A subsidy was raised by an impost on the people ofthe realm in respect of their reputed estates. Landed property was thechief subject of taxation, and was assessed nominally at four shillingsin the pound. But the assessment was made in such a way that it not onlydid not rise in proportion to the rise in the value of land or tothe fall in the value of the precious metals, but went on constantlysinking, till at length the rate was in truth less than twopence in thepound. In the time of Charles the First a real tax of four shillings inthe pound on land would probably have yielded near a million and a half;but a subsidy amounted to little more than fifty thousand pounds. [364]

The financiers of the Long Parliament devised a more efficient mode oftaxing estates. The sum which was to be raised was fixed. It was thendistributed among the counties in proportion to their supposed wealth, and was levied within each county by a rate. The revenue derivedfrom these assessments in the time of the Commonwealth varied fromthirty-five thousand pounds to a hundred and twenty thousand pounds amonth. 

After the Restoration the legislature seemed for a time inclinedto revert, in finance as in other things, to the ancient practice. Subsidies were once or twice granted to Charles the Second. But itsoon appeared that the old system was much less convenient than thenew system. The Cavaliers condescended to take a lesson in the artof taxation from the Roundheads; and, during the interval between theRestoration and the Revolution, extraordinary calls were occasionallymet by assessments resembling the assessments of the Commonwealth. Afterthe Revolution, the war with France made it necessary to have recourseannually to this abundant source of revenue. In 1689, in 1690 and in1691, great sums had been raised on the land. At length in 1692 it wasdetermined to draw supplies from real property more largely than ever. The Commons resolved that a new and more accurate valuation of estatesshould be made over the whole realm, and that on the rental thusascertained a pound rate should be paid to the government. 

Such was the origin of the existing land tax. The valuation made in1692 has remained unaltered down to our own time. According to thatvaluation, one shilling in the pound on the rental of the kingdomamounted, in round numbers, to half a million. During a hundred and sixyears, a land tax bill was annually presented to Parliament, and wasannually passed, though not always without murmurs from the countrygentlemen. The rate was, in time of war, four shillings in the pound. Intime of peace, before the reign of George the Third, only two or threeshillings were usually granted; and, during a short part of the prudentand gentle administration of Walpole, the government asked for only oneshilling. But, after the disastrous year in which England drew thesword against her American colonies, the rate was never less than fourshillings. At length, in the year 1798, the Parliament relieved itselffrom the trouble of passing a new Act every spring. The land tax, atfour shillings in the pound, was made permanent; and those who weresubject to it were permitted to redeem it. A great part has beenredeemed; and at present little more than a fiftieth of the ordinaryrevenue required in time of peace is raised by that impost which wasonce regarded as the most productive of all the resources of the State. [365]

The land tax was fixed, for the year 1693, at four shillings in thepound, and consequently brought about two millions into the Treasury. That sum, small as it may seem to a generation which has expended ahundred and twenty millions in twelve months, was such as had neverbefore been raised here in one year by direct taxation. It seemedimmense both to Englishmen and to foreigners. Lewis, who found it almostimpossible to wring by cruel exactions from the beggared peasantry ofFrance the means of supporting the greatest army and the most gorgeouscourt that had existed in Europe since the downfall of the Roman empire, broke out, it is said, into an exclamation of angry surprise when helearned that the Commons of England had, from dread and hatred ofhis power, unanimously determined to lay on themselves, in a year ofscarcity and of commercial embarrassment, a burden such as neither theynor their fathers had ever before borne. "My little cousin of Orange, "he said, "seems to be firm in the saddle. " He afterwards added:"No matter, the last piece of gold will win. " This however was aconsideration from which, if he had been well informed touching theresources of England, he would not have derived much comfort. Kensingtonwas certainly a mere hovel when compared to his superb Versailles. Thedisplay of jewels, plumes and lace, led horses and gilded coaches, whichdaily surrounded him, far outshone the splendour which, even on greatpublic occasions, our princes were in the habit of displaying. Butthe condition of the majority of the people of England was, beyond alldoubt, such as the majority of the people of France might well haveenvied. In truth what was called severe distress here would have beencalled unexampled prosperity there. 

The land tax was not imposed without a quarrel between the Houses. The Commons appointed commissioners to make the assessment. Thesecommissioners were the principal gentlemen of every county, and werenamed in the bill. The Lords thought this arrangement inconsistent withthe dignity of the peerage. They therefore inserted a clause providingthat their estates should be valued by twenty of their own order. TheLower House indignantly rejected this amendment, and demanded an instantconference. After some delay, which increased the ill humour of theCommons, the conference took place. The bill was returned to the Peerswith a very concise and haughty intimation that they must not presumeto alter laws relating to money. A strong party among the Lords wasobstinate. Mulgrave spoke at great length against the pretensions ofthe plebeians. He told his brethren that, if they gave way, they wouldabdicate that authority which had belonged to the baronage of Englandever since the foundation of the monarchy, and that they would havenothing left of their old greatness except their coronets and ermines. Burnet says that this speech was the finest that he ever heard inParliament; and Burnet was undoubtedly a good judge of speaking, andwas neither partial to Mulgrave nor zealous for the privileges of thearistocracy. The orator, however, though he charmed his hearers, did notsucceed in convincing them. Most of them shrank from a conflict in whichthey would have had against them the Commons united as one man, and theKing, who, in case of necessity, would undoubtedly have created fiftypeers rather than have suffered the land tax bill to be lost. Two strongprotests, however, signed, the first by twenty-seven, the second bytwenty-one dissentients, show how obstinately many nobles were preparedto contend at all hazards for the dignity of their caste. Anotherconference was held; and Rochester announced that the Lords, for thesake of the public interest, waived what they must nevertheless assertto be their clear right, and would not insist on their amendment. [366]The bill passed, and was followed by bills for laying additional dutieson imports, and for taxing the dividends of joint stock companies. 

Still, however, the estimated revenue was not equal to the estimatedexpenditure. The year 1692 had bequeathed a large deficit to the year1693; and it seemed probable that the charge for 1693 would exceed byabout five hundred thousand pounds the charge for 1692. More than twomillions had been voted for the army and ordnance, near two millions forthe navy. [367] Only eight years before fourteen hundred thousand poundshad defrayed the whole annual charge of government. More than four timesthat sum was now required. Taxation, both direct and indirect, had beencarried to an unprecedented point; yet the income of the state stillfell short of the outlay by about a million. It was necessary to devisesomething. Something was devised, something of which the effects arefelt to this day in every part of the globe. 

There was indeed nothing strange or mysterious in the expedient to whichthe government had recourse. It was an expedient familiar, during twocenturies, to the financiers of the Continent, and could hardly fail tooccur to any English statesman who compared the void in the Exchequerwith the overflow in the money market. 

During the interval between the Restoration and the Revolution theriches of the nation had been rapidly increasing. Thousands of busymen found every Christmas that, after the expenses of the year'shousekeeping had been defrayed out of the year's income, a surplusremained; and how that surplus was to be employed was a question of somedifficulty. In our time, to invest such a surplus, at something morethan three per cent. , on the best security that has ever been known inthe world, is the work of a few minutes. But in the seventeenth centurya lawyer, a physician, a retired merchant, who had saved some thousandsand who wished to place them safely and profitably, was often greatlyembarrassed. Three generations earlier, a man who had accumulated wealthin a profession generally purchased real property or lent his savings onmortgage. But the number of acres in the kingdom had remained the same;and the value of those acres, though it had greatly increased, had by nomeans increased so fast as the quantity of capital which was seeking foremployment. Many too wished to put their money where they could find itat an hour's notice, and looked about for some species of property whichcould be more readily transferred than a house or a field. A capitalistmight lend on bottomry or on personal security; but, if he did so, heran a great risk of losing interest and principal. There were a fewjoint stock companies, among which the East India Company held theforemost place; but the demand for the stock of such companies was fargreater than the supply. Indeed the cry for a new East India Companywas chiefly raised by persons who had found difficulty in placing theirsavings at interest on good security. So great was that difficulty thatthe practice of hoarding was common. We are told that the father of Popethe poet, who retired from business in the City about the time of theRevolution, carried to a retreat in the country a strong box containingnear twenty thousand pounds, and took out from time to time what wasrequired for household expenses; and it is highly probable that this wasnot a solitary case. At present the quantity of coin which is hoardedby private persons is so small that it would, if brought forth, make noperceptible addition to the circulation. But, in the earlier part of thereign of William the Third, all the greatest writers on currency were ofopinion that a very considerable mass of gold and silver was hidden insecret drawers and behind wainscots. 

The natural effect of this state of things was that a crowd ofprojectors, ingenious and absurd, honest and knavish, employedthemselves in devising new schemes for the employment of redundantcapital. It was about the year 1688 that the word stockjobber was firstheard in London. In the short space of four years a crowd of companies, every one of which confidently held out to subscribers the hope ofimmense gains, sprang into existence; the Insurance Company, the PaperCompany, the Lutestring Company, the Pearl Fishery Company, theGlass Bottle Company, the Alum Company, the Blythe Coal Company, theSwordblade Company. There was a Tapestry Company which would soonfurnish pretty hangings for all the parlours of the middle class andfor all the bedchambers of the higher. There was a Copper Company whichproposed to explore the mines of England, and held out a hope that theywould prove not less valuable than those of Potosi. There was a DivingCompany which undertook to bring up precious effects from shipwreckedvessels, and which announced that it had laid in a stock of wonderfulmachines resembling complete suits of armour. In front of the helmet wasa huge glass eye like that of a cyclop; and out of the crest went apipe through which the air was to be admitted. The whole process wasexhibited on the Thames. Fine gentlemen and fine ladies were invitedto the show, were hospitably regaled, and were delighted by seeing thedivers in their panoply descend into the river and return laden withold iron, and ship's tackle. There was a Greenland Fishing Company whichcould not fail to drive the Dutch whalers and herring busses out of theNorthern Ocean. There was a Tanning Company which promised to furnishleather superior to the best that was brought from Turkey or Russia. There was a society which undertook the office of giving gentlemen aliberal education on low terms, and which assumed the sounding name ofthe Royal Academies Company. In a pompous advertisement it was announcedthat the directors of the Royal Academies Company had engaged the bestmasters in every branch of knowledge, and were about to issue twentythousand tickets at twenty shillings each. There was to be a lottery;two thousand prizes were to be drawn; and the fortunate holders of theprizes were to be taught, at the charge of the Company, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French, Spanish, conic sections, trigonometry, heraldry, japanning, fortification, bookkeeping and the art of playing thetheorbo. Some of these companies took large mansions and printed theiradvertisements in gilded letters. Others, less ostentatious, werecontent with ink, and met at coffeehouses in the neighbourhood of theRoyal Exchange. Jonathan's and Garraway's were in a constant fermentwith brokers, buyers, sellers, meetings of directors, meetingsof proprietors. Time bargains soon came into fashion. Extensivecombinations were formed, and monstrous fables were circulated, forthe purpose of raising or depressing the price of shares. Our countrywitnessed for the first time those phenomena with which a longexperience has made us familiar. A mania of which the symptoms wereessentially the same with those of the mania of 1720, of the mania of1825, of the mania of 1845, seized the public mind. An impatience tobe rich, a contempt for those slow but sure gains which are the properreward of industry, patience and thrift, spread through society. Thespirit of the cogging dicers of Whitefriars took possession of the graveSenators of the City, Wardens of Trades, Deputies, Aldermen. It wasmuch easier and much more lucrative to put forth a lying prospectusannouncing a new stock, to persuade ignorant people that the dividendscould not fall short of twenty per cent. , and to part with five thousandpounds of this imaginary wealth for ten thousand solid guineas, than toload a ship with a well chosen cargo for Virginia or the Levant. Everyday some new bubble was puffed into existence, rose buoyant, shonebright, burst, and was forgotten. [368]

The new form which covetousness had taken furnished the comic poetsand satirists with an excellent subject; nor was that subject theless welcome to them because some of the most unscrupulous and mostsuccessful of the new race of gamesters were men in sad coloured clothesand lank hair, men who called cards the Devil's books, men who thoughtit a sin and a scandal to win or lose twopence over a backgammon board. It was in the last drama of Shadwell that the hypocrisy and knavery ofthese speculators was, for the first time, exposed to public ridicule. He died in November 1692, just before his Stockjobbers came on thestage; and the epilogue was spoken by an actor dressed in deep mourning. The best scene is that in which four or five stern Nonconformists, clad in the full Puritan costume, after discussing the prospects ofthe Mousetrap Company and the Fleakilling Company, examine the questionwhether the godly may lawfully hold stock in a Company for bringing overChinese ropedancers. "Considerable men have shares, " says one austereperson in cropped hair and bands; "but verily I question whether itbe lawful or not. " These doubts are removed by a stout old Roundheadcolonel who had fought at Marston Moor, and who reminds his weakerbrother that the saints need not themselves see the ropedancing, andthat, in all probability, there will be no ropedancing to see. "Thething, " he says, "is like to take; the shares will sell well; and thenwe shall not care whether the dancers come over or no. " It is importantto observe that this scene was exhibited and applauded before onefarthing of the national debt had been contracted. So ill informed werethe numerous writers who, at a later period, ascribed to the nationaldebt the existence of stockjobbing and of all the immoralities connectedwith stockjobbing. The truth is that society had, in the natural courseof its growth, reached a point at which it was inevitable that thereshould be stockjobbing whether there were a national debt or not, andinevitable also that, if there were a long and costly war, there shouldbe a national debt. 

How indeed was it possible that a debt should not have been contracted, when one party was impelled by the strongest motives to borrow, andanother was impelled by equally strong motives to lend? A moment hadarrived at which the government found it impossible, without excitingthe most formidable discontents, to raise by taxation the suppliesnecessary to defend the liberty and independence of the nation; and, atthat very moment, numerous capitalists were looking round them in vainfor some good mode of investing their savings, and, for want of sucha mode, were keeping their wealth locked up, or were lavishing it onabsurd projects. Riches sufficient to equip a navy which would sweep theGerman Ocean and the Atlantic of French privateers, riches sufficientto maintain an army which might retake Namur and avenge the disaster ofSteinkirk, were lying idle, or were passing away from the owners intothe hands of sharpers. A statesman might well think that some part ofthe wealth which was daily buried or squandered might, with advantage tothe proprietor, to the taxpayer and to the State, be attracted into theTreasury. Why meet the extraordinary charge of a year of war by seizingthe chairs, the tables, the beds of hardworking families, by compellingone country gentleman to cut down his trees before they were ready forthe axe, another to let the cottages on his land fall to ruin, a thirdto take away his hopeful son from the University, when Change Alley wasswarming with people who did not know what to do with their money andwho were pressing every body to borrow it?

It was often asserted at a later period by Tories, who hated thenational debt most of all things, and who hated Burnet most of all men, that Burnet was the person who first advised the government to contracta national debt. But this assertion is proved by no trustworthyevidence, and seems to be disproved by the Bishop's silence. Of all menhe was the least likely to conceal the fact that an important fiscalrevolution had been his work. Nor was the Board of Treasury at that timeone which much needed, or was likely much to regard, the counsels of adivine. At that Board sate Godolphin the most prudent and experienced, and Montague the most daring and inventive of financiers. Neither ofthese eminent men could be ignorant that it had long been the practiceof the neighbouring states to spread over many years of peace theexcessive taxation which was made necessary by one year of war. In Italythis practice had existed through many generations. France had, duringthe war which began in 1672 and ended in 1679, borrowed not less thanthirty millions of our money. Sir William Temple, in his interestingwork on the Batavian federation, had told his countrymen that, when hewas ambassador at the Hague, the single province of Holland, then ruledby the frugal and prudent De Witt, owed about five millions sterling, for which interest at four per cent. Was always ready to the day, andthat when any part of the principal was paid off the public creditorreceived his money with tears, well knowing that he could find no otherinvestment equally secure. The wonder is not that England should have atlength imitated the example both of her enemies and of her allies, butthat the fourth year of her arduous and exhausting struggle againstLewis should have been drawing to a close before she resorted to anexpedient so obvious. 

On the fifteenth of December 1692 the House of Commons resolved itselfinto a Committee of Ways and Means. Somers took the chair. Montagueproposed to raise a million by way of loan; the proposition wasapproved; and it was ordered that a bill should be brought in. Thedetails of the scheme were much discussed and modified; but theprinciple appears to have been popular with all parties. The moneyed menwere glad to have a good opportunity of investing what they had hoarded. The landed men, hard pressed by the load of taxation, were ready toconsent to any thing for the sake of present ease. No member ventured todivide the House. On the twentieth of January the bill was read a thirdtime, carried up to the Lords by Somers, and passed by them without anyamendment. [369]

By this memorable law new duties were imposed on beer and other liquors. These duties were to be kept in the Exchequer separate from all otherreceipts, and were to form a fund on the credit of which a million wasto be raised by life annuities. As the annuitants dropped off, theirannuities were to be divided among the survivors, till the number ofsurvivors was reduced to seven. After that time, whatever fell in was togo to the public. It was therefore certain that the eighteenth centurywould be far advanced before the debt would be finally extinguished. Therate of interest was to be ten per cent. Till the year 1700, and afterthat year seven per cent. The advantages offered to the public creditorby this scheme may seem great, but were not more than sufficient tocompensate him for the risk which he ran. It was not impossible thatthere might be a counterrevolution; and it was certain that, if therewere a counterrevolution, those who had lent money to William would loseboth interest and principal. 

Such was the origin of that debt which has since become the greatestprodigy that ever perplexed the sagacity and confounded the pride ofstatesmen and philosophers. At every stage in the growth of that debtthe nation has set up the same cry of anguish and despair. At everystage in the growth of that debt it has been seriously asserted by wisemen that bankruptcy and ruin were at hand. Yet still the debt went ongrowing; and still bankruptcy and ruin were as remote as ever. When thegreat contest with Lewis the Fourteenth was finally terminated by thePeace of Utrecht, the nation owed about fifty millions; and thatdebt was considered, not merely by the rude multitude, not merely byfoxhunting squires and coffeehouse orators, but by acute and profoundthinkers, as an incumbrance which would permanently cripple the bodypolitic; Nevertheless trade flourished; wealth increased; the nationbecame richer and richer. Then came the war of the Austrian Succession;and the debt rose to eighty millions. Pamphleteers, historians andorators pronounced that now, at all events, our case was desperate. Yet the signs of increasing prosperity, signs which could neither becounterfeited nor concealed, ought to have satisfied observant andreflecting men that a debt of eighty millions was less to the Englandwhich was governed by Pelham than a debt of fifty millions had been tothe England which was governed by Oxford. Soon war again broke forth;and, under the energetic and prodigal administration of the firstWilliam Pitt, the debt rapidly swelled to a hundred and forty millions. As soon as the first intoxication of victory was over, men of theory andmen of business almost unanimously pronounced that the fatal day had nowreally arrived. The only statesman, indeed, active or speculative, whodid not share in the general delusion was Edmund Burke. David Hume, undoubtedly one of the most profound political economists of his time, declared that our madness had exceeded the madness of the Crusaders. Richard Coeur de Lion and Saint Lewis had not gone in the face ofarithmetical demonstration. It was impossible to prove by figures thatthe road to Paradise did not lie through the Holy Land; but it waspossible to prove by figures that the road to national ruin was throughthe national debt. It was idle, however, now to talk about the road; wehad done with the road; we had reached the goal; all was over; allthe revenues of the island north of Trent and west of Reading weremortgaged. Better for us to have been conquered by Prussia or Austriathan to be saddled with the interest of a hundred and forty millions. [370] And yet this great philosopher--for such he was--had only to openhis eyes, and to see improvement all around him, cities increasing, cultivation extending, marts too small for the crowd of buyers andsellers, harbours insufficient to contain the shipping, artificialrivers joining the chief inland seats of industry to the chief seaports, streets better lighted, houses better furnished, richer wares exposed tosale in statelier shops, swifter carriages rolling along smoother roads. He had, indeed, only to compare the Edinburgh of his boyhood withthe Edinburgh of his old age. His prediction remains to posterity, amemorable instance of the weakness from which the strongest mindsare not exempt. Adam Smith saw a little and but a little further. He admitted that, immense as the burden was, the nation did actuallysustain it and thrive under it in a way which nobody could haveforeseen. But he warned his countrymen not to repeat so hazardous anexperiment. The limit had been reached. Even a small increase mightbe fatal. [371] Not less gloomy was the view which George Grenville, a minister eminently diligent and practical, took of our financialsituation. The nation must, he conceived, sink under a debt of a hundredand forty millions, unless a portion of the load were borne by theAmerican colonies. The attempt to lay a portion of the load on theAmerican colonies produced another war. That war left us with anadditional hundred millions of debt, and without the colonies whose helphad been represented as indispensable. Again England was given over;and again the strange patient persisted in becoming stronger and moreblooming in spite of all the diagnostics and prognostics of Statephysicians. As she had been visibly more prosperous with a debt of ahundred and forty millions than with a debt of fifty millions, so she, as visibly more prosperous with a debt of two hundred and forty millionsthan with a debt of a hundred and forty millions. Soon however the warswhich sprang from the French Revolution, and which far exceeded in costany that the world had ever seen, tasked the powers of public credit tothe utmost. When the world was again at rest the funded debt of Englandamounted to eight hundred millions. If the most enlightened man had beentold, in 1792, that, in 1815, the interest on eight hundred millionswould be duly paid to the day at the Bank, he would have been as hard ofbelief as if he had been told that the government would be in possessionof the lamp of Aladdin or of the purse of Fortunatus. It was in trutha gigantic, a fabulous debt; and we can hardly wonder that the cry ofdespair should have been louder than ever. But again that cry was foundto have been as unreasonable as ever. After a few years of exhaustion, England recovered herself. Yet, like Addison's valetudinarian, whocontinued to whimper that he was dying of consumption till he became sofat that he was shamed into silence, she went on complaining that shewas sunk in poverty till her wealth showed itself by tokens which madeher complaints ridiculous. The beggared, the bankrupt society notonly proved able to meet all its obligations, but, while meeting thoseobligations, grew richer and richer so fast that the growth could almostbe discerned by the eye. In every county, we saw wastes recently turnedinto gardens; in every city, we saw new streets, and squares, andmarkets, more brilliant lamps, more abundant supplies of water; in thesuburbs of every great seat of industry, we saw villas multiplying fast, each embosomed in its gay little paradise of lilacs and roses. Whileshallow politicians were repeating that the energies of the people wereborne down by the weight of the public burdens, the first journey wasperformed by steam on a railway. Soon the island was intersected byrailways. A sum exceeding the whole amount of the national debt at theend of the American war was, in a few years, voluntarily expended bythis ruined people in viaducts, tunnels, embankments, bridges, stations, engines. Meanwhile taxation was almost constantly becoming lighterand lighter; yet still the Exchequer was full. It may be now affirmedwithout fear of contradiction that we find it as easy to pay theinterest of eight hundred millions as our ancestors found it, a centuryago, to pay the interest of eighty millions. 

It can hardly be doubted that there must have been some great fallacyin the notions of those who uttered and of those who believed that longsuccession of confident predictions, so signally falsified by a longsuccession of indisputable facts. To point out that fallacy is theoffice rather of the political economist than of the historian. Hereit is sufficient to say that the prophets of evil were under a doubledelusion. They erroneously imagined that there was an exact analogybetween the case of an individual who is in debt to another individualand the case of a society which is in debt to a part of itself; and thisanalogy led them into endless mistakes about the effect of the systemof funding. They were under an error not less serious touching theresources of the country. They made no allowance for the effect producedby the incessant progress of every experimental science, and by theincessant efforts of every man to get on in life. They saw that the debtgrew; and they forgot that other things grew as well as the debt. 

A long experience justifies us in believing that England may, in thetwentieth century, be better able to bear a debt of sixteen hundredmillions than she is at the present time to bear her present load. Butbe this as it may, those who so confidently predicted that she mustsink, first under a debt of fifty millions, then under a debt of eightymillions then under a debt of a hundred and forty millions, then under adebt of two hundred and forty millions, and lastly under a debt of eighthundred millions, were beyond all doubt under a twofold mistake. Theygreatly overrated the pressure of the burden; they greatly underratedthe strength by which the burden was to be borne. 

It may be desirable to add a few words touching the way in which thesystem of funding has affected the interests of the great commonwealthof nations. If it be true that whatever gives to intelligence anadvantage over brute force and to honesty an advantage over dishonestyhas a tendency to promote the happiness and virtue of our race, it canscarcely be denied that, in the largest view, the effect of this systemhas been salutary. For it is manifest that all credit depends on twothings, on the power of a debtor to pay debts, and on his inclinationto pay them. The power of a society to pay debts is proportioned to theprogress which that society has made in industry, in commerce, and inall the arts and sciences which flourish under the benignant influenceof freedom and of equal law. The inclination of a society to paydebts is proportioned to the degree in which that society respects theobligations of plighted faith. Of the strength which consists in extentof territory and in number of fighting men, a rude despot who knowsno law but his own childish fancies and headstrong passions, or aconvention of socialists which proclaims all property to be robbery, mayhave more than falls to the lot of the best and wisest government. Butthe strength which is derived from the confidence of capitalists such adespot, such a convention, never can possess. That strength, --and itis a strength which has decided the event of more than one greatconflict, --flies, by the law of its nature, from barbarism and fraud, from tyranny and anarchy, to follow civilisation and virtue, liberty andorder. 

While the bill which first created the funded debt of England waspassing, with general approbation, through the regular stages, thetwo Houses discussed, for the first time, the great question ofParliamentary Reform. 

It is to be observed that the object of the reformers of that generationwas merely to make the representative body a more faithful interpreterof the sense of the constituent body. It seems scarcely to haveoccurred to any of them that the constituent body might be anunfaithful interpreter of the sense of the nation. It is true that thosedeformities in the structure of the constituent body, which, at length, in our own days, raised an irresistible storm of public indignation, were far less numerous and far less offensive in the seventeenth centurythan they had become in the nineteenth. Most of the boroughs which weredisfranchised in 1832 were, if not positively, yet relatively, much moreimportant places in the reign of William the Third than in the reignof William the Fourth. Of the populous and wealthy manufacturing towns, seaports and watering places, to which the franchise was given in thereign of William the Fourth, some were, in the reign of William theThird, small hamlets, where a few ploughmen or fishermen lived underthatched roofs; some were fields covered with harvests, or moorsabandoned to grouse; With the exception of Leeds and Manchester, therewas not, at the time of the Revolution, a single town of five thousandinhabitants which did not send two representatives to the House ofCommons. Even then, however, there was no want of startling anomalies. Looe, East and West, which contained not half the population or half thewealth of the smallest of the hundred parishes of London, returnedas many members as London. [372] Old Sarum, a deserted ruin which thetraveller feared to enter at night lest he should find robbers lurkingthere, had as much weight in the legislature as Devonshire or Yorkshire. [373] Some eminent individuals of both parties, Clarendon, for example, among the Tories, and Pollexfen among the Whigs, condemned this system. Yet both parties were, for very different reasons, unwilling to alterit. It was protected by the prejudices of one faction and by theinterests of the other. Nothing could be more repugnant to the genius ofToryism than the thought of destroying at a blow institutions whichhad stood through ages, for the purpose of building something moresymmetrical out of the ruins. The Whigs, on the other hand, could notbut know that they were much more likely to lose than to gain by achange in this part of our polity. It would indeed be a great mistaketo imagine that a law transferring political power from small to largeconstituent bodies would have operated in 1692 as it operated in 1832. 

In 1832 the effect of the transfer was to increase the power of the townpopulation. In 1692 the effect would have been to make the power of therural population irresistible. Of the one hundred and forty-two memberstaken away in 1832 from small boroughs more than half were given tolarge and flourishing towns. But in 1692 there was hardly one large andflourishing town which had not already as many members as it could, withany show of reason, claim. Almost all therefore that was taken from thesmall boroughs must have been given to the counties; and there can beno doubt that whatever tended to raise the counties and to depress thetowns must on the whole have tended to raise the Tories and to depressthe Whigs. From the commencement of our civil troubles the towns hadbeen on the side of freedom and progress, the country gentlemen andthe country clergymen on the side of authority and prescription. Iftherefore a reform bill, disfranchising small constituent bodies andgiving additional members to large constituent bodies, had become lawsoon after the Revolution, there can be little doubt that a decidedmajority of the House of Commons would have consisted of rustic baronetsand squires, high Churchmen, high Tories, and half Jacobites. With sucha House of Commons it is almost certain that there would have been apersecution of the Dissenters; it is not easy to understand how therecould have been an union with Scotland; and it is not improbable thatthere would have been a restoration of the Stuarts. Those parts ofour constitution therefore which, in recent times, politicians ofthe liberal school have generally considered as blemishes, were, fivegenerations ago, regarded with complacency by the men who were mostzealous for civil and religious freedom. 

But, while Whigs and Tories agreed in wishing to maintain the existingrights of election, both Whigs and Tories were forced to admit thatthe relation between the elector and the representative was not what itought to be. Before the civil wars the House of Commons had enjoyedthe fullest confidence of the nation. A House of Commons, distrusted, despised, hated by the Commons, was a thing unknown. The very wordswould, to Sir Peter Wentworth or Sir Edward Coke, have sounded likea contradiction in terms. But by degrees a change took place. TheParliament elected in 1661, during that fit of joy and fondness whichfollowed the return of the royal family, represented, not the deliberatesense, but the momentary caprice of the nation. Many of the members weremen who, a few months earlier or a few months later, would have hadno chance of obtaining seats, men of broken fortunes and of dissolutehabits, men whose only claim to public confidence was the ferocioushatred which they bore to rebels and Puritans. The people, as soon asthey had become sober, saw with dismay to what an assembly they had, during their intoxication, confided the care of their property, theirliberty and their religion. And the choice, made in a moment of franticenthusiasm, might prove to be a choice for life. As the law then stood, it depended entirely on the King's pleasure whether, during his reign, the electors should have an opportunity of repairing their error. Eighteen years passed away. A new generation grew up. To the fervidloyalty with which Charles had been welcomed back to Dover succeededdiscontent and disaffection. The general cry was that the kingdom wasmisgoverned, degraded, given up as a prey to worthless men and moreworthless women, that our navy had been found unequal to a contest withHolland, that our independence had been bartered for the gold of France, that our consciences were in danger of being again subjected to the yokeof Rome. The people had become Roundheads; but the body which alonewas authorised to speak in the name of the people was still a body ofCavaliers. It is true that the King occasionally found even that Houseof Commons unmanageable. From the first it had contained not a few trueEnglishmen; others had been introduced into it as vacancies were made bydeath; and even the majority, courtly as it was, could not but feel somesympathy with the nation. A country party grew up and became formidable. But that party constantly found its exertions frustrated by systematiccorruption. That some members of the legislature received direct bribeswas with good reason suspected, but could not be proved. That thepatronage of the Crown was employed on an extensive scale for thepurpose of influencing votes was matter of notoriety. A large proportionof those who gave away the public money in supplies received part ofthat money back in salaries; and thus was formed a mercenary band onwhich the Court might, in almost any extremity, confidently rely. 

The servility of this Parliament had left a deep impression on thepublic mind. It was the general opinion that England ought to beprotected against all risk of being ever again represented, during along course of years, by men who had forfeited her confidence, and whowere retained by a fee to vote against her wishes and interests. Thesubject was mentioned in the Convention; and some members wished to dealwith it while the throne was still vacant. The cry for reform had eversince been becoming more and more importunate. The people, heavilypressed by taxes, were naturally disposed to regard those who lived onthe taxes with little favour. The war, it was generally acknowledged, was just and necessary; and war could not be carried on without largeexpenditure. But the larger the expenditure which was required for thedefence of the nation, the more important it was that nothing shouldbe squandered. The immense gains of official men moved envy andindignation. Here a gentleman was paid to do nothing. There manygentlemen were paid to do what would be better done by one. The coach, the liveries, the lace cravat and diamond buckles of the placeman werenaturally seen with an evil eye by those who rose up early and lay downlate in order to furnish him with the means of indulging in splendourand luxury. Such abuses it was the especial business of a House ofCommons to correct. What then had the existing House of Commons done inthe way of correction? Absolutely nothing. In 1690, indeed, while theCivil List was settling, some sharp speeches had been made. In 1691, when the Ways and Means were under consideration, a resolution hadbeen passed so absurdly framed that it had proved utterly abortive. Thenuisance continued, and would continue while it was a source of profitto those whose duty was to abate it. Who could expect faithful andvigilant stewardship from stewards who had a direct interest inencouraging the waste which they were employed to check? The Houseswarmed with placemen of all kinds, Lords of the Treasury, Lords ofthe Admiralty, Commissioners of Customs, Commissioners of Excise, Commissioners of Prizes, Tellers, Auditors, Receivers, Paymasters, Officers of the Mint, Officers of the household, Colonels of regiments, Captains of men of war, Governors of forts. We send up to Westminster, it was said, one of our neighbours, an independent gentleman, inthe full confidence that his feelings and interests are in perfectaccordance with ours. We look to him to relieve us from every burdenexcept those burdens without which the public service cannot becarried on, and which therefore, galling as they are, we patiently andresolutely bear. But before he has been a session in Parliament welearn that he is a Clerk of the Green Cloth or a Yeoman of the RemovingWardrobe, with a comfortable salary. Nay, we sometimes learn that he hasobtained one of those places in the Exchequer of which the emolumentsrise and fall with the taxes which we pay. It would be strange indeed ifour interests were safe in the keeping of a man whose gains consist in apercentage on our losses. The evil would be greatly diminished if we hadfrequent opportunities of considering whether the powers of our agentought to be renewed or revoked. But, as the law stands, it is notimpossible that he may hold those powers twenty or thirty years. Whilehe lives, and while either the King or the Queen lives, it is not likelythat we shall ever again exercise our elective franchise, unless thereshould be a dispute between the Court and the Parliament. The moreprofuse and obsequious a Parliament is, the less likely it is to giveoffence to the Court. The worse our representatives, therefore, thelonger we are likely to be cursed with them. 

The outcry was loud. Odious nicknames were given to the Parliament. Sometimes it was the Officers' Parliament; sometimes it was the StandingParliament, and was pronounced to be a greater nuisance than even astanding army. 

Two specifics for the distempers of the State were strongly recommended, and divided the public favour. One was a law excluding placemen fromthe House of Commons. The other was a law limiting the duration ofParliaments to three years. In general the Tory reformers preferreda Place Bill, and the Whig reformers a Triennial Bill; but not a fewzealous men of both parties were for trying both remedies. 

Before Christmas a Place Bill was laid on the table of the Commons. Thatbill has been vehemently praised by writers who never saw it, and whomerely guessed at what it contained. But no person who takes the troubleto study the original parchment, which, embrowned with the dust of ahundred and sixty years, reposes among the archives of the House ofLords, will find much matter for eulogy. 

About the manner in which such a bill should have been framed therewill, in our time, be little difference of opinion among enlightenedEnglishmen. They will agree in thinking that it would be most perniciousto open the House of Commons to all placemen, and not less pernicious toclose that House against all placemen. To draw with precision theline between those who ought to be admitted and those who ought to beexcluded would be a task requiring much time, thought and knowledge ofdetails. But the general principles which ought to guide us are obvious. The multitude of subordinate functionaries ought to be excluded. Afew functionaries who are at the head or near the head of the greatdepartments of the administration ought to be admitted. 

The subordinate functionaries ought to be excluded, because theiradmission would at once lower the character of Parliament and destroythe efficiency of every public office. They are now excluded, and theconsequence is that the State possesses a valuable body of servants whoremain unchanged while cabinet after cabinet is formed and dissolved, who instruct every successive minister in his duties, and with whom itis the most sacred point of honour to give true information, sincereadvise, and strenuous assistance to their superior for the time being. To the experience, the ability and the fidelity of this class of men isto be attributed the ease and safety with which the direction of affairshas been many times, within our own memory, transferred from Tories toWhigs and from Whigs to Tories. But no such class would have existed ifpersons who received salaries from the Crown had been suffered to sitwithout restriction in the House of Commons. Those commissionerships, assistant secretaryships, chief clerkships, which are now held for lifeby persons who stand aloof from the strife of parties, would have beenbestowed on members of Parliament who were serviceable to the governmentas voluble speakers or steady voters. As often as the ministry waschanged, all this crowd of retainers would have been ejected fromoffice, and would have been succeeded by another set of members ofParliament who would probably have been ejected in their turn beforethey had half learned their business. Servility and corruption in thelegislature, ignorance and incapacity in all the departments of theexecutive administration, would have been the inevitable effects of sucha system. 

Still more noxious, if possible, would be the effects of a systemunder which all the servants of the Crown, without exception, should beexcluded from the House of Commons. Aristotle has, in that treatise ongovernment which is perhaps the most judicious and instructive of allhis writings, left us a warning against a class of laws artfully framedto delude the vulgar, democratic in seeming, but oligarchic in effect. [374] Had he had an opportunity of studying the history of the Englishconstitution, he might easily have enlarged his list of such laws. Thatmen who are in the service and pay of the Crown ought not to sit inan assembly specially charged with the duty of guarding the rights andinterests of the community against all aggression on the part of theCrown is a plausible and a popular doctrine. Yet it is certain that ifthose who, five generations ago, held that doctrine, had been able tomould the constitution according to their wishes, the effect would havebeen the depression of that branch of the legislature which springs fromthe people and is accountable to the people, and the ascendency of themonarchical and aristocratical elements of our polity. The governmentwould have been entirely in patrician hands. The House of Lords, constantly drawing to itself the first abilities in the realm, wouldhave become the most august of senates, while the House of Commons wouldhave sunk almost to the rank of a vestry. From time to time undoubtedlymen of commanding genius and of aspiring temper would have made theirappearance among the representatives of the counties and boroughs. Butevery such man would have considered the elective chamber merely as alobby through which he must pass to the hereditary chamber. The firstobject of his ambition would have been that coronet without which hecould not be powerful in the state. As soon as he had shown that hecould be a formidable enemy and a valuable friend to the government, hewould have made haste to quit what would then have been in every sensethe Lower House for what would then have been in every sense the Upper. The conflict between Walpole and Pulteney, the conflict between Pitt andFox, would have been transferred from the popular to the aristocraticpart of the legislature. On every great question, foreign, domestic orcolonial, the debates of the nobles would have been impatiently expectedand eagerly devoured. The report of the proceedings of an assemblycontaining no person empowered to speak in the name of the government, no person who had ever been in high political trust, would have beenthrown aside with contempt. Even the control of the purse of the nationmust have passed, not perhaps in form, but in substance, to that body inwhich would have been found every man who was qualified to bring forwarda budget or explain an estimate. The country would have been governed byPeers; and the chief business of the Commons would have been to wrangleabout bills for the inclosing of moors and the lighting of towns. 

These considerations were altogether overlooked in 1692. Nobody thoughtof drawing a line between the few functionaries who ought to be allowedto sit in the House of Commons and the crowd of functionaries who oughtto be shut out. The only line which the legislators of that day tookpains to draw was between themselves and their successors. Their owninterest they guarded with a care of which it seems strange that theyshould not have been ashamed. Every one of them was allowed to keepthe places which he had got, and to get as many more places as he couldbefore the next dissolution of Parliament, an event which might nothappen for many years. But a member who should be chosen after the firstof February 1693 was not to be permitted to accept any place whatever. [375]

In the House of Commons the bill passed through all its stages rapidlyand without a single division. But in the Lords the contest was sharpand obstinate. Several amendments were proposed in committee; but allwere rejected. The motion that the bill should pass was supported byMulgrave in a lively and poignant speech, which has been preserved, andwhich proves that his reputation for eloquence was not unmerited. TheLords who took the other side did not, it should seem, venture to denythat there was an evil which required a remedy; but they maintainedthat the proposed remedy would only aggravate the evil. The patrioticrepresentatives of the people had devised a reform which might perhapsbenefit the next generation; but they had carefully reserved tothemselves the privilege of plundering the present generation. If thisbill passed, it was clear that, while the existing Parliament lasted, the number of placemen in the House of Commons would be little, if atall, diminished; and, if this bill passed, it was highly probable thatthe existing Parliament would last till both King William and Queen Marywere dead. For as, under this bill, Their Majesties would be able toexercise a much greater influence over the existing Parliament thanover any future Parliament, they would naturally wish to put off adissolution as long as possible. The complaint of the electors ofEngland was that now, in 1692, they were unfairly represented. It wasnot redress, but mockery, to tell them that their children should befairly represented in 1710 or 1720. The relief ought to be immediate;and the way to give immediate relief was to limit the duration ofParliaments, and to begin with that Parliament which, in the opinion ofthe country, had already held power too long. 

The forces were so evenly balanced that a very slight accident mighthave turned the scale. When the question was put that the bill do pass, eighty-two peers were present. Of these forty-two were for the bill, andforty against it. Proxies were then called. There were only two proxiesfor the bill; there were seven against it; but of the seven three werequestioned, and were with difficulty admitted. The result was that thebill was lost by three votes. 

The majority appears to have been composed of moderate Whigs andmoderate Tories. Twenty of the minority protested, and among themwere the most violent and intolerant members of both parties, such asWarrington, who had narrowly escaped the block for conspiring againstJames, and Aylesbury, who afterwards narrowly escaped the block forconspiring against William. Marlborough, who, since his imprisonment, had gone all lengths in opposition to the government, not only put hisown name to the protest, but made the Prince of Denmark sign what itwas altogether beyond the faculties of His Royal Highness to comprehend. [376]

It is a remarkable circumstance that neither Caermarthen, the first inpower as well as in abilities of the Tory ministers, nor Shrewsbury, themost distinguished of those Whigs who were then on bad terms with theCourt, was present on this important occasion. Their absence was in allprobability the effect of design; for both of them were in the House nolong time before and no long time after the division. 

A few days later Shrewsbury laid on the table of the Lord a bill forlimiting the duration of Parliaments. By this bill it was providedthat the Parliament then sitting should cease to exist on the firstof January 1694, and that no future Parliament should last longer thanthree years. 

Among the Lords there seems to have been almost perfect unanimity onthis subject. William in vain endeavoured to induce those peers in whomhe placed the greatest confidence to support his prerogative. Some ofthem thought the proposed change salutary; others hoped to quiet thepublic mind by a liberal concession; and others had held such languagewhen they were opposing the Place Bill that they could not, withoutgross inconsistency, oppose the Triennial Bill. The whole House too borea grudge to the other House, and had a pleasure in putting the otherHouse in a most disagreeable dilemma. Burnet, Pembroke, nay, evenCaermarthen, who was very little in the habit of siding with the peopleagainst the throne, supported Shrewsbury. "My Lord, " said the King toCaermarthen, with bitter displeasure, "you will live to repent the partwhich you are taking in this matter. " [377] The warning was disregarded;and the bill, having passed the Lords smoothly and rapidly, was carriedwith great solemnity by two judges to the Commons. 

Of what took place in the Commons we have but very meagre accounts; butfrom those accounts it is clear that the Whigs, as a body, supported thebill, and that the opposition came chiefly from Tories. Old Titus, whohad been a politician in the days of the Commonwealth, entertained theHouse with a speech in the style which had been fashionable in thosedays. Parliaments, he said, resembled the manna which God bestowed onthe chosen people. They were excellent while they were fresh; but ifkept too long they became noisome; and foul worms were engendered bythe corruption of that which had been sweeter than honey. Littletonand other leading Whigs spoke on the same side. Seymour, Finch, andTredenham, all stanch Tories, were vehement against the bill; and evenSir John Lowther on this point dissented from his friend and patronCaermarthen. Several Tory orators appealed to a feeling which was strongin the House, and which had, since the Revolution, prevented manylaws from passing. Whatever, they said, comes from the Peers is to bereceived with suspicion; and the present bill is of such a nature that, even if it were in itself good, it ought to be at once rejected merelybecause it has been brought down from them. If their Lordships were tosend us the most judicious of all money bills, should we not kick it tothe door? Yet to send us a money bill would hardly be a grosser affrontthan to send us such a bill as this. They have taken an initiativewhich, by every rule of parliamentary courtesy, ought to have been leftto us. They have sate in judgment on us, convicted us, condemned us todissolution, and fixed the first of January for the execution. Are weto submit patiently to so degrading a sentence, a sentence too passed bymen who have not so conducted themselves as to have acquired any rightto censure others? Have they ever made any sacrifice of their owninterest, of their own dignity, to the general welfare? Have notexcellent bills been lost because we would not consent to insert in themclauses conferring new privileges on the nobility? And now that theirLordships are bent on obtaining popularity, do they propose topurchase it by relinquishing even the smallest of their own oppressiveprivileges? No; they offer to their country that which will cost themnothing, but which will cost us and will cost the Crown dear. In suchcircumstances it is our duty to repel the insult which has been offeredto us, and, by doing so, to vindicate the lawful prerogative of theKing. 

Such topics as these were doubtless well qualified to inflame thepassions of the House of Commons. The near prospect of a dissolutioncould not be very agreeable to a member whose election was likely to becontested. He must go through all the miseries of a canvass, must shakehands with crowds of freeholders or freemen, must ask after their wivesand children, must hire conveyances for outvoters, must open alehouses, must provide mountains of beef, must set rivers of ale running, andmight perhaps, after all the drudgery and all the expense, after beinglampooned, hustled, pelted, find himself at the bottom of the poll, seehis antagonists chaired, and sink half ruined into obscurity. All thisevil he was now invited to bring on himself, and invited by men whoseown seats in the legislature were permanent, who gave up neither dignitynor quiet, neither power nor money, but gained the praise of patriotismby forcing him to abdicate a high station, to undergo harassing labourand anxiety, to mortgage his cornfields and to hew down his woods. Therewas naturally much irritation, more probably than is indicated by thedivisions. For the constituent bodies were generally delighted with thebill; and many members who disliked it were afraid to oppose it. TheHouse yielded to the pressure of public opinion, but not without apang and a struggle. The discussions in the committee seem to have beenacrimonious. Such sharp words passed between Seymour and one of the Whigmembers that it was necessary to put the Speaker in the chair and themace on the table for the purpose of restoring order. One amendment wasmade. The respite which the Lords had granted to the existing Parliamentwas extended from the first of January to Lady Day, in order that theremight be full time for another session. The third reading was carriedby two hundred votes to a hundred and sixty-one. The Lords agreed to thebill as amended; and nothing was wanting but the royal assent. Whetherthat assent would or would not be given was a question which remained insuspense till the last day of the session. [378]

One strange inconsistency in the conduct of the reformers of thatgeneration deserves notice. It never occurred to any one of those whowere zealous for the Triennial Bill that every argument which could beurged in favour of that bill was an argument against the rules whichhad been framed in old times for the purpose of keeping parliamentarydeliberations and divisions strictly secret. It is quite natural thata government which withholds political privileges from the commonaltyshould withhold also political information. But nothing can be moreirrational than to give power, and not to give the knowledge withoutwhich there is the greatest risk that power will be abused. What couldbe more absurd than to call constituent bodies frequently together thatthey might decide whether their representative had done his duty bythem, and yet strictly to interdict them from learning, on trustworthyauthority, what he had said or how he had voted? The absurdity howeverappears to have passed altogether unchallenged. It is highly probablethat among the two hundred members of the House of Commons who voted forthe third reading of the Triennial Bill there was not one who would havehesitated about sending to Newgate any person who had dared to publisha report of the debate on that bill, or a list of the Ayes and the Noes. The truth is that the secrecy of parliamentary debates, a secrecy whichwould now be thought a grievance more intolerable than the Shipmoneyor the Star Chamber, was then inseparably associated, even in the mosthonest and intelligent minds, with constitutional freedom. A few oldmen still living could remember times when a gentleman who was known atWhitehall to have let fall a sharp word against a court favourite wouldhave been brought before the Privy Council and sent to the Tower. Thosetimes were gone, never to return. There was no longer any danger thatthe King would oppress the members of the legislature; and there wasmuch danger that the members of the legislature might oppress thepeople. Nevertheless the words Privilege of Parliament, those wordswhich the stern senators of the preceding generation had murmured when atyrant filled their chamber with his guards, those words which a hundredthousand Londoners had shouted in his ears when he ventured for the lasttime within the walls of their city; still retained a magical influenceover all who loved liberty. It was long before even the most enlightenedmen became sensible that the precautions which had been originallydevised for the purpose of protecting patriots against the displeasureof the Court now served only to protect sycophants against thedispleasure of the nation. 

It is also to be observed that few of those who showed at this time thegreatest desire to increase the political power of the people were asyet prepared to emancipate the press from the control of the government. The Licensing Act, which had passed, as a matter of course, in 1685, expired in 1693, and was renewed, not however without an opposition, which, though feeble when compared with the magnitude of the object indispute, proved that the public mind was beginning dimly to perceivehow closely civil freedom and freedom of conscience are connected withfreedom of discussion. 

On the history of the Licensing Act no preceding writer has thought itworth while to expend any care or labour. Yet surely the events whichled to the establishment of the liberty of the press in England, and inall the countries peopled by the English race, may be thought to haveas much interest for the present generation as any of those battles andsieges of which the most minute details have been carefully recorded. 

During the first three years of William's reign scarcely a voice seemsto have been raised against the restrictions which the law imposed onliterature. Those restrictions were in perfect harmony with the theoryof government held by the Tories, and were not, in practice, gallingto the Whigs. Roger Lestrange, who had been licenser under the last twoKings of the House of Stuart, and who had shown as little tendernessto Exclusionists and Presbyterians in that character as in his othercharacter of Observator, was turned out of office at the Revolution, andwas succeeded by a Scotch gentleman, who, on account of his passion forrare books, and his habit of attending all sales of libraries, was knownin the shops and coffeehouses near Saint Paul's by the name of CatalogueFraser. Fraser was a zealous Whig. By Whig authors and publishers hewas extolled as a most impartial and humane man. But the conduct whichobtained their applause drew on him the abuse of the Tories, and wasnot altogether pleasing to his official superior Nottingham. [379] Noserious difference however seems to have arisen till the year 1692. Inthat year an honest old clergyman named Walker, who had, in the time ofthe Commonwealth, been Gauden's curate, wrote a book which convincedall sensible and dispassionate readers that Gauden, and not Charles theFirst, was the author of the Icon Basilike. This book Fraser suffered tobe printed. If he had authorised the publication of a work in which theGospel of Saint John or the Epistle to the Romans had been representedas spurious, the indignation of the High Church party could hardly havebeen greater. The question was not literary, but religious. Doubt wasimpiety. In truth the Icon was to many fervent Royalists a supplementaryrevelation. One of them indeed had gone so far as to propose thatlessons taken out of the inestimable little volume should be read inthe churches. [380] Fraser found it necessary to resign his place; andNottingham appointed a gentleman of good blood and scanty fortune namedEdmund Bohun. This change of men produced an immediate and total changeof system; for Bohun was as strong a Tory as a conscientious man whohad taken the oaths could possibly be. He had been conspicuous as apersecutor of nonconformists and a champion of the doctrine of passiveobedience. He had edited Filmer's absurd treatise on the origin ofgovernment, and had written an answer to the paper which Algernon Sidneyhad delivered to the Sheriffs on Tower Hill. Nor did Bohun admit that, in swearing allegiance to William and Mary, he had done any thinginconsistent with his old creed. For he had succeeded in convincinghimself that they reigned by right of conquest, and that it was the dutyof an Englishman to serve them as faithfully as Daniel had served Dariusor as Nehemiah had served Artaxerxes. This doctrine, whatever peace itmight bring to his own conscience, found little favour with anyparty. The Whigs loathed it as servile; the Jacobites loathed it asrevolutionary. Great numbers of Tories had doubtless submitted toWilliam on the ground that he was, rightfully or wrongfully, Kingin possession; but very few of them were disposed to allow that hispossession had originated in conquest. Indeed the plea which hadsatisfied the weak and narrow mind of Bohun was a mere fiction, and, hadit been a truth, would have been a truth not to be uttered by Englishmenwithout agonies of shame and mortification. [381] He however clung tohis favourite whimsy with a tenacity which the general disapprobationonly made more intense. His old friends, the stedfast adherentsof indefeasible hereditary right, grew cold and reserved. He askedSancroft's blessing, and got only a sharp word, and a black look. He asked Ken's blessing; and Ken, though not much in the habit oftransgressing the rules of Christian charity and courtesy, murmuredsomething about a little scribbler. Thus cast out by one faction, Bohunwas not received by any other. He formed indeed a class apart; for hewas at once a zealous Filmerite and a zealous Williamite. He held thatpure monarchy, not limited by any law or contract, was the form ofgovernment which had been divinely ordained. But he held that Williamwas now the absolute monarch, who might annul the Great Charter, abolishtrial by jury, or impose taxes by royal proclamation, without forfeitingthe right to be implicitly obeyed by Christian men. As to the rest, Bohun was a man of some learning, mean understanding and unpopularmanners. He had no sooner entered on his functions than all PaternosterRow and Little Britain were in a ferment. The Whigs had, under Fraser'sadministration, enjoyed almost as entire a liberty as if there had beenno censorship. But they were now as severely treated as in the days ofLestrange. A History of the Bloody Assizes was about to be published, and was expected to have as great a run as the Pilgrim's Progress. Butthe new licenser refused his Imprimatur. The book, he said, representedrebels and schismatics as heroes and martyrs; and he would not sanctionit for its weight in gold. A charge delivered by Lord Warrington to thegrand jury of Cheshire was not permitted to appear, because His Lordshiphad spoken contemptuously of divine right and passive obedience. Julian Johnson found that, if he wished to promulgate his notions ofgovernment, he must again have recourse, as in the evil times of KingJames, to a secret press. [382] Such restraint as this, comingafter several years of unbounded freedom, naturally produced violentexasperation. Some Whigs began to think that the censorship itself was agrievance; all Whigs agreed in pronouncing the new censor unfit for hispost, and were prepared to join in an effort to get rid of him. 

Of the transactions which terminated in Bohun's dismission, and whichproduced the first parliamentary struggle for the liberty of unlicensedprinting, we have accounts written by Bohun himself and by others; butthere are strong reasons for believing that in none of those accounts isthe whole truth to be found. It may perhaps not be impossible, even atthis distance of time, to put together dispersed fragments of evidencein such a manner as to produce an authentic narrative which would haveastonished the unfortunate licenser himself. 

There was then about town a man of good family, of some reading, and ofsome small literary talent, named Charles Blount. [383] In politics hebelonged to the extreme section of the Whig party. In the days of theExclusion Bill he had been one of Shaftesbury's brisk boys, and had, under the signature of Junius Brutus, magnified the virtues and publicservices of Titus Oates, and exhorted the Protestants to take signalvengeance on the Papists for the fire of London and for the murderof Godfrey. [384] As to the theological questions which were in issuebetween Protestants and Papists, Blount was perfectly impartial. He wasan infidel, and the head of a small school of infidels who were troubledwith a morbid desire to make converts. He translated from the Latintranslation part of the Life of Apollonius of Tyana, and appended to itnotes of which the flippant profaneness called forth the severe censureof an unbeliever of a very different order, the illustrious Bayle. [385]Blount also attacked Christianity in several original treatises, orrather in several treatises purporting to be original; for he wasthe most audacious of literary thieves, and transcribed, withoutacknowledgment, whole pages from authors who had preceded him. Hisdelight was to worry the priests by asking them how light existedbefore the sun was made, how Paradise could be bounded by Pison, Gihon, Hiddekel and Euphrates, how serpents moved before they were condemnedto crawl, and where Eve found thread to stitch her figleaves. To hisspeculations on these subjects he gave the lofty name of the Oracles ofReason; and indeed whatever he said or wrote was considered as oracularby his disciples. Of those disciples the most noted was a bad writernamed Gildon, who lived to pester another generation with doggrel andslander, and whose memory is still preserved, not by his own voluminousworks, but by two or three lines in which his stupidity and venalityhave been contemptuously mentioned by Pope. [386]

Little as either the intellectual or the moral character of Blount mayseem to deserve respect, it is in a great measure to him that we mustattribute the emancipation of the English press. Between him and thelicensers there was a feud of long standing. Before the Revolution oneof his heterodox treatises had been grievously mutilated by Lestrange, and at last suppressed by orders from Lestrange's superior the Bishopof London. [387] Bohun was a scarcely less severe critic than Lestrange. Blount therefore began to make war on the censorship and the censor. The hostilities were commenced by a tract which came forth without anylicense, and which is entitled A Just Vindication of Learning and of theLiberty of the Press, by Philopatris. [388] Whoever reads this piece, and is not aware that Blount was one of the most unscrupulous plagiariesthat ever lived, will be surprised to find, mingled with the poorthoughts and poor words of a thirdrate pamphleteer, passages so elevatedin sentiment and style that they would be worthy of the greatest namein letters. The truth is that the just Vindication consists chiefly ofgarbled extracts from the Areopagitica of Milton. That noble discoursehad been neglected by the generation to which it was addressed, hadsunk into oblivion, and was at the mercy of every pilferer. The literaryworkmanship of Blount resembled the architectural workmanship of thosebarbarians who used the Coliseum and the Theatre of Pompey as quarries, who built hovels out of Ionian friezes and propped cowhouses on pillarsof lazulite. Blount concluded, as Milton had done, by recommending thatany book might be printed without a license, provided that the name ofthe author or publisher were registered. [389] The Just Vindication waswell received. The blow was speedily followed up. There still remainedin the Areopagitica many fine passages which Blount had not used in hisfirst pamphlet. Out of these passages he constructed a second pamphletentitled Reasons for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing. [390] To theseReasons he appended a postscript entitled A Just and True Characterof Edmund Bohun. This character was written with extreme bitterness. Passages were quoted from the licenser's writings to prove that he heldthe doctrines of passive obedience and nonresistance. He was accused ofusing his power systematically for the purpose of favouring the enemiesand silencing the friends of the Sovereigns whose bread he ate; and itwas asserted that he was the friend and the pupil of his predecessor SirRoger. 

Blount's Character of Bohun could not be publicly sold; but it waswidely circulated. While it was passing from hand to hand, and whilethe Whigs were every where exclaiming against the new censor as a secondLestrange, he was requested to authorise the publication of an anonymouswork entitled King William and Queen Mary Conquerors. [391] He readilyand indeed eagerly complied. For in truth there was between thedoctrines which he had long professed and the doctrines which werepropounded in this treatise a coincidence so exact that many suspectedhim of being the author; nor was this suspicion weakened by a passageto which a compliment was paid to his political writings. But the realauthor was that very Blount who was, at that very time, labouring toinflame the public both against the Licensing Act and the licenser. Blount's motives may easily be divined. His own opinions werediametrically opposed to those which, on this occasion, he put forwardin the most offensive manner. It is therefore impossible to doubt thathis object was to ensnare and to ruin Bohun. It was a base and wickedscheme. But it cannot be denied that the trap was laid and baited withmuch skill. The republican succeeded in personating a high Tory. The atheist succeeded in personating a high Churchman. The pamphletconcluded with a devout prayer that the God of light and love would openthe understanding and govern the will of Englishmen, so that theymight see the things which belonged to their peace. The censor was inraptures. In every page he found his own thoughts expressed more plainlythan he had ever expressed them. Never before, in his opinion, had thetrue claim of their Majesties to obedience been so clearly stated. EveryJacobite who read this admirable tract must inevitably be converted. Thenonjurors would flock to take the oaths. The nation, so long divided, would at length be united. From these pleasing dreams Bohun was awakenedby learning, a few hours after the appearance of the discourse which hadcharmed him, that the titlepage had set all London in a flame, and thatthe odious words, King William and Queen Mary Conquerors, had moved theindignation of multitudes who had never read further. Only four daysafter the publication he heard that the House of Commons had taken thematter up, that the book had been called by some members a rascallybook, and that, as the author was unknown, the Serjeant at Arms was insearch of the licenser. [392] Bohun's mind had never been strong; and hewas entirely unnerved and bewildered by the fury and suddenness ofthe storm which had burst upon him. He went to the House. Most of themembers whom he met in the passages and lobbies frowned on him. When hewas put to the bar, and, after three profound obeisances, ventured tolift his head and look round him, he could read his doom in the angryand contemptuous looks which were cast on him from every side. Hehesitated, blundered, contradicted himself, called the Speaker My Lord, and, by his confused way of speaking, raised a tempest of rude laughterwhich confused him still more. As soon as he had withdrawn, it wasunanimously resolved that the obnoxious treatise should be burned inPalace Yard by the common hangman. It was also resolved, without adivision, that the King should be requested to remove Bohun from theoffice of licenser. The poor man, ready to faint with grief and fear, was conducted by the officers of the House to a place of confinement. [393]

But scarcely was he in his prison when a large body of membersclamorously demanded a more important victim. Burnet had, shortly afterhe became Bishop of Salisbury, addressed to the clergy of his diocese aPastoral Letter, exhorting them to take the oaths. In one paragraph ofthis letter he had held language bearing some resemblance to that of thepamphlet which had just been sentenced to the flames. There were indeeddistinctions which a judicious and impartial tribunal would not havefailed to notice. But the tribunal before which Burnet was arraigned wasneither judicious nor impartial. His faults had made him many enemies, and his virtues many more. The discontented Whigs complained that heleaned towards the Court, the High Churchmen that he leaned towards theDissenters; nor can it be supposed that a man of so much boldness and solittle tact, a man so indiscreetly frank and so restlessly active, had passed through life without crossing the schemes and wounding thefeelings of some whose opinions agreed with his. He was regarded withpeculiar malevolence by Howe. Howe had never, even while he was inoffice, been in the habit of restraining his bitter and petulant tongue;and he had recently been turned out of office in a way which hadmade him ungovernably ferocious. The history of his dismission is notaccurately known, but it was certainly accompanied by some circumstanceswhich had cruelly galled his temper. If rumour could be trusted, he hadfancied that Mary was in love with him, and had availed himself of anopportunity which offered itself while he was in attendance on heras Vice Chamberlain to make some advances which had justly moved herindignation. Soon after he was discarded, he was prosecuted for having, in a fit of passion, beaten one of his servants savagely within theverge of the palace. He had pleaded guilty, and had been pardoned; butfrom this time he showed, on every occasion, the most rancorous personalhatred of his royal mistress, of her husband, and of all who werefavoured by either. It was known that the Queen frequently consultedBurnet; and Howe was possessed with the belief that her severity was tobe imputed to Burnet's influence. [394] Now was the time to be revenged. In a long and elaborate speech the spiteful Whig--for such he stillaffected to be--represented Burnet as a Tory of the worst class. "Thereshould be a law, " he said, "making it penal for the clergy to introducepolitics into their discourses. Formerly they sought to enslave us bycrying up the divine and indefeasible right of the hereditary prince. Now they try to arrive at the same result by telling us that we are aconquered people. " It was moved that the Bishop should be impeached. To this motion there was an unanswerable objection, which the Speakerpointed out. The Pastoral Letter had been written in 1689, and wastherefore covered by the Act of Grace which had been passed in 1690. Yeta member was not ashamed to say, "No matter: impeach him; and forcehim to plead the Act. " Few, however, were disposed to take a course sounworthy of a House of Commons. Some wag cried out, "Burn it; burn it;"and this bad pun ran along the benches, and was received with shouts oflaughter. It was moved that the Pastoral Letter should be burned by thecommon hangman. A long and vehement debate followed. For Burnet wasa man warmly loved as well as warmly hated. The great majority of theWhigs stood firmly by him; and his goodnature and generosity had madehim friends even among the Tories. The contest lasted two days. Montagueand Finch, men of widely different opinions, appear to have beenforemost among the Bishop's champions. An attempt to get rid of thesubject by moving the previous question failed. At length the mainquestion was put; and the Pastoral Letter was condemned to the flames bya small majority in a full house. The Ayes were a hundred and sixty-two;the Noes a hundred and fifty-five. [395] The general opinion, at leastof the capital, seems to have been that Burnet was cruelly treated. [396]

He was not naturally a man of fine feelings; and the life which he hadled had not tended to make them finer. He had been during many yearsa mark for theological and political animosity. Grave doctors hadanathematized him; ribald poets had lampooned him; princes and ministershad laid snares for his life; he had been long a wanderer and an exile, in constant peril of being kidnapped, struck in the boots, hanged andquartered. Yet none of these things had ever seemed to move him. Hisselfconceit had been proof against ridicule, and his dauntless temperagainst danger. But on this occasion his fortitude seems to have failedhim. To be stigmatized by the popular branch of the legislature as ateacher of doctrines so servile that they disgusted even Tories, to bejoined in one sentence of condemnation with the editor of Filmer, wastoo much. How deeply Burnet was wounded appeared many years later, when, after his death, his History of his Life and Times was given to theworld. In that work he is ordinarily garrulous even to minutenessabout all that concerns himself, and sometimes relates with amusingingenuousness his own mistakes and the censures which those mistakesbrought upon him. But about the ignominious judgment passed by the Houseof Commons on his Pastoral Letter he has preserved a most significantsilence. [397]

The plot which ruined Bohun, though it did no honour to those whocontrived it, produced important and salutary effects. Before theconduct of the unlucky licenser had been brought under the considerationof Parliament, the Commons had resolved, without any division, and, asfar as appears, without any discussion, that the Act which subjectedliterature to a censorship should be continued. But the question hadnow assumed a new aspect; and the continuation of the Act was no longerregarded as a matter of course. A feeling in favour of the liberty ofthe press, a feeling not yet, it is true, of wide extent or formidableintensity, began to show itself. The existing system, it was said, wasprejudicial both to commerce and to learning. Could it be expected thatany capitalist would advance the funds necessary for a great literaryundertaking, or that any scholar would expend years of toil and researchon such an undertaking, while it was possible that, at the last moment, the caprice, the malice, the folly of one man might frustrate the wholedesign? And was it certain that the law which so grievously restrictedboth the freedom of trade and the freedom of thought had really addedto the security of the State? Had not recent experience proved that thelicenser might himself be an enemy of their Majesties, or, worse still, an absurd and perverse friend; that he might suppress a book of which itwould be for their interest that every house in the country should havea copy, and that he might readily give his sanction to a libel whichtended to make them hateful to their people, and which deserved to betorn and burned by the hand of Ketch? Had the government gained much byestablishing a literary police which prevented Englishmen fromhaving the History of the Bloody Circuit, and allowed them, by way ofcompensation, to read tracts which represented King William and QueenMary as conquerors?

In that age persons who were not specially interested in a publicbill very seldom petitioned Parliament against it or for it. The onlypetitions therefore which were at this conjuncture presented to the twoHouses against the censorship came from booksellers, bookbinders andprinters. [398] But the opinion which these classes expressed wascertainly not confined to them. 

The law which was about to expire had lasted eight years. It was renewedfor only two years. It appears, from an entry in the journals of theCommons which unfortunately is defective, that a division took place onan amendment about the nature of which we are left entirely in the dark. The votes were ninety-nine to eighty. In the Lords it was proposed, according to the suggestion offered fifty years before by Milton andstolen from him by Blount, to exempt from the authority of the licenserevery book which bore the name of an author or publisher. This amendmentwas rejected; and the bill passed, but not without a protest signed byeleven peers who declared that they could not think it for the publicinterest to subject all learning and true information to the arbitrarywill and pleasure of a mercenary and perhaps ignorant licenser. Amongthose who protested were Halifax, Shrewsbury and Mulgrave, threenoblemen belonging to different political parties, but all distinguishedby their literary attainments. It is to be lamented that the signaturesof Tillotson and Burnet, who were both present on that day, should bewanting. Dorset was absent. [399]

Blount, by whose exertions and machinations the opposition to thecensorship had been raised, did not live to see that oppositionsuccessful. Though not a very young man, he was possessed by an insanepassion for the sister of his deceased wife. Having long laboured invain to convince the object of his love that she might lawfully marryhim, he at last, whether from weariness of life, or in the hope oftouching her heart, inflicted on himself a wound of which, afterlanguishing long, he died. He has often been mentioned as a blasphemerand selfmurderer. But the important service which, by means doubtlessmost immoral and dishonourable, he rendered to his country, has passedalmost unnoticed. [400]

Late in this busy and eventful session the attention of the Houses wascalled to the state of Ireland. The government of that kingdom had, during the six months which followed the surrender of Limerick, beenin an unsettled state. It was not till the Irish troops who adhered toSarsfield had sailed for France, and till the Irish troops who had madetheir election to remain at home had been disbanded, that William atlength put forth a proclamation solemnly announcing the terminationof the civil war. From the hostility of the aboriginal inhabitants, destitute as they now were of chiefs, of arms and of organization, nothing was to be apprehended beyond occasional robberies and murders. But the war cry of the Irishry had scarcely died away when the firstfaint murmurs of the Englishry began to be heard. Coningsby was duringsome months at the head of the administration. He soon made himself inthe highest degree odious to the dominant caste. He was an unprincipledman; he was insatiable of riches; and he was in a situation in whichriches were easily to be obtained by an unprincipled man. Immense sumsof money, immense quantities of military stores had been sent overfrom England. Immense confiscations were taking place in Ireland. Therapacious governor had daily opportunities of embezzling and extorting;and of those opportunities he availed himself without scruple or shame. This however was not, in the estimation of the colonists, his greatestoffence. They might have pardoned his covetousness; but they could notpardon the clemency which he showed to their vanquished and enslavedenemies. His clemency indeed amounted merely to this, that he lovedmoney more than he hated Papists, and that he was not unwilling to sellfor a high price a scanty measure of justice to some of the oppressedclass. Unhappily, to the ruling minority, sore from recent conflict anddrunk with recent victory, the subjugated majority was as a drove ofcattle, or rather as a pack of wolves. Man acknowledges in the inferioranimals no rights inconsistent with his own convenience; and as mandeals with the inferior animals the Cromwellian thought himself atliberty to deal with the Roman Catholic. Coningsby therefore drew onhimself a greater storm of obloquy by his few good acts than by his manybad acts. The clamour against him was so violent that he was removed;and Sidney went over, with the full power and dignity of LordLieutenant, to hold a Parliament at Dublin. [401]

But the easy temper and graceful manners of Sidney failed to produce aconciliatory effect. He does not indeed appear to have been greedy ofunlawful gain. But he did not restrain with a sufficiently firm handthe crowd of subordinate functionaries whom Coningsby's example andprotection had encouraged to plunder the public and to sell their goodoffices to suitors. Nor was the new Viceroy of a temper to bear hardon the feeble remains of the native aristocracy. He therefore speedilybecame an object of suspicion and aversion to the Anglosaxon settlers. His first act was to send out the writs for a general election. TheRoman Catholics had been excluded from every municipal corporation; butno law had yet deprived them of the county franchise. It is probablehowever that not a single Roman Catholic freeholder ventured to approachthe hustings. The members chosen were, with few exceptions, men animatedby the spirit of Enniskillen and Londonderry, a spirit eminently heroicin times of distress and peril, but too often cruel and imperious inthe season of prosperity and power. They detested the civil treaty ofLimerick, and were indignant when they learned that the Lord Lieutenantfully expected from them a parliamentary ratification of that odiouscontract, a contract which gave a licence to the idolatry of themass, and which prevented good Protestants from ruining their Popishneighbours by bringing civil actions for injuries done during the war. [402]

On the fifth of October 1692 the Parliament met at Dublin in ChichesterHouse. It was very differently composed from the assembly which hadborne the same title in 1689. Scarcely one peer, not one member of theHouse of Commons, who had sate at the King's Inns, was to be seen. Tothe crowd of O's and Macs, descendants of the old princes of the island, had succeeded men whose names indicated a Saxon origin. A single O, an apostate from the faith of his fathers, and three Macs, evidentlyemigrants from Scotland, and probably Presbyterians, had seats in theassembly. 

The Parliament, thus composed, had then less than the powers of theAssembly of Jamaica or of the Assembly of Virginia. Not merely was theLegislature which sate at Dublin subject to the absolute control of theLegislature which sate at Westminster: but a law passed in the fifteenthcentury, during the administration of the Lord Deputy Poynings, andcalled by his name, had provided that no bill which had not beenconsidered and approved by the Privy Council of England should bebrought into either House in Ireland, and that every bill so consideredand approved should be either passed without amendment or rejected. [403]

The session opened with a solemn recognition of the paramount authorityof the mother country. The Commons ordered their clerk to read to themthe English Act which required them to take the Oath of Supremacy and tosubscribe the Declaration against Transubstantiation. Having heard theAct read, they immediately proceeded to obey it. Addresses were thenvoted which expressed the warmest gratitude and attachment to the King. Two members, who had been untrue to the Protestant and English interestduring the troubles, were expelled. Supplies, liberal when compared withthe resources of a country devastated by years of predatory war, werevoted with eagerness. But the bill for confirming the Act of Settlementwas thought to be too favourable to the native gentry, and, as it couldnot be amended, was with little ceremony rejected. A committee of thewhole House resolved that the unjustifiable indulgence with which theIrish had been treated since the battle of the Boyne was one of thechief causes of the misery of the kingdom. A Committee of Grievancessate daily till eleven in the evening; and the proceedings of thisinquest greatly alarmed the Castle. Many instances of gross venalityand knavery on the part of men high in office were brought to light, andmany instances also of what was then thought a criminal lenity towardsthe subject nation. This Papist had been allowed to enlist in the army;that Papist had been allowed to keep a gun; a third had too good ahorse; a fourth had been protected against Protestants who wished tobring actions against him for wrongs committed during the years ofconfusion. The Lord Lieutenant, having obtained nearly as much money ashe could expect, determined to put an end to these unpleasant inquiries. He knew, however, that if he quarrelled with the Parliament for treatingeither peculators or Papists with severity, he should have littlesupport in England. He therefore looked out for a pretext, and wasfortunate enough to find one. The Commons had passed a vote which mightwith some plausibility be represented as inconsistent with thePoynings statute. Any thing which looked like a violation of that greatfundamental law was likely to excite strong disapprobation on the otherside of Saint George's Channel. The Viceroy saw his advantage, andavailed himself of it. He went to the chamber of the Lords at ChichesterHouse, sent for the Commons, reprimanded them in strong language, charged them with undutifully and ungratefully encroaching on the rightsof the mother country, and put an end to the session. [404]

Those whom he had lectured withdrew full of resentment. The imputationwhich he had thrown on them was unjust. They had a strong feeling oflove and reverence for the land from which they sprang, and looked withconfidence for redress to the supreme Parliament. Several of them wentto London for the purpose of vindicating themselves and of accusing theLord Lieutenant. They were favoured with a long and attentive audience, both by the Lords and by the Commons, and were requested to put thesubstance of what had been said into writing. The humble language ofthe petitioners, and their protestations that they had never intended toviolate the Poynings statute, or to dispute the paramount authority ofEngland, effaced the impression which Sidney's accusations had made. Both Houses addressed the King on the state of Ireland. They censuredno delinquent by name; but they expressed an opinion that there had beengross maladministration, that the public had been plundered, and thatRoman Catholics had been treated with unjustifiable tenderness. Williamin reply promised that what was amiss should be corrected. His friendSidney was soon recalled, and consoled for the loss of the viceregaldignity with the lucrative place of Master of the Ordnance. Thegovernment of Ireland was for a time entrusted to Lords justices, amongwhom Sir Henry Capel, a zealous Whig, very little disposed to showindulgence to Papists, had the foremost place. 

The prorogation drew nigh; and still the fate of the Triennial Bill wasuncertain. Some of the ablest ministers thought the bill a good one;and, even had they thought it a bad one, they would probably have triedto dissuade their master from rejecting it. It was impossible, however, to remove from his mind the impression that a concession on this pointwould seriously impair his authority. Not relying on the judgment of hisordinary advisers, he sent Portland to ask the opinion of Sir WilliamTemple. Temple had made a retreat for himself at a place called MoorPark, in the neighbourhood of Farnham. The country round his dwellingwas almost a wilderness. His amusement during some years had been tocreate in the waste what those Dutch burgomasters among whom he hadpassed some of the best years of his life, would have considered as aparadise. His hermitage had been occasionally honoured by the presenceof the King, who had from a boy known and esteemed the author of theTriple Alliance, and who was well pleased to find, among the heath andfurze of the wilds of Surrey, a spot which seemed to be part of Holland, a straight canal, a terrace, rows of clipped trees, and rectangular bedsof flowers and potherbs. 

Portland now repaired to this secluded abode and consulted the oracle. Temple was decidedly of opinion that the bill ought to pass. He wasapprehensive that the reasons which led him to form this opinion mightnot be fully and correctly reported to the King by Portland, who wasindeed as brave a soldier and as trusty a friend as ever lived, whosenatural abilities were not inconsiderable, and who, in some departmentsof business, had great experience, but who was very imperfectlyacquainted with the history and constitution of England. As the stateof Sir William's health made it impossible for him to go himself toKensington, he determined to send his secretary thither. The secretarywas a poor scholar of four or five and twenty, under whose plain garband ungainly deportment were concealed some of the choicest gifts thathave ever been bestowed on any of the children of men; rare powers ofobservation, brilliant wit, grotesque invention, humour of the mostaustere flavour, yet exquisitely delicious, eloquence singularly pure, manly and perspicuous. This young man was named Jonathan Swift. He wasborn in Ireland, but would have thought himself insulted if he had beencalled an Irishman. He was of unmixed English blood, and, through life, regarded the aboriginal population of the island in which he first drewbreath as an alien and a servile caste. He had in the late reign keptterms at the University of Dublin, but had been distinguished there onlyby his irregularities, and had with difficulty obtained his degree. Atthe time of the Revolution, he had, with many thousands of his fellowcolonists, taken refuge in the mother country from the violence ofTyrconnel, and had thought himself fortunate in being able to obtainshelter at Moor Park. [405] For that shelter, however, he had to paya heavy price. He was thought to be sufficiently remunerated for hisservices with twenty pounds a year and his board. He dined at the secondtable. Sometimes, indeed, when better company was not to be had, he washonoured by being invited to play at cards with his patron; and on suchoccasions Sir William was so generous as to give his antagonist a littlesilver to begin with. [406] The humble student would not have dared toraise his eyes to a lady of family; but, when he had become a clergyman, he began, after the fashion of the clergymen of that generation, to makelove to a pretty waitingmaid who was the chief ornament of the servants'hall, and whose name is inseparably associated with his in a sad andmysterious history. 

Swift many years later confessed some part of what he felt when he foundhimself on his way to Court. His spirit had been bowed down, and mightseem to have been broken, by calamities and humiliations. The languagewhich he was in the habit of holding to his patron, as far as we canjudge from the specimens which still remain, was that of a lacquey, or rather of a beggar. [407] A sharp word or a cold look of the mastersufficed to make the servant miserable during several days. [408] Butthis tameness was merely the tameness with which a tiger, caught, cagedand starved, submits to the keeper who brings him food. The humblemenial was at heart the haughtiest, the most aspiring, the mostvindictive, the most despotic of men. And now at length a great, aboundless prospect was opening before him. To William he was alreadyslightly known. At Moor Park the King had sometimes, when his host wasconfined by gout to an easy chair, been attended by the secretary aboutthe grounds. His Majesty had condescended to teach his companion theDutch way of cutting and eating asparagus, and had graciously askedwhether Mr. Swift would like to have a captain's commission in a cavalryregiment. But now for the first time the young man was to stand inthe royal presence as a counsellor. He was admitted into the closet, delivered a letter from Temple, and explained and enforced the argumentswhich that letter contained, concisely, but doubtless with clearness andability. There was, he said, no reason to think that short Parliamentswould be more disposed than long Parliaments to encroach on the justprerogatives of the Crown. In fact the Parliament which had, in thepreceding generation, waged war against a king, led him captive, senthim to the prison, to the bar, to the scaffold, was known in our annalsas emphatically the Long Parliament. Never would such disasters havebefallen the monarchy but for the fatal law which secured that assemblyfrom dissolution. [409] There was, it must be owned, a flaw in thisreasoning which a man less shrewd than William might easily detect. Thatone restriction of the royal prerogative had been mischievous didnot prove that another restriction would be salutary. It by no meansfollowed because one sovereign had been ruined by being unable to getrid of a hostile Parliament that another sovereign might not be ruinedby being forced to part with a friendly Parliament. To the greatmortification of the ambassador, his arguments failed to shake theKing's resolution. On the fourteenth of March the Commons were summonedto the Upper House; the title of the Triennial Bill was read; and it wasannounced, after the ancient form, that the King and Queen would takethe matter into their consideration. The Parliament was then prorogued. 

Soon after the prorogation William set out for the Continent. It wasnecessary that, before his departure, he should make some importantchanges. He was resolved not to discard Nottingham, on whose integrity, a virtue rare among English statesmen, he placed a well foundedreliance. Yet, if Nottingham remained Secretary of State, it wasimpossible to employ Russell at sea. Russell, though much mortified, was induced to accept a lucrative post in the household; and two navalofficers of great note in their profession, Killegrew and Delaval, wereplaced at the Board of Admiralty and entrusted with the command of theChannel Fleet. [410] These arrangements caused much murmuring among theWhigs; for Killegrew and Delaval were certainly Tories, and were by manysuspected of being Jacobites. But other promotions which took place atthe same time proved that the King wished to bear himself evenly betweenthe hostile factions. Nottingham had, during a year, been the soleSecretary of State. He was now joined with a colleague in whose societyhe must have felt himself very ill at ease, John Trenchard. Trenchardbelonged to the extreme section of the Whig party. He was a Taunton man, animated by that spirit which had, during two generations, peculiarlydistinguished Taunton. He had, in the days of Popeburnings and ofProtestant flails, been one of the renowned Green Riband Club; he hadbeen an active member of several stormy Parliaments; he had broughtin the first Exclusion Bill; he had been deeply concerned in the plotsformed by the chiefs of the opposition; he had fled to the Continent;he had been long an exile; and he had been excepted by name from thegeneral pardon of 1686. Though his life had been passed in turmoil, histemper was naturally calm; but he was closely connected with a set ofmen whose passions were far fiercer than his own. He had married thesister of Hugh Speke, one of the falsest and most malignant of thelibellers who brought disgrace on the cause of constitutional freedom. Aaron Smith, the solicitor of the Treasury, a man in whom the fanaticand the pettifogger were strangely united, possessed too much influenceover the new Secretary, with whom he had, ten years before, discussedplans of rebellion at the Rose. Why Trenchard was selected in preferenceto many men of higher rank and greater ability for a post of the firstdignity and importance, it is difficult to say. It seems however that, though he bore the title and drew the salary of Secretary of State, hewas not trusted with any of the graver secrets of State, and that he waslittle more than a superintendent of police, charged to look after theprinters of unlicensed books, the pastors of nonjuring congregations, and the haunters of treason taverns. [411]

Another Whig of far higher character was called at the same time to afar higher place in the administration. The Great Seal had now been fouryears in commission. Since Maynard's retirement, the constitution ofthe Court of Chancery had commanded little respect. Trevor, who was theFirst Commissioner, wanted neither parts nor learning; but his integritywas with good reason suspected; and the duties which, as Speaker of theHouse of Commons, he had to perform during four or five months inthe busiest part of every year, made it impossible for him to be anefficient judge in equity. Every suitor complained that he had to waita most unreasonable time for a judgment, and that, when at length ajudgment had been pronounced, it was very likely to be reversed onappeal. Meanwhile there was no efficient minister of justice, no greatfunctionary to whom it especially belonged to advise the King touchingthe appointment of judges, of Counsel for the Crown, of Justices of thePeace. [412] It was known that William was sensible of the inconvenienceof this state of things; and, during several months, there had beenflying rumours that a Lord Keeper or a Lord Chancellor would soonbe appointed. [413] The name most frequently mentioned was that ofNottingham. But the same reasons which had prevented him from acceptingthe Great Seal in 1689 had, since that year, rather gained than loststrength. William at length fixed his choice on Somers. 

Somers was only in his forty-second year; and five years had not elapsedsince, on the great day of the trial of the Bishops, his powers hadfirst been made known to the world. From that time his fame had beensteadily and rapidly rising. Neither in forensic nor in parliamentaryeloquence had he any superior. The consistency of his public conduct hadgained for him the entire confidence of the Whigs; and the urbanityof his manners had conciliated the Tories. It was not without greatreluctance that he consented to quit an assembly over which he exercisedan immense influence for an assembly where it would be necessary for himto sit in silence. He had been but a short time in great practice. Hissavings were small. Not having the means of supporting a hereditarytitle, he must, if he accepted the high dignity which was offered tohim, preside during some years in the Upper House without taking part inthe debates. The opinion of others, however, was that he would be moreuseful as head of the law than as head of the Whig party in the Commons. He was sent for to Kensington, and called into the Council Chamber. Caermarthen spoke in the name of the King. "Sir John, " he said, "it isnecessary for the public service that you should take this charge uponyou; and I have it in command from His Majesty to say that he can admitof no excuse. " Somers submitted. The seal was delivered to him, with apatent which entitled him to a pension of two thousand a year from theday on which he should quit his office; and he was immediately sworn ina Privy Councillor and Lord Keeper. [414]

The Gazette which announced these changes in the administration, announced also the King's departure. He set out for Holland on thetwenty-fourth of March. 

He left orders that the Estates of Scotland should, after a recess ofmore than two years and a half, be again called together. Hamilton, whohad lived many months in retirement, had, since the fall of Melville, been reconciled to the Court, and now consented to quit his retreat, and to occupy Holyrood House as Lord High Commissioner. It wasnecessary that one of the Secretaries of State for Scotland should bein attendance on the King. The Master of Stair had therefore gone to theContinent. His colleague, Johnstone, was chief manager for the Crown atEdinburgh, and was charged to correspond regularly with Carstairs, whonever quitted William. [415]

It might naturally have been expected that the session would beturbulent. The Parliament was that very Parliament which had in 1689passed, by overwhelming majorities, all the most violent resolutionswhich Montgomery and his club could frame, which had refused supplies, which had proscribed the ministers of the Crown, which had closed theCourts of justice, which had seemed bent on turning Scotland into anoligarchical republic. In 1690 the Estates had been in a better temper. Yet, even in 1690, they had, when the ecclesiastical polity of the realmwas under consideration, paid little deference to what was well known tobe the royal wish. They had abolished patronage; they had sanctioned therabbling of the episcopal clergy; they had refused to pass a TolerationAct. It seemed likely that they would still be found unmanageable whenquestions touching religion came before them; and such questions itwas unfortunately necessary to bring forward. William had, during therecess, attempted to persuade the General Assembly of the Church toreceive into communion such of the old curates as should subscribe theConfession of Faith and should submit to the government of Synods. Butthe attempt had failed; and the Assembly had consequently been dissolvedby the Lord Commissioner. Unhappily, the Act which established thePresbyterian polity had not defined the extent of the power which wasto be exercised by the Sovereign over the Spiritual Courts. No soonertherefore had the dissolution been announced than the Moderatorrequested permission to speak. He was told that he was now merelya private person. As a private person he requested a hearing, andprotested, in the name of his brethren, against the royal mandate. The right, he said, of the office bearers of the Church to meet anddeliberate touching her interests was derived from her Divine Head, and was not dependent on the pleasure of the temporal magistrate. His brethren stood up, and by an approving murmur signified theirconcurrence in what their President had said. Before they retired theyfixed a day for their next meeting. [416] It was indeed a very distantday; and when it came neither minister nor elder attended; for even theboldest members shrank from a complete rupture with the civilpower. But, though there was not open war between the Church and theGovernment, they were estranged from each other, jealous of eachother, and afraid of each other. No progress had been made towards areconciliation when the Estates met; and which side the Estates wouldtake might well be doubted. 

But the proceedings of this strange Parliament, in almost every one ofits sessions, falsified all the predictions of politicians. It had oncebeen the most unmanageable of senates. It was now the most obsequious. Yet the old men had again met in the old hall. There were all the mostnoisy agitators of the club, with the exception of Montgomery, who wasdying of want and of a broken heart in a garret far from his nativeland. There was the canting Ross and the perfidious Annandale. Therewas Sir Patrick Hume, lately created a peer, and henceforth to becalled Lord Polwarth, but still as eloquent as when his interminabledeclamations and dissertations ruined the expedition of Argyle. Butthe whole spirit of the assembly had undergone a change. The memberslistened with profound respect to the royal letter, and returned ananswer in reverential and affectionate language. An extraordinary aidof a hundred and fourteen thousand pounds sterling was granted to theCrown. Severe laws were enacted against the Jacobites. The legislationon ecclesiastical matters was as Erastian as William himself could havedesired. An Act was passed requiring all ministers of the EstablishedChurch to swear fealty to their Majesties, and directing the GeneralAssembly to receive into communion those Episcopalian ministers, notyet deprived, who should declare that they conformed to the Presbyteriandoctrine and discipline. [417] Nay, the Estates carried adulation so faras to make it their humble request to the King that he would be pleasedto confer a Scotch peerage on his favourite Portland. This wasindeed their chief petition. They did not ask for redress of a singlegrievance. They contented themselves with hinting in general terms thatthere were abuses which required correction, and with referring the Kingfor fuller information to his own Ministers, the Lord High Commissionerand the Secretary of State. [418]

There was one subject on which it may seem strange that even the mostservile of Scottish Parliaments should have kept silence. More than ayear had elapsed since the massacre of Glencoe; and it might havebeen expected that the whole assembly, peers, commissioners of shires, commissioners of burghs, would with one voice have demanded a strictinvestigation into that great crime. It is certain, however, that nomotion for investigation was made. The state of the Gaelic clans wasindeed taken into consideration. A law was passed for the more effectualsuppressing of depredations and outrages beyond the Highland line; andin that law was inserted a special proviso reserving to Mac Callum Morehis hereditary jurisdiction. But it does not appear, either from thepublic records of the proceedings of the Estates, or from those privateletters in which Johnstone regularly gave Carstairs an account of whathad passed, that any speaker made any allusion to the fate of MacIan and his kinsmen. [419] The only explanation of this extraordinarysilence seems to be that the public men who were assembled in thecapital of Scotland knew little and cared little about the fate of athieving tribe of Celts. The injured clan, bowed down by fear ofthe allpowerful Campbells, and little accustomed to resort to theconstituted authorities of the kingdom for protection or redress, presented no petition to the Estates. The story of the butchery hadbeen told at coffeehouses, but had been told in different ways. Veryrecently, one or two books, in which the facts were but too trulyrelated, had come forth from the secret presses of London. But thosebooks were not publicly exposed to sale. They bore the name of noresponsible author. The Jacobite writers were, as a class, savagelymalignant and utterly regardless of truth. Since the Macdonalds didnot complain, a prudent man might naturally be unwilling to incur thedispleasure of the King, of the ministers, and of the most powerfulfamily in Scotland, by bringing forward an accusation grounded onnothing but reports wandering from mouth to mouth, or pamphlets which nolicenser had approved, to which no author had put his name, and which nobookseller ventured to place in his shop-window. But whether this beor be not the true solution, it is certain that the Estates separatedquietly after a session of two months, during which, as far as cannow be discovered, the name of Glencoe was not once uttered in theParliament House. 

CHAPTER XX

 State of the Court of Saint Germains--Feeling of the Jacobites; Compounders and Noncompounders--Change of Ministry at Saint Germains; Middleton--New Declaration put forth by James--Effect of the new Declaration--French Preparations for the Campaign; Institution of the Order of Saint Lewis--Middleton's Account of Versailles--William's Preparations for the Campaign--Lewis takes the Field--Lewis returns to Versailles--Manoeuvres of Luxemburg--Battle of Landen--Miscarriage of the Smyrna Fleet--Excitement in London--Jacobite Libels; William Anderton--Writings and Artifices of the Jacobites--Conduct of Caermarthen--Now Charter granted to the East India Company--Return of William to England; Military Successes of France--Distress of France--A Ministry necessary to Parliamentary Government--The First Ministry gradually formed--Sunderland--Sunderland advises the King to give the Preference to the Whigs--Reasons for preferring the Whigs--Chiefs of the Whig Party; Russell--Somers--Montague--Wharton--Chiefs of the Tory Party; Harley--Foley--Howe--Meeting of Parliament--Debates about the Naval Miscarriages--Russell First Lord of the Admiralty; Retirement of Nottingham--Shrewsbury refuses Office--Debates about the Trade with India--Bill for the Regulation of Trials in Cases of Treason--Triennial Bill--Place Bill--Bill for the Naturalisation of Foreign Protestants--Supply--Ways and Means; Lottery Loan--The Bank of England--Prorogation of Parliament; Ministerial Arrangements; Shrewsbury Secretary of State--New Titles bestowed--French Plan of War; English Plan of War--Expedition against Brest--Naval Operations in the Mediterranean--War by Land--Complaints of Trenchard's Administration--The Lancashire Prosecutions--Meeting of the Parliament; Death of Tillotson--Tenison Archbishop of Canterbury; Debates on the Lancashire Prosecutions--Place Bill--Bill for the Regulation of Trials in Cases of Treason; the Triennial Bill passed--Death of Mary--Funeral of Mary--Greenwich Hospital founded

IT is now time to relate the events which, since the battle of La Hogue, had taken place at Saint Germains. 

James, after seeing the fleet which was to have convoyed him back to hiskingdom burned down to the water edge, had returned in no good humour tohis abode near Paris. Misfortune generally made him devout after hisown fashion; and he now starved himself and flogged himself till hisspiritual guides were forced to interfere. [420]

It is difficult to conceive a duller place than Saint Germains was whenhe held his Court there; and yet there was scarcely in all Europe aresidence more enviably situated than that which the generous Lewis hadassigned to his suppliants. The woods were magnificent, the air clearand salubrious, the prospects extensive and cheerful. No charm ofrural life was wanting; and the towers of the most superb city of theContinent were visible in the distance. The royal apartments were richlyadorned with tapestry and marquetry, vases of silver and mirrors ingilded frames. A pension of more than forty thousand pounds sterlingwas annually paid to James from the French Treasury. He had a guard ofhonour composed of some of the finest soldiers in Europe. If hewished to amuse himself with field sports, he had at his command anestablishment far more sumptuous than that which had belonged to himwhen he was at the head of a great kingdom, an army of huntsmen andfowlers, a vast arsenal of guns, spears, buglehorns and tents, miles ofnetwork, staghounds, foxhounds, harriers, packs for the boar and packsfor the wolf, gerfalcons for the heron and haggards for the wildduck. His presence chamber and his antechamber were in outward show assplendid as when he was at Whitehall. He was still surrounded by blueribands and white staves. But over the mansion and the domain broodeda constant gloom, the effect, partly of bitter regrets and of deferredhopes, but chiefly of the abject superstition which had taken completepossession of his own mind, and which was affected by almost all thosewho aspired to his favour. His palace wore the aspect of a monastery. There were three places of worship within the spacious pile. Thirty orforty ecclesiastics were lodged in the building; and their apartmentswere eyed with envy by noblemen and gentlemen who had followed thefortunes of their Sovereign, and who thought it hard that, when therewas so much room under his roof, they should be forced to sleep in thegarrets of the neighbouring town. Among the murmurers was the brilliantAnthony Hamilton. He has left us a sketch of the life of Saint Germains, a slight sketch indeed, but not unworthy of the artist to whom we owethe most highly finished and vividly coloured picture of the EnglishCourt in the days when the English Court was gayest. He complains thatexistence was one round of religious exercises; that, in order to livein peace, it was necessary to pass half the day in devotion or in theoutward show of devotion; that, if he tried to dissipate his melancholyby breathing the fresh air of that noble terrace which looks down on thevalley of the Seine, he was driven away by the clamour of a Jesuit whohad got hold of some unfortunate Protestant royalists from England, and was proving to them that no heretic could go to heaven. In general, Hamilton said, men suffering under a common calamity have a strongfellow feeling and are disposed to render good offices to each other. But it was not so at Saint Germains. There all was discord, jealousy, bitterness of spirit. Malignity was concealed under the show offriendship and of piety. All the saints of the royal household werepraying for each other and backbiting each other from morning, to night. Here and there in the throng of hypocrites might be remarked a man toohighspirited to dissemble. But such a man, however advantageously hemight have made himself known elsewhere, was certain to be treated withdisdain by the inmates of that sullen abode. [421]

Such was the Court of James, as described by a Roman Catholic. Yet, however disagreeable that Court may have been to a Roman Catholic, itwas infinitely more disagreeable to a Protestant. For the Protestant hadto endure, in addition to all the dulness of which the Roman Catholiccomplained, a crowd of vexations from which the Roman Catholic was free. In every competition between a Protestant and a Roman Catholic the RomanCatholic was preferred. In every quarrel between a Protestant and aRoman Catholic the Roman Catholic was supposed to be in the right. While the ambitious Protestant looked in vain for promotion, whilethe dissipated Protestant looked in vain for amusement, the seriousProtestant looked in vain for spiritual instruction and consolation. James might, no doubt, easily have obtained permission for those membersof the Church of England who had sacrificed every thing in his cause tomeet privately in some modest oratory, and to receive the eucharisticbread and wine from the hands of one of their own clergy; but he did notwish his residence to be defiled by such impious rites. Doctor DennisGranville, who had quitted the richest deanery, the richest archdeaconryand one of the richest livings in England, rather than take the oaths, gave mortal offence by asking leave to read prayers to the exiles of hisown communion. His request was refused; and he was so grossly insultedby his master's chaplains and their retainers that he was forced toquit Saint Germains. Lest some other Anglican doctor should be equallyimportunate, James wrote to inform his agents in England that he wishedno Protestant divine to come out to him. [422] Indeed the nonjuringclergy were at least as much sneered at and as much railed at in hispalace as in his nephew's. If any man had a claim to be mentioned withrespect at Saint Germains, it was surely Sancroft. Yet it was reportedthat the bigots who were assembled there never spoke of him but withaversion and disgust. The sacrifice of the first place in the Church, of the first place in the peerage, of the mansion at Lambeth and themansion at Croydon, of immense patronage and of a revenue of more thanfive thousand a year was thought but a poor atonement for the greatcrime of having modestly remonstrated against the unconstitutionalDeclaration of Indulgence. Sancroft was pronounced to be just such atraitor and just such a penitent as Judas Iscariot. The old hypocritehad, it was said, while affecting reverence and love for his master, given the fatal signal to his master's enemies. When the mischief hadbeen done and could not be repaired, the conscience of the sinner hadbegun to torture him. He had, like his prototype, blamed himself andbemoaned himself. He had, like his prototype, flung down his wealth atthe feet of those whose instrument he had been. The best thing that hecould now do was to make the parallel complete by hanging himself. [423]

James seems to have thought that the strongest proof of kindness whichhe could give to heretics who had resigned wealth, country, family, forhis sake, was to suffer them to be beset, on their dying beds, by hispriests. If some sick man, helpless in body and in mind, and deafenedby the din of bad logic and bad rhetoric, suffered a wafer to be thrustinto his mouth, a great work of grace was triumphantly announced to theCourt; and the neophyte was buried with all the pomp of religion. Butif a royalist, of the highest rank and most stainless character, diedprofessing firm attachment to the Church of England, a hole was dug inthe fields; and, at dead of night, he was flung into it and coveredup like a mass of carrion. Such were the obsequies of the Earl ofDunfermline, who had served the House of Stuart with the hazard ofhis life and to the utter ruin of his fortunes, who had fought atKilliecrankie, and who had, after the victory, lifted from the earth thestill breathing remains of Dundee. While living he had been treated withcontumely. The Scottish officers who had long served under him had invain entreated that, when they were formed into a company, he mightstill be their commander. His religion had been thought a fataldisqualification. A worthless adventurer, whose only recommendation wasthat he was a Papist, was preferred. Dunfermline continued, during ashort time, to make his appearance in the circle which surrounded thePrince whom he had served too well; but it was to no purpose. The bigotswho ruled the Court refused to the ruined and expatriated ProtestantLord the means of subsistence; he died of a broken heart; and theyrefused him even a grave. [424]

The insults daily offered at Saint Germains to the Protestant religionproduced a great effect in England. The Whigs triumphantly asked whetherit were not clear that the old tyrant was utterly incorrigible; and manyeven of the nonjurors observed his proceedings with shame, disgust andalarm. [425] The Jacobite party had, from the first, been divided intotwo sections, which, three or four years after the Revolution, began tobe known as the Compounders and the Noncompounders. The Compounders werethose who wished for a restoration, but for a restoration accompanied bya general amnesty, and by guarantees for the security of the civil andecclesiastical constitution of the realm. The Noncompounders thoughtit downright Whiggery, downright rebellion; to take advantage of HisMajesty's unfortunate situation for the purpose of imposing on him anycondition. The plain duty of his subjects was to bring him back. Whattraitors he would punish and what traitors he would spare, what laws hewould observe and with what laws he would dispense, were questions to bedecided by himself alone. If he decided them wrongly, he must answer forhis fault to heaven and not to his people. 

The great body of the English Jacobites were more or less Compounders. The pure Noncompounders were chiefly to be found among the RomanCatholics, who, very naturally, were not solicitous to obtain anysecurity for a religion which they thought heretical, or for a polityfrom the benefits of which they were excluded. There were also someProtestant nonjurors, such as Kettlewell and Hickes, who resolutelyfollowed the theory of Filmer to all the extreme consequences to whichit led. But, though Kettlewell tried to convince his countrymen thatmonarchical government had been ordained by God, not as a means ofmaking them happy here, but as a cross which it was their duty totake up and bear in the hope of being recompensed for their sufferingshereafter, and though Hickes assured them that there was not a singleCompounder in the whole Theban legion, very few churchmen were inclinedto run the risk of the gallows merely for the purpose of reestablishingthe High Commission and the Dispensing Power. 

The Compounders formed the main strength of the Jacobite party inEngland; but the Noncompounders had hitherto had undivided sway at SaintGermains. No Protestant, no moderate Roman Catholic, no man who dared tohint that any law could bind the royal prerogative, could hope for thesmallest mark of favour from the banished King. The priests and theapostate Melfort, the avowed enemy of the Protestant religion and ofcivil liberty, of Parliaments, of trial by jury and of the Habeas CorpusAct, were in exclusive possession of the royal ear. Herbert was calledChancellor, walked before the other officers of state, wore a black robeembroidered with gold, and carried a seal; but he was a member of theChurch of England; and therefore he was not suffered to sit at theCouncil Board. [426]

The truth is that the faults of James's head and heart were incurable. In his view there could be between him and his subjects no reciprocityof obligation. Their duty was to risk property, liberty, life, in orderto replace him on the throne, and then to bear patiently whatever hechose to inflict upon them. They could no more pretend to meritbefore him than before God. When they had done all, they were stillunprofitable servants. The highest praise due to the royalist who shedhis blood on the field of battle or on the scaffold for hereditarymonarchy was simply that he was not a traitor. After all the severediscipline which the deposed King had undergone, he was still as muchbent on plundering and abasing the Church of England as on the day whenhe told the kneeling fellows of Magdalene to get out of his sight, oron the day when he sent the Bishops to the Tower. He was in the habitof declaring that he would rather die without seeing England again thanstoop to capitulate with those whom he ought to command. [427] In theDeclaration of April 1692 the whole man appears without disguise, fullof his own imaginary rights, unable to understand how any body buthimself can have any rights, dull, obstinate and cruel. Another paperwhich he drew up about the same time shows, if possible, still moreclearly, how little he had profited by a sharp experience. In that paperhe set forth the plan according to which he intended to govern when heshould be restored. He laid it down as a rule that one Commissioner ofthe Treasury, one of the two Secretaries of State, the Secretary at War, the majority of the Great Officers of the Household, the majority ofthe Lords of the Bedchamber, the majority of the officers of the army, should always be Roman Catholics. [428]

It was to no purpose that the most eminent Compounders sent fromLondon letter after letter filled with judicious counsel and earnestsupplication. It was to no purpose that they demonstrated in theplainest manner the impossibility of establishing Popish ascendancy ina country where at least forty-nine fiftieths of the population and muchmore than forty-nine fiftieths of the wealth and the intelligence wereProtestant. It was to no purpose that they informed their master thatthe Declaration of April 1692 had been read with exultation by hisenemies and with deep affliction by his friends, that it had beenprinted and circulated by the usurpers, that it had done more than allthe libels of the Whigs to inflame the nation against him, and that ithad furnished those naval officers who had promised him support with aplausible pretext for breaking faith with him, and for destroying thefleet which was to have convoyed him back to his kingdom. He continuedto be deaf to the remonstrances of his best friends in Englandtill those remonstrances began to be echoed at Versailles. All theinformation which Lewis and his ministers were able to obtain touchingthe state of our island satisfied them that James would never berestored unless he could bring himself to make large concessions to hissubjects. It was therefore intimated to him, kindly and courteously, but seriously, that he would do well to change his counsels and hiscounsellors. France could not continue the war for the purpose offorcing a Sovereign on an unwilling nation. She was crushed by publicburdens. Her trade and industry languished. Her harvest and her vintagehad failed. The peasantry were starving. The faint murmurs of theprovincial Estates began to be heard. There was a limit to the amountof the sacrifices which the most absolute prince could demand from thosewhom he ruled. However desirous the Most Christian King might be touphold the cause of hereditary monarchy and of pure religion allover the world, his first duty was to his own kingdom; and, unless acounterrevolution speedily took place in England, his duty to his ownkingdom might impose on him the painful necessity of treating with thePrince of Orange. It would therefore be wise in James to do withoutdelay whatever he could honourably and conscientiously do to win backthe hearts of his people. 

Thus pressed, James unwillingly yielded. He consented to give a sharein the management of his affairs to one of the most distinguished of theCompounders, Charles Earl of Middleton. 

Middleton's family and his peerage were Scotch. But he was closelyconnected with some of the noblest houses of England; he had residedlong in England; he had been appointed by Charles the Second one of theEnglish Secretaries of State, and had been entrusted by James with thelead of the English House of Commons. His abilities and acquirementswere considerable; his temper was easy and generous; his manners werepopular; and his conduct had generally been consistent and honourable. He had, when Popery was in the ascendant, resolutely refused to purchasethe royal favour by apostasy. Roman Catholic ecclesiastics had been sentto convert him; and the town had been much amused by the dexterity withwhich the layman baffled the divines. A priest undertook to demonstratethe doctrine of transubstantiation, and made the approaches in the usualform. "Your Lordship believes in the Trinity. " "Who told you so?" saidMiddleton. "Not believe in the Trinity!" cried the priest in amazement. "Nay, " said Middleton; "prove your religion to be true if you can; butdo not catechize me about mine. " As it was plain that the Secretarywas not a disputant whom it was easy to take at an advantage, thecontroversy ended almost as soon as it began. [429] When fortunechanged, Middleton adhered to the cause of hereditary monarchy with astedfastness which was the more respectable because he would have had nodifficulty in making his peace with the new government. His sentimentswere so well known that, when the kingdom was agitated by apprehensionsof an invasion and an insurrection, he was arrested and sent to theTower; but no evidence on which he could be convicted of treason wasdiscovered; and, when the dangerous crisis was past, he was set atliberty. It should seem indeed that, during the three years whichfollowed the Revolution, he was by no means an active plotter. He sawthat a Restoration could be effected only with the general assent of thenation, and that the nation would never assent to a Restoration withoutsecurities against Popery and arbitrary power. He therefore conceivedthat, while his banished master obstinately refused to give suchsecurities, it would be worse than idle to conspire against the existinggovernment. 

Such was the man whom James, in consequence of strong representationsfrom Versailles, now invited to join him in France. The great bodyof Compounders learned with delight that they were at length to berepresented in the Council at Saint Germains by one of their favouriteleaders. Some noblemen and gentlemen, who, though they had not approvedof the deposition of James, had been so much disgusted by his perverseand absurd conduct that they had long avoided all connection with him, now began to hope that he had seen his error. They had refused tohave any thing to do with Melfort; but they communicated freely withMiddleton. The new minister conferred also with the four traitors whoseinfamy has been made preeminently conspicuous by their station, theirabilities, and their great public services; with Godolphin, the greatobject of whose life was to be in favour with both the rival Kings atonce, and to keep, through all revolutions and counterrevolutions, hishead, his estate and a place at the Board of Treasury; with Shrewsbury, who, having once in a fatal moment entangled himself in criminal anddishonourable engagements, had not had the resolution to break throughthem; with Marlborough, who continued to profess the deepest repentancefor the past and the best intentions for the future; and with Russell, who declared that he was still what he had been before the day of LaHogue, and renewed his promise to do what Monk had done, on conditionthat a general pardon should be granted to all political offenders, and that the royal power should be placed under strong constitutionalrestraints. 

Before Middleton left England he had collected the sense of all theleading Compounders. They were of opinion that there was one expedientwhich would reconcile contending factions at home, and lead to thespeedy pacification of Europe. This expedient was that James shouldresign the Crown in favour of the Prince of Wales, and that the Princeof Wales should be bred a Protestant. If, as was but too probable, HisMajesty should refuse to listen to this suggestion, he must at leastconsent to put forth a Declaration which might do away the unfavourableimpression made by his Declaration of the preceding spring. A paper suchas it was thought expedient that he should publish was carefully drawnup, and, after much discussion, approved. 

Early in the year 1693, Middleton, having been put in full possession ofthe views of the principal English Jacobites, stole across the Channel, and made his appearance at the Court of James. There was at that Courtno want of slanderers and sneerers whose malignity was only the moredangerous because it wore a meek and sanctimonious air. Middleton found, on his arrival, that numerous lies, fabricated by the priests who fearedand hated him, were already in circulation. Some Noncompounders toohad written from London that he was at heart a Presbyterian and arepublican. He was however very graciously received, and was appointedSecretary of State conjointly with Melfort. [430]

It very soon appeared that James was fully resolved never to resign theCrown, or to suffer the Prince of Wales to be bred a heretic; and itlong seemed doubtful whether any arguments or entreaties would inducehim to sign the Declaration which his friends in England had prepared. It was indeed a document very different from any that had yet appearedunder his Great Seal. He was made to promise that he would grant a freepardon to all his subjects who should not oppose him after he shouldland in the island; that, as soon as he was restored, he would calla Parliament; that he would confirm all such laws, passed during theusurpation, as the Houses should tender to him for confirmation; thathe would waive his right to the chimney money; that he would protect anddefend the Established Church in the enjoyment of all her possessionsand privileges; that he would not again violate the Test Act; that hewould leave it to the legislature to define the extent of his dispensingpower; and that he would maintain the Act of Settlement in Ireland. 

He struggled long and hard. He pleaded his conscience. Could a son ofthe Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church bind himself to protect anddefend heresy, and to enforce a law which excluded true believers fromoffice? Some of the ecclesiastics who swarmed in his household toldhim that he could not without sin give any such pledge as his undutifulsubjects demanded. On this point the opinion of Middleton, who was aProtestant, could be of no weight. But Middleton found an ally inone whom he regarded as a rival and an enemy. Melfort, scared by theuniversal hatred of which he knew himself to be the object, and afraidthat he should be held accountable, both in England and in France, forhis master's wrongheadedness, submitted the case to several eminentDoctors of the Sorbonne. These learned casuists pronounced theDeclaration unobjectionable in a religious point of view. The greatBossuet, Bishop of Meaux, who was regarded by the Gallican Church as afather scarcely inferior in authority to Cyprian or Augustin, showed, by powerful arguments, both theological and political, that the scruplewhich tormented James was precisely of that sort against which amuch wiser King had given a caution in the words, "Be not righteousovermuch. " [431] The authority of the French divines was supported bythe authority of the French government. The language held at Versailleswas so strong that James began to be alarmed. What if Lewis should takeserious offence, should think his hospitality ungratefully requited, should conclude a peace with the usurpers, and should request hisunfortunate guests to seek another asylum? It was necessary to submit. On the seventeenth of April 1693 the Declaration was signed and sealed. The concluding sentence was a prayer. "We come to vindicate our ownright and to establish the liberties of our people; and may God giveus success in the prosecution of the one as we sincerely intend theconfirmation of the other!" [432] The prayer was heard. The success ofJames was strictly proportioned to his sincerity. What his sinceritywas we know on the best evidence. Scarcely had he called on heaven towitness the truth of his professions, when he directed Melfort to send acopy of the Declaration to Rome with such explanations as might satisfythe Pope. Melfort's letter ends thus: "After all, the object of thisDeclaration is only to get us back to England. We shall fight the battleof the Catholics with much greater advantage at Whitehall than at SaintGermains. " [433]

Meanwhile the document from which so much was expected had beendespatched to London. There it was printed at a secret press in thehouse of a Quaker; for there was among the Quakers a party, smallin number, but zealous and active, which had imbibed the politics ofWilliam Penn. [434] To circulate such a work was a service of somedanger; but agents were found. Several persons were taken up whiledistributing copies in the streets of the city. A hundred packets werestopped in one day at the Post Office on their way to the fleet. But, after a short time, the government wisely gave up the endeavour tosuppress what could not be suppressed, and published the Declaration atfull length, accompanied by a severe commentary. [435]

The commentary, however, was hardly needed. The Declaration altogetherfailed to produce the effect which Middleton had anticipated. The truthis that his advice had not been asked till it mattered not what advicehe gave. If James had put forth such a manifesto in January 1689, thethrone would probably not have been declared vacant. If he had put forthsuch a manifesto when he was on the coast of Normandy at the head of anarmy, he would have conciliated a large part of the nation, and he mightpossibly have been joined by a large part of the fleet. But both in 1689and in 1692 he had held the language of an implacable tyrant; and itwas now too late to affect tenderness of heart and reverence for theconstitution of the realm. The contrast between the new Declaration andthe preceding Declaration excited, not without reason, general suspicionand contempt. What confidence could be placed in the word of a Princeso unstable, of a Prince who veered from extreme to extreme? In 1692nothing would satisfy him but the heads and quarters of hundreds of poorploughmen and boatmen who had, several years before, taken some rusticliberties with him at which his grandfather Henry the Fourth would havehad a hearty laugh. In 1693 the foulest and most ungrateful treasonswere to be covered with oblivion. Caermarthen expressed the generalsentiment. "I do not, " he said, "understand all this. Last April I wasto be hanged. This April I am to have a free pardon. I cannot imaginewhat I have done during the past year to deserve such goodness. "The general opinion was that a snare was hidden under this unwontedclemency, this unwonted respect for law. The Declaration, it was said, was excellent; and so was the Coronation oath. Every body knew how KingJames had observed his Coronation oath; and every body might guess howhe would observe his Declaration. While grave men reasoned thus, the Whig jesters were not sparing of their pasquinades. Some of theNoncompounders, meantime, uttered indignant murmurs. The King was in badhands, in the hands of men who hated monarchy. His mercy was cruelty ofthe worst sort. The general pardon which he had granted to his enemieswas in truth a general proscription of his friends. Hitherto the judgesappointed by the usurper had been under a restraint, imperfect indeed, yet not absolutely nugatory. They had known that a day of reckoningmight come, and had therefore in general dealt tenderly with thepersecuted adherents of the rightful King. That restraint His Majestyhad now taken away. He had told Holt and Treby that, till he should landin England, they might hang royalists without the smallest fear of beingcalled to account. [436]

But by no class of people was the Declaration read with so much disgustand indignation as by the native aristocracy of Ireland. This then wasthe reward of their loyalty. This was the faith of kings. When Englandhad cast James out, when Scotland had rejected him, the Irish had stillbeen true to him; and he had, in return, solemnly given his sanction toa law which restored to them an immense domain of which they had beendespoiled. Nothing that had happened since that time had diminishedtheir claim to his favour. They had defended his cause to the last; theyhad fought for him long after he had deserted them; many of them, whenunable to contend longer against superior force, had followed him intobanishment; and now it appeared that he was desirous to make peace withhis deadliest enemies at the expense of his most faithful friends. Therewas much discontent in the Irish regiments which were dispersed throughthe Netherlands and along the frontiers of Germany and Italy. Even theWhigs allowed that, for once, the O's and Macs were in the right, andasked triumphantly whether a prince who had broken his word to hisdevoted servants could be expected to keep it to his foes? [437]

While the Declaration was the subject of general conversation inEngland, military operations recommenced on the Continent. Thepreparations of France had been such as amazed even those who estimatedmost highly her resources and the abilities of her rulers. Both heragriculture and her commerce were suffering. The vineyards of Burgundy, the interminable cornfields of the Beauce, had failed to yield theirincrease; the looms of Lyons were silent; and the merchant ships wererotting in the harbour of Marseilles. Yet the monarchy presented to itsnumerous enemies a front more haughty and more menacing than ever. Lewishad determined not to make any advance towards a reconciliation with thenew government of England till the whole strength of his realm had beenput forth in one more effort. A mighty effort in truth it was, but tooexhausting to be repeated. He made an immense display of force at onceon the Pyrenees and on the Alps, on the Rhine and on the Meuse, in theAtlantic and in the Mediterranean. That nothing might be wanting whichcould excite the martial ardour of a nation eminently highspirited, heinstituted, a few days before he left his palace for the camp, a newmilitary order of knighthood, and placed it under the protection of hisown sainted ancestor and patron. The new cross of Saint Lewis shone onthe breasts of the gentlemen who had been conspicuous in the trenchesbefore Mons and Namur, and on the fields of Fleurus and Steinkirk; andthe sight raised a generous emulation among those who had still to winan honourable fame in arms. [438]

In the week in which this celebrated order began to exist Middletonvisited Versailles. A letter in which he gave his friends in Englandan account of his visit has come down to us. [439] He was presented toLewis, was most kindly received, and was overpowered by gratitude andadmiration. Of all the wonders of the Court, --so Middleton wrote, --itsmaster was the greatest. The splendour of the great King's personalmerit threw even the splendour of his fortunes into the shade. Thelanguage which His Most Christian Majesty held about English politicswas, on the whole, highly satisfactory. Yet in one thing thisaccomplished prince and his able and experienced ministers werestrangely mistaken. They were all possessed with the absurd notionthat the Prince of Orange was a great man. No pains had been sparedto undeceive them; but they were under an incurable delusion. They sawthrough a magnifying glass of such power that the leech appeared to thema leviathan. It ought to have occurred to Middleton that possibly thedelusion might be in his own vision and not in theirs. Lewis and thecounsellors who surrounded him were far indeed from loving William. Butthey did not hate him with that mad hatred which raged in the breasts ofhis English enemies. Middleton was one of the wisest and most moderateof the Jacobites. Yet even Middleton's judgment was so much darkenedby malice that, on this subject, he talked nonsense unworthy of hiscapacity. He, like the rest of his party, could see in the usurpernothing but what was odious and contemptible, the heart of a fiend, theunderstanding and manners of a stupid, brutal, Dutch boor, who generallyobserved a sulky silence, and, when forced to speak, gave short testyanswers in bad English. The French statesmen, on the other hand, judgedof William's faculties from an intimate knowledge of the way in which hehad, during twenty years, conducted affairs of the greatest momentand of the greatest difficulty. He had, ever since 1673, been playingagainst themselves a most complicated game of mixed chance and skillfor an immense stake; they were proud, and with reason, of their owndexterity at that game; yet they were conscious that in him they hadfound more than their match. At the commencement of the long contestevery advantage had been on their side. They had at their absolutecommand all the resources of the greatest kingdom in Europe; and he wasmerely the servant of a commonwealth, of which the whole territory wasinferior in extent to Normandy or Guienne. A succession of generalsand diplomatists of eminent ability had been opposed to him. A powerfulfaction in his native country had pertinaciously crossed his designs. He had undergone defeats in the field and defeats in the senate; but hiswisdom and firmness had turned defeats into victories. Notwithstandingall that could be done to keep him down, his influence and fame had beenalmost constantly rising and spreading. The most important and arduousenterprise in the history of modern Europe had been planned andconducted to a prosperous termination by him alone. The most extensivecoalition that the world had seen for ages had been formed by him, andwould be instantly dissolved if his superintending care were withdrawn. He had gained two kingdoms by statecraft, and a third by conquest; andhe was still maintaining himself in the possession of all three in spiteof both foreign and domestic foes. That these things had been effectedby a poor creature, a man of the most ordinary capacity, was anassertion which might easily find credence among the nonjuring parsonswho congregated at Sam's Coffee-house, but which moved the laughter ofthe veteran politicians of Versailles. 

While Middleton was in vain trying to convince the French thatWilliam was a greatly overrated man, William, who did full justice toMiddleton's merit, felt much uneasiness at learning that the Court ofSaint Germains had called in the help of so able a counsellor. [440]But this was only one of a thousand causes of anxiety which during thatspring pressed on the King's mind. He was preparing for the opening ofthe campaign, imploring his allies to be early in the field, rousing thesluggish, haggling with the greedy, making up quarrels, adjusting pointsof precedence. He had to prevail on the Cabinet of Vienna to send timelysuccours into Piedmont. He had to keep a vigilant eye on those Northernpotentates who were trying to form a third party in Europe. He had toact as tutor to the Elector of Bavaria in the Netherlands. He had toprovide for the defence of Liege, a matter which the authorities ofLiege coolly declared to be not at all their business, but the businessof England and Holland. He had to prevent the House of BrunswickWolfenbuttel from going to blows with the House of Brunswick Lunenburg;he had to accommodate a dispute between the Prince of Baden and theElector of Saxony, each of whom wished to be at the head of an army onthe Rhine; and he had to manage the Landgrave of Hesse, who omitted tofurnish his own contingent, and yet wanted to command the contingentsfurnished by other princes. [441]

And now the time for action had arrived. On the eighteenth of May Lewisleft Versailles; early in June he was under the walls of Namur. ThePrincesses, who had accompanied him, held their court within thefortress. He took under his immediate command the army of Boufflers, which was encamped at Gembloux. Little more than a mile off lay the armyof Luxemburg. The force collected in that neighbourhood under the Frenchlilies did not amount to less than a hundred and twenty thousand men. Lewis had flattered himself that he should be able to repeat in 1693 thestratagem by which Mons had been taken in 1691 and Namur in 1692; andhe had determined that either Liege or Brussels should be his prey. But William had this year been able to assemble in good time a force, inferior indeed to that which was opposed to him, but still formidable. With this force he took his post near Louvain, on the road between thetwo threatened cities, and watched every movement of the enemy. 

Lewis was disappointed. He found that it would not be possible for himto gratify his vanity so safely and so easily as in the two precedingyears, to sit down before a great town, to enter the gates in triumph, and to receive the keys, without exposing himself to any risk greaterthan that of a staghunt at Fontainebleau. Before he could lay siegeeither to Liege or to Brussels he must fight and win a battle. Thechances were indeed greatly in his favour; for his army was morenumerous, better officered and better disciplined than that of theallies. Luxemburg strongly advised him to march against William. Thearistocracy of France anticipated with intrepid gaiety a bloody but aglorious day, followed by a large distribution of the crosses of the neworder. William himself was perfectly aware of his danger, and preparedto meet it with calm but mournful fortitude. [442] Just at thisconjuncture Lewis announced his intention to return instantly toVersailles, and to send the Dauphin and Boufflers, with part of the armywhich was assembled near Namur, to join Marshal Lorges who commanded inthe Palatinate. Luxemburg was thunderstruck. He expostulated boldly andearnestly. Never, he said, was such an opportunity thrown away. If HisMajesty would march against the Prince of Orange, victory was almostcertain. Could any advantage which it was possible to obtain on theRhine be set against the advantage of a victory gained in the heartof Brabant over the principal army and the principal captain of thecoalition? The Marshal reasoned; he implored; he went on his knees; butin vain; and he quitted the royal presence in the deepest dejection. Lewis left the camp a week after he had joined it, and never afterwardsmade war in person. 

The astonishment was great throughout his army. All the awe which heinspired could not prevent his old generals from grumbling and lookingsullen, his young nobles from venting their spleen, sometimes in cursesand sometimes in sarcasms, and even his common soldiers from holdingirreverent language round their watchfires. His enemies rejoiced withvindictive and insulting joy. Was it not strange, they asked, that thisgreat prince should have gone in state to the theatre of war, and thenin a week have gone in the same state back again? Was it necessarythat all that vast retinue, princesses, dames of honour and tirewomen, equerries and gentlemen of the bedchamber, cooks, confectioners andmusicians, long trains of waggons, droves of led horses and sumptermules, piles of plate, bales of tapestry, should travel four hundredmiles merely in order that the Most Christian King might look at hissoldiers and then return? The ignominious truth was too evident to beconcealed. He had gone to the Netherlands in the hope that he mightagain be able to snatch some military glory without any hazard to hisperson, and had hastened back rather than expose himself to the chancesof a pitched field. [443] This was not the first time that His MostChristian Majesty had shown the same kind of prudence. Seventeen yearsbefore he had been opposed under the wails of Bouchain to the sameantagonist. William, with the ardour of a very young commander, had mostimprudently offered battle. The opinion of the ablest generals was that, if Lewis had seized the opportunity, the war might have been ended in aday. The French army had eagerly asked to be led to the onset. The Kinghad called his lieutenants round him and had collected their opinions. Some courtly officers to whom a hint of his wishes had been dexterouslyconveyed had, blushing and stammering with shame, voted againstfighting. It was to no purpose that bold and honest men, who prized hishonour more than his life, had proved to him that, on all principles ofthe military art, he ought to accept the challenge rashly given by theenemy. His Majesty had gravely expressed his sorrow that he could not, consistently with his public duty, obey the impetuous movement of hisblood, had turned his rein, and had galloped back to his quarters. [444]Was it not frightful to think what rivers of the best blood of France, of Spain, of Germany and of England, had flowed, and were destined stillto flow, for the gratification of a man who wanted the vulgar couragewhich was found in the meanest of the hundreds of thousands whom he hadsacrificed to his vainglorious ambition?

Though the French army in the Netherlands had been weakened by thedeparture of the forces commanded by the Dauphin and Boufflers, andthough the allied army was daily strengthened by the arrival of freshtroops, Luxemburg still had a superiority of force; and that superiorityhe increased by an adroit stratagem. He marched towards Liege, and madeas if he were about to form the siege of that city. William was uneasy, and the more uneasy because he knew that there was a French party amongthe inhabitants. He quitted his position near Louvain, advanced toNether Hespen, and encamped there with the river Gette in his rear. Onhis march he learned that Huy had opened its gates to the French. Thenews increased his anxiety about Liege, and determined him to sendthither a force sufficient to overawe malecontents within the city, andto repel any attack from without. [445] This was exactly what Luxemburghad expected and desired. His feint had served its purpose. He turnedhis back on the fortress which had hitherto seemed to be his object, andhastened towards the Gette. William, who had detached more than twentythousand men, and who had but fifty thousand left in his camp, wasalarmed by learning from his scouts, on the eighteenth of July, that theFrench General, with near eighty thousand, was close at hand. 

It was still in the King's power, by a hasty retreat, to put the narrow, but deep, waters of the Gette, which had lately been swollen by rains, between his army and the enemy. But the site which he occupied wasstrong; and it could easily be made still stronger. He set all histroops to work. Ditches were dug, mounds thrown up, palisades fixed inthe earth. In a few hours the ground wore a new aspect; and the Kingtrusted that he should be able to repel the attack even of a forcegreatly outnumbering his own. Nor was it without much appearance ofreason that he felt this confidence. When the morning of the nineteenthof July broke, the bravest men of Lewis's army looked gravely andanxiously on the fortress which had suddenly sprung up to arrest theirprogress. The allies were protected by a breastwork. Here and therealong the entrenchments were formed little redoubts and half moons. Ahundred pieces of cannon were disposed along the ramparts. On the leftflank, the village of Romsdorff rose close to the little stream ofLanden, from which the English have named the disastrous day. On theright was the village of Neerwinden. Both villages were, after thefashion of the Low Countries, surrounded by moats and fences; and, within these enclosures, the little plots of ground occupied bydifferent families were separated by mud walls five feet in height anda foot in thickness. All these barricades William had repaired andstrengthened. Saint Simon, who, after the battle, surveyed the ground, could hardly, he tells us, believe that defences so extensive and soformidable could have been created with such rapidity. 

Luxemburg, however, was determined to try whether even this positioncould be maintained against the superior numbers and the impetuousvalour of his soldiers. Soon after sunrise the roar of cannon beganto be heard. William's batteries did much execution before the Frenchartillery could be so placed as to return the fire. It was eight o'clockbefore the close fighting began. The village of Neerwinden was regardedby both commanders as the point on which every thing depended. There anattack was made by the French left wing commanded by Montchevreuil, aveteran officer of high reputation, and by Berwick, who, though young, was fast rising to a high place among the captains of his time. Berwickled the onset, and forced his way into the village, but was soon drivenout again with a terrible carnage. His followers fled or perished; he, while trying to rally them, and cursing them for not doing their dutybetter, was surrounded by foes. He concealed his white cockade, andhoped to be able, by the help of his native tongue, to pass himself offas an officer of the English army. But his face was recognised by oneof his mother's brothers, George Churchill, who held on that day thecommand of a brigade. A hurried embrace was exchanged between thekinsmen; and the uncle conducted the nephew to William, who, as long asevery thing seemed to be going well, remained in the rear. The meetingof the King and the captive, united by such close domestic ties, anddivided by such inexpiable injuries, was a strange sight. Both behavedas became them. William uncovered, and addressed to his prisoner a fewwords of courteous greeting. Berwick's only reply was a solemn bow. TheKing put on his hat; the Duke put on his hat; and the cousins parted forever. 

By this time the French, who had been driven in confusion out ofNeerwinden, had been reinforced by a division under the command of theDuke of Bourbon, and came gallantly back to the attack. William, wellaware of the importance of this post, gave orders that troops shouldmove thither from other parts of his line. This second conflict was longand bloody. The assailants again forced an entrance into the village. They were again driven out with immense slaughter, and showed littleinclination to return to the charge. 

Meanwhile the battle had been raging all along the entrenchments ofthe allied army. Again and again Luxemburg brought up his troops withinpistolshot of the breastwork; but he could bring them no nearer. Againand again they recoiled from the heavy fire which was poured on theirfront and on their flanks. It seemed that all was over. Luxemburgretired to a spot which was out of gunshot, and summoned a few of hischief officers to a consultation. They talked together during some time;and their animated gestures were observed with deep interest by all whowere within sight. 

At length Luxemburg formed his decision. A last attempt must be made tocarry Neerwinden; and the invincible household troops, the conquerors ofSteinkirk, must lead the way. 

The household troops came on in a manner worthy of their long andterrible renown. A third time Neerwinden was taken. A third time Williamtried to retake it. At the head of some English regiments he charged theguards of Lewis with such fury that, for the first time in the memory ofthe oldest warrior, that far famed band gave way. [446] It was only bythe strenuous exertions of Luxemburg, of the Duke of Chartres, and ofthe Duke of Bourbon, that the broken ranks were rallied. But by thistime the centre and left of the allied army had been so much thinnedfor the purpose of supporting the conflict at Neerwinden that theentrenchments could no longer be defended on other points. A littleafter four in the afternoon the whole line gave way. All was havoc andconfusion. Solmes had received a mortal wound, and fell, still alive, into the hands of the enemy. The English soldiers, to whom his name washateful, accused him of having in his sufferings shown pusillanimityunworthy of a soldier. The Duke of Ormond was struck down in the press;and in another moment he would have been a corpse, had not a richdiamond on his finger caught the eye of one of the French guards, who justly thought that the owner of such a jewel would be a valuableprisoner. The Duke's life was saved; and he was speedily exchanged forBerwick. Ruvigny, animated by the true refugee hatred of the countrywhich had cast him out, was taken fighting in the thickest of thebattle. Those into whose hands he had fallen knew him well, and knewthat, if they carried him to their camp, his head would pay for thattreason to which persecution had driven him. With admirable generositythey pretended not to recognise him, and suffered him to make his escapein the tumult. 

It was only on such occasions as this that the whole greatness ofWilliam's character appeared. Amidst the rout and uproar, while arms andstandards were flung away, while multitudes of fugitives were choking upthe bridges and fords of the Gette or perishing in its waters, the King, having directed Talmash to superintend the retreat, put himself at thehead of a few brave regiments, and by desperate efforts arrested theprogress of the enemy. His risk was greater than that which others ran. For he could not be persuaded either to encumber his feeble frame witha cuirass, or to hide the ensigns of the garter. He thought his star agood rallying point for his own troops, and only smiled when he was toldthat it was a good mark for the enemy. Many fell on his right hand andon his left. Two led horses, which in the field always closely followedhis person, were struck dead by cannon shots. One musket ball passedthrough the curls of his wig, another through his coat; a thirdbruised his side and tore his blue riband to tatters. Many years latergreyhaired old pensioners who crept about the arcades and alleys ofChelsea Hospital used to relate how he charged at the head of Galway'shorse, how he dismounted four times to put heart into the infantry, howhe rallied one corps which seemed to be shrinking; "That is not the wayto fight, gentlemen. You must stand close up to them. Thus, gentlemen, thus. " "You might have seen him, " an eyewitness wrote, only four daysafter the battle, "with his sword in his hand, throwing himself upon theenemy. It is certain that one time, among the rest, he was seen at thehead of two English regiments, and that he fought seven with these twoin sight of the whole army, driving them before him above a quarter ofan hour. Thanks be to God that preserved him. " The enemy pressed on himso close that it was with difficulty that he at length made his way overthe Gette. A small body of brave men, who shared his peril to the last, could hardly keep off the pursuers as he crossed the bridge. [447]

Never, perhaps, was the change which the progress of civilisation hasproduced in the art of war more strikingly illustrated than on that day. Ajax beating down the Trojan leader with a rock which two ordinary mencould scarcely lift, Horatius defending the bridge against an army, Richard the Lionhearted spurring along the whole Saracen line withoutfinding an enemy to stand his assault, Robert Bruce crushing with oneblow the helmet and head of Sir Henry Bohun in sight of the whole arrayof England and Scotland, such are the heroes of a dark age. In such anage bodily vigour is the most indispensable qualification of a warrior. At Landen two poor sickly beings, who, in a rude state of society, wouldhave been regarded as too puny to bear any part in combats, were thesouls of two great armies. In some heathen countries they would havebeen exposed while infants. In Christendom they would, six hundred yearsearlier, have been sent to some quiet cloister. But their lot had fallenon a time when men had discovered that the strength of the muscles isfar inferior in value to the strength of the mind. It is probable that, among the hundred and twenty thousand soldiers who were marshalled roundNeerwinden under all the standards of Western Europe, the two feeblestin body were the hunchbacked dwarf who urged forward the fiery onsetof France, and the asthmatic skeleton who covered the slow retreat ofEngland. 

The French were victorious; but they had bought their victory dear. Morethan ten thousand of the best troops of Lewis had fallen. Neerwinden wasa spectacle at which the oldest soldiers stood aghast. The streets werepiled breast high with corpses. Among the slain were some great lordsand some renowned warriors. Montchevreuil was there, and the mutilatedtrunk of the Duke of Uzes, first in order of precedence among thewhole aristocracy of France. Thence too Sarsfield was borne desperatelywounded to a pallet from which he never rose again. The Court of SaintGermains had conferred on him the empty title of Earl of Lucan;but history knows him by the name which is still dear to the mostunfortunate of nations. The region, renowned in history as the battlefield, during many ages, of the most warlike nations of Europe, hasseen only two more terrible days, the day of Malplaquet and the day ofWaterloo. During many months the ground was strewn with skulls and bonesof men and horses, and with fragments of hats and shoes, saddles andholsters. The next summer the soil, fertilised by twenty thousandcorpses, broke forth into millions of poppies. The traveller who, on theroad from Saint Tron to Tirlemont, saw that vast sheet of rich scarletspreading from Landen to Neerwinden, could hardly help fancying that thefigurative prediction of the Hebrew prophet was literally accomplished, that the earth was disclosing her blood, and refusing to cover theslain. [448]

There was no pursuit, though the sun was still high in the heaven whenWilliam crossed the Gette. The conquerors were so much exhausted bymarching and fighting that they could scarcely move; and the horses werein even worse condition than the men. Their general thought it necessaryto allow some time for rest and refreshment. The French nobles unloadedtheir sumpter horses, supped gaily, and pledged one another in champagneamidst the heaps of dead; and, when night fell, whole brigades gladlylay down to sleep in their ranks on the field of battle. The inactivityof Luxemburg did not escape censure. None could deny that he had in theaction shown great skill and energy. But some complained that he wantedpatience and perseverance. Others whispered that he had no wish to bringto an end a war which made him necessary to a Court where he had never, in time of peace, found favour or even justice. [449] Lewis, who on thisoccasion was perhaps not altogether free from some emotions of jealousy, contrived, it was reported, to mingle with the praise which he bestowedon his lieutenant blame which, though delicately expressed, wasperfectly intelligible. "In the battle, " he said, "the Duke of Luxemburgbehaved like Conde; and since the battle the Prince of Orange hasbehaved like Turenne. "

In truth the ability and vigour with which William repaired his terribledefeat might well excite admiration. "In one respect, " said the AdmiralColigni, "I may claim superiority over Alexander, over Scipio, overCaesar. They won great battles, it is true. I have lost four greatbattles; and yet I show to the enemy a more formidable front than ever. "The blood of Coligni ran in the veins of William; and with the blood haddescended the unconquerable spirit which could derive from failure asmuch glory as happier commanders owed to success. The defeat of Landenwas indeed a heavy blow. The King had a few days of cruel anxiety. If Luxemburg pushed on, all was lost. Louvain must fall, and Mechlin, Nieuport, and Ostend. The Batavian frontier would be in danger. The cryfor peace throughout Holland might be such as neither States General norStadtholder would be able to resist. [450] But there was delay; and avery short delay was enough for William. From the field of battle hemade his way through the multitude of fugitives to the neighbourhood ofLouvain, and there began to collect his scattered forces. His characteris not lowered by the anxiety which, at that moment, the most disastrousof his life, he felt for the two persons who were dearest to him. Assoon as he was safe, he wrote to assure his wife of his safety. [451] Inthe confusion of the flight he had lost sight of Portland, who was thenin very feeble health, and had therefore run more than the ordinaryrisks of war. A short note which the King sent to his friend a few hourslater is still extant. [452] "Though I hope to see you this evening, Icannot help writing to tell you how rejoiced I am that you got off sowell. God grant that your health may soon be quite restored. These aregreat trials, which he has been pleased to send me in quick succession. I must try to submit to his pleasure without murmuring, and to deservehis anger less. "

His forces rallied fast. Large bodies of troops which he had, perhapsimprudently, detached from his army while he supposed that Liege was theobject of the enemy, rejoined him by forced marches. Three weeks afterhis defeat he held a review a few miles from Brussels. The number of menunder arms was greater than on the morning of the bloody day of Landen;their appearance was soldierlike; and their spirit seemed unbroken. William now wrote to Heinsius that the worst was over. "The crisis, " hesaid, "has been a terrible one. Thank God that it has ended thus. " Hedid not, however, think it prudent to try at that time the event ofanother pitched field. He therefore suffered the French to besiege andtake Charleroy; and this was the only advantage which they derivedfrom the most sanguinary battle fought in Europe during the seventeenthcentury. 

The melancholy tidings of the defeat of Landen found England agitated bytidings not less melancholy from a different quarter. During manymonths the trade with the Mediterranean Sea had been almost entirelyinterrupted by the war. There was no chance that a merchantman fromLondon or from Amsterdam would, if unprotected, reach the Pillars ofHercules without being boarded by a French privateer; and the protectionof armed vessels was not easily to be obtained. During the year 1691, great fleets, richly laden for Spanish, Italian and Turkish markets, hadbeen gathering in the Thames and the Texel. In February 1693, nearfour hundred ships were ready to start. The value of the cargoes wasestimated at several millions sterling. Those galleons which had longbeen the wonder and envy of the world had never conveyed so preciousa freight from the West Indies to Seville. The English governmentundertook, in concert with the Dutch government, to escort the vesselswhich were laden with this great mass of wealth. The French governmentwas bent on intercepting them. 

The plan of the allies was that seventy ships of the line and aboutthirty frigates and brigantines should assemble in the Channel underthe command of Killegrew and Delaval, the two new Lords of the EnglishAdmiralty, and should convoy the Smyrna fleet, as it was popularlycalled, beyond the limits within which any danger could be apprehendedfrom the Brest squadron. The greater part of the armament might thenreturn to guard the Channel, while Rooke, with twenty sail, mightaccompany the trading vessels and might protect them against thesquadron which lay at Toulon. The plan of the French government was thatthe Brest squadron under Tourville and the Toulon squadron under Estreesshould meet in the neighbourhood of the Straits of Gibraltar, and shouldthere lie in wait for the booty. 

Which plan was the better conceived may be doubted. Which was the betterexecuted is a question which admits of no doubt. The whole French navy, whether in the Atlantic or in the Mediterranean, was moved by one will. The navy of England and the navy of the United Provinces were subject todifferent authorities; and, both in England and in the United Provinces, the power was divided and subdivided to such an extent that no singleperson was pressed by a heavy responsibility. The spring came. Themerchants loudly complained that they had already lost more by delaythan they could hope to gain by the most successful voyage; and stillthe ships of war were not half manned or half provisioned. The Amsterdamsquadron did not arrive on our coast till late in April; the Zealandsquadron not till the middle of May. [453] It was June before theimmense fleet, near five hundred sail, lost sight of the cliffs ofEngland. 

Tourville was already on the sea, and was steering southward. ButKillegrew and Delaval were so negligent or so unfortunate that they hadno intelligence of his movements. They at first took it for granted thathe was still lying in the port of Brest. Then they heard a rumour thatsome shipping had been seen to the northward; and they supposed thathe was taking advantage of their absence to threaten the coast ofDevonshire. It never seems to have occurred to them as possible that hemight have effected a junction with the Toulon squadron, and might beimpatiently waiting for his prey in the neighbourhood of Gibraltar. Theytherefore, on the sixth of June, having convoyed the Smyrna fleet abouttwo hundred miles beyond Ushant, announced their intention to partcompany with Rooke. Rooke expostulated, but to no purpose. It wasnecessary for him to submit, and to proceed with his twenty men ofwar to the Mediterranean, while his superiors, with the rest of thearmament, returned to the Channel. 

It was by this time known in England that Tourville had stolen out ofBrest, and was hastening to join Estrees. The return of Killegrewand Delaval therefore excited great alarm. A swift sailing vessel wasinstantly despatched to warn Rooke of his danger; but the warning neverreached him. He ran before a fair wind to Cape Saint Vincent; and therehe learned that some French ships were lying in the neighbouring Bay ofLagos. The first information which he received led him to believe thatthey were few in number; and so dexterously did they conceal theirstrength that, till they were within half an hour's sail, he had nosuspicion that he was opposed to the whole maritime strength of a greatkingdom. To contend against fourfold odds would have been madness. Itwas much that he was able to save his squadron from titter destruction. He exerted all his skill. Two or three Dutch men of war, which were inthe rear, courageously sacrificed themselves to save the fleet. Withthe rest of the armament, and with about sixty merchant ships, Rooke gotsafe to Madeira and thence to Cork. But more than three hundred ofthe vessels which he had convoyed were scattered over the ocean. Someescaped to Ireland; some to Corunna; some to Lisbon; some to Cadiz; somewere captured, and more destroyed. A few, which had taken shelter underthe rock of Gibraltar, and were pursued thither by the enemy, were sunkwhen it was found that they could not be defended. Others perished inthe same manner under the batteries of Malaga. The gain to the Frenchseems not to have been great; but the loss to England and Holland wasimmense. [454]

Never within the memory of man had there been in the City a day of moregloom and agitation than that on which the news of the encounter in theBay of Lagos arrived. Many merchants, an eyewitness said, went away fromthe Royal Exchange, as pale as if they had received sentence of death. A deputation from the merchants who had been sufferers by this greatdisaster went up to the Queen with an address representing theirgrievances. They were admitted to the Council Chamber, where she wasseated at the head of the Board. She directed Somers to reply to themin her name; and he addressed to them a speech well calculated to soothetheir irritation. Her Majesty, he said, felt for them from her heart;and she had already appointed a Committee of the Privy Council toinquire into the cause of the late misfortune, and to consider of thebest means of preventing similar misfortunes in time to come. [455] Thisanswer gave so much satisfaction that the Lord Mayor soon came to thepalace to thank the Queen for her goodness, to assure her that, throughall vicissitudes, London would be true to her and her consort, and toinform her that, severely as the late calamity had been felt by manygreat commercial houses, the Common Council had unanimously resolved toadvance whatever might be necessary for the support of the government. [456]

The ill humour which the public calamities naturally produced wasinflamed by every factious artifice. Never had the Jacobite pamphleteersbeen so savagely scurrilous as during this unfortunate summer. Thepolice was consequently more active than ever in seeking for the densfrom which so much treason proceeded. With great difficulty and afterlong search the most important of all the unlicensed presses wasdiscovered. This press belonged to a Jacobite named William Anderton, whose intrepidity and fanaticism marked him out as fit to be employedon services from which prudent men and scrupulous men shrink. During twoyears he had been watched by the agents of the government; but wherehe exercised his craft was an impenetrable mystery. At length he wastracked to a house near Saint James's Street, where he was known by afeigned name, and where he passed for a working jeweller. A messengerof the press went thither with several assistants, and found Anderton'swife and mother posted as sentinels at the door. The women knew themessenger, rushed on him, tore his hair, and cried out "Thieves"and "Murder. " The alarm was thus given to Anderton. He concealed theinstruments of his calling, came forth with an assured air, and badedefiance to the messenger, the Censor, the Secretary, and LittleHooknose himself. After a struggle he was secured. His room wassearched; and at first sight no evidence of his guilt appeared. Butbehind the bed was soon found a door which opened into a dark closet. The closet contained a press, types and heaps of newly printed papers. One of these papers, entitled Remarks on the Present Confederacy and theLate Revolution, is perhaps the most frantic of all the Jacobite libels. In this tract the Prince of Orange is gravely accused of having orderedfifty of his wounded English soldiers to be burned alive. The governingprinciple of his whole conduct, it is said, is not vainglory, orambition, or avarice, but a deadly hatred of Englishmen and a desireto make them miserable. The nation is vehemently adjured, on peril ofincurring the severest judgments, to rise up and free itself from thisplague, this curse, this tyrant, whose depravity makes it difficult tobelieve that he can have been procreated by a human pair. Many copieswere also found of another paper, somewhat less ferocious but perhapsmore dangerous, entitled A French Conquest neither desirable norpracticable. In this tract also the people are exhorted to rise ininsurrection. They are assured that a great part of the army is withthem. The forces of the Prince of Orange will melt away; he will be gladto make his escape; and a charitable hope is sneeringly expressed thatit may not be necessary to do him any harm beyond sending him back toLoo, where he may live surrounded by luxuries for which the English havepaid dear. 

The government, provoked and alarmed by the virulence of the Jacobitepamphleteers, determined to make Anderton an example. He was indictedfor high treason, and brought to the bar of the Old Bailey. Treby, now Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, and Powell, who had honourablydistinguished himself on the day of the trial of the bishops, were onthe Bench. It is unfortunate that no detailed report of the evidence hascome down to us, and that we are forced to content ourselves with suchfragments of information as can be collected from the contradictorynarratives of writers evidently partial, intemperate and dishonest. Theindictment, however, is extant; and the overt acts which it imputes tothe prisoner undoubtedly amount to high treason. [457] To exhort thesubjects of the realm to rise up and depose the King by force, and toadd to that exhortation the expression, evidently ironical, of a hopethat it may not be necessary to inflict on him any evil worse thanbanishment, is surely an offence which the least courtly lawyer willadmit to be within the scope of the statute of Edward the Third. On thispoint indeed there seems to have been no dispute, either at the trial orsubsequently. 

The prisoner denied that he had printed the libels. On this point itseems reasonable that, since the evidence has not come down to us, we should give credit to the judges and the jury who heard what thewitnesses had to say. 

One argument with which Anderton had been furnished by his advisers, and which, in the Jacobite pasquinades of that time, is represented asunanswerable, was that, as the art of printing had been unknown in thereign of Edward the Third, printing could not be an overt act of treasonunder a statute of that reign. The judges treated this argument verylightly; and they were surely justified in so treating it. For it isan argument which would lead to the conclusion that it could not be anovert act of treason to behead a King with a guillotine or to shoot himwith a Minie rifle. 

It was also urged in Anderton's favour, --and this was undoubtedly anargument well entitled to consideration, --that a distinction ought tobe made between the author of a treasonable paper and the man who merelyprinted it. The former could not pretend that he had not understood themeaning of the words which he had himself selected. But to the latterthose words might convey no idea whatever. The metaphors, the allusions, the sarcasms, might be far beyond his comprehension; and, while hishands were busy among the types, his thoughts might be wandering tothings altogether unconnected with the manuscript which was before him. It is undoubtedly true that it may be no crime to print what it would bea great crime to write. But this is evidently a matter concerningwhich no general rule can be laid down. Whether Anderton had, as a meremechanic, contributed to spread a work the tendency of which he didnot suspect, or had knowingly lent his help to raise a rebellion, wasa question for the jury; and the jury might reasonably infer from hischange of his name, from the secret manner in which he worked, from thestrict watch kept by his wife and mother, and from the fury with which, even in the grasp of the messengers, he railed at the government, that he was not the unconscious tool, but the intelligent and zealousaccomplice of traitors. The twelve, after passing a considerable timein deliberation, informed the Court that one of them entertained doubts. Those doubts were removed by the arguments of Treby and Powell; and averdict of Guilty was found. 

The fate of the prisoner remained during sometime in suspense. TheMinisters hoped that he might be induced to save his own neck at theexpense of the necks of the pamphleteers who had employed him. But hisnatural courage was kept up by spiritual stimulants which the nonjuringdivines well understood how to administer. He suffered death withfortitude, and continued to revile the government to the last. TheJacobites clamoured loudly against the cruelty of the judges who hadtried him and of the Queen who had left him for execution, and, not veryconsistently, represented him at once as a poor ignorant artisan who wasnot aware of the nature and tendency of the act for which he suffered, and as a martyr who had heroically laid down his life for the banishedKing and the persecuted Church. [458]

The Ministers were much mistaken if they flattered themselves that thefate of Anderton would deter others from imitating his example. Hisexecution produced several pamphlets scarcely less virulent than thosefor which he had suffered. Collier, in what he called Remarks on theLondon Gazette, exulted with cruel joy over the carnage of Landen, andthe vast destruction of English property on the coast of Spain. [459]Other writers did their best to raise riots among the labouring people. For the doctrine of the Jacobites was that disorder, in whatever placeor in whatever way it might begin, was likely to end in a Restoration. A phrase which, without a commentary, may seem to be mere nonsense, but which was really full of meaning, was often in their mouths atthis time, and was indeed a password by which the members of the partyrecognised each other: "Box it about; it will come to my father. " Thehidden sense of this gibberish was, "Throw the country into confusion;it will be necessary at last to have recourse to King James. " [460]Trade was not prosperous; and many industrious men were out of work. Accordingly songs addressed to the distressed classes were composed bythe malecontent street poets. Numerous copies of a ballad exhorting theweavers to rise against the government were discovered in the house ofthat Quaker who had printed James's Declaration. [461] Every art wasused for the purpose of exciting discontent in a much more formidablebody of men, the sailors; and unhappily the vices of the navaladministration furnished the enemies of the State with but too good achoice of inflammatory topics. Some seamen deserted; some mutinied; thencame executions; and then came more ballads and broadsides representingthose executions as barbarous murders. Reports that the governmenthad determined to defraud its defenders of their hard earned pay werecirculated with so much effect that a great crowd of women from Wappingand Rotherhithe besieged Whitehall, clamouring for what was due to theirhusbands. Mary had the good sense and good nature to order four ofthose importunate petitioners to be admitted into the room where she washolding a Council. She heard their complaints, and herself assured themthat the rumour which had alarmed them was unfounded. [462] By thistime Saint Bartholomew's day drew near; and the great annual fair, thedelight of idle apprentices and the horror of Puritanical Aldermen, was opened in Smithfield with the usual display of dwarfs, giants, anddancing dogs, the man that ate fire, and the elephant that loaded andfired a musket. But of all the shows none proved so attractive as adramatic performance which, in conception, though doubtless not inexecution, seems to have borne much resemblance to those immortalmasterpieces of humour in which Aristophanes held up Cleon and Lamachusto derision. Two strollers personated Killegrew and Delaval. TheAdmirals were represented as flying with their whole fleet before a fewFrench privateers, and taking shelter under the grins of the Tower. The office of Chorus was performed by a Jackpudding who expressed veryfreely his opinion of the naval administration. Immense crowds flockedto see this strange farce. The applauses were loud; the receipts weregreat; and the mountebanks, who had at first ventured to attack only theunlucky and unpopular Board of Admiralty, now, emboldened by impunityand success, and probably prompted and rewarded by persons of muchhigher station than their own, began to cast reflections on otherdepartments of the government. This attempt to revive the license of theAttic Stage was soon brought to a close by the appearance of a strongbody of constables who carried off the actors to prison. [463] Meanwhilethe streets of London were every night strewn with seditious handbills. At all the taverns the zealots of hereditary right were limping aboutwith glasses of wine and punch at their lips. This fashion had just comein; and the uninitiated wondered much that so great a number of jollygentlemen should have suddenly become lame. But, those who were in thesecret knew that the word Limp was a consecrated word, that every oneof the four letters which composed it was the initial of an august name, and that the loyal subject who limped while he drank was taking off hisbumper to Lewis, James, Mary, and the Prince. [464]

It was not only in the capital that the Jacobites, at this time, made agreat display of their wit. They mustered strong at Bath, where the LordPresident Caermarthen was trying to recruit his feeble health. Everyevening they met, as they phrased it, to serenade the Marquess. In otherwords they assembled under the sick man's window, and there sang doggrellampoons on him. [465]

It is remarkable that the Lord President, at the very time at whichhe was insulted as a Williamite at Bath, was considered as a stanchJacobite at Saint Germains. How he came to be so considered is amost perplexing question. Some writers are of opinion that he, likeShrewsbury, Russell, Godolphin and Marlborough, entered into engagementswith one king while eating the bread of the other. But this opiniondoes not rest on sufficient proofs. About the treasons of Shrewsbury, of Russell, of Godolphin and of Marlborough, we have a great mass ofevidence, derived from various sources, and extending over severalyears. But all the information which we possess about Caermarthen'sdealings with James is contained in a single short paper written byMelfort on the sixteenth of October 1693. From that paper it is quiteclear that some intelligence had reached the banished King and hisMinisters which led them to regard Caermarthen as a friend. But there isno proof that they ever so regarded him, either before that day or afterthat day. [466] On the whole, the most probable explanation of thismystery seems to be that Caermarthen had been sounded by some Jacobiteemissary much less artful than himself, and had, for the purpose ofgetting at the bottom of the new scheme of policy devised by Middleton, pretended to be well disposed to the cause of the banished King, that anexaggerated account of what had passed had been sent to Saint Germains, and that there had been much rejoicing there at a conversion which soonproved to have been feigned. It seems strange that such a conversionshould even for a moment have been thought sincere. It was plainlyCaermarthen's interest to stand by the sovereigns in possession. Hewas their chief minister. He could not hope to be the chief minister ofJames. It can indeed hardly be supposed that the political conduct of acunning old man, insatiably ambitious and covetous, was much influencedby personal partiality. But, if there were any person to whomCaermarthen was partial, that person was undoubtedly Mary. That he hadseriously engaged in a plot to depose her, at the risk of his head if hefailed, and with the certainty of losing immense power and wealth if hesucceeded, was a story too absurd for any credulity but the credulity ofexiles. 

Caermarthen had indeed at that moment peculiarly strong reasons forbeing satisfied with the place which he held in the counsels of Williamand Mary. There is but too strong reason to believe that he was thenaccumulating unlawful gain with a rapidity unexampled even in hisexperience. 

The contest between the two East India Companies was, during the autumnof 1693, fiercer than ever. The House of Commons, finding the OldCompany obstinately averse to all compromise, had, a little before theclose of the late session, requested the King to give the three years'warning prescribed by the Charter. Child and his fellows now began tobe seriously alarmed. They expected every day to receive the dreadednotice. Nay, they were not sure that their exclusive privilege might notbe taken away without any notice at all; for they found that they had, by inadvertently omitting to pay the tax lately imposed on their stockat the precise time fixed by law, forfeited their Charter; and, thoughit would, in ordinary circumstances, have been thought cruel in thegovernment to take advantage of such a slip, the public was not inclinedto allow the Old Company any thing more than the strict letter of thebond. Every thing was lost if the Charter were not renewed before themeeting of Parliament. There can be little doubt that the proceedingsof the corporation were still really directed by Child. But he had, itshould seem, perceived that his unpopularity had injuriously affectedthe interests which were under his care, and therefore did not obtrudehimself on the public notice. His place was ostensibly filled by hisnear kinsman Sir Thomas Cook, one of the greatest merchants of London, and Member of Parliament for the borough of Colchester. The Directorsplaced at Cook's absolute disposal all the immense wealth which lay intheir treasury; and in a short time near a hundred thousand pounds wereexpended in corruption on a gigantic scale. In what proportions thisenormous sum was distributed among the great men at Whitehall, and howmuch of it was embezzled by intermediate agents, is still a mystery. Weknow with certainty however that thousands went to Seymour and thousandsto Caermarthen. 

The effect of these bribes was that the Attorney General received ordersto draw up a charter regranting the old privileges to the old Company. No minister, however, could, after what had passed in Parliament, venture to advise the Crown to renew the monopoly without conditions. The Directors were sensible that they had no choice, and reluctantlyconsented to accept the new Charter on terms substantially the same withthose which the House of Commons had sanctioned. 

It is probable that, two years earlier, such a compromise would havequieted the feud which distracted the City. But a long conflict, inwhich satire and calumny had not been spared, had heated the minds ofmen. The cry of Dowgate against Leadenhall Street was louder than ever. Caveats were entered; petitions were signed; and in those petitions adoctrine which had hitherto been studiously kept in the backgroundwas boldly affirmed. While it was doubtful on which side the royalprerogative would be used, that prerogative had not been questioned. But as soon as it appeared that the Old Company was likely to obtain aregrant of the monopoly under the Great Seal, the New Company began toassert with vehemence that no monopoly could be created except by Actof Parliament. The Privy Council, over which Caermarthen presided, afterhearing the matter fully argued by counsel on both sides, decided infavour of the Old Company, and ordered the Charter to be sealed. [467]

The autumn was by this time far advanced, and the armies in theNetherlands had gone into quarters for the winter. On the last day ofOctober William landed in England. The Parliament was about to meet; andhe had every reason to expect a session even more stormy than the last. The people were discontented, and not without cause. The year had beenevery where disastrous to the allies, not only on the sea and in the LowCountries, but also in Servia, in Spain, in Italy, and in Germany. TheTurks had compelled the generals of the Empire to raise the siege ofBelgrade. A newly created Marshal of France, the Duke of Noailles, hadinvaded Catalonia and taken the fortress of Rosas. Another newly createdMarshal, the skilful and valiant Catinat, had descended from the Alpson Piedmont, and had, at Marsiglia, gained a complete victory over theforces of the Duke of Savoy. This battle is memorable as the first ofa long series of battles in which the Irish troops retrieved the honourlost by misfortunes and misconduct in domestic war. Some of the exilesof Limerick showed, on that day, under the standard of France, a valourwhich distinguished them among many thousands of brave men. It isremarkable that on the same day a battalion of the persecuted andexpatriated Huguenots stood firm amidst the general disorder round thestandard of Savoy, and fell fighting desperately to the last. 

The Duke of Lorges had marched into the Palatinate, already twicedevastated, and had found that Turenne and Duras had left him somethingto destroy. Heidelberg, just beginning to rise again from its ruins, was again sacked, the peaceable citizens butchered, their wives anddaughters foully outraged. The very choirs of the churches were stainedwith blood; the pyxes and crucifixes were torn from the altars; thetombs of the ancient Electors were broken open; the corpses, strippedof their cerecloths and ornaments, were dragged about the streets. Theskull of the father of the Duchess of Orleans was beaten to fragmentsby the soldiers of a prince among the ladies of whose splendid Court sheheld the foremost place. 

And yet a discerning eye might have perceived that, unfortunate as theconfederates seemed to have been, the advantage had really been on theirside. The contest was quite as much a financial as a military contest. The French King had, some months before, said that the last piece ofgold would carry the day; and he now began painfully to feel the truthof the saying. England was undoubtedly hard pressed by public burdens;but still she stood up erect. France meanwhile was fast sinking. Herrecent efforts had been too much for her strength, and had left herspent and unnerved. Never had her rulers shown more ingenuity indevising taxes or more severity in exacting them; but by no ingenuity, by no severity, was it possible to raise the sums necessary for anothersuch campaign as that of 1693. In England the harvest had been abundant. In France the corn and the wine had again failed. The people, as usual, railed at the government. The government, with shameful ignorance ormore shameful dishonesty, tried to direct the public indignationagainst the dealers in grain. Decrees appeared which seemed to have beenelaborately framed for the purpose of turning dearth into famine. Thenation was assured that there was no reason for uneasiness, that therewas more than a sufficient supply of food, and that the scarcity hadbeen produced by the villanous arts of misers, who locked up theirstores in the hope of making enormous gains. Commissioners wereappointed to inspect the granaries, and were empowered to send tomarket all the corn that was not necessary for the consumption of theproprietors. Such interference of course increased the suffering whichit was meant to relieve. But in the midst of the general distress therewas an artificial plenty in one favoured spot. The most arbitraryprince must always stand in some awe of an immense mass of human beingscollected in the neighbourhood of his own palace. Apprehensions similarto those which had induced the Caesars to extort from Africa and Egyptthe means of pampering the rabble of Rome induced Lewis to aggravate themisery of twenty provinces for the purpose of keeping one huge city ingood humour. He ordered bread to be distributed in all the parishes ofthe capital at less than half the market price. The English Jacobiteswere stupid enough to extol the wisdom and humanity of this arrangement. The harvest, they said, had been good in England and bad in France; andyet the loaf was cheaper at Paris than in London; and the explanationwas simple. The French had a sovereign whose heart was French, andwho watched over his people with the solicitude of a father, while theEnglish were cursed with a Dutch tyrant, who sent their corn to Holland. The truth was that a week of such fatherly government as that of Lewiswould have raised all England in arms from Northumberland to Cornwall. That there might be abundance at Paris, the people of Normandy and Anjouwere stuffing themselves with nettles. That there might be tranquillityat Paris, the peasantry were fighting with the bargemen and the troopsall along the Loire and the Seine. Multitudes fled from those ruraldistricts where bread cost five sous a pound to the happy place wherebread was to be had for two sous a pound. It was necessary to drive thefamished crowds back by force from the barriers, and to denounce themost terrible punishments against all who should not go home and starvequietly. [468]

Lewis was sensible that the strength of France had been overstrained bythe exertions of the last campaign. Even if her harvest and her vintagehad been abundant, she would not have been able to do in 1694 what shehad done in 1693; and it was utterly impossible that, in a season ofextreme distress, she should again send into the field armies superiorin number on every point to the armies of the coalition. New conquestswere not to be expected. It would be much if the harassed and exhaustedland, beset on all sides by enemies, should be able to sustain adefensive war without any disaster. So able a politician as the FrenchKing could not but feel that it would be for his advantage to treat withthe allies while they were still awed by the remembrance of the giganticefforts which his kingdom had just made, and before the collapse whichhad followed those efforts should become visible. 

He had long been communicating through various channels with somemembers of the confederacy, and trying to induce them to separatethemselves from the rest. But he had as yet made no overture tendingto a general pacification. For he knew that there could be no generalpacification unless he was prepared to abandon the cause of James, andto acknowledge the Prince and Princess of Orange as King and Queen ofEngland. This was in truth the point on which every thing turned. Whatshould be done with those great fortresses which Lewis had unjustlyseized and annexed to his empire in time of peace, Luxemburg whichoverawed the Moselle, and Strasburg which domineered over the UpperRhine; what should be done with the places which he had recently won inopen war, Philipsburg, Mons and Namur, Huy and Charleroy; what barriershould be given to the States General; on what terms Lorraine should berestored to its hereditary Dukes; these were assuredly not unimportantquestions. But the all important question was whether England was tobe, as she had been under James, a dependency of France, or, as shewas under William and Mary, a power of the first rank. If Lewis reallywished for peace, he must bring himself to recognise the Sovereignswhom he had so often designated as usurpers. Could he bring himself torecognise them? His superstition, his pride, his regard for the unhappyexiles who were pining at Saint Germains, his personal dislike ofthe indefatigable and unconquerable adversary who had been constantlycrossing his path during twenty years, were on one side; his interestsand those of his people were on the other. He must have been sensiblethat it was not in his power to subjugate the English, that he must atlast leave them to choose their government for themselves, and that whathe must do at last it would be best to do soon. Yet he could not at oncemake up his mind to what was so disagreeable to him. He however openeda negotiation with the States General through the intervention of Swedenand Denmark, and sent a confidential emissary to confer in secret atBrussels with Dykvelt, who possessed the entire confidence of William. There was much discussion about matters of secondary importance; butthe great question remained unsettled. The French agent used, in privateconversation, expressions plainly implying that the government which herepresented was prepared to recognise William and Mary; but no formalassurance could be obtained from him. Just at the same time the Kingof Denmark informed the allies that he was endeavouring to prevail onFrance not to insist on the restoration of James as an indispensablecondition of peace, but did not say that his endeavours had as yetbeen successful. Meanwhile Avaux, who was now Ambassador at Stockholm, informed the King of Sweden, that, as the dignity of all crowned headshad been outraged in the person of James, the Most Christian King feltassured that not only neutral powers, but even the Emperor, would try tofind some expedient which might remove so grave a cause of quarrel. Theexpedient at which Avaux hinted doubtless was that James should waivehis rights, and that the Prince of Wales should be sent to England, breda Protestant, adopted by William and Mary, and declared their heir. To such an arrangement William would probably have had no personalobjection. But we may be assured that he never would have consented tomake it a condition of peace with France. Who should reign in Englandwas a question to be decided by England alone. [469]

It might well be suspected that a negotiation conducted in this mannerwas merely meant to divide the confederates. William understood thewhole importance of the conjuncture. He had not, it may be, the eye of agreat captain for all the turns of a battle. But he had, in the highestperfection, the eye of a great statesman for all the turns of a war. That France had at length made overtures to him was a sufficient proofthat she felt herself spent and sinking. That those overtures were madewith extreme reluctance and hesitation proved that she had not yet cometo a temper in which it was possible to have peace with her on fairterms. He saw that the enemy was beginning to give ground, and that thiswas the time to assume the offensive, to push forward, to bring up everyreserve. But whether the opportunity should be seized or lost it did notbelong to him to decide. The King of France might levy troops and exacttaxes without any limit save that which the laws of nature impose ondespotism. But the King of England could do nothing without the supportof the House of Commons; and the House of Commons, though it hadhitherto supported him zealously and liberally, was not a body onwhich he could rely. It had indeed got into a state which perplexedand alarmed all the most sagacious politicians of that age. Therewas something appalling in the union of such boundless power and suchboundless caprice. The fate of the whole civilised world depended onthe votes of the representatives of the English people; and there wasno public man who could venture to say with confidence what thoserepresentatives might not be induced to vote within twenty-four hours. [470] William painfully felt that it was scarcely possible for a princedependent on an assembly so violent at one time, so languid at another, to effect any thing great. Indeed, though no sovereign did so much tosecure and to extend the power of the House of Commons, no sovereignloved the House of Commons less. Nor is this strange; for he saw thatHouse at the very worst. He saw it when it had just acquired the powerand had not yet acquired the gravity of a senate. In his letters toHeinsius he perpetually complains of the endless talking, the factioussquabbling, the inconstancy, the dilatoriness, of the body whichhis situation made it necessary for him to treat with deference. Hiscomplaints were by no means unfounded; but he had not discovered eitherthe cause or the cure of the evil. 

The truth was that the change which the Revolution had made in thesituation of the House of Commons had made another change necessary;and that other change had not yet taken place. There was parliamentarygovernment; but there was no Ministry; and, without a Ministry, theworking of a parliamentary government, such as ours, must always beunsteady and unsafe. 

It is essential to our liberties that the House of Commons shouldexercise a control over all the departments of the executiveadministration. And yet it is evident that a crowd of five or sixhundred people, even if they were intellectually much above the averageof the members of the best Parliament, even if every one of them werea Burleigh, or a Sully, would be unfit for executive functions. It hasbeen truly said that every large collection of human beings, howeverwell educated, has a strong tendency to become a mob; and a country ofwhich the Supreme Executive Council is a mob is surely in a periloussituation. 

Happily a way has been found out in which the House of Commons canexercise a paramount influence over the executive government, withoutassuming functions such as can never be well discharged by a body sonumerous and so variously composed. An institution which did not existin the times, of the Plantagenets, of the Tudors or of the Stuarts, aninstitution not known to the law, an institution not mentioned in anystatute, an institution of which such writers as De Lolme and Blackstonetake no notice, began to exist a few years after the Revolution, grewrapidly into importance, became firmly established, and is now almostas essential a part of our polity as the Parliament itself. Thisinstitution is the Ministry. 

The Ministry is, in fact, a committee of leading members of the twoHouses. It is nominated by the Crown; but it consists exclusively ofstatesmen whose opinions on the pressing questions of the time agree, in the main, with the opinions of the majority of the House ofCommons. Among the members of this committee are distributed the greatdepartments of the administration. Each Minister conducts the ordinarybusiness of his own office without reference to his colleagues. But themost important business of every office, and especially such businessas is likely to be the subject of discussion in Parliament, is broughtunder the consideration of the whole Ministry. In Parliament theMinisters are bound to act as one man on all questions relating tothe executive government. If one of them dissents from the rest on aquestion too important to admit of compromise, it is his duty to retire. While the Ministers retain the confidence of the parliamentary majority, that majority supports them against opposition, and rejects every motionwhich reflects on them or is likely to embarrass them. If they forfeitthat confidence, if the parliamentary majority is dissatisfied withthe way in which patronage is distributed, with the way in which theprerogative of mercy is used, with the conduct of foreign affairs, withthe conduct of a war, the remedy is simple. It is not necessary that theCommons should take on themselves the business of administration, thatthey should request the Crown to make this man a bishop and that mana judge, to pardon one criminal and to execute another, to negotiate atreaty on a particular basis or to send an expedition to a particularplace. They have merely to declare that they have ceased to trust theMinistry, and to ask for a Ministry which they can trust. 

It is by means of Ministries thus constituted, and thus changed, thatthe English government has long been conducted in general conformitywith the deliberate sense of the House of Commons, and yet has beenwonderfully free from the vices which are characteristic of governmentsadministered by large, tumultuous and divided assemblies. A fewdistinguished persons, agreeing in their general opinions, are theconfidential advisers at once of the Sovereign and of the Estates of theRealm. In the closet they speak with the authority of men who stand highin the estimation of the representatives of the people. In Parliamentthey speak with the authority of men versed in great affairs andacquainted with all the secrets of the State. Thus the Cabinet hassomething of the popular character of a representative body; and therepresentative body has something of the gravity of a cabinet. 

Sometimes the state of parties is such that no set of men who can bebrought together possesses the full confidence and steady support of amajority of the House of Commons. When this is the case, there must bea weak Ministry; and there will probably be a rapid succession of weakMinistries. At such times the House of Commons never fails to get intoa state which no person friendly to representative government cancontemplate without uneasiness, into a state which may enable us to formsome faint notion of the state of that House during the earlier yearsof the reign of William. The notion is indeed but faint; for the weakestMinistry has great power as a regulator of parliamentary proceedings;and in the earlier years of the reign of William there was no Ministryat all. 

No writer has yet attempted to trace the progress of this institution, an institution indispensable to the harmonious working of our otherinstitutions. The first Ministry was the work, partly of mere chance, and partly of wisdom, not however of that highest wisdom which isconversant with great principles of political philosophy, but of thatlower wisdom which meets daily exigencies by daily expedients. NeitherWilliam nor the most enlightened of his advisers fully understood thenature and importance of that noiseless revolution, --for it was noless, --which began about the close of 1693, and was completed about theclose of 1696. But every body could perceive that, at the close of1693, the chief offices in the government were distributed not unequallybetween the two great parties, that the men who held those offices wereperpetually caballing against each other, haranguing against eachother, moving votes of censure on each other, exhibiting articles ofimpeachment against each other, and that the temper of the House ofCommons was wild, ungovernable and uncertain. Everybody could perceivethat at the close of 1696, all the principal servants of the Crown wereWhigs, closely bound together by public and private ties, and prompt todefend one another against every attack, and that the majority of theHouse of Commons was arrayed in good order under those leaders, and hadlearned to move, like one man, at the word of command. The historyof the period of transition and of the steps by which the change waseffected is in a high degree curious and interesting. 

The statesman who had the chief share in forming the first EnglishMinistry had once been but too well known, but had long hidden himselffrom the public gaze, and had but recently emerged from the obscurityin which it had been expected that he would pass the remains of anignominious and disastrous life. During that period of general terrorand confusion which followed the flight of James, Sunderland haddisappeared. It was high time; for of all the agents of the fallengovernment he was, with the single exception of Jeffreys, the mostodious to the nation. Few knew that Sunderland's voice had in secretbeen given against the spoliation of Magdalene College and theprosecution of the Bishops; but all knew that he had signed numerousinstruments dispensing with statutes, that he had sate in the HighCommission, that he had turned or pretended to turn Papist, that he had, a few days after his apostasy, appeared in Westminster Hall as a witnessagainst the oppressed fathers of the Church. He had indeed atoned formany crimes by one crime baser than all the rest. As soon as he hadreason to believe that the day of deliverance and retribution was athand, he had, by a most dexterous and seasonable treason, earned hispardon. During the three months which preceded the arrival of the Dutcharmament in Torbay, he had rendered to the cause of liberty and of theProtestant religion services of which it is difficult to overrate eitherthe wickedness or the utility. To him chiefly it was owing that, at themost critical moment in our history, a French army was not menacing theBatavian frontier and a French fleet hovering about the English coast. William could not, without staining his own honour, refuse to protectone whom he had not scrupled to employ. Yet it was no easy task even forWilliam to save that guilty head from the first outbreak of public fury. For even those extreme politicians of both sides who agreed in nothingelse agreed in calling for vengeance on the renegade. The Whigs hatedhim as the vilest of the slaves by whom the late government had beenserved, and the Jacobites as the vilest of the traitors by whom it hadbeen overthrown. Had he remained in England, he would probably have diedby the hand of the executioner, if indeed the executioner had notbeen anticipated by the populace. But in Holland a political refugee, favoured by the Stadtholder, might hope to live unmolested. To HollandSunderland fled, disguised, it is said, as a woman; and his wifeaccompanied him. At Rotterdam, a town devoted to the House of Orange, hethought himself secure. But the magistrates were not in all the secretsof the Prince, and were assured by some busy Englishmen that HisHighness would be delighted to hear of the arrest of the Popish dog, theJudas, whose appearance on Tower Hill was impatiently expected by allLondon. Sunderland was thrown into prison, and remained there tillan order for his release arrived from Whitehall. He then proceeded toAmsterdam, and there changed his religion again. His second apostasyedified his wife as much as his first apostasy had edified his master. The Countess wrote to assure her pious friends in England that her poordear lord's heart had at last been really touched by divine grace, andthat, in spite of all her afflictions, she was comforted by seeing himso true a convert. We may, however, without any violation of Christiancharity, suspect that he was still the same false, callous, Sunderlandwho, a few months before, had made Bonrepaux shudder by denying theexistence of a God, and had, at the same time, won the heart of Jamesby pretending to believe in transubstantiation. In a short time thebanished man put forth an apology for his conduct. This apology, whenexamined, will be found to amount merely to a confession that he hadcommitted one series of crimes in order to gain James's favour, andanother series in order to avoid being involved in James's ruin. Thewriter concluded by announcing his intention to pass all the rest of hislife in penitence and prayer. He soon retired from Amsterdam to Utrecht, and at Utrecht made himself conspicuous by his regular and devoutattendance on the ministrations of Huguenot preachers. If his lettersand those of his wife were to be trusted, he had done for ever withambition. He longed indeed to be permitted to return from exile, notthat he might again enjoy and dispense the favours of the Crown, notthat his antechambers might again be filled by the daily swarm ofsuitors, but that he might see again the turf, the trees and the familypictures of his country seat. His only wish was to be suffered to endhis troubled life at Althorpe; and he would be content to forfeit hishead if ever he went beyond the palings of his park. [471]

While the House of Commons, which had been elected during the vacancy ofthe throne, was busily engaged in the work of proscription, he could notventure to show himself in England. But when that assembly had ceased toexist, he thought himself safe. He returned a few days after the Act ofGrace had been laid on the table of the Lords. From the benefit of thatAct he was by name excluded; but he well knew that he had now nothing tofear. He went privately to Kensington, was admitted into the closet, had an audience which lasted two hours, and then retired to his countryhouse. [472]

During many months be led a secluded life, and had no residence inLondon. Once in the spring of 1692, to the great astonishment of thepublic, he showed his face in the circle at Court, and was graciouslyreceived. [473] He seems to have been afraid that he might, on hisreappearance in Parliament, receive some marked affront. He therefore, very prudently, stole down to Westminster, in the dead time of the year, on a day to which the Houses stood adjourned by the royal command, andon which they met merely for the purpose of adjourning again. Sunderlandhad just time to present himself, to take the oaths, to sign thedeclaration against transubstantiation, and to resume his seat. None ofthe few peers who were present had an opportunity of making any remark. [474] It was not till the year 1692 that he began to attend regularly. He was silent; but silent he had always been in large assemblies, evenwhen he was at the zenith of power. His talents were not those of apublic speaker. The art in which he surpassed all men was the art ofwhispering. His tact, his quick eye for the foibles of individuals, his caressing manners, his power of insinuation, and, above all, hisapparent frankness, made him irresistible in private conversation. By means of these qualities he had governed James, and now aspired togovern William. 

To govern William, indeed, was not easy. But Sunderland succeededin obtaining such a measure of favour and influence as excited muchsurprise and some indignation. In truth, scarcely any mind was strongenough to resist the witchery of his talk and of his manners. Every manis prone to believe in the gratitude and attachment even of the mostworthless persons on whom he has conferred great benefits. It cantherefore hardly be thought strange that the most skilful of allflatterers should have been heard with favour, when he, with everyoutward sign of strong emotion, implored permission to dedicate allhis faculties to the service of the generous protector to whom he owedproperty, liberty, life. It is not necessary, however, to suppose thatthe King was deceived. He may have thought, with good reason, that, though little confidence could be placed in Sunderland's professions, much confidence might be placed in Sunderland's situation; and the truthis that Sunderland proved, on the whole, a more faithful servant than amuch less depraved man might have been. He did indeed make, in profoundsecresy, some timid overtures towards a reconciliation with James. But it may be confidently affirmed that, even had those overturesbeen graciously received, --and they appear to have been received veryungraciously, --the twice turned renegade would never have rendered anyreal service to the Jacobite cause. He well knew that he had done thatwhich at Saint Germains must be regarded as inexpiable. It was notmerely that he had been treacherous and ungrateful. Marlborough had beenas treacherous and ungrateful; and Marlborough had been pardoned. But Marlborough had not been guilty of the impious hypocrisy ofcounterfeiting the signs of conversion. Marlborough had not pretendedto be convinced by the arguments of the Jesuits, to be touched by divinegrace, to pine for union with the only true Church. Marlborough had not, when Popery was in the ascendant, crossed himself, shrived himself, done penance, taken the communion in one kind, and, as soon as a turnof fortune came, apostatized back again, and proclaimed to all the worldthat, when he knelt at the confessional and received the host, he wasmerely laughing at the King and the priests. The crime of Sunderlandwas one which could never be forgiven by James; and a crime which couldnever be forgiven by James was, in some sense, a recommendation toWilliam. The Court, nay, the Council, was full of men who might hopeto prosper if the banished King were restored. But Sunderland had lefthimself no retreat. He had broken down all the bridges behind him. Hehad been so false to one side that he must of necessity be true tothe other. That he was in the main true to the government which nowprotected him there is no reason to doubt; and, being true, he could notbut be useful. He was, in some respects, eminently qualified to be atthat time an adviser of the Crown. He had exactly the talents and theknowledge which William wanted. The two together would have made up aconsummate statesman. The master was capable of forming and executinglarge designs, but was negligent of those small arts in which theservant excelled. The master saw farther off than other men; but whatwas near no man saw so clearly as the servant. The master, thoughprofoundly versed in the politics of the great community of nations, never thoroughly understood the politics of his own kingdom. The servantwas perfectly well informed as to the temper and the organization of theEnglish factions, and as to the strong and weak parts of the characterof every Englishman of note. 

Early in 1693, it was rumoured that Sunderland was consulted on allimportant questions relating to the internal administration of therealm; and the rumour became stronger when it was known that he had comeup to London in the autumn before the meeting of Parliament and that hehad taken a large mansion near Whitehall. The coffeehouse politicianswere confident that he was about to hold some high office. As yet, however, he had the wisdom to be content with the reality of power, andto leave the show to others. [475]

His opinion was that, as long as the King tried to balance the two greatparties against each other, and to divide his favour equally betweenthem, both would think themselves ill used, and neither would lend tothe government that hearty and steady support which was now greatlyneeded. His Majesty must make up his mind to give a marked preferenceto one or the other; and there were three weighty reasons for giving thepreference to the Whigs. 

In the first place, the Whigs were on principle attached to the reigningdynasty. In their view the Revolution had been, not merely necessary, not merely justifiable, but happy and glorious. It had been the triumphof their political theory. When they swore allegiance to William, theyswore without scruple or reservation; and they were so far from havingany doubt about his title that they thought it the best of all titles. The Tories, on the other hand, very generally disapproved of that voteof the Convention which had placed him on the throne. Some of them wereat heart Jacobites, and had taken the oath of allegiance to him onlythat they might be able to injure him. Others, though they thoughtit their duty to obey him as King in fact, denied that he was King byright, and, if they were loyal to him, were loyal without enthusiasm. There could, therefore, be little doubt on which of the two parties itwould be safer for him to rely. 

In the second place, as to the particular matter on which his heartwas at present set, the Whigs were, as a body, prepared to support himstrenuously, and the Tories were, as a body, inclined to thwart him. Theminds of men were at this time much occupied by the question, in whatway the war ought to be carried on. To that question the two partiesreturned very different answers. An opinion had during many months beengrowing among the Tories that the policy of England ought to be strictlyinsular; that she ought to leave the defence of Flanders and the Rhineto the States General, the House of Austria and the Princes of theEmpire; that she ought to carry on hostilities with vigour by sea, butto keep up only such an army as might, with the help of the militia, besufficient to repel an invasion. It was plain that, if this systemwere adopted, there might be an immediate reduction of the taxes whichpressed most heavily on the nation. But the Whigs maintained thatthis relief would be dearly purchased. Many thousands of brave Englishsoldiers were now in Flanders. Yet the allies had not been able toprevent the French from taking Mons in 1691, Namur in 1692, Charleroy in1693. If the English troops were withdrawn, it was certain that Ostend, Ghent, Liege, Brussels would fall. The German Princes would hasten tomake peace, each for himself. The Spanish Netherlands would probably beannexed to the French monarchy. The United Provinces would be again inas great peril as in 1672, and would accept whatever terms Lewis mightbe pleased to dictate. In a few months, he would be at liberty to putforth his whole strength against our island. Then would come a strugglefor life and death. It might well be hoped that we should be able todefend our soil even against such a general and such an army as hadwon the battle of Landen. But the fight must be long and hard. How manyfertile counties would be turned into deserts, how many flourishingtowns would be laid in ashes, before the invaders were destroyed ordriven out! One triumphant campaign in Kent and Middlesex would do moreto impoverish the nation than ten disastrous campaigns in Brabant. It isremarkable that this dispute between the two great factions was, duringseventy years, regularly revived as often as our country was at war withFrance. That England ought never to attempt great military operations onthe Continent continued to be a fundamental article of the creed of theTories till the French Revolution produced a complete change in theirfeelings. [476] As the chief object of William was to open thecampaign of 1694 in Flanders with an immense display of force, it wassufficiently clear to whom he must look for assistance. 

In the third place, the Whigs were the stronger party in Parliament. Thegeneral election of 1690, indeed, had not been favourable to them. They had been, for a time, a minority; but they had ever since beenconstantly gaining ground; they were now in number a full half of theLower House; and their effective strength was more than proportionedto their number; for in energy, alertness and discipline, they weredecidedly superior to their opponents. Their organization was not indeedso perfect as it afterwards became; but they had already begun tolook for guidance to a small knot of distinguished men, which was longafterwards widely known by the name of the junto. There is, perhaps, noparallel in history, ancient or modern, to the authority exercised bythis council, during twenty troubled years, over the Whig body. The menwho acquired that authority in the days of William and Mary continuedto possess it, without interruption, in office and out of office, tillGeorge the First was on the throne. 

One of these men was Russell. Of his shameful dealings with the Court ofSaint Germains we possess proofs which leave no room for doubt. But nosuch proofs were laid before the world till he had been many years dead. If rumours of his guilt got abroad, they were vague and improbable; theyrested on no evidence; they could be traced to no trustworthy author;and they might well be regarded by his contemporaries as Jacobitecalumnies. What was quite certain was that he sprang from an illustrioushouse, which had done and suffered great things for liberty and for theProtestant religion, that he had signed the invitation of the thirtiethof June, that he had landed with the Deliverer at Torbay, that he had inParliament, on all occasions, spoken and voted as a zealous Whig, that he had won a great victory, that he had saved his country from aninvasion, and that, since he had left the Admiralty, every thing hadgone wrong. We cannot therefore wonder that his influence over his partyshould have been considerable. 

But the greatest man among the members of the junto, and, in somerespects, the greatest man of that age, was the Lord Keeper Somers. Hewas equally eminent as a jurist and as a politician, as an orator and asa writer. His speeches have perished; but his State papers remain, andare models of terse, luminous, and dignified eloquence. He had lefta great reputation in the House of Commons, where he had, during fouryears, been always heard with delight; and the Whig members still lookedup to him as their leader, and still held their meetings under his roof. In the great place to which he had recently been promoted, he had soborne himself that, after a very few months, even faction and envy hadceased to murmur at his elevation. In truth, he united all thequalities of a great judge, an intellect comprehensive, quick and acute, diligence, integrity, patience, suavity. In council, the calm wisdomwhich he possessed in a measure rarely found among men of parts so quickand of opinions so decided as his, acquired for him the authority ofan oracle. The superiority of his powers appeared not less clearly inprivate circles. The charm of his conversation was heightened by thefrankness with which he poured out his thoughts. [477] His good temperand his good breeding never failed. His gesture, his look, his toneswere expressive of benevolence. His humanity was the more remarkable, because he had received from nature a body such as is generally foundunited with a peevish and irritable mind. His life was one long malady;his nerves were weak; his complexion was livid; his face was prematurelywrinkled. Yet his enemies could not pretend that he had ever once, during a long and troubled public life, been goaded, even by suddenprovocation, into vehemence inconsistent with the mild dignity of hischaracter. All that was left to them was to assert that his dispositionwas very far from being so gentle as the world believed, that he wasreally prone to the angry passions, and that sometimes, while his voicewas soft, and his words kind and courteous, his delicate frame wasalmost convulsed by suppressed emotion. It will perhaps be thought thatthis reproach is the highest of all eulogies. 

The most accomplished men of those times have told us that there wasscarcely any subject on which Somers was not competent to instruct andto delight. He had never travelled; and, in that age, an Englishman whohad not travelled was generally thought incompetent to give an opinionon works of art. But connoisseurs familiar with the masterpieces of theVatican and of the Florentine gallery allowed that the taste of Somersin painting and sculpture was exquisite. Philology was one of hisfavourite pursuits. He had traversed the whole vast range of politeliterature, ancient and modern. He was at once a munificent and severelyjudicious patron of genius and learning. Locke owed opulence to Somers. By Somers Addison was drawn forth from a cell in a college. In distantcountries the name of Somers was mentioned with respect and gratitudeby great scholars and poets who had never seen his face. He was thebenefactor of Leclerc. He was the friend of Filicaja. Neither politicalnor religious differences prevented him from extending his powerfulprotection to merit. Hickes, the fiercest and most intolerant of allthe nonjurors, obtained, by the influence of Somers, permission tostudy Teutonic antiquities in freedom and safety. Vertue, a strict RomanCatholic, was raised by the discriminating and liberal patronage ofSomers from poverty and obscurity to the first rank among the engraversof the age. 

The generosity with which Somers treated his opponents was the morehonourable to him because he was no waverer in politics. From thebeginning to the end of his public life he was a steady Whig. His voicewas indeed always raised, when his party was dominant in the State, against violent and vindictive counsels; but he never forsook hisfriends, even when their perverse neglect of his advice had brought themto the verge of ruin. 

His powers of mind and his acquirements were not denied, even by hisdetractors. The most acrimonious Tories were forced to admit, with anungracious snarl, which increased the value of their praise, that he hadall the intellectual qualities of a great man, and that in him alone, among his contemporaries, brilliant eloquence and wit were to be foundassociated with the quiet and steady prudence which ensures successin life. It is a remarkable fact, that, in the foulest of all the manylibels that were published against him, he was slandered under the nameof Cicero. As his abilities could not be questioned, he was charged withirreligion and immorality. That he was heterodox all the country vicarsand foxhunting squires firmly believed; but as to the nature and extentof his heterodoxy there were many different opinions. He seems to havebeen a Low Churchman of the school of Tillotson, whom he alwaysloved and honoured; and he was, like Tillotson, called by bigots aPresbyterian, an Arian, a Socinian, a Deist, and an Atheist. 

The private life of this great statesman and magistrate was malignantlyscrutinised; and tales were told about his libertinism which went ongrowing till they became too absurd for the credulity even of partyspirit. At last, long after he had been condemned to flannel and chickenbroth, a wretched courtesan, who had probably never seen him except inthe stage box at the theatre, when she was following her vocation belowin a mask, published a lampoon in which she described him as the masterof a haram more costly than the Great Turk's. There is, however, reasonto believe that there was a small nucleus of truth round which thisgreat mass of fiction gathered, and that the wisdom and selfcommandwhich Somers never wanted in the senate, on the judgment seat, at thecouncil board, or in the society of wits, scholars and philosophers, were not always proof against female attractions. [478]

Another director of the Whig party was Charles Montague. He was often, when he had risen to power, honours and riches, called an upstart bythose who envied his success. That they should have called him so mayseem strange; for few of the statesmen of his time could show such apedigree as his. He sprang from a family as old as the Conquest; he wasin the succession to an earldom, and was, by the paternal side, cousinof three earls. But he was the younger son of a younger brother; andthat phrase had, ever since the time of Shakspeare and Raleigh, andperhaps before their time, been proverbially used to designate a personso poor as to be broken to the most abject servitude or ready for themost desperate adventure. 

Charles Montague was early destined for the Church, was entered on thefoundation of Westminster, and, after distinguishing himself there byskill in Latin versification, was sent up to Trinity College, Cambridge. At Cambridge the philosophy of Des Cartes was still dominant in theschools. But a few select spirits had separated from the crowd, andformed a fit audience round a far greater teacher. [479] Conspicuousamong the youths of high promise who were proud to sit at the feet ofNewton was the quick and versatile Montague. Under such guidance theyoung student made considerable proficiency in the severe sciences; butpoetry was his favourite pursuit; and when the University invited hersons to celebrate royal marriages and funerals, he was generally allowedto have surpassed his competitors. His fame travelled to London; hewas thought a clever lad by the wits who met at Will's, and the livelyparody which he wrote, in concert with his friend and fellow studentPrior, on Dryden's Hind and Panther, was received with great applause. 

At this time all Montague's wishes pointed towards the Church. At alater period, when he was a peer with twelve thousand a year, when hisvilla on the Thames was regarded as the most delightful of all suburbanretreats, when he was said to revel in Tokay from the Imperial cellar, and in soups made out of birds' nests brought from the Indian Ocean, andcosting three guineas a piece, his enemies were fond of reminding himthat there had been a time when he had eked out by his wits an incomeof barely fifty pounds, when he had been happy with a trencher of muttonchops and a flagon of ale from the College buttery, and when a tithepig was the rarest luxury for which he had dared to hope. The Revolutioncame, and changed his whole scheme of life. He obtained, by theinfluence of Dorset, who took a peculiar pleasure in befriending youngmen of promise, a seat in the House of Commons. Still, during a fewmonths, the needy scholar hesitated between politics and divinity. Butit soon became clear that, in the new order of things, parliamentaryability must fetch a higher price than any other kind of ability; andhe felt that in parliamentary ability he had no superior. He was in thevery situation for which he was peculiarly fitted by nature; and duringsome years his life was a series of triumphs. 

Of him, as of several of his contemporaries, especially of Mulgrave andof Sprat, it may be said that his fame has suffered from the folly ofthose editors who, down to our own time, have persisted in reprintinghis rhymes among the works of the British poets. There is not a year inwhich hundreds of verses as good as any that he ever wrote are not sentin for the Newdigate prize at Oxford and for the Chancellor's medal atCambridge. His mind had indeed great quickness and vigour, but not thatkind of quickness and vigour which produces great dramas or odes; andit is most unjust to him that his loan of Honour and his Epistle onthe Battle of the Boyne should be placed side by side with Comusand Alexander's Feast. Other eminent statesmen and orators, Walpole, Pulteney, Chatham, Fox, wrote poetry not better than his. Butfortunately for them, their metrical compositions were never thoughtworthy to be admitted into any collection of our national classics. 

It has long been usual to represent the imagination under the figure ofa wing, and to call the successful exertions of the imagination flights. One poet is the eagle; another is the swan; a third modestly compareshimself to the bee. But none of these types would have suited Montague. His genius may be compared to that pinion which, though it is too weakto lift the ostrich into the air, enables her, while she remains on theearth, to outrun hound, horse and dromedary. If the man who possessesthis kind of genius attempts to ascend the heaven of invention, hisawkward and unsuccessful efforts expose him to derision. But if he willbe content to stay in the terrestrial region of business, he will findthat the faculties which would not enable him to soar into a highersphere will enable him to distance all his competitors in the lower. Asa poet Montague could never have risen above the crowd. But in the Houseof Commons, now fast becoming supreme in the State, and extendingits control over one executive department after another, the youngadventurer soon obtained a place very different from the place which heoccupies among men of letters. At thirty, he would gladly have given allhis chances in life for a comfortable vicarage and a chaplain's scarf. At thirty-seven, he was First Lord of the Treasury, Chancellor of theExchequer and a Regent of the kingdom; and this elevation he owed notat all to favour, but solely to the unquestionable superiority of histalents for administration and debate. 

The extraordinary ability with which, at the beginning of the year 1692, he managed the conference on the Bill for regulating Trials in cases ofTreason, placed him at once in the first rank of parliamentary orators. On that occasion he was opposed to a crowd of veteran senators renownedfor their eloquence, Halifax, Rochester, Nottingham, Mulgrave, andproved himself a match for them all. He was speedily seated at the Boardof Treasury; and there the clearheaded and experienced Godolphin soonfound that his young colleague was his master. When Somers had quittedthe House of Commons, Montague had no rival there. Sir Thomas Littleton, once distinguished as the ablest debater and man of business among theWhig members, was content to serve under his junior. To this day we maydiscern in many parts of our financial and commercial system the marksof the vigorous intellect and daring spirit of Montague. His bitterestenemies were unable to deny that some of the expedients which he hadproposed had proved highly beneficial to the nation. But it was saidthat these expedients were not devised by himself. He was represented, in a hundred pamphlets, as the daw in borrowed plumes. He had taken, itwas affirmed, the hint of every one of his great plans from the writingsor the conversation of some ingenious speculator. This reproach was, in truth, no reproach. We can scarcely expect to find in the same humanbeing the talents which are necessary for the making of new discoveriesin political science, and the talents which obtain the assent of dividedand tumultuous assemblies to great practical reforms. To be at once anAdam Smith and a Pitt is scarcely possible. It is surely praise enoughfor a busy politician that he knows how to use the theories of others, that he discerns, among the schemes of innumerable projectors, theprecise scheme which is wanted and which is practicable, that he shapesit to suit pressing circumstances and popular humours, that he proposesit just when it is most likely to be favourably received, that hetriumphantly defends it against all objectors, and that he carries itinto execution with prudence and energy; and to this praise no Englishstatesman has a fairer claim than Montague. 

It is a remarkable proof of his selfknowledge that, from the moment atwhich he began to distinguish himself in public life, he ceased to bea versifier. It does not appear that, after he became a Lord of theTreasury, he ever wrote a couplet, with the exception of a few wellturned lines inscribed on a set of toasting glasses which were sacredto the most renowned Whig beauties of his time. He wisely determinedto derive from the poetry of others a glory which he never would havederived from his own. As a patron of genius and learning he ranks withhis two illustrious friends, Dorset and Somers. His munificence fullyequalled theirs; and, though he was inferior to them in delicacy oftaste, he succeeded in associating his name inseparably with some nameswhich will last as long as our language. 

Yet it must be acknowledged that Montague, with admirable parts andwith many claims on the gratitude of his country, had great faults, andunhappily faults not of the noblest kind. His head was not strong enoughto bear without giddiness the speed of his ascent and the height of hisposition. He became offensively arrogant and vain. He was too often coldto his old friends, and ostentatious in displaying his new riches. Aboveall, he was insatiably greedy of praise, and liked it best when it wasof the coarsest and rankest quality. But, in 1693, these faults wereless offensive than they became a few years later. 

With Russell, Somers and Montague, was closely connected, duringa quarter of a century a fourth Whig, who in character bore littleresemblance to any of them. This was Thomas Wharton, eldest son ofPhilip Lord Wharton. Thomas Wharton has been repeatedly mentioned in thecourse of this narrative. But it is now time to describe him morefully. He was in his forty-seventh year, but was still a young man inconstitution, in appearance and in manners. Those who hated him mostheartily, --and no man was hated more heartily, --admitted that hisnatural parts were excellent, and that he was equally qualified fordebate and for action. The history of his mind deserves notice; for itwas the history of many thousands of minds. His rank and abilitiesmade him so conspicuous that in him we are able to trace distinctlythe origin and progress of a moral taint which was epidemic among hiscontemporaries. 

He was born in the days of the Covenant, and was the heir of acovenanted house. His father was renowned as a distributor ofCalvinistic tracts, and a patron of Calvinistic divines. The boy's firstyears were past amidst Geneva bands, heads of lank hair, upturned eyes, nasal psalmody, and sermons three hours long. Plays and poems, huntingand dancing, were proscribed by the austere discipline of his saintlyfamily. The fruits of this education became visible, when, from thesullen mansion of Puritan parents, the hotblooded, quickwitted youngpatrician emerged into the gay and voluptuous London of the Restoration. The most dissolute cavaliers stood aghast at the dissoluteness of theemancipated precisian. He early acquired and retained to the last thereputation of being the greatest rake in England. Of wine indeed henever became the slave; and he used it chiefly for the purpose of makinghimself the master of his associates. But to the end of his long lifethe wives and daughters of his nearest friends were not safe from hislicentious plots. The ribaldry of his conversation moved astonishmenteven in that age. To the religion of his country he offered, in the merewantonness of impiety, insults too foul to be described. His mendacityand his effrontery passed into proverbs. Of all the liars of his time hewas the most deliberate, the most inventive and the most circumstantial. What shame meant he did not seem to understand. No reproaches, even whenpointed and barbed with the sharpest wit, appeared to give him pain. Great satirists, animated by a deadly personal aversion, exhaustedall their strength in attacks upon him. They assailed him with keeninvective; they assailed him with still keener irony; but they foundthat neither invective nor irony could move him to any thing but anunforced smile and a goodhumoured curse; and they at length threw downthe lash, acknowledging that it was impossible to make him feel. That, with such vices, he should have played a great part in life, should havecarried numerous elections against the most formidable opposition by hispersonal popularity, should have had a large following in Parliament, should have risen to the highest offices of the State, seemsextraordinary. But he lived in times when faction was almost a madness;and he possessed in an eminent degree the qualities of the leader ofa faction. There was a single tie which he respected. The falsestof mankind in all relations but one, he was the truest of Whigs. Thereligious tenets of his family he had early renounced with contempt;but to the politics of his family he stedfastly adhered through all thetemptations and dangers of half a century. In small things and in greathis devotion to his party constantly appeared. He had the finest stud inEngland; and his delight was to win plates from Tories. Sometimes when, in a distant county, it was fully expected that the horse of a HighChurch squire would be first on the course, down came, on the very eveof the race, Wharton's Careless, who had ceased to run at Newmarketmerely for want of competitors, or Wharton's Gelding, for whom Lewisthe Fourteenth had in vain offered a thousand pistoles. A man whose meresport was of this description was not likely to be easily beaten inany serious contest. Such a master of the whole art of electioneeringEngland had never seen. Buckinghamshire was his own especial province;and there he ruled without a rival. But he extended his care overthe Whig interest in Yorkshire, Cumberland, Westmoreland, Wiltshire. Sometimes twenty, sometimes thirty, members of Parliament were named byhim. As a canvasser he was irresistible. He never forgot a face thathe had once seen. Nay, in the towns in which he wished to establish aninterest, he remembered, not only the voters, but their families. His opponents were confounded by the strength of his memory and theaffability of his deportment, and owned, that it was impossible tocontend against a great man who called the shoemaker by his Christianname, who was sure that the butcher's daughter must be growing a finegirl, and who was anxious to know whether the blacksmith's youngest boywas breeched. By such arts as these he made himself so popular thathis journeys to the Buckinghamshire Quarter Sessions resembled royalprogresses. The bells of every parish through which he passed were rung, and flowers were strewed along the road. It was commonly believed that, in the course of his life, he expended on his parliamentary interest notless than eighty thousand pounds, a sum which, when compared with thevalue of estates, must be considered as equivalent to more than threehundred thousand pounds in our time. 

But the chief service which Wharton rendered to the Whig party was thatof bringing in recruits from the young aristocracy. He was quite asdexterous a canvasser among the embroidered coats at the Saint James'sCoffeehouse as among the leathern aprons at Wycombe and Aylesbury. Hehad his eye on every boy of quality who came of age; and it was noteasy for such a boy to resist the arts of a noble, eloquent and wealthyflatterer, who united juvenile vivacity to profound art and longexperience of the gay world. It mattered not what the novice preferred, gallantry or field sports, the dicebox or the bottle. Wharton soon foundout the master passion, offered sympathy, advice and assistance, and, while seeming to be only the minister of his disciple's pleasures, madesure of his disciple's vote. 

The party to whose interests Wharton, with such spirit and constancy, devoted his time, his fortune, his talents, his very vices, judgedhim, as was natural, far too leniently. He was widely known by thevery undeserved appellation of Honest Tom. Some pious men, Burnet, forexample, and Addison, averted their eyes from the scandal which he gave, and spoke of him, not indeed with esteem, yet with goodwill. A mostingenious and accomplished Whig, the third Earl of Shaftesbury, authorof the Characteristics, described Wharton as the most mysterious ofhuman beings, as a strange compound of best and worst, of privatedepravity and public virtue, and owned himself unable to understand howa man utterly without principle in every thing but politics should inpolitics be as true as steel. But that which, in the judgment of onefaction, more than half redeemed all Wharton's faults, seemed to theother faction to aggravate them all. The opinion which the Toriesentertained of him is expressed in a single line written after his deathby the ablest man of that party; "He was the most universal villain thatever I knew. " [480] Wharton's political adversaries thirsted forhis blood, and repeatedly tried to shed it. Had he not been a man ofimperturbable temper, dauntless courage and consummate skill in fence, his life would have been a short one. But neither anger nor danger everdeprived him of his presence of mind; he was an incomparable swordsman;and he had a peculiar way of disarming opponents which moved the envy ofall the duellists of his time. His friends said that he had never givena challenge, that he had never refused one, that he had never taken alife, and yet that he had never fought without having his antagonist'slife at his mercy. [481]

The four men who have been described resembled each other so little thatit may be thought strange that they should ever have been able to actin concert. They did, however, act in the closest concert during manyyears. They more than once rose and more than once fell together. Buttheir union lasted till it was dissolved by death. Little as some ofthem may have deserved esteem, none of them can be accused of havingbeen false to his brethren of the Junto. 

While the great body of the Whigs was, under these able chiefs, arrayingitself in order resembling that of a regular army, the Tories were in astate of an ill drilled and ill officered militia. They were numerous;and they were zealous; but they can hardly be said to have had, at thistime, any chief in the House of Commons. The name of Seymour had oncebeen great among them, and had not quite lost its influence. But, since he had been at the Board of Treasury, he had disgusted themby vehemently defending all that he had himself, when out of place, vehemently attacked. They had once looked up to the Speaker, Trevor; buthis greediness, impudence and venality were now so notorious that allrespectable gentlemen, of all shades of opinion, were ashamed to see himin the chair. Of the old Tory members Sir Christopher Musgrave alone hadmuch weight. Indeed the real leaders of the party were two or three menbred in principles diametrically opposed to Toryism, men who had carriedWhiggism to the verge of republicanism, and who had been considered notmerely as Low Churchmen, but as more than half Presbyterians. Of thesemen the most eminent were two great Herefordshire squires, Robert Harleyand Paul Foley. 

The space which Robert Harley fills in the history of three reigns, his elevation, his fall, the influence which, at a great crisis, heexercised on the politics of all Europe, the close intimacy in whichhe lived with some of the greatest wits and poets of his time, and thefrequent recurrence of his name in the works of Swift, Pope, Arbuthnot, and Prior, must always make him an object of interest. Yet the manhimself was of all men the least interesting. There is indeed awhimsical contrast between the very ordinary qualities of his mind andthe very extraordinary vicissitudes of his fortune. 

He was the heir of a Puritan family. His father, Sir Edward Harley, had been conspicuous among the patriots of the Long parliament, hadcommanded a regiment under Essex, had, after the Restoration, been anactive opponent of the Court, had supported the Exclusion Bill, hadharboured dissenting preachers, had frequented meetinghouses, and hadmade himself so obnoxious to the ruling powers that at the time of theWestern Insurrection, he had been placed under arrest, and his househad been searched for arms. When the Dutch army was marching from Torbaytowards London, he and his eldest son Robert declared for the Princeof Orange and a free Parliament, raised a large body of horse, tookpossession of Worcester, and evinced their zeal against Popery bypublicly breaking to pieces, in the High Street of that city, a pieceof sculpture which to rigid precisians seemed idolatrous. Soon after theConvention became a Parliament, Robert Harley was sent up to Westminsteras member for a Cornish borough. His conduct was such as might havebeen expected from his birth and education. He was a Whig, and indeed anintolerant and vindictive Whig. Nothing would satisfy him but a generalproscription of the Tories. His name appears in the list of thosemembers who voted for the Sacheverell clause; and, at the generalelection which took place in the spring of 1690, the party which he hadpersecuted made great exertions to keep him out of the House of Commons. A cry was raised that the Harleys were mortal enemies of the Church; andthis cry produced so much effect that it was with difficulty that any ofthem could obtain a seat. Such was the commencement of the public lifeof a man whose name, a quarter of a century later, was inseparablycoupled with the High Church in the acclamations of Jacobite mobs. [482]

Soon, however, it began to be observed that in every division Harleywas in the company of those gentlemen who held his political opinionsin abhorrence; nor was this strange; for he affected the character ofa Whig of the old pattern; and before the Revolution it had alwaysbeen supposed that a Whig was a person who watched with jealousy everyexertion of the prerogative, who was slow to loose the strings of thepublic purse, and who was extreme to mark the faults of the ministersof the Crown. Such a Whig Harley still professed to be. He did not admitthat the recent change of dynasty had made any change in the duties of arepresentative of the people. The new government ought to be observed assuspiciously, checked as severely, and supplied as sparingly as the oldone. Acting on these principles he necessarily found himself actingwith men whose principles were diametrically opposed to his. He liked tothwart the King; they liked to thwart the usurper; the consequencewas that, whenever there was an opportunity of thwarting William, theRoundhead stayed in the House or went into the lobby in company with thewhole crowd of Cavaliers. 

Soon Harley acquired the authority of a leader among those with whom, notwithstanding wide differences of opinion, he ordinarily voted. Hisinfluence in Parliament was indeed altogether out of proportion to hisabilities. His intellect was both small and slow. He was unable to takea large view of any subject. He never acquired the art of expressinghimself in public with fluency and perspicuity. To the end of his lifehe remained a tedious, hesitating and confused speaker. [483]

He had none of the external graces of an orator. His countenance washeavy, his figure mean and somewhat deformed, and his gestures uncouth. Yet he was heard with respect. For, such as his mind was, it had beenassiduously cultivated. His youth had been studious; and to the last hecontinued to love books and the society of men of genius and learning. Indeed he aspired to the character of a wit and a poet, and occasionallyemployed hours which should have been very differently spent incomposing verses more execrable than the bellman's. [484] His timehowever was not always so absurdly wasted. He had that sort of industryand that sort of exactness which would have made him a respectableantiquary or King at Arms. His taste led him to plod among old records;and in that age it was only by plodding among old records that anyman could obtain an accurate and extensive knowledge of the law ofParliament. Having few rivals in this laborious and unattractivepursuit, he soon began to be regarded as an oracle on questions of formand privilege. His moral character added not a little to his influence. He had indeed great vices; but they were not of a scandalous kind. He was not to be corrupted by money. His private life was regular. Noillicit amour was imputed to him even by satirists. Gambling he heldin aversion; and it was said that he never passed White's, then thefavourite haunt of noble sharpers and dupes, without an exclamation ofanger. His practice of flustering himself daily with claret was hardlyconsidered as a fault by his contemporaries. His knowledge, his gravityand his independent position gained for him the ear of the House; andeven his bad speaking was, in some sense, an advantage to him. Forpeople are very loth to admit that the same man can unite very differentkinds of excellence. It is soothing to envy to believe that what issplendid cannot be solid, that what is clear cannot be profound. Veryslowly was the public brought to acknowledge that Mansfield was a greatjurist, and that Burke was a great master of political science. Montaguewas a brilliant rhetorician, and, therefore, though he had ten timesHarley's capacity for the driest parts of business, was represented bydetractors as a superficial, prating pretender. But from the absence ofshow in Harley's discourses many people inferred that there must bemuch substance; and he was pronounced to be a deep read, deep thinkinggentleman, not a fine talker, but fitter to direct affairs of state thanall the fine talkers in the world. This character he long supported withthat cunning which is frequently found in company with ambitious andunquiet mediocrity. He constantly had, even with his best friends, anair of mystery and reserve which seemed to indicate that he knew somemomentous secret, and that his mind was labouring with some vast design. In this way he got and long kept a high reputation for wisdom. It wasnot till that reputation had made him an Earl, a Knight of the Garter, Lord High Treasurer of England, and master of the fate of Europe, thathis admirers began to find out that he was really a dull puzzleheadedman. [485]

Soon after the general election of 1690, Harley, generally voting withthe Tories, began to turn Tory. The change was so gradual as to bealmost imperceptible; but was not the less real. He early began to holdthe Tory doctrine that England ought to confine herself to a maritimewar. He early felt the true Tory antipathy to Dutchmen and tomoneyed men. The antipathy to Dissenters, which was necessary tothe completeness of the character, came much later. At length thetransformation was complete; and the old haunter of conventicles becamean intolerant High Churchman. Yet to the last the traces of his earlybreeding would now and then show themselves; and, while he acted afterthe fashion of Laud, he sometimes wrote in the style of Praise GodBarebones. [486]

Of Paul Foley we know comparatively little. His history, up to a certainpoint, greatly resembles that of Harley: but he appears to have beensuperior to Harley both in parts and in elevation of character. He wasthe son of Thomas Foley, a new man, but a. Man of great merit, who, having begun life with nothing, had created a noble estate by ironworks, and who was renowned for his spotless integrity and his munificentcharity. The Foleys were, like their neighbours the Harleys, Whigs andPuritans. Thomas Foley lived on terms of close intimacy with Baxter, inwhose writings he is mentioned with warm eulogy. The opinions and theattachments of Paul Foley were at first those of his family. But be, like Harley, became, merely from the vehemence of his Whiggism, an allyof the Tories, and might, perhaps, like Harley, have been completelymetamorphosed into a Tory, if the process of transmutation had not beeninterrupted by death. Foley's abilities were highly respectable, and hadbeen improved by education. He was so wealthy that it was unnecessaryfor him to follow the law as a profession; but he had studied itcarefully as a science. His morals were without stain; and the greatestfault which could be imputed to him was that he paraded his independenceand disinterestedness too ostentatiously, and was so much afraid ofbeing thought to fawn that he was always growling. 

Another convert ought to be mentioned. Howe, lately the most virulentof the Whigs, had been, by the loss of his place, turned into one of themost virulent of the Tories. The deserter brought to the party which hehad joined no weight of character, no capacity or semblance of capacityfor great affairs, but much parliamentary ability of a low kind, muchspite and much impudence. No speaker of that time seems to have had, insuch large measure, both the power and the inclination to give pain. 

The assistance of these men was most welcome to the Tory party; but itwas impossible that they could, as yet, exercise over that party theentire authority of leaders. For they still called themselves Whigs, and generally vindicated their Tory votes by arguments grounded on Whigprinciples. [487]

From this view of the state of parties in the House of Commons, itseems clear that Sunderland had good reason for recommending that theadministration should be entrusted to the Whigs. The King, however, hesitated long before he could bring himself to quit that neutralposition which he had long occupied between the contending parties. Ifone of those parties was disposed to question his title, the otherwas on principle hostile to his prerogative. He still remembered withbitterness the unreasonable and vindictive conduct of the ConventionParliament at the close of 1689 and the beginning of 1690; and he shrankfrom the thought of being entirely in the hands of the men who hadobstructed the Bill of Indemnity, who had voted for the Sacheverellclause, who had tried to prevent him from taking the command of his armyin Ireland, and who had called him an ungrateful tyrant merely becausehe would not be their slave and their hangman. He had once, by a boldand unexpected effort, freed himself from their yoke; and he was notinclined to put it on his neck again. He personally disliked Whartonand Russell. He thought highly of the capacity of Caermarthen, ofthe integrity of Nottingham, of the diligence and financial skill ofGodolphin. It was only by slow degrees that the arguments of Sunderland, backed by the force of circumstances, overcame all objections. 

On the seventh of November 1693 the Parliament met; and the conflict ofparties instantly began. William from the throne pressed on the Housesthe necessity of making a great exertion to arrest the progress ofFrance on the Continent. During the last campaign, he said, she had, onevery point, had a superiority of force; and it had therefore been foundimpossible to cope with her. His allies had promised to increase theirarmies; and he trusted that the Commons would enable him to do the same. [488]

The Commons at their next sitting took the King's speech intoconsideration. The miscarriage of the Smyrna fleet was the chief subjectof discussion. The cry for inquiry was universal: but it was evidentthat the two parties raised that cry for very different reasons. Montague spoke the sense of the Whigs. He declared that the disasters ofthe summer could not, in his opinion, be explained by the ignorance andimbecility of those who had charge of the naval administration. Theremust have been treason. It was impossible to believe that Lewis, when hesent his Brest squadron to the Straits of Gibraltar, and left the wholecoast of his kingdom from Dunkirk to Bayonne unprotected, had trustedmerely to chance. He must have been well assured that his fleetwould meet with a vast booty under a feeble convoy. As there had beentreachery in some quarters, there had been incapacity in others. TheState was ill served. And then the orator pronounced a warm panegyric onhis friend Somers. "Would that all men in power would follow the exampleof my Lord Keeper! If all patronage were bestowed as judiciously anddisinterestedly as his, we should not see the public offices filled withmen who draw salaries and perform no duties. " It was moved and carriedunanimously, that the Commons would support their Majesties, and wouldforthwith proceed to investigate the cause of the disaster in the Bay ofLagos. [489] The Lords of the Admiralty were directed to produce agreat mass of documentary evidence. The King sent down copies of theexaminations taken before the Committee of Council which Mary hadappointed to inquire into the grievances of the Turkey merchants. TheTurkey merchants themselves were called in and interrogated. Rooke, though too ill to stand or speak, was brought in a chair to the bar, and there delivered in a narrative of his proceedings. The Whigs soonthought that sufficient ground had been laid for a vote condemning thenaval administration, and moved a resolution attributing the miscarriageof the Smyrna fleet to notorious and treacherous mismanagement. Thatthere had been mismanagement could not be disputed; but that there hadbeen foul play had certainly not been proved. The Tories proposed thatthe word "treacherous" should be omitted. A division took place; and theWhigs carried their point by a hundred and forty votes to a hundred andthree. Wharton was a teller for the majority. [490]

It was now decided that there had been treason, but not who was thetraitor. Several keen debates followed. The Whigs tried to throw theblame on Killegrew and Delaval, who were Tories; the Tories did theirbest to make out that the fault lay with the Victualling Department, which was under the direction of Whigs. But the House of Commons hasalways been much more ready to pass votes of censure drawn in generalterms than to brand individuals by name. A resolution clearing theVictualling Office was proposed by Montague, and carried, after adebate of two days, by a hundred and eighty-eight votes to a hundred andfifty-two. [491] But when the victorious party brought forward a motioninculpating the admirals, the Tories came up in great numbers from thecountry, and, after a debate which lasted from nine in the morning tillnear eleven at night, succeeded in saving their friends. The Noes were ahundred and seventy, and the Ayes only a hundred and sixty-one. Anotherattack was made a few days later with no better success. The Noes werea hundred and eighty-five, the Ayes only a hundred and seventy-five. Theindefatigable and implacable Wharton was on both occasions tellers forthe minority. [492]

In spite of this check the advantage was decidedly with the Whigs;The Tories who were at the head of the naval administration had indeedescaped impeachment; but the escape had been so narrow that it wasimpossible for the King to employ them any longer. The advice ofSunderland prevailed. A new Commission of Admiralty was prepared; andRussell was named First Lord. He had already been appointed to thecommand of the Channel fleet. 

His elevation made it necessary that Nottingham should retire. For, though it was not then unusual to see men who were personally andpolitically hostile to each other holding high offices at the same time, the relation between the First Lord of the Admiralty and the Secretaryof State, who had charge of what would now be called the War Department, was of so peculiar a nature that the public service could not bewell conducted without cordial cooperation between them; and betweenNottingham and Russell such cooperation was not to be expected. "I thankyou, " William said to Nottingham, "for your services. I have nothing tocomplain of in your conduct. It is only from necessity that I part withyou. " Nottingham retired with dignity. Though a very honest man, he wentout of office much richer than he had come in five years before. Whatwere then considered as the legitimate emoluments of his place weregreat; he had sold Kensington House to the Crown for a large sum; and hehad probably, after the fashion of that time, obtained for himselfsome lucrative grants. He laid out all his gains in purchasing land. Heheard, he said, that his enemies meant to accuse him of having acquiredwealth by illicit means. He was perfectly ready to abide the issue ofan inquiry. He would not, as some ministers had done, place his fortunebeyond the reach of the justice of his country. He would have no secrethoard. He would invest nothing in foreign funds. His property should allbe such as could be readily discovered and seized. [493]

During some weeks the seals which Nottingham had delivered up remainedin the royal closet. To dispose of them proved no easy matter. They wereoffered to Shrewsbury, who of all the Whig leaders stood highest in theKing's favour; but Shrewsbury excused himself, and, in order to avoidfurther importunity, retired into the country. There he soon receiveda pressing letter from Elizabeth Villiers. This lady had, when a girl, inspired William with a passion which had caused much scandal and muchunhappiness in the little Court of the Hague. Her influence over him sheowed not to her personal charms, --for it tasked all the art of Knellerto make her look tolerably on canvass, --not to those talents whichpeculiarly belong to her sex, --for she did not excel in playful talk, and her letters are remarkably deficient in feminine ease and grace--, but to powers of mind which qualified her to partake the cares and guidethe counsels of statesmen. To the end of her life great politicianssought her advice. Even Swift, the shrewdest and most cynical of hercontemporaries, pronounced her the wisest of women, and more than oncesate, fascinated by her conversation, from two in the afternoon tillnear midnight. [494] By degrees the virtues and charms of Mary conqueredthe first place in her husband's affection. But he still, in difficultconjunctures, frequently applied to Elizabeth Villiers for advice andassistance. She now implored Shrewsbury to reconsider his determination, and not to throw away the opportunity of uniting the Whig party forever. Wharton and Russell wrote to the same effect. In reply cameflimsy and unmeaning excuses: "I am not qualified for a court life; Iam unequal to a place which requires much exertion; I do not quite agreewith any party in the State; in short, I am unfit for the world; Iwant to travel; I want to see Spain. " These were mere pretences. HadShrewsbury spoken the whole truth, he would have said that he had, inan evil hour, been false to the cause of that Revolution in which he hadborne so great a part, that he had entered into engagements of which herepented, but from which he knew not how to extricate himself, and that, while he remained under those engagements, he was unwilling to enterinto the service of the existing government. Marlborough, Godolphin andRussell, indeed, had no scruple about corresponding with one King whileholding office under the other. But Shrewsbury had, what was wantingto Marlborough, Godolphin and Russell, a conscience, a conscience whichindeed too often failed to restrain him from doing wrong, but whichnever failed to punish him. [495]

In consequence of his refusal to accept the Seals, the ministerialarrangements which the King had planned were not carried into entireeffect till the end of the session. Meanwhile the proceedings of the twoHouses had been highly interesting and important. 

Soon after the Parliament met, the attention of the Commons was againcalled to the state of the trade with India; and the charter which hadjust been granted to the Old Company was laid before them. They wouldprobably have been disposed to sanction the new arrangement, which, intruth, differed little from that which they had themselves suggested notmany months before, if the Directors had acted with prudence. But theDirectors, from the day on which they had obtained their charter, hadpersecuted the interlopers without mercy, and had quite forgotten thatit was one thing to persecute interlopers in the Eastern Seas, andanother to persecute them in the port of London. Hitherto the war of themonopolists against the private trade had been generally carried on atthe distance of fifteen thousand miles from England. If harsh thingswere done, the English did not see them done, and did not hear of themtill long after they had been done; nor was it by any means easy toascertain at Westminster who had been right and who had been wrong in adispute which had arisen three or four years before at Moorshedabad orCanton. With incredible rashness the Directors determined, at the verymoment when the fate of their company was in the balance, to give thepeople of this country a near view of the most odious features of themonopoly. Some wealthy merchants of London had equipped a fine shipnamed the Redbridge. Her crew was numerous, her cargo of immense value. Her papers had been made out for Alicant: but there was some reason tosuspect that she was really bound for the countries lying beyond theCape of Good Hope. She was stopped by the Admiralty, in obedience to anorder which the Company obtained from the Privy Council, doubtless bythe help of the Lord President. Every day that she lay in the Thamescaused a heavy expense to the owners. The indignation in the City wasgreat and general. The Company maintained that from the legality of themonopoly the legality of the detention necessarily followed. Thepublic turned the argument round, and, being firmly convinced that thedetention was illegal, drew the inference that the monopoly must beillegal too. The dispute was at the height when the Parliament met. Petitions on both sides were speedily laid on the table of theCommons; and it was resolved that these petitions should be taken intoconsideration by a Committee of the whole House. The first question onwhich the conflicting parties tried their strength was the choice ofa chairman. The enemies of the Old Company proposed Papillon, once theclosest ally and subsequently the keenest opponent of Child, and carriedtheir point by a hundred and thirty-eight votes to a hundred and six. The Committee proceeded to inquire by what authority the Redbridge hadbeen stopped. One of her owners, Gilbert Heathcote, a rich merchant anda stanch Whig, appeared at the bar as a witness. He was asked whether hewould venture to deny that the ship had really been fitted out for theIndian trade. "It is no sin that I know of, " he answered, "to tradewith India; and I shall trade with India till I am restrained by Act ofParliament. " Papillon reported that in the opinion of the Committee, thedetention of the Redbridge was illegal. The question was then put, thatthe House would agree with the Committee. The friends of the Old Companyventured on a second division, and were defeated by a hundred andseventy-one votes to a hundred and twenty-five. [496]

The blow was quickly followed up. A few days later it was moved that allsubjects of England had equal right to trade to the East Indies unlessprohibited by Act of Parliament; and the supporters of the Old Company, sensible that they were in a minority, suffered the motion to passwithout a division. [497]

This memorable vote settled the most important of the constitutionalquestions which had been left unsettled by the Bill of Rights. It hasever since been held to be the sound doctrine that no power but thatof the whole legislature can give to any person or to any society anexclusive privilege of trading to any part of the world. 

The opinion of the great majority of the House of Commons was that theIndian trade could be advantageously carried on only by means of a jointstock and a monopoly. It might therefore have been expected that theresolution which destroyed the monopoly of the Old Company would havebeen immediately followed by a law granting a monopoly to the NewCompany. No such law, however, was passed. The Old Company, though notstrong enough to defend its own privileges, was able, with the helpof its Tory friends, to prevent the rival association from obtainingsimilar privileges. The consequence was that, during some years, therewas nominally a free trade with India. In fact, the trade still layunder severe restrictions. The private adventurer found indeed nodifficulty in sailing from England; but his situation was as perilous asever when he had turned the Cape of Good Hope. Whatever respect mightbe paid to a vote of the House of Commons by public functionaries inLondon, such a vote was, at Bombay or Calcutta, much less regarded thana private letter from Child; and Child still continued to fight thebattle with unbroken spirit. He sent out to the factories of the Companyorders that no indulgence should be shown to the intruders. For theHouse of Commons and for its resolutions he expressed the bitterestcontempt. "Be guided by my instructions, " he wrote, "and not by thenonsense of a few ignorant country gentlemen who have hardly wit enoughto manage their own private affairs, and who know nothing at all aboutquestions of trade. " It appears that his directions were obeyed. 

Every where in the East, during this period of anarchy, servant of theCompany and the independent merchant waged war on each other, accusedeach other of piracy, and tried by every artifice to exasperate theMogul government against each other. [498]

The three great constitutional questions of the preceding year were, inthis year, again brought under the consideration of Parliament. In thefirst week of the session, a Bill for the Regulation of Trials in casesof High Treason, a Triennial Bill, and a Place Bill were laid on thetable of the House of Commons. 

None of these bills became a law. The first passed the Commons, but wasunfavourably received by the Peers. William took so much interest in thequestion that he came down to the House of Lords, not in his crown androbes, but in the ordinary dress of a gentleman, and sate through thewhole debate on the second reading. Caermarthen spoke of the dangers towhich the State was at that time exposed, and entreated his brethrennot to give, at such a moment, impunity to traitors. He was powerfullysupported by two eminent orators, who had, during some years, been onthe uncourtly side of every question, but who, in this session, showeda disposition to strengthen the hands of the government, Halifax andMulgrave. Marlborough, Rochester and Nottingham spoke for the bill;but the general feeling was so clearly against them that they did notventure to divide. It is probable, however, that the reasons urged byCaermarthen were not the reasons which chiefly swayed his hearers. ThePeers were fully determined that the bill should not pass without aclause altering the constitution of the Court of the Lord High Steward:they knew that the Lower House was as fully determined not to passsuch a clause; and they thought it better that what must happen at lastshould happen speedily, and without a quarrel. [499]

The fate of the Triennial Bill confounded all the calculations of thebest informed politicians of that time, and may therefore well seemextraordinary to us. During the recess, that bill had been described innumerous pamphlets, written for the most part by persons zealous for theRevolution and for popular principles of government, as the one thingneedful, as the universal cure for the distempers of the State. On thefirst, second and third readings in the House of Commons no divisiontook place. The Whigs were enthusiastic. The Tories seemed to beacquiescent. It was understood that the King, though he had usedhis Veto for the purpose of giving the Houses an opportunity ofreconsidering the subject, had no intention of offering a pertinaciousopposition to their wishes. But Seymour, with a cunning which longexperience had matured, after deferring the conflict to the last moment, snatched the victory from his adversaries, when they were most secure. When the Speaker held up the bill in his hands, and put the questionwhether it should pass, the Noes were a hundred and forty-six, theAyes only a hundred and thirty-six. [500] Some eager Whigs flatteredthemselves that their defeat was the effect of a surprise, and might beretrieved. Within three days, therefore, Monmouth, the most ardent andrestless man in the whole party, brought into the Upper House a billsubstantially the same with that which had so strangely miscarried inthe Lower. The Peers passed this bill very expeditiously, and sentit down to the Commons. But in the Commons it found no favour. Manymembers, who professed to wish that the duration of parliaments shouldbe limited, resented the interference of the hereditary branch of thelegislature in a matter which peculiarly concerned the elective branch. The subject, they said, is one which especially belongs to us; wehave considered it; we have come to a decision; and it is scarcelyparliamentary, it is certainly most indelicate, in their Lordships, tocall upon us to reverse that decision. The question now is, not whetherthe duration of parliaments ought to be limited, but whether we oughtto submit our judgment to the authority of the Peers, and to rescind, at their bidding, what we did only a fortnight ago. The animosity withwhich the patrician order was regarded was inflamed by the arts and theeloquence of Seymour. The bill contained a definition of the words, "to hold a Parliament. " This definition was scrutinised with extremejealousy, and was thought by many, with very little reason, to have beenframed for the purpose of extending the privileges, already invidiouslygreat, of the nobility. It appears, from the scanty and obscurefragments of the debates which have come down to us, that bitterreflections were thrown on the general conduct, both political andjudicial, of the Peers. Old Titus, though zealous for triennialparliaments, owned that he was not surprised at the ill humour whichmany gentlemen showed. "It is true, " he said, "that we ought to bedissolved; but it is rather hard, I must own, that the Lords are toprescribe the time of our dissolution. The Apostle Paul wished to bedissolved; but, I doubt, if his friends had set him a day, he would nothave taken it kindly of them. " The bill was rejected by a hundred andninety-seven votes to a hundred and twenty-seven. [501]

The Place Bill, differing very little from the Place Bill which had beenbrought in twelve months before, passed easily through the Commons. Most of the Tories supported it warmly; and the Whigs did not ventureto oppose it. It went up to the Lords, and soon came back completelychanged. As it had been originally drawn, it provided that no member ofthe House of Commons, elected after the first of January, 1694, shouldaccept any place of profit under the Crown, on pain of forfeiting hisseat, and of being incapable of sitting again in the same Parliament. The Lords had added the words, "unless he be afterwards again chosen toserve in the same Parliament. " These words, few as they were, sufficedto deprive the bill of nine tenths of its efficacy, both for good andfor evil. It was most desirable that the crowd of subordinate publicfunctionaries should be kept out of the House of Commons. It was mostundesirable that the heads of the great executive departments should bekept out of that House. The bill, as altered, left that House open bothto those who ought and to those who ought not to have been admitted. Itvery properly let in the Secretaries of State and the Chancellor of theExchequer; but it let in with them Commissioners of Wine Licenses andCommissioners of the Navy, Receivers, Surveyors, Storekeepers, Clerks ofthe Acts and Clerks of the Cheque, Clerks of the Green Cloth and Clerksof the Great Wardrobe. So little did the Commons understand what theywere about that, after framing a law, in one view most mischievous, andin another view most beneficial, they were perfectly willing that itshould be transformed into a law quite harmless and almost useless. They agreed to the amendment; and nothing was now wanting but the royalsanction. 

That sanction certainly ought not to have been withheld, and probablywould not have been withheld, if William had known how unimportant thebill now was. But he understood the question as little as the Commonsthemselves. He knew that they imagined that they had devised a moststringent limitation of the royal power; and he was determined not tosubmit, without a struggle, to any such limitation. He was encouraged bythe success with which he had hitherto resisted the attempts of the twoHouses to encroach on his prerogative. He had refused to pass the billwhich quartered the judges on his hereditary revenue; and the Parliamenthad silently acquiesced in the justice of the refusal. He had refusedto pass the Triennial Bill; and the Commons had since, by rejecting twoTriennial Bills, acknowledged that he had done well. He ought, however, to have considered that, on both these occasions, the announcementof his refusal was immediately followed by the announcement that theParliament was prorogued. On both these occasions, therefore, themembers had half a year to think and to grow cool before the nextsitting. The case was now very different. The principal business ofthe session was hardly begun: estimates were still under consideration:bills of supply were still depending; and, if the Houses should take afit of ill humour, the consequences might be serious indeed. 

He resolved, however, to run the risk. Whether he had any adviser is notknown. His determination seems to have taken both the leading Whigs andthe leading Tories by surprise. When the Clerk had proclaimed that theKing and Queen would consider of the bill touching free and impartialproceedings in Parliament, the Commons retired from the bar of the Lordsin a resentful and ungovernable mood. As soon as the Speaker was againin his chair there was a long and tempestuous debate. All other businesswas postponed. All committees were adjourned. It was resolved that theHouse would, early the next morning, take into consideration the stateof the nation. When the morning came, the excitement did not appear tohave abated. The mace was sent into Westminster Hall and into the Courtof Requests. All members who could be found were brought into the House. That none might be able to steal away unnoticed, the back door waslocked, and the key laid on the table. All strangers were ordered toretire. With these solemn preparations began a sitting which reminded afew old men of some of the first sittings of the Kong Parliament. Highwords were uttered by the enemies of the government. Its friends, afraidof being accused of abandoning the cause of the Commons of Englandfor the sake of royal favour, hardly ventured to raise their voices. Montague alone seems to have defended the King. Lowther, though highin office and a member of the cabinet, owned that there were evilinfluences at work, and expressed a wish to see the Sovereign surroundedby counsellors in whom the representatives of the people could confide. Harley, Foley and Howe carried every thing before them. A resolution, affirming that those who had advised the Crown on this occasion werepublic enemies, was carried with only two or three Noes. Harley, afterreminding his hearers that they had their negative voice as the King hadhis, and that, if His Majesty refused then redress, they could refusehim money, moved that they should go up to the Throne, not, as usual, with a Humble Address, but with a Representation. Some members proposedto substitute the more respectful word Address: but they were overruled;and a committee was appointed to draw up the Representation. 

Another night passed; and, when the House met again, it appeared thatthe storm had greatly subsided. The malignant joy and the wild hopeswhich the Jacobites had, during the last forty-eight hours, expressedwith their usual imprudence, had incensed and alarmed the Whigs andthe moderate Tories. Many members too were frightened by hearing thatWilliam was fully determined not to yield without an appeal to thenation. Such an appeal might have been successful: for a dissolution, onany ground whatever, would, at that moment, have been a highly popularexercise of the prerogative. The constituent bodies, it was well known, were generally zealous for the Triennial Bill, and cared comparativelylittle about the Place Bill. Many Tory members, therefore, who hadrecently voted against the Triennial Bill, were by no means desirousto run the risks of a general election. When the Representation whichHarley and his friends had prepared was read, it was thought offensivelystrong. After being recommitted, shortened and softened, it waspresented by the whole House. William's answer was kind and gentle;but he conceded nothing. He assured the Commons that he remembered withgratitude the support which he had on many occasions received from them, that he should always consider their advice as most valuable, and thathe should look on counsellors who might attempt to raise dissensionbetween him and his Parliament as his enemies but he uttered not a wordwhich could be construed into an acknowledgment that he had used hisVeto ill, or into a promise that he would not use it again. 

The Commons on the morrow took his speech into consideration. Harleyand his allies complained that the King's answer was no answer at all, threatened to tack the Place Bill to a money bill, and proposed to makea second representation pressing His Majesty to explain himself moredistinctly. But by this time there was a strong reflux of feeling in theassembly. The Whigs had not only recovered from their dismay, but werein high spirits and eager for conflict. Wharton, Russell and Littletonmaintained that the House ought to be satisfied with what the King hadsaid. "Do you wish, " said Littleton, "to make sport for your enemies?There is no want of them. They besiege our very doors. We read, as wecome through the lobby, in the face and gestures of every nonjuror whomwe pass, delight at the momentary coolness which has arisen between usand the King. That should be enough for us. We may be sure that we arevoting rightly when we give a vote which tends to confound the hopes oftraitors. " The House divided. Harley was a teller on one side, Whartonon the other. Only eighty-eight voted with Harley, two hundred andtwenty-nine with Wharton. The Whigs were so much elated by their victorythat some of them wished to move a vote of thanks to William for hisgracious answer; but they were restrained by wiser men. "We have losttime enough already in these unhappy debates, " said a leader of theparty. "Let us get to Ways and Means as fast as we can. The best formwhich our thanks can take is that of a money bill. "

Thus ended, more happily than William had a right to expect, one of themost dangerous contests in which he ever engaged with his Parliament. At the Dutch Embassy the rising and going down of this tempest had beenwatched with intense interest; and the opinion there seems to have beenthat the King had on the whole lost neither power nor popularity by hisconduct. [502]

Another question, which excited scarcely less angry feeling inParliament and in the country, was, about the same time, underconsideration. On the sixth of December, a Whig member of the Houseof Commons obtained leave to bring in a bill for the Naturalisation ofForeign Protestants. Plausible arguments in favour of such a billwere not wanting. Great numbers of people, eminently industrious andintelligent, firmly attached to our faith, and deadly enemies of ourdeadly enemies, were at that time without a country. Among the Huguenotswho had fled from the tyranny of the French King were many persons ofgreat fame in war, in letters, in arts and in sciences; and even thehumblest refugees were intellectually and morally above the average ofthe common people of any kingdom in Europe. With French Protestantswho had been driven into exile by the edicts of Lewis were now mingledGerman Protestants who had been driven into exile by his arms. Vienna, Berlin, Basle, Hamburg, Amsterdam, London, swarmed with honest laboriousmen who had once been thriving burghers of Heidelberg or Mannheim, or who had cultivated vineyards along the banks of the Neckar and theRhine. A statesman might well think that it would be at once generousand politic to invite to the English shores and to incorporate withthe English people emigrants so unfortunate and so respectable. Theiringenuity and their diligence could not fail to enrich any land whichshould afford them an asylum; nor could it be doubted that they wouldmanfully defend the country of their adoption against him whose crueltyhad driven them from the country of their birth. 

The first two readings passed without a division. But, on the motionthat the bill should be committed, there was a debate in which theright of free speech was most liberally used by the opponents of thegovernment. It was idle, they said, to talk about the poor Huguenots orthe poor Palatines. The bill was evidently meant for the benefit, not ofFrench Protestants or German Protestants, but of Dutchmen, who would beProtestants, Papists or Pagans for a guilder a head, and who would, nodoubt, be as ready to sign the Declaration against Transubstantiationin England as to trample on the Cross in Japan. They would come over inmultitudes. They would swarm in every public office. They would collectthe customs, and gauge the beer barrels. Our Navigation Laws would bevirtually repealed. Every merchant ship that cleared out from theThames or the Severn would be manned by Zealanders and Hollanders andFrieslanders. To our own sailors would be left the hard and perilousservice of the royal navy. For Hans, after filling the pockets of hishuge trunk hose with our money by assuming the character of a native, would, as soon as a pressgang appeared, lay claim to the privileges ofan alien. The intruders would soon rule every corporation. They wouldelbow our own Aldermen off the Royal Exchange. They would buy thehereditary woods and halls of our country gentlemen. Already one of themost noisome of the plagues of Egypt was among us. Frogs had made theirappearance even in the royal chambers. Nobody could go to Saint James'swithout being disgusted by hearing the reptiles of the Batavian marshescroaking all round him; and if this bill should pass, the whole countrywould be as much infested by the loathsome brood as the palace alreadywas. 

The orator who indulged himself most freely in this sort of rhetoricwas Sir John Knight, member for Bristol, a coarseminded and spitefulJacobite, who, if he had been an honest man, would have been a nonjuror. Two years before, when Mayor of Bristol, he had acquired a discreditablenotoriety by treating with gross disrespect a commission sealed with thegreat seal of the Sovereigns to whom he had repeatedly sworn allegiance, and by setting on the rabble of his city to hoot and pelt the Judges. [503] He now concluded a savage invective by desiring that theSerjeant at Arms would open the doors, in order that the odious roll ofparchment, which was nothing less than a surrender of the birthrightof the English people, might be treated with proper contumely. "Let usfirst, " he said, "kick the bill out of the House; and then let us kickthe foreigners out of the kingdom. "

On a division the motion for committing the bill was carried by ahundred and sixty-three votes to a hundred and twenty-eight. [504] Butthe minority was zealous and pertinacious; and the majority speedilybegan to waver. Knight's speech, retouched and made more offensive, soonappeared in print without a license. Tens of thousands of copies werecirculated by the post, or dropped in the streets; and such was thestrength of national prejudice that too many persons read this ribaldrywith assent and admiration. But, when a copy was produced in the House, there was such an outbreak of indignation and disgust, as cowed even theimpudent and savage nature of the orator. Finding himself in imminentdanger of being expelled and sent to prison, he apologized, anddisclaimed all knowledge of the paper which purported to be a reportof what he had said. He escaped with impunity; but his speech was votedfalse, scandalous and seditious, and was burned by the hangman in PalaceYard. The bill which had caused all this ferment was prudently sufferedto drop. [505]

Meanwhile the Commons were busied with financial questions of graveimportance. The estimates for the year 1694 were enormous. The Kingproposed to add to the regular army, already the greatest regular armythat England had ever supported, four regiments of dragoons, eight ofhorse, and twenty-five of infantry. The whole number of men, officersincluded, would thus be increased to about ninety-four thousand. [506]Cromwell, while holding down three reluctant kingdoms, and makingvigorous war on Spain in Europe and America, had never had two thirds ofthe military force which William now thought necessary. The great bodyof the Tories, headed by three Whig chiefs, Harley, Foley and Howe, opposed any augmentation. The great body of the Whigs, headed byMontague and Wharton, would have granted all that was asked. After manylong discussions, and probably many close divisions, in the Committeeof Supply, the King obtained the greater part of what he demanded. TheHouse allowed him four new regiments of dragoons, six of horse, andfifteen of infantry. The whole number of troops voted for the yearamounted to eighty-three thousand, the charge to more than two millionsand a half, including about two hundred thousand pounds for theordnance. [507]

The naval estimates passed much more rapidly; for Whigs and Toriesagreed in thinking that the maritime ascendency of England ought tobe maintained at any cost. Five hundred thousand pounds were voted forpaying the arrears due to seamen, and two millions for the expenses ofthe year 1694. [508]

The Commons then proceeded to consider the Ways and Means. The landtax was renewed at four shillings in the pound; and by this simple butpowerful machinery about two millions were raised with certainty anddespatch. [509] A poll tax was imposed. [510] Stamp duties had long beenamong the fiscal resources of Holland and France, and had existed hereduring part of the reign of Charles the Second, but had been sufferedto expire. They were now revived; and they have ever since formed animportant part of the revenue of the State. [511] The hackney coachesof the capital were taxed, and were placed under the government ofcommissioners, in spite of the resistance of the wives of the coachmen, who assembled round Westminster Hall and mobbed the members. [512]But, notwithstanding all these expedients, there was still a largedeficiency; and it was again necessary to borrow. A new duty on salt andsome other imposts of less importance were set apart to form a fund fora loan. On the security of this fund a million was to be raised by alottery, but a lottery which had scarcely any thing but the name incommon with the lotteries of a later period. The sum to be contributedwas divided into a hundred thousand shares of ten pounds each. Theinterest on each share was to be twenty shillings annually, or, inother words, ten per cent. , during sixteen years. But ten per cent. Forsixteen years was not a bait which was likely to attract lenders. Anadditional lure was therefore held out to capitalists. On one fortiethof the shares much higher interest was to be paid than on the otherthirty-nine fortieths. Which of the shares should be prizes was to bedetermined by lot. The arrangements for the drawing of the tickets weremade by an adventurer of the name of Neale, who, after squandering awaytwo fortunes, had been glad to become groom porter at the palace. Hisduties were to call the odds when the Court played at hazard, to providecards and dice, and to decide any dispute which might arise on thebowling green or at the gaming table. He was eminently skilled inthe business of this not very exalted post, and had made such sums byraffles that he was able to engage in very costly speculations, and wasthen covering the ground round the Seven Dials with buildings. He wasprobably the best adviser that could have been consulted about thedetails of a lottery. Yet there were not wanting persons who thoughtit hardly decent in the Treasury to call in the aid of a gambler byprofession. [513]

By the lottery loan, as it was called, one million was obtained. Butanother million was wanted to bring the estimated revenue for the year1694 up to a level with the estimated expenditure. The ingenious andenterprising Montague had a plan ready, a plan to which, except underthe pressure of extreme pecuniary difficulties, he might not easilyhave induced the Commons to assent, but which, to his large and vigorousmind, appeared to have advantages, both commercial and political, moreimportant than the immediate relief to the finances. He succeeded, not only in supplying the wants of the State for twelve months, butin creating a great institution, which, after the lapse of more than acentury and a half, continues to flourish, and which he lived to seethe stronghold, through all vicissitudes, of the Whig party, and thebulwark, in dangerous times, of the Protestant succession. 

In the reign of William old men were still living who could remember thedays when there was not a single banking house in the city of London. Solate as the time of the Restoration every trader had his own strong boxin his own house, and, when an acceptance was presented to him, tolddown the crowns and Caroluses on his own counter. But the increaseof wealth had produced its natural effect, the subdivision of labour. Before the end of the reign of Charles the Second, a new mode of payingand receiving money had come into fashion among the merchants of thecapital. A class of agents arose, whose office was to keep the cash ofthe commercial houses. This new branch of business naturally fell intothe hands of the goldsmiths, who were accustomed to traffic largely inthe precious metals, and who had vaults in which great masses of bullioncould lie secure from fire and from robbers. It was at the shops of thegoldsmiths of Lombard Street that all the payments in coin were made. Other traders gave and received nothing but paper. 

This great change did not take place without much opposition andclamour. Oldfashioned merchants complained bitterly that a class ofmen who, thirty years before, had confined themselves to their properfunctions, and had made a fair profit by embossing silver bowls andchargers, by setting jewels for fine ladies, and by selling pistolesand dollars to gentlemen setting out for the Continent, had become thetreasurers, and were fast becoming the masters, of the whole City. Theseusurers, it was said, played at hazard with what had been earned by theindustry and hoarded by the thrift of other men. If the dice turned upwell, the knave who kept the cash became an alderman; if they turnedup ill, the dupe who furnished the cash became a bankrupt. On the otherside the conveniences of the modern practice were set forth in animatedlanguage. The new system, it was said, saved both labour and money. Twoclerks, seated in one counting house, did what, under the old system, must have been done by twenty clerks in twenty different establishments. A goldsmith's note might be transferred ten times in a morning; and thusa hundred guineas, locked in his safe close to the Exchange, did whatwould formerly have required a thousand guineas, dispersed through manytills, some on Ludgate Hill, some in Austin Friars, and some in TowerStreet. [514]

Gradually even those who had been loudest in murmuring against theinnovation gave way and conformed to the prevailing usage. The lastperson who held out, strange to say, was Sir Dudley North. When, in1680, after residing many years abroad, he returned to London, nothingastonished or displeased him more than the practice of making paymentsby drawing bills on bankers. He found that he could not go on Changewithout being followed round the piazza by goldsmiths, who, with lowbows, begged to have the honour of serving him. He lost his temper whenhis friends asked where he kept his cash. "Where should I keep it, " heasked, "but in my own house?" With difficulty he was induced to puthis money into the hands of one of the Lombard Street men, as theywere called. Unhappily, the Lombard Street man broke, and some of hiscustomers suffered severely. Dudley North lost only fifty pounds; butthis loss confirmed him in his dislike of the whole mystery of banking. It was in vain, however, that he exhorted his fellow citizens to returnto the good old practice, and not to expose themselves to utter ruin inorder to spare themselves a little trouble. He stood alone against thewhole community. The advantages of the modern system were felt everyhour of every day in every part of London; and people were no moredisposed to relinquish those advantages for fear of calamities whichoccurred at long intervals than to refrain from building houses for fearof fires, or from building ships for fear of hurricanes. It is a curiouscircumstance that a man who, as a theorist, was distinguished fromall the merchants of his time by the largeness of his views and byhis superiority to vulgar prejudices, should, in practice, have beendistinguished from all the merchants of his time by the obstinacy withwhich he adhered to an ancient mode of doing business, long after thedullest and most ignorant plodders had abandoned that mode for onebetter suited to a great commercial society. [515]

No sooner had banking become a separate and important trade, than menbegan to discuss with earnestness the question whether it would beexpedient to erect a national bank. The general opinion seems to havebeen decidedly in favour of a national bank; nor can we wonder at this;for few were then aware that trade is in general carried on to much moreadvantage by individuals than by great societies; and banking really isone of those few trades which can be carried on to as much advantageby a great society as by an individual. Two public banks had long beenrenowned throughout Europe, the Bank of Saint George at Genoa, and theBank of Amsterdam. The immense wealth which was in the keeping of thoseestablishments, the confidence which they inspired, the prosperitywhich they had created, their stability, tried by panics, by wars, byrevolutions, and found proof against all, were favourite topics. Thebank of Saint George had nearly completed its third century. It hadbegun to receive deposits and to make loans before Columbus had crossedthe Atlantic, before Gama had turned the Cape, when a Christian Emperorwas reigning at Constantinople, when a Mahomedan Sultan was reigning atGranada, when Florence was a Republic, when Holland obeyed a hereditaryPrince. All these things had been changed. New continents and new oceanshad been discovered. The Turk was at Constantinople; the Castilian wasat Granada; Florence had its hereditary Prince; Holland was a Republic;but the Bank of Saint George was still receiving deposits and makingloans. The Bank of Amsterdam was little more than eighty years old;but its solvency had stood severe tests. Even in the terrible crisisof 1672, when the whole Delta of the Rhine was overrun by the Frencharmies, when the white flags were seen from the top of the Stadthouse, there was one place where, amidst the general consternation andconfusion, tranquillity and order were still to be found; and thatplace was the Bank. Why should not the Bank of London be as great andas durable as the Banks of Genoa and of Amsterdam? Before the end ofthe reign of Charles the Second several plans were proposed, examined, attacked and defended. Some pamphleteers maintained that a national bankought to be under the direction of the King. Others thought that themanagement ought to be entrusted to the Lord Mayor, Aldermen and CommonCouncil of the capital. [516] After the Revolution the subject wasdiscussed with an animation before unknown. For, under the influenceof liberty, the breed of political projectors multiplied exceedingly. A crowd of plans, some of which resemble the fancies of a child or thedreams of a man in a fever, were pressed on the government. Preeminentlyconspicuous among the political mountebanks, whose busy faces were seenevery day in the lobby of the House of Commons, were John Briscoe andHugh Chamberlayne, two projectors worthy to have been members of thatAcademy which Gulliver found at Lagado. These men affirmed that the onecure for every distemper of the State was a Land Bank. A Land Bank wouldwork for England miracles such as had never been wrought for Israel, miracles exceeding the heaps of quails and the daily shower of manna. There would be no taxes; and yet the Exchequer would be full tooverflowing. There would be no poor rates; for there would be no poor. The income of every landowner would be doubled. The profits of everymerchant would be increased. In short, the island would, to useBriscoe's words, be the paradise of the world. The only losers would bethe moneyed men, those worst enemies of the nation, who had done moreinjury to the gentry and yeomanry than an invading army from Francewould have had the heart to do. [517]

These blessed effects the Land Bank was to produce simply by issuingenormous quantities of notes on landed security. The doctrine of theprojectors was that every person who had real property ought to have, besides that property, paper money to the full value of that property. Thus, if his estate was worth two thousand pounds, he ought to have hisestate and two thousand pounds in paper money. [518] Both Briscoe andChamberlayne treated with the greatest contempt the notion that therecould be an overissue of paper as long as there was, for every ten poundnote, a piece of land in the country worth ten pounds. Nobody, theysaid, would accuse a goldsmith of overissuing as long as his vaultscontained guineas and crowns to the full value of all the notes whichbore his signature. Indeed no goldsmith had in his vaults guineas andcrowns to the full value of all his paper. And was not a square mile ofrich land in Taunton Dean at least as well entitled to be called wealthas a bag of gold or silver? The projectors could not deny that manypeople had a prejudice in favour of the precious metals, and thattherefore, if the Land Bank were bound to cash its notes, it would verysoon stop payment. This difficulty they got over by proposing that thenotes should be inconvertible, and that every body should be forced totake them. 

The speculations of Chamberlayne on the subject of the currency maypossibly find admirers even in our own time. But to his other errorshe added an error which began and ended with him. He was fool enough totake it for granted, in all his reasonings, that the value of an estatevaried directly as the duration. He maintained that if the annual incomederived from a manor were a thousand pounds, a grant of that manor fortwenty years must be worth twenty thousand pounds, and a grant for ahundred years worth a hundred thousand pounds. If, therefore, the lordof such a manor would pledge it for a hundred years to the Land Bank, the Land Bank might, on that security, instantly issue notes for ahundred thousand pounds. On this subject Chamberlayne was proof toridicule, to argument, even to arithmetical demonstration. He wasreminded that the fee simple of land would not sell for more than twentyyears' purchase. To say, therefore, that a term of a hundred years wasworth five times as much as a term of twenty years, was to say that aterm of a hundred years was worth five times the fee simple; in otherwords, that a hundred was five times infinity. Those who reasoned thuswere refuted by being told that they were usurers; and it shouldseem that a large number of country gentlemen thought the refutationcomplete. [519]

In December 1693 Chamberlayne laid his plan, in all its naked absurdity, before the Commons, and petitioned to be heard. He confidently undertookto raise eight thousand pounds on every freehold estate of a hundred andfifty pounds a year which should be brought, as he expressed it, intohis Land Bank, and this without dispossessing the freeholder. [520] Allthe squires in the House must have known that the fee simple of such anestate would hardly fetch three thousand pounds in the market. That lessthan the fee simple of such an estate could, by any device, be made toproduce eight thousand pounds, would, it might have been thought, haveseemed incredible to the most illiterate foxhunter that could be foundon the benches. Distress, however, and animosity had made the landedgentlemen credulous. They insisted on referring Chamberlayne's plan to acommittee; and the committee reported that the plan was practicable, and would tend to the benefit of the nation. [521] But by this timethe united force of demonstration and derision had begun to produce aneffect even on the most ignorant rustics in the House. The reportlay unnoticed on the table; and the country was saved from a calamitycompared with which the defeat of Landen and the loss of the Smyrnafleet would have been blessings. 

All the projectors of this busy time, however, were not so absurd asChamberlayne. One among them, William Paterson, was an ingenious, thoughnot always a judicious, speculator. Of his early life little is knownexcept that he was a native of Scotland, and that he had been in theWest Indies. In what character he had visited the West Indies was amatter about which his contemporaries differed. His friends said thathe had been a missionary; his enemies that he had been a buccaneer. Heseems to have been gifted by nature with fertile invention, an ardenttemperament and great powers of persuasion, and to have acquiredsomewhere in the course of his vagrant life a perfect knowledge ofaccounts. 

This man submitted to the government, in 1691, a plan of a nationalbank; and his plan was favourably received both by statesmen and bymerchants. But years passed away; and nothing was done, till, in thespring of 1694, it became absolutely necessary to find some new mode ofdefraying the charges of the war. Then at length the scheme devisedby the poor and obscure Scottish adventurer was taken up in earnest byMontague. With Montague was closely allied Michael Godfrey, the brotherof that Sir Edmondsbury Godfrey whose sad and mysterious death had, fifteen years before, produced a terrible outbreak of popular feeling. Michael was one of the ablest, most upright and most opulent of themerchant princes of London. He was, as might have been expected from hisnear connection with the martyr of the Protestant faith, a zealousWhig. Some of his writings are still extant, and prove him to have had astrong and clear mind. 

By these two distinguished men Paterson's scheme was fathered. Montagueundertook to manage the House of Commons, Godfrey to manage the City. Anapproving vote was obtained from the Committee of Ways and Means; and abill, the title of which gave occasion to many sarcasms, was laid on thetable. It was indeed not easy to guess that a bill, which purportedonly to impose a new duty on tonnage for the benefit of such personsas should advance money towards carrying on the war, was really a billcreating the greatest commercial institution that the world had everseen. 

The plan was that twelve hundred thousand pounds should be borrowed bythe government on what was then considered as the moderate interestof eight per cent. In order to induce capitalists to advance the moneypromptly on terms so favourable to the public, the subscribers were tobe incorporated by the name of the Governor and Company of the Bank ofEngland. The corporation was to have no exclusive privilege, and was tobe restricted from trading in any thing but bills of exchange, bullionand forfeited pledges. 

As soon as the plan became generally known, a paper war broke out asfurious as that between the swearers and the nonswearers, or as thatbetween the Old East India Company and the New East India Company. Theprojectors who had failed to gain the ear of the government felllike madmen on their more fortunate brother. All the goldsmiths andpawnbrokers set up a howl of rage. Some discontented Tories predictedruin to the monarchy. It was remarkable, they said, that Banks and Kingshad never existed together. Banks were republican institutions. Therewere flourishing banks at Venice, at Genoa, at Amsterdam and at Hamburg. But who had ever heard of a Bank of France or a Bank of Spain? [522]Some discontented Whigs, on the other hand, predicted ruin to ourliberties. Here, they said, is an instrument of tyranny more formidablethan the High Commission, than the Star Chamber, than even the fiftythousand soldiers of Oliver. The whole wealth of the nation will be inthe hands of the Tonnage Bank, --such was the nickname then in use;--andthe Tonnage Bank will be in the hands of the Sovereign. The power of thepurse, the one great security for all the rights of Englishmen, will betransferred from the House of Commons to the Governor and Directors ofthe new Company. This last consideration was really of some weight, andwas allowed to be so by the authors of the bill. A clause was thereforemost properly inserted which inhibited the Bank from advancing money tothe Crown without authority from Parliament. Every infraction of thissalutary rule was to be punished by forfeiture of three times the sumadvanced; and it was provided that the King should not have power toremit any part of the penalty. 

The plan, thus amended, received the sanction of the Commons more easilythan might have been expected from the violence of the adverse clamour. In truth, the Parliament was under duress. Money must be had, and couldin no other way be had so easily. What took place when the House hadresolved itself into a committee cannot be discovered; but, while theSpeaker was in the chair, no division took place. The bill, however, wasnot safe when it had reached the Upper House. Some Lords suspected thatthe plan of a national bank had been devised for the purpose of exaltingthe moneyed interest at the expense of the landed interest. Othersthought that this plan, whether good or bad, ought not to have beensubmitted to them in such a form. Whether it would be safe to call intoexistence a body which might one day rule the whole commercial world, and how such a body should be constituted, were questions which oughtnot to be decided by one branch of the Legislature. The Peers ought tobe at perfect liberty to examine all the details of the proposed scheme, to suggest amendments, to ask for conferences. It was therefore mostunfair that the law establishing the Bank should be sent up as part of alaw granting supplies to the Crown. The Jacobites entertained some hopethat the session would end with a quarrel between the Houses, that theTonnage Bill would be lost, and that William would enter on the campaignwithout money. It was already May, according to the New Style. TheLondon season was over; and many noble families had left Covent Gardenand Soho Square for their woods and hayfields. But summonses were sentout. There was a violent rush back to town. The benches which had latelybeen deserted were crowded. The sittings began at an hour unusuallyearly, and were prolonged to an hour unusually late. On the day on whichthe bill was committed the contest lasted without intermission fromnine in the morning till six in the evening. Godolphin was in the chair. Nottingham and Rochester proposed to strike out all the clauses whichrelated to the Bank. Something was said about the danger of setting up agigantic corporation which might soon give law to the King and thethree Estates of the Realm. But the Peers seemed to be most moved bythe appeal which was made to them as landlords. The whole scheme, it wasasserted, was intended to enrich usurers at the expense of the nobilityand gentry. Persons who had laid by money would rather put it into theBank than lend it on mortgage at moderate interest. Caermarthen saidlittle or nothing in defence of what was, in truth, the work of hisrivals and enemies. He owned that there were grave objections to themode in which the Commons had provided for the public service of theyear. But would their Lordships amend a money bill? Would they engage ina contest of which the end must be that they must either yield, or incurthe grave responsibility of leaving the Channel without a fleet duringthe summer? This argument prevailed; and, on a division, the amendmentwas rejected by forty-three votes to thirty-one. A few hours later thebill received the royal assent, and the Parliament was prorogued. [523]In the City the success of Montague's plan was complete. It was then atleast as difficult to raise a million at eight per cent. As it would nowbe to raise thirty millions at four per cent. It had been supposed thatcontributions would drop in very slowly; and a considerable time hadtherefore been allowed by the Act. This indulgence was not needed. Sopopular was the new investment that on the day on which the books wereopened three hundred thousand pounds were subscribed; three hundredthousand more were subscribed during the next forty-eight hours; and, in ten days, to the delight of all the friends of the government, it wasannounced that the list was full. The whole sum which the Corporationwas bound to lend to the State was paid into the Exchequer before thefirst instalment was due. [524] Somers gladly put the Great Seal to acharter framed in conformity with the terms prescribed by Parliament;and the Bank of England commenced its operations in the house of theCompany of Grocers. There, during many years, directors, secretaries andclerks might be seen labouring in different parts of one spacious hall. The persons employed by the bank were originally only fifty-four. Theyare now nine hundred. The sum paid yearly in salaries amounted at firstto only four thousand three hundred and fifty pounds. It now exceeds twohundred and ten thousand pounds. We may therefore fairly infer that theincomes of commercial clerks are, on an average, about three times aslarge in the reign of Victoria as they were in the reign of William theThird. [525]

It soon appeared that Montague had, by skilfully availing himself of thefinancial difficulties of the country, rendered an inestimable serviceto his party. During several generations the Bank of Englandwas emphatically a Whig body. It was Whig, not accidentally, butnecessarily. It must have instantly stopped payment if it had ceased toreceive the interest on the sum which it had advanced to the government;and of that interest James would not have paid one farthing. Seventeenyears after the passing of the Tonnage Bill, Addison, in one of his mostingenious and graceful little allegories, described the situation of thegreat Company through which the immense wealth of London was constantlycirculating. He saw Public Credit on her throne in Grocers' Hall, theGreat Charter over her head, the Act of Settlement full in her view. Hertouch turned every thing to gold. Behind her seat, bags filled with coinwere piled up to the ceiling. On her right and on her left the floorwas hidden by pyramids of guineas. On a sudden the door flies open. ThePretender rushes in, a sponge in one hand, in the other a sword whichhe shakes at the Act of Settlement. The beautiful Queen sinks downfainting. The spell by which she has turned all things around her intotreasure is broken. The money bags shrink like pricked bladders. Thepiles of gold pieces are turned into bundles of rags or faggots ofwooden tallies. [526] The truth which this parable was meant to conveywas constantly present to the minds of the rulers of the Bank. Soclosely was their interest bound up with the interest of the governmentthat the greater the public danger the more ready were they to come tothe rescue. In old times, when the Treasury was empty, when the taxescame in slowly, and when the pay of the soldiers and sailors was inarrear, it had been necessary for the Chancellor of the Exchequer to go, hat in hand, up and down Cheapside and Cornhill, attended by the LordMayor and by the Aldermen, and to make up a sum by borrowing a hundredpounds from this hosier, and two hundred pounds from that ironmonger. [527] Those times were over. The government, instead of laboriouslyscooping up supplies from numerous petty sources, could now drawwhatever it required from an immense reservoir, which all those pettysources kept constantly replenished. It is hardly too much to say that, during many years, the weight of the Bank, which was constantly in thescale of the Whigs, almost counterbalanced the weight of the Church, which was as constantly in the scale of the Tories. 

A few minutes after the bill which established the Bank of England hadreceived the royal assent, the Parliament was prorogued by the King witha speech in which he warmly thanked the Commons for their liberality. Montague was immediately rewarded for his services with the place ofChancellor of the Exchequer. [528]

Shrewsbury had a few weeks before consented to accept the seals. He hadheld out resolutely from November to March. While he was trying to findexcuses which might satisfy his political friends, Sir James Montgomeryvisited him. Montgomery was now the most miserable of human beings. Having borne a great part in a great Revolution, having been chargedwith the august office of presenting the Crown of Scotland to theSovereigns whom the Estates had chosen, having domineered without arival, during several months, in the Parliament at Edinburgh, havingseen before him in near prospect the seals of Secretary, the coronetof an Earl, ample wealth, supreme power, he had on a sudden sunk intoobscurity and abject penury. His fine parts still remained; and he wastherefore used by the Jacobites; but, though used, he was despised, distrusted and starved. He passed his life in wandering from England toFrance and from France back to England, without finding a resting placein either country. Sometimes he waited in the antechamber at SaintGermains, where the priests scowled at him as a Calvinist, and whereeven the Protestant Jacobites cautioned one another in whispers againstthe old Republican. Sometimes he lay hid in the garrets of London, imagining that every footstep which he heard on the stairs was that ofa bailiff with a writ, or that of a King's messenger with a warrant. Henow obtained access to Shrewsbury, and ventured to talk as a Jacobite toa brother Jacobite. Shrewsbury, who was not at all inclined to put hisestate and his neck in the power of a man whom he knew to be both rashand perfidious, returned very guarded answers. Through some channelwhich is not known to us, William obtained full intelligence of whathad passed on this occasion. He sent for Shrewsbury, and again spokeearnestly about the secretaryship. Shrewsbury again excused himself. His health, he said, was bad. "That, " said William, "is not your onlyreason. " "No, Sir, " said Shrewsbury, "it is not. " And he began to speakof public grievances, and alluded to the fate of the Triennial Bill, which he had himself introduced. But William cut him short. "There isanother reason behind. When did you see Montgomery last?" Shrewsbury wasthunderstruck. The King proceeded to repeat some things which Montgomeryhad said. By this time Shrewsbury had recovered from his dismay, andhad recollected that, in the conversation which had been so accuratelyreported to the government, he had fortunately uttered no treason, though he had heard much. "Sir, " said he, "since Your Majesty has beenso correctly informed, you must be aware that I gave no encouragementto that man's attempts to seduce me from my allegiance. " William did notdeny this, but intimated that such secret dealings with noted Jacobitesraised suspicions which Shrewsbury could remove only by accepting theseals. "That, " he said, "will put me quite at ease. I know that you area man of honour, and that, if you undertake to serve me, you will serveme faithfully. " So pressed, Shrewsbury complied, to the great joy ofhis whole party; and was immediately rewarded for his compliance with adukedom and a garter. [529]

Thus a Whig ministry was gradually forming. There were now two WhigSecretaries of State, a Whig Keeper of the Great Seal, a Whig First Lordof the Admiralty, a Whig Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Lord PrivySeal, Pembroke, might also be called a Whig; for his mind was one whichreadily took the impress of any stronger mind with which it was broughtinto contact. Seymour, having been long enough a Commissioner of theTreasury to lose much of his influence with the Tory country gentlemenwho had once listened to him as to an oracle, was dismissed, and hisplace was filled by John Smith, a zealous and able Whig, who had takenan active part in the debates of the late session. [530] The only Torieswho still held great offices in the executive government were the LordPresident, Caermarthen, who, though he began to feel that power wasslipping from his grasp, still clutched it desperately, and the firstLord of the Treasury, Godolphin, who meddled little out of his owndepartment, and performed the duties of that department with skill andassiduity. 

William, however, still tried to divide his favours between the twoparties. Though the Whigs were fast drawing to themselves the substanceof power, the Tories obtained their share of honorary distinctions. Mulgrave, who had, during the late session, exerted his greatparliamentary talents in favour of the King's policy, was createdMarquess of Normanby, and named a Cabinet Councillor, but was neverconsulted. He obtained at the same time a pension of three thousandpounds a year. Caermarthen, whom the late changes had deeply mortified, was in some degree consoled by a signal mark of royal approbation. Hebecame Duke of Leeds. It had taken him little more than twenty years toclimb from the station of a Yorkshire country gentleman to the highestrank in the peerage. Two great Whig Earls were at the same time createdDukes, Bedford and Devonshire. It ought to be mentioned that Bedfordhad repeatedly refused the dignity which he now somewhat reluctantlyaccepted. He declared that he preferred his Earldom to a Dukedom, and gave a very sensible reason for the preference. An Earl who hada numerous family might send one son to the Temple and another to acounting house in the city. But the sons of a Duke were all lords; anda lord could not make his bread either at the bar or on Change. The oldman's objections, however, were overcome; and the two great housesof Russell and Cavendish, which had long been closely connected byfriendship and by marriage, by common opinions, common sufferings andcommon triumphs, received on the same day the greatest honour which itis in the power of the Crown to confer. [531]

The Gazette which announced these creations announced also that the Kinghad set out for the Continent. He had, before his departure, consultedwith his ministers about the means of counteracting a plan of navaloperations which had been formed by the French government. Hithertothe maritime war had been carried on chiefly in the Channel and theAtlantic. But Lewis had now determined to concentrate his maritimeforces in the Mediterranean. He hoped that, with their help, the army ofMarshal Noailles would be able to take Barcelona, to subdue the wholeof Catalonia, and to compel Spain to sue for peace. Accordingly, Tourville's squadron, consisting of fifty three men of war, set sailfrom Brest on the twenty-fifth of April and passed the Straits ofGibraltar on the fourth of May. 

William, in order to cross the designs of the enemy, determined to sendRussell to the Mediterranean with the greater part of the combined fleetof England and Holland. A squadron was to remain in the British seasunder the command of the Earl of Berkeley. Talmash was to embark onboard of this squadron with a large body of troops, and was to attackBrest, which would, it was supposed, in the absence of Tourville and hisfifty-three vessels, be an easy conquest. 

That preparations were making at Portsmouth for an expedition, in whichthe land forces were to bear a part, could not be kept a secret. There was much speculation at the Rose and at Garraway's touching thedestination of the armament. Some talked of Rhe, some of Oleron, some ofRochelle, some of Rochefort. Many, till the fleet actually began tomove westward, believed that it was bound for Dunkirk. Many guessed thatBrest would be the point of attack; but they only guessed this; for thesecret was much better kept than most of the secrets of that age. [532]Russell, till he was ready to weigh anchor, persisted in assuring hisJacobite friends that he knew nothing. His discretion was proof evenagainst all the arts of Marlborough. Marlborough, however, had othersources of intelligence. To those sources he applied himself; and heat length succeeded in discovering the whole plan of the government. Heinstantly wrote to James. He had, he said, but that moment ascertainedthat twelve regiments of infantry and two regiments of marines wereabout to embark, under the command of Talmash, for the purpose ofdestroying the harbour of Brest and the shipping which lay there. "This, " he added, "would be a great advantage to England. But noconsideration can, or ever shall, hinder me from letting you know whatI think may be for your service. " He then proceeded to caution Jamesagainst Russell. "I endeavoured to learn this some time ago from him;but he always denied it to me, though I am very sure that he knew thedesign for more than six weeks. This gives me a bad sign of this man'sintentions. "

The intelligence sent by Marlborough to James was communicated byJames to the French government. That government took its measures withcharacteristic promptitude. Promptitude was indeed necessary; for, whenMarlborough's letter was written, the preparations at Portsmouth wereall but complete; and, if the wind had been favourable to the English, the objects of the expedition might have been attained without astruggle. But adverse gales detained our fleet in the Channel duringanother month. Meanwhile a large body of troops was collected at Brest. Vauban was charged with the duty of putting the defences in order; and, under his skilful direction, batteries were planted which commandedevery spot where it seemed likely that an invader would attempt toland. Eight large rafts, each carrying many mortars, were moored in theharbour, and, some days before the English arrived, all was ready fortheir reception. 

On the sixth of June the whole allied fleet was on the Atlantic aboutfifteen leagues west of Cape Finisterre. There Russell and Berkeleyparted company. Russell proceeded towards the Mediterranean. Berkeley'ssquadron, with the troops on board, steered for the coast of Brittany, and anchored just without Camaret Bay, close to the mouth of the harbourof Brest. Talmash proposed to land in Camaret Bay. It was thereforedesirable to ascertain with accuracy the state of the coast. The eldestson of the Duke of Leeds, now called Marquess of Caermarthen, undertookto enter the basin and to obtain the necessary information. The passionof this brave and eccentric young man for maritime adventure wasunconquerable. He had solicited and obtained the rank of Rear Admiral, and had accompanied the expedition in his own yacht, the Peregrine, renowned as the masterpiece of shipbuilding, and more than once alreadymentioned in this history. Cutts, who had distinguished himself byhis intrepidity in the Irish war, and had been rewarded with an Irishpeerage, offered to accompany Caermarthen, Lord Mohun, who, desirous, it may be hoped, to efface by honourable exploits the stain which ashameful and disastrous brawl had left on his name, was serving withthe troops as a volunteer, insisted on being of the party. The Peregrinewent into the bay with its gallant crew, and came out safe, but notwithout having run great risks. Caermarthen reported that the defences, of which however he had seen only a small part, were formidable. ButBerkeley and Talmash suspected that he overrated the danger. They werenot aware that their design had long been known at Versailles, that anarmy had been collected to oppose them, and that the greatest engineerin the world had been employed to fortify the coast against them. Theytherefore did not doubt that their troops might easily be put on shoreunder the protection of a fire from the ships. On the following morningCaermarthen was ordered to enter the bay with eight vessels and tobatter the French works. Talmash was to follow with about a hundredboats full of soldiers. It soon appeared that the enterprise was evenmore perilous than it had on the preceding day appeared to be. Batterieswhich had then escaped notice opened on the ships a fire so murderousthat several decks were soon cleared. Great bodies of foot and horsewere discernible; and, by their uniforms, they appeared to be regulartroops. The young Rear Admiral sent an officer in all haste to warnTalmash. But Talmash was so completely possessed by the notion thatthe French were not prepared to repel an attack that he disregarded allcautions and would not even trust his own eyes. He felt sure that theforce which he saw assembled on the shore was a mere rabble of peasants, who had been brought together in haste from the surrounding country. Confident that these mock soldiers would run like sheep before realsoldiers, he ordered his men to pull for the beach. He was soonundeceived. A terrible fire mowed down his troops faster than theycould get on shore. He had himself scarcely sprung on dry ground when hereceived a wound in the thigh from a cannon ball, and was carried backto his skiff. His men reembarked in confusion. Ships and boats madehaste to get out of the bay, but did not succeed till four hundredseamen and seven hundred soldiers had fallen. During many days the wavescontinued to throw up pierced and shattered corpses on the beach ofBrittany. The battery from which Talmash received his wound is called, to this day, the Englishman's Death. 

The unhappy general was laid on his couch; and a council of war was heldin his cabin. He was for going straight into the harbour of Brestand bombarding the town. But this suggestion, which indicated but tooclearly that his judgment had been affected by the irritation of awounded body and a wounded mind, was wisely rejected by the navalofficers. The armament returned to Portsmouth. There Talmash died, exclaiming with his last breath that he had been lured into a snare bytreachery. The public grief and indignation were loudly expressed. Thenation remembered the services of the unfortunate general, forgave hisrashness, pitied his sufferings, and execrated the unknown traitorswhose machinations had been fatal to him. There were many conjecturesand many rumours. Some sturdy Englishmen, misled by national prejudice, swore that none of our plans would ever be kept a secret from the enemywhile French refugees were in high military command. Some zealous Whigs, misled by party sprit, muttered that the Court of Saint Germains wouldnever want good intelligence while a single Tory remained in the CabinetCouncil. The real criminal was not named; nor, till the archives of theHouse of Stuart were explored, was it known to the world that Talmashhad perished by the basest of all the hundred villanies of Marlborough. [533]

Yet never had Marlborough been less a Jacobite than at the moment whenhe rendered this wicked and shameful service to the Jacobite cause. Itmay be confidently affirmed that to serve the banished family was nothis object, and that to ingratiate himself with the banished family wasonly his secondary object. His primary object was to force himself intothe service of the existing government, and to regain possession ofthose important and lucrative places from which he had been dismissedmore than two years before. He knew that the country and the Parliamentwould not patiently bear to see the English army commanded by foreigngenerals. Two Englishmen only had shown themselves fit for high militaryposts, himself and Talmash. If Talmash were defeated and disgraced, William would scarcely have a choice. In fact, as soon as it was knownthat the expedition had failed, and that Talmash was no more, thegeneral cry was that the King ought to receive into his favour theaccomplished Captain who had done such good service at Walcourt, at Corkand at Kinsale. Nor can we blame the multitude for raising this cry. For every body knew that Marlborough was an eminently brave, skilfuland successful officer; but very few persons knew that he had, whilecommanding William's troops, while sitting in William's council, whilewaiting in William's bedchamber, formed a most artful and dangerous plotfor the subversion of William's throne; and still fewer suspected thereal author of the recent calamity, of the slaughter in the Bay ofCamaret, of the melancholy fate of Talmash. The effect therefore of thefoulest of all treasons was to raise the traitor in public estimation. Nor was he wanting to himself at this conjuncture. While the RoyalExchange was in consternation at this disaster of which he was thecause, while many families were clothing themselves in mourning for thebrave men of whom he was the murderer, he repaired to Whitehall; andthere, doubtless with all that grace, that nobleness, that suavity, under which lay, hidden from all common observers, a seared conscienceand a remorseless heart, he professed himself the most devoted, the mostloyal, of all the subjects of William and Mary, and expressed a hopethat he might, in this emergency, be permitted to offer his sword totheir Majesties. Shrewsbury was very desirous that the offer should beaccepted; but a short and dry answer from William, who was then inthe Netherlands, put an end for the present to all negotiation. AboutTalmash the King expressed himself with generous tenderness. "The poorfellow's fate, " he wrote, "has affected me much. I do not indeed thinkthat he managed well; but it was his ardent desire to distinguishhimself that impelled him to attempt impossibilities. " [534]

The armament which had returned to Portsmouth soon sailed again for thecoast of France, but achieved only exploits worse than inglorious. Anattempt was made to blow up the pier at Dunkirk. Some towns inhabited byquiet tradesmen and fishermen were bombarded. In Dieppe scarcely a housewas left standing; a third part of Havre was laid in ashes; and shellswere thrown into Calais which destroyed thirty private dwellings. TheFrench and the Jacobites loudly exclaimed against the cowardiceand barbarity of making war on an unwarlike population. The Englishgovernment vindicated itself by reminding the world of the sufferings ofthe thrice wasted Palatinate; and, as against Lewis and the flatterersof Lewis, the vindication was complete. But whether it were consistentwith humanity and with sound policy to visit the crimes which anabsolute Prince and a ferocious soldiery had committed in the Palatinateon shopkeepers and labourers, on women and children, who did not knowthat the Palatinate existed, may perhaps be doubted. 

Meanwhile Russell's fleet was rendering good service to the commoncause. Adverse winds had impeded his progress through the Straits solong that he did not reach Carthagena till the middle of July. By thattime the progress of the French arms had spread terror even to theEscurial. Noailles had, on the banks of the Tar, routed an armycommanded by the Viceroy of Catalonia; and, on the day on which thisvictory was won, the Brest squadron had joined the Toulon squadron inthe Bay of Rosas. Palamos, attacked at once by land and sea, was takenby storm. Gerona capitulated after a faint show of resistance. Ostalricsurrendered at the first summons. Barcelona would in all probabilityhave fallen, had not the French Admirals learned that the conquerors ofLa Hogue was approaching. They instantly quitted the coast of Catalonia, and never thought themselves safe till they had taken shelter under thebatteries of Toulon. 

The Spanish government expressed warm gratitude for this seasonableassistance, and presented to the English Admiral a jewel which waspopularly said to be worth near twenty thousand pounds sterling. Therewas no difficulty in finding such a jewel among the hoards of gorgeoustrinkets which had been left by Charles the Fifth and Philip the Secondto a degenerate race. But, in all that constitutes the true wealth ofstates, Spain was poor indeed. Her treasury was empty; her arsenals wereunfurnished; her ships were so rotten that they seemed likely to flyasunder at the discharge of their own guns. Her ragged and starvingsoldiers often mingled with the crowd of beggars at the doors ofconvents, and battled there for a mess of pottage and a crust of bread. Russell underwent those trials which no English commander whose hardfate it has been to cooperate with Spaniards has escaped. The Viceroyof Catalonia promised much, did nothing, and expected every thing. Hedeclared that three hundred and fifty thousand rations were ready to beserved out to the fleet at Carthagena. It turned out that there were notin all the stores of that port provisions sufficient to victual a singlefrigate for a single week. Yet His Excellency thought himself entitledto complain because England had not sent an army as well as a fleet, andbecause the heretic Admiral did not choose to expose the fleet to utterdestruction by attacking the French under the guns of Toulon. Russellimplored the Spanish authorities to look well to their dockyards, and totry to have, by the next spring, a small squadron which might at leastbe able to float; but he could not prevail on them to careen a singleship. He could with difficulty obtain, on hard conditions, permission tosend a few of his sick men to marine hospitals on shore. Yet, in spiteof all the trouble given him by the imbecility and ingratitude of agovernment which has generally caused more annoyance to its allies thanto its enemies, he acquitted himself well. It is but just to him tosay that, from the time at which he became First Lord of the Admiralty, there was a decided improvement in the naval administration. Thoughhe lay with his fleet many months near an inhospitable shore, and at agreat distance from England, there were no complaints about the qualityor the quantity of provisions. The crews had better food and drinkthan they had ever had before; comforts which Spain did not afford weresupplied from home; and yet the charge was not greater than when, inTorrington's time, the sailor was poisoned with mouldy biscuit andnauseous beer. 

As almost the whole maritime force of France was in the Mediterranean, and as it seemed likely that an attempt would be made on Barcelonain the following year, Russell received orders to winter at Cadiz. In October he sailed to that port; and there he employed himself inrefitting his ships with an activity unintelligible to the Spanishfunctionaries, who calmly suffered the miserable remains of what hadonce been the greatest navy in the world to rot under their eyes. [535]

Along the eastern frontier of France the war during this year seemed tolanguish. In Piedmont and on the Rhine the most important events of thecampaign were petty skirmishes and predatory incursions. Lewis remainedat Versailles, and sent his son, the Dauphin, to represent him in theNetherlands; but the Dauphin was placed under the tutelage of Luxemburg, and proved a most submissive pupil. During several months the hostilearmies observed each other. The allies made one bold push with theintention of carrying the war into the French territory; but Luxemburg, by a forced march, which excited the admiration of persons versed in themilitary art, frustrated the design. William on the other hand succeededin taking Huy, then a fortress of the third rank. No battle was fought;no important town was besieged; but the confederates were satisfied withtheir campaign. Of the four previous years every one had been marked bysome great disaster. In 1690 Waldeck had been defeated at Fleurus. In 1691 Mons had fallen. In 1692 Namur had been taken in sight of theallied army; and this calamity had been speedily followed by the defeatof Steinkirk. In 1693 the battle of Landen had been lost; and Charleroyhad submitted to the conqueror. At length in 1694 the tide had begun toturn. The French arms had made no progress. What had been gained by theallies was indeed not much; but the smallest gain was welcome to thosewhom a long run of evil fortune had discouraged. 

In England, the general opinion was that, notwithstanding the disasterin Camaret Bay, the war was on the whole proceeding satisfactorilyboth by land and by sea. But some parts of the internal administrationexcited, during this autumn, much discontent. 

Since Trenchard had been appointed Secretary of State, the Jacobiteagitators had found their situation much more unpleasant than before. Sidney had been too indulgent and too fond of pleasure to give them muchtrouble. Nottingham was a diligent and honest minister; but he was ashigh a Tory as a faithful subject of William and Mary could be; he lovedand esteemed many of the nonjurors; and, though he might force himselfto be severe when nothing but severity could save the State, he wasnot extreme to mark the transgressions of his old friends; nor did heencourage talebearers to come to Whitehall with reports of conspiracies. But Trenchard was both an active public servant and an earnest Whig. Even if he had himself been inclined to lenity, he would have been urgedto severity by those who surrounded him. He had constantly at his sideHugh Speke and Aaron Smith, men to whom a hunt after a Jacobite wasthe most exciting of all sports. The cry of the malecontents was thatNottingham had kept his bloodhounds in the leash, but that Trenchard hadlet them slip. Every honest gentleman who loved the Church and hatedthe Dutch went in danger of his life. There was a constant bustle atthe Secretary's Office, a constant stream of informers coming in, and ofmessengers with warrants going out. It was said too, that the warrantswere often irregularly drawn, that they did not specify the person, thatthey did not specify the crime, and yet that, under the authority ofsuch instruments as these, houses were entered, desks and cabinetssearched, valuable papers carried away, and men of good birth andbreeding flung into gaol among felons. [536] The minister and his agentsanswered that Westminster Hall was open; that, if any man had beenillegally imprisoned, he had only to bring his action; that juries werequite sufficiently disposed to listen to any person who pretended tohave been oppressed by cruel and griping men in power, and that, asnone of the prisoners whose wrongs were so pathetically described hadventured to resort to this obvious and easy mode of obtaining redress, it might fairly be inferred that nothing had been done which couldnot be justified. The clamour of the malecontents however made aconsiderable impression on the public mind; and at length, a transactionin which Trenchard was more unlucky than culpable, brought on him and onthe government with which he was connected much temporary obloquy. 

Among the informers who haunted his office was an Irish vagabond who hadborne more than one name and had professed more than one religion. Henow called himself Taaffe. He had been a priest of the Roman CatholicChurch, and secretary to Adda the Papal Nuncio, but had since theRevolution turned Protestant, had taken a wife, and had distinguishedhimself by his activity in discovering the concealed property of thoseJesuits and Benedictines who, during the late reign, had been quarteredin London. The ministers despised him; but they trusted him. Theythought that he had, by his apostasy, and by the part which he had bornein the spoliation of the religious orders, cut himself off from allretreat, and that, having nothing but a halter to expect from KingJames, he must be true to King William. [537]

This man fell in with a Jacobite agent named Lunt, who had, since theRevolution, been repeatedly employed among the discontented gentryof Cheshire and Lancashire, and who had been privy to those plans ofinsurrection which had been disconcerted by the battle of the Boyne in1690, and by the battle of La Hogue in 1692. Lunt had once been arrestedon suspicion of treason, but had been discharged for want of legal proofof his guilt. He was a mere hireling, and was, without much difficulty, induced by Taaffe to turn approver. The pair went to Trenchard. Lunttold his story, mentioned the names of some Cheshire and Lancashiresquires to whom he had, as he affirmed, carried commissions from SaintGermains, and of others, who had, to his knowledge, formed secret hoardsof arms and ammunition. His simple oath would not have been sufficientto support a charge of high treason; but he produced another witnesswhose evidence seemed to make the case complete. The narrative wasplausible and coherent; and indeed, though it may have been embellishedby fictions, there can be little doubt that it was in substance true. [538] Messengers and search warrants were sent down to Lancashire. AaronSmith himself went thither; and Taaffe went with him. The alarm had beengiven by some of the numerous traitors who ate the bread of William. Some of the accused persons had fled; and others had buried their sabresand muskets and burned their papers. Nevertheless, discoveries weremade which confirmed Lunt's depositions. Behind the wainscot of the oldmansion of one Roman Catholic family was discovered a commission signedby James. Another house, of which the master had absconded, was strictlysearched, in spite of the solemn asseverations of his wife and hisservants that no arms were concealed there. While the lady, with herhand on her heart, was protesting on her honour that her husband wasfalsely accused, the messengers observed that the back of the chimneydid not seem to be firmly fixed. It was removed, and a heap of bladessuch as were used by horse soldiers tumbled out. In one of the garretswere found, carefully bricked up, thirty saddles for troopers, asmany breastplates, and sixty cavalry swords. Trenchard and Aaron Smiththought the case complete; and it was determined that those culprits whohad been apprehended should be tried by a special commission. [539]

Taaffe now confidently expected to be recompensed for his services;but he found a cold reception at the Treasury. He had gone down toLancashire chiefly in order that he might, under the protection of asearch warrant, pilfer trinkets and broad pieces from secret drawers. His sleight of hand however had not altogether escaped the observationof his companions. They discovered that he had made free with thecommunion plate of the Popish families, whose private hoards he hadassisted in ransacking. When therefore he applied for reward, he wasdismissed, not merely with a refusal, but with a stern reprimand. Hewent away mad with greediness and spite. There was yet one way in whichhe might obtain both money and revenge; and that way he took. He madeovertures to the friends of the prisoners. He and he alone could undowhat he had done, could save the accused from the gallows, could coverthe accusers with infamy, could drive from office the Secretary and theSolicitor who were the dread of all the friends of King James. Loathsomeas Taaffe was to the Jacobites, his offer was not to be slighted. Hereceived a sum in hand; he was assured that a comfortable annuity forlife should be settled on him when the business was done; and he wassent down into the country, and kept in strict seclusion against the dayof trial. [540]

Meanwhile unlicensed pamphlets, in which the Lancashire plot was classedwith Oates's plot, with Dangerfield's plot, with Fuller's plot, withYoung's plot, with Whitney's plot, were circulated all over the kingdom, and especially in the county which was to furnish the jury. Of thesepamphlets the longest, the ablest, and the bitterest, entitled a Letterto Secretary Trenchard, was commonly ascribed to Ferguson. It is notimprobable that Ferguson may have furnished some of the materials, andmay have conveyed the manuscript to the press. But many passages arewritten with an art and a vigour which assuredly did not belong to him. Those who judge by internal evidence may perhaps think that, in someparts of this remarkable tract, they can discern the last gleam of themalignant genius of Montgomery. A few weeks after the appearance of theLetter he sank, unhonoured and unlamented, into the grave. [541]

There were then no printed newspapers except the London Gazette. But since the Revolution the newsletter had become a more importantpolitical engine than it had previously been. The newsletters of onewriter named Dyer were widely circulated in manuscript. He affected tobe a Tory and a High Churchman, and was consequently regarded by thefoxhunting lords of manors, all over the kingdom, as an oracle. He hadalready been twice in prison; but his gains had more than compensatedfor his sufferings, and he still persisted in seasoning his intelligenceto suit the taste of the country gentlemen. He now turned the Lancashireplot into ridicule, declared that the guns which had been found were oldfowling pieces, that the saddles were meant only for hunting, and thatthe swords were rusty reliques of Edge Hill and Marston Moor. [542] Theeffect produced by all this invective and sarcasm on the public mindseems to have been great. Even at the Dutch Embassy, where assuredlythere was no leaning towards Jacobitism, there was a strong impressionthat it would be unwise to bring the prisoners to trial. In Lancashireand Cheshire the prevailing sentiments were pity for the accused andhatred of the prosecutors. The government however persevered. In Octoberfour Judges went down to Manchester. At present the population of thattown is made up of persons born in every part of the British Isles, andconsequently has no especial sympathy with the landowners, the farmersand the agricultural labourers of the neighbouring districts. But inthe seventeenth century the Manchester man was a Lancashire man. Hispolitics were those of his county. For the old Cavalier families of hiscounty he felt a great respect; and he was furious when he thought thatsome of the best blood of his county was about to be shed by a knotof Roundhead pettifoggers from London. Multitudes of people from theneighbouring villages filled the streets of the town, and saw with griefand indignation the array of drawn swords and loaded carbines whichsurrounded the culprits. Aaron Smith's arrangements do not seem to havebeen skilful. The chief counsel for the Crown was Sir William Williams, who, though now well stricken in years and possessed of a great estate, still continued to practise. One fault had thrown a dark shade over thelatter part of his life. The recollection of that day on which he hadstood up in Westminster Hall, amidst laughter and hooting, to defend thedispensing power and to attack the right of petition, had, eversince the Revolution, kept him back from honour. He was an angry anddisappointed man, and was by no means disposed to incur unpopularity inthe cause of a government to which he owed nothing, and from which hehoped nothing. 

Of the trial no detailed report has come down to us; but we have botha Whig narrative and a Jacobite narrative. [543] It seems that theprisoners who were first arraigned did not sever in their challenges, and were consequently tried together. Williams examined or rathercrossexamined his own witnesses with a severity which confused them. Thecrowd which filled the court laughed and clamoured. Lunt in particularbecame completely bewildered, mistook one person for another, and didnot recover himself till the judges took him out of the hands of thecounsel for the Crown. For some of the prisoners an alibi was set up. Evidence was also produced to show, what was undoubtedly quite true, that Lunt was a man of abandoned character. The result however seemeddoubtful till, to the dismay of the prosecutors, Taaffe entered the box. He swore with unblushing forehead that the whole story of the plot was acircumstantial lie devised by himself and Lunt. Williams threw down hisbrief; and, in truth, a more honest advocate might well have done thesame. The prisoners who were at the bar were instantly acquitted; thosewho had not yet been tried were set at liberty; the witnesses forthe prosecution were pelted out of Manchester; the Clerk of the Crownnarrowly escaped with life; and the judges took their departure amidsthisses and execrations. 

A few days after the close of the trials at Manchester William returnedto England. On the twelfth of November, only forty-eight hours afterhis arrival at Kensington, the Houses met. He congratulated them on theimproved aspect of affairs. Both by land and by sea the events of theyear which was about to close had been, on the whole, favourable to theallies; the French armies had made no progress; the French fleets hadnot ventured to show themselves; nevertheless, a safe and honourablepeace could be obtained only by a vigorous prosecution of the war;and the war could not be vigorously prosecuted without large supplies. William then reminded the Commons that the Act by which they had settledthe tonnage and poundage on the Crown for four years was about toexpire, and expressed his hope that it would be renewed. 

After the King had spoken, the Commons, for some reason which no writerhas explained, adjourned for a week. Before they met again, an eventtook place which caused great sorrow at the palace, and through all theranks of the Low Church party. Tillotson was taken suddenly ill whileattending public worship in the chapel of Whitehall. Prompt remediesmight perhaps have saved him; but he would not interrupt the prayers;and, before the service was over, his malady was beyond the reach ofmedicine. He was almost speechless; but his friends long remembered withpleasure a few broken ejaculations which showed that he enjoyed peace ofmind to the last. He was buried in the church of Saint Lawrence Jewry, near Guildhall. It was there that he had won his immense oratoricalreputation. He had preached there during the thirty years which precededhis elevation to the throne of Canterbury. His eloquence had attractedto the heart of the City crowds of the learned and polite, from theInns of Court and from the lordly mansions of Saint James's and Soho. Aconsiderable part of his congregation had generally consisted of youngclergymen, who came to learn the art of preaching at the feet of him whowas universally considered as the first of preachers. To this church hisremains were now carried through a mourning population. The hearse wasfollowed by an endless train of splendid equipages from Lambeth throughSouthwark and over London Bridge. Burnet preached the funeral sermon. His kind and honest heart was overcome by so many tender recollectionsthat, in the midst of his discourse, he paused and burst into tears, while a loud moan of sorrow rose from the whole auditory. The Queencould not speak of her favourite instructor without weeping. EvenWilliam was visibly moved. "I have lost, " he said, "the best friend thatI ever had, and the best man that I ever knew. " The only Englishman whois mentioned with tenderness in any part of the great mass of letterswhich the King wrote to Heinsius is Tillotson. The Archbishop had left awidow. To her William granted a pension of four hundred a year, which heafterwards increased to six hundred. His anxiety that she should receiveher income regularly and without stoppages was honourable to him. Everyquarterday he ordered the money, without any deduction, to be brought tohimself, and immediately sent it to her. Tillotson had bequeathed to herno property, except a great number of manuscript sermons. Such was hisfame among his contemporaries that those sermons were purchased by thebooksellers for the almost incredible sum of two thousand five hundredguineas, equivalent, in the wretched state in which the silver coin thenwas, to at least three thousand six hundred pounds. Such a price hadnever before been given in England for any copyright. About the sametime Dryden, whose reputation was then in the zenith, received thirteenhundred pounds for his translation of all the works of Virgil, and wasthought to have been splendidly remunerated. [544]

It was not easy to fill satisfactorily the high place which Tillotsonhad left vacant. Mary gave her voice for Stillingfleet, and pressedhis claims as earnestly as she ever ventured to press any thing. Inabilities and attainments he had few superiors among the clergy. But, though he would probably have been considered as a Low Churchman byJane and South, he was too high a Churchman for William; and Tenison wasappointed. The new primate was not eminently distinguished by eloquenceor learning: but he was honest, prudent, laborious and benevolent; hehad been a good rector of a large parish and a good bishop of a largediocese; detraction had not yet been busy with his name; and it mightwell be thought that a man of plain sense, moderation and integrity, wasmore likely than a man of brilliant genius and lofty spirit to succeedin the arduous task of quieting a discontented and distracted Church. 

Meanwhile the Commons had entered upon business. They cheerfully votedabout two million four hundred thousand pounds for the army, and asmuch for the navy. The land tax for the year was again fixed at fourshillings in the pound; the Tonnage Act was renewed for a term of fiveyears; and a fund was established on which the government was authorisedto borrow two millions and a half. 

Some time was spent by both Houses in discussing the Manchester trials. If the malecontents had been wise, they would have been satisfied withthe advantage which they had already gained. Their friends had been setfree. The prosecutors had with difficulty escaped from the hands of anenraged multitude. The character of the government had been seriouslydamaged. The ministers were accused, in prose and in verse, sometimesin earnest and sometimes in jest, of having hired a gang of ruffians toswear away the lives of honest gentlemen. Even moderate politicians, whogave no credit to these foul imputations, owned that Trenchard ought tohave remembered the villanies of Fuller and Young, and to have beenon his guard against such wretches as Taaffe and Lunt. The unfortunateSecretary's health and spirits had given way. It was said that he wasdying; and it was certain that he would not long continue to hold theseals. The Tories had won a great victory; but, in their eagerness toimprove it, they turned it into a defeat. 

Early in the session Howe complained, with his usual vehemence andasperity, of the indignities to which innocent and honourable men, highly descended and highly esteemed, had been subjected by Aaron Smithand the wretches who were in his pay. The leading Whigs, with greatjudgment, demanded an inquiry. Then the Tories began to flinch. Theywell knew that an inquiry could not strengthen their case, and mightweaken it. The issue, they said, had been tried; a jury had pronounced;the verdict was definitive; and it would be monstrous to give thefalse witnesses who had been stoned out of Manchester an opportunityof repeating their lesson. To this argument the answer was obvious. Theverdict was definitive as respected the defendants, but not as respectedthe prosecutors. The prosecutors were now in their turn defendants, andwere entitled to all the privileges of defendants. It did not follow, because the Lancashire gentlemen had been found, and very properlyfound, not guilty of treason, that the Secretary of State or theSolicitor of the Treasury had been guilty of unfairness or even ofrashness. The House, by one hundred and nineteen votes to one hundredand two resolved that Aaron Smith and the witnesses on both sidesshould be ordered to attend. Several days were passed in examinationand crossexamination; and sometimes the sittings extended far into thenight. It soon became clear that the prosecution had not been lightlyinstituted, and that some of the persons who had been acquitted had beenconcerned in treasonable schemes. The Tories would now have been contentwith a drawn battle; but the Whigs were not disposed to forego theiradvantage. It was moved that there had been a sufficient ground for theproceedings before the Special Commission; and this motion was carriedwithout a division. The opposition proposed to add some words implyingthat the witnesses for the Crown had forsworn themselves; but thesewords were rejected by one hundred and thirty-six votes to one hundredand nine, and it was resolved by one hundred and thirty-three votes toninety-seven that there had been a dangerous conspiracy. The Lords hadmeanwhile been deliberating on the same subject, and had come to thesame conclusion. They sent Taaffe to prison for prevarication; and theypassed resolutions acquitting both the government and the judges of allblame. The public however continued to think that the gentlemen whohad been tried at Manchester had been unjustifiably persecuted, tilla Jacobite plot of singular atrocity, brought home to the plotters bydecisive evidence, produced a violent revulsion of feeling. [545]

Meanwhile three bills, which had been repeatedly discussed in precedingyears, and two of which had been carried in vain to the foot of thethrone, had been again brought in; the Place Bill, the Bill for theRegulation of Trials in cases of Treason, and the Triennial Bill. 

The Place Bill did not reach the Lords. It was thrice read in the LowerHouse, but was not passed. At the very last moment it was rejected bya hundred and seventy-five votes to a hundred and forty-two. Howe andBarley were the tellers for the minority. [546]

The Bill for the Regulation of Trials in cases of Treason went up againto the Peers. Their Lordships again added to it the clause which hadformerly been fatal to it. The Commons again refused to grant any newprivilege to the hereditary aristocracy. Conferences were again held;reasons were again exchanged; both Houses were again obstinate; and thebill was again lost. [547]

The Triennial Bill was more fortunate. It was brought in on the firstday of the session, and went easily and rapidly through both Houses. Theonly question about which there was any serious contention was, how longthe existing Parliament should be suffered to continue. After severalsharp debates November in the year 1696 was fixed as the extreme term. The Tonnage Bill and the Triennial Bill proceeded almost side by side. Both were, on the twenty-second of December, ready for the royal assent. William came in state on that day to Westminster. The attendance ofmembers of both Houses was large. When the Clerk of the Crown read thewords, "A Bill for the frequent Calling and Meeting of Parliaments, " theanxiety was great. When the Clerk of the Parliament made answer, "Le royet la royne le veulent, " a loud and long hum of delight and exultationrose from the benches and the bar. [548] William had resolved manymonths before not to refuse his assent a second time to so popular alaw. [549] There was some however who thought that he would not havemade so great a concession if he had on that day been quite himself. It was plain indeed that he was strangely agitated and unnerved. Ithad been announced that he would dine in public at Whitehall. But hedisappointed the curiosity of the multitude which on such occasionsflocked to the Court, and hurried back to Kensington. [550]

He had but too good reason to be uneasy. His wife had, during two orthree days, been poorly; and on the preceding evening grave symptoms hadappeared. Sir Thomas Millington, who was physician in ordinary to theKing, thought that she had the measles. But Radcliffe, who, with coarsemanners and little book learning, had raised himself to the firstpractice in London chiefly by his rare skill in diagnostics, utteredthe more alarming words, small pox. That disease, over which science hassince achieved a succession of glorious and beneficient victories, wasthen the most terrible of all the ministers of death. The havoc of theplague had been far more rapid; but the plague had visited our shoresonly once or twice within living memory; and the small pox was alwayspresent, filling the churchyards with corpses, tormenting with constantfears all whom it had not yet stricken, leaving on those whose livesit spared the hideous traces of its power, turning the babe into achangeling at which the mother shuddered, and making the eyes and cheeksof the betrothed maiden objects of horror to the lover. Towards theend of the year 1694, this pestilence was more than usually severe. Atlength the infection spread to the palace, and reached the young andblooming Queen. She received the intimation of her danger with truegreatness of soul. She gave orders that every lady of her bedchamber, every maid of honour, nay, every menial servant, who had not had thesmall pox, should instantly leave Kensington House. She locked herselfup during a short time in her closet, burned some papers, arrangedothers, and then calmly awaited her fate. 

During two or three days there were many alternations of hope and fear. The physicians contradicted each other and themselves in a way whichsufficiently indicates the state of medical science in that age. Thedisease was measles; it was scarlet fever; it was spotted fever; it waserysipelas. At one moment some symptoms, which in truth showed thatthe case was almost hopeless, were hailed as indications of returninghealth. At length all doubt was over. Radcliffe's opinion proved to beright. It was plain that the Queen was sinking under small pox of themost malignant type. 

All this time William remained night and day near her bedside. Thelittle couch on which he slept when he was in camp was spread for himin the antechamber; but he scarcely lay down on it. The sight of hismisery, the Dutch Envoy wrote, was enough to melt the hardest heart. Nothing seemed to be left of the man whose serene fortitude had beenthe wonder of old soldiers on the disastrous day of Landen, and of oldsailors on that fearful night among the sheets of ice and banks ofsand on the coast of Goree. The very domestics saw the tears runningunchecked down that face, of which the stern composure had seldom beendisturbed by any triumph or by any defeat. Several of the prelates werein attendance. The King drew Burnet aside, and gave way to an agony ofgrief. "There is no hope, " he cried. "I was the happiest man on earth;and I am the most miserable. She had no fault; none; you knew her well;but you could not know, nobody but myself could know, her goodness. "Tenison undertook to tell her that she was dying. He was afraid thatsuch a communication, abruptly made, might agitate her violently, andbegan with much management. But she soon caught his meaning, and, withthat gentle womanly courage which so often puts our bravery to shame, submitted herself to the will of God. She called for a small cabinetin which her most important papers were locked up, gave orders that, assoon as she was no more, it should be delivered to the King, and thendismissed worldly cares from her mind. She received the Eucharist, andrepeated her part of the office with unimpaired memory and intelligence, though in a feeble voice. She observed that Tenison had been longstanding at her bedside, and, with that sweet courtesy which washabitual to her, faltered out her commands that he would sit down, andrepeated them till he obeyed. After she had received the sacrament shesank rapidly, and uttered only a few broken words. Twice she tried totake a last farewell of him whom she had loved so truly and entirely;but she was unable to speak. He had a succession of fits so alarmingthat his Privy Councillors, who were assembled in a neighbouring room, were apprehensive for his reason and his life. The Duke of Leeds, at therequest of his colleagues, ventured to assume the friendly guardianshipof which minds deranged by sorrow stand in need. A few minutes beforethe Queen expired, William was removed, almost insensible, from the sickroom. 

Mary died in peace with Anne. Before the physicians had pronounced thecase hopeless, the Princess, who was then in very delicate health, hadsent a kind message; and Mary had returned a kind answer. The Princesshad then proposed to come herself; but William had, in very graciousterms, declined the offer. The excitement of an interview, he said, would be too much for both sisters. If a favourable turn took place, HerRoyal Highness should be most welcome to Kensington. A few hours laterall was over. [551]

The public sorrow was great and general. For Mary's blameless life, herlarge charities and her winning manners had conquered the hearts ofher people. When the Commons next met they sate for a time in profoundsilence. At length it was moved and resolved that an Address ofCondolence should be presented to the King; and then the House brokeup without proceeding to other business. The Dutch envoy informed theStates General that many of the members had handkerchiefs at theireyes. The number of sad faces in the street struck every observer. Themourning was more general than even the mourning for Charles the Secondhad been. On the Sunday which followed the Queen's death her virtueswere celebrated in almost every parish church of the Capital, and inalmost every great meeting of nonconformists. [552]

The most estimable Jacobites respected the sorrow of William and thememory of Mary. But to the fiercer zealots of the party neither thehouse of mourning nor the grave was sacred. At Bristol the adherents ofSir John Knight rang the bells as if for a victory. [553] It has oftenbeen repeated, and is not at all improbable, that a nonjuring divine, inthe midst of the general lamentation, preached on the text, "Go; seenow this cursed woman and bury her; for she is a King's daughter. " It iscertain that some of the ejected priests pursued her to the grave withinvectives. Her death, they said, was evidently a judgment for hercrime. God had, from the top of Sinai, in thunder and lightning, promised length of days to children who should honour their parents; andin this promise was plainly implied a menace. What father had ever beenworse treated by his daughters than James by Mary and Anne? Mary wasgone, cut off in the prime of life, in the glow of beauty, in theheight of prosperity; and Anne would do well to profit by the warning. Wagstaffe went further, and dwelt much on certain wonderful coincidencesof time. James had been driven from his palace and country in Christmasweek. Mary had died in Christmas week. There could be no doubt that, ifthe secrets of Providence were disclosed to us, we should find that theturns of the daughter's complaint in December 1694 bore an exactanalogy to the turns of the father's fortune in December 1688. It wasat midnight that the father ran away from Rochester; it was at midnightthat the daughter expired. Such was the profundity and such theingenuity of a writer whom the Jacobite schismatics justly regarded asone of their ablest chiefs. [554]

The Whigs soon had an opportunity of retaliating. They triumphantlyrelated that a scrivener in the Borough, a stanch friend of hereditaryright, while exulting in the judgment which had overtaken the Queen, hadhimself fallen down dead in a fit. [555]

The funeral was long remembered as the saddest and most august thatWestminster had ever seen. While the Queen's remains lay in state atWhitehall, the neighbouring streets were filled every day, from sunriseto sunset, by crowds which made all traffic impossible. The two Houseswith their maces followed the hearse, the Lords robed in scarlet andermine, the Commons in long black mantles. No preceding Sovereign hadever been attended to the grave by a Parliament; for, till then, theParliament had always expired with the Sovereign. A paper had indeedbeen circulated, in which the logic of a small sharp pettifogger wasemployed to prove that writs, issued in the joint names of William andMary, ceased to be of force as soon as William reigned alone. But thispaltry cavil had completely failed. It had not even been mentionedin the Lower House, and had been mentioned in the Upper only to becontemptuously overruled. The whole Magistracy of the City swelled theprocession. The banners of England and France, Scotland and Ireland, were carried by great nobles before the corpse. The pall was borneby the chiefs of the illustrious houses of Howard, Seymour, Grey, andStanley. On the gorgeous coffin of purple and gold were laid the crownand sceptre of the realm. The day was well suited to such a ceremony. The sky was dark and troubled; and a few ghastly flakes of snow fell onthe black plumes of the funeral car. Within the Abbey, nave, choirand transept were in a blaze with innumerable waxlights. The body wasdeposited under a magnificent canopy in the centre of the church whilethe Primate preached. The earlier part of his discourse was deformed bypedantic divisions and subdivisions; but towards the close he told whathe had himself seen and heard with a simplicity and earnestness moreaffecting than the most skilful rhetoric. Through the whole ceremony thedistant booming of cannon was heard every minute from the batteries ofthe Tower. The gentle Queen sleeps among her illustrious kindred in thesouthern aisle of the Chapel of Henry the Seventh. [556]

The affection with which her husband cherished her memory was soonattested by a monument the most superb that was ever erected to anysovereign. No scheme had been so much her own, none had been so near herheart, as that of converting the palace at Greenwich into a retreatfor seamen. It had occurred to her when she had found it difficult toprovide good shelter and good attendance for the thousands of brave menwho had come back to England wounded after the battle of La Hogue. Whileshe lived scarcely any step was taken towards the accomplishing of herfavourite design. But it should seem that, as soon as her husband hadlost her, he began to reproach himself for having neglected her wishes. No time was lost. A plan was furnished by Wren; and soon an edifice, surpassing that asylum which the magnificent Lewis had provided forhis soldiers, rose on the margin of the Thames. Whoever reads theinscription which runs round the frieze of the hall will observe thatWilliam claims no part of the merit of the design, and that the praiseis ascribed to Mary alone. Had the King's life been prolonged till theworks were completed, a statue of her who was the real foundress ofthe institution would have had a conspicuous place in that court whichpresents two lofty domes and two graceful colonnades to the multitudeswho are perpetually passing up and down the imperial river. But thatpart of the plan was never carried into effect; and few of those whonow gaze on the noblest of European hospitals are aware that it is amemorial of the virtues of the good Queen Mary, of the love and sorrowof William, and of the great victory of La Hogue. 

CHAPTER XXI

 Effect of Mary's Death on the Continent--Death of Luxemburg--Distress of William--Parliamentary Proceedings; Emancipation of the Press--Death of Halifax--Parliamentary Inquiries into the Corruption of the Public Offices--Vote of Censure on the Speaker--Foley elected Speaker; Inquiry into the Accounts of the East India Company--Suspicious Dealings of Seymour--Bill against Sir Thomas Cook--Inquiry by a joint Committee of Lords and Commons--Impeachment of Leeds--Disgrace of Leeds--Lords Justices appointed; Reconciliation between William and the Princess Anne--Jacobite Plots against William's Person--Charnock; Porter--Goodman; Parkyns--Fenwick--Session of the Scottish Parliament; Inquiry into the Slaughter of Glencoe--War in the Netherlands; Marshal Villeroy--The Duke of Maine--Jacobite Plots against the Government during William's Absence--Siege of Namur--Surrender of the Town of Namur--Surrender of the Castle of Namur--Arrest of Boufflers--Effect of the Emancipation of the English Press--Return of William to England; Dissolution of the Parliament--William makes a Progress through the Country--The Elections--Alarming State of the Currency--Meeting of the Parliament; Loyalty of the House of Commons--Controversy touching the Currency--Parliamentary Proceedings touching the Currency--Passing of the Act regulating Trials in Cases of High Treason--Parliamentary Proceedings touching the Grant of Crown Lands in Wales to Portland--Two Jacobite Plots formed--Berwick's Plot; the Assassination Plot; Sir George Barclay--Failure of Berwick's Plot--Detection of the Assassination Plot--Parliamentary Proceedings touching the Assassination Plot--State of Public Feeling--Trial of Charnock, King and Keyes--Execution of Charnock, King and Keyes--Trial of Friend--Trial of Parkyns--Execution of Friend and Parkyns--Trials of Rookwood, Cranburne and Lowick--The Association--Bill for the Regulation of Elections--Act establishing a Land Bank

ON the Continent the news of Mary's death excited various emotions. TheHuguenots, in every part of Europe to which they had wandered, bewailedthe Elect Lady, who had retrenched from her own royal state in order tofurnish bread and shelter to the persecuted people of God. [557] In theUnited Provinces, where she was well known and had always beenpopular, she was tenderly lamented. Matthew Prior, whose parts andaccomplishments had obtained for him the patronage of the magnificentDorset, and who was now attached to the Embassy at the Hague, wrotethat the coldest and most passionless of nations was touched. The verymarble, he said, wept. [558] The lamentations of Cambridge and Oxfordwere echoed by Leyden and Utrecht. The States General put on mourning. The bells of all the steeples of Holland tolled dolefully day afterday. [559] James, meanwhile, strictly prohibited all mourning at SaintGermains, and prevailed on Lewis to issue a similar prohibition atVersailles. Some of the most illustrious nobles of France, and amongthem the Dukes of Bouillon and of Duras, were related to the House ofNassau, and had always, when death visited that House, punctiliouslyobserved the decent ceremonial of sorrow. They were now forbidden towear black; and they submitted; but it was beyond the power of the greatKing to prevent his highbred and sharpwitted courtiers from whisperingto each other that there was something pitiful in this revenge taken bythe living on the dead, by a parent on a child. [560]

The hopes of James and of his companions in exile were now higher thanthey had been since the day of La Hogue. Indeed the general opinion ofpoliticians, both here and on the Continent was that William would findit impossible to sustain himself much longer on the throne. He wouldnot, it was said, have sustained himself so long but for the help of hiswife. Her affability had conciliated many who had been repelled by hisfreezing looks and short answers. Her English tones, sentiments andtastes had charmed many who were disgusted by his Dutch accent and Dutchhabits. Though she did not belong to the High Church party, she lovedthat ritual to which she had been accustomed from infancy, and compliedwillingly and reverently with some ceremonies which he considered, notindeed as sinful, but as childish, and in which he could hardly bringhimself to take part. While the war lasted, it would be necessary thathe should pass nearly half the year out of England. Hitherto she had, when he was absent, supplied his place, and had supplied it well. Who was to supply it now? In what vicegerent could he place equalconfidence? To what vicegerent would the nation look up with equalrespect? All the statesmen of Europe therefore agreed in thinking thathis position, difficult and dangerous at best, had been made far moredifficult and more dangerous by the death of the Queen. But all thestatesmen of Europe were deceived; and, strange to say, his reign wasdecidedly more prosperous and more tranquil after the decease of Marythan during her life. 

A few hours after he had lost the most tender and beloved of all hisfriends, he was delivered from the most formidable of all his enemies. Death had been busy at Paris as well as in London. While Tenison waspraying by the bed of Mary, Bourdaloue was administering the lastunction to Luxemburg. The great French general had never been afavourite at the French Court; but when it was known that his feebleframe, exhausted by war and pleasure, was sinking under a dangerousdisease, the value of his services was, for the first time, fullyappreciated; the royal physicians were sent to prescribe for him; thesisters of Saint Cyr were ordered to pray for him; but prayers andprescriptions were vain. "How glad the Prince of Orange will be, " saidLewis, "when the news of our loss reaches him. " He was mistaken. Thatnews found William unable to think of any loss but his own. [561]

During the month which followed the death of Mary the King was incapableof exertion. Even to the addresses of the two Houses of Parliament hereplied only by a few inarticulate sounds. The answers which appear inthe journals were not uttered by him, but were delivered in writing. Such business as could not be deferred was transacted by theintervention of Portland, who was himself oppressed with sorrow. Duringsome weeks the important and confidential correspondence between theKing and Heinsius was suspended. At length William forced himself toresume that correspondence: but his first letter was the letter of aheartbroken man. Even his martial ardour had been tamed by misery. "Itell you in confidence, " he wrote, "that I feel myself to be no longerfit for military command. Yet I will try to do my duty; and I hope thatGod will strengthen me. " So despondingly did he look forward to the mostbrilliant and successful of his many campaigns. [562]

There was no interruption of parliamentary business. While the Abbey washanging with black for the funeral of the Queen, the Commons came to avote, which at the time attracted little attention, which produced noexcitement, which has been left unnoticed by voluminous annalists, andof which the history can be but imperfectly traced in the archives ofParliament, but which has done more for liberty and for civilisationthan the Great Charter or the Bill of Rights. Early in the session aselect committee had been appointed to ascertain what temporary statuteswere about to expire, and to consider which of those statutes itmight be expedient to continue. The report was made; and all therecommendations contained in that report were adopted, with oneexception. Among the laws which the committee advised the House to renewwas the law which subjected the press to a censorship. The question wasput, "that the House do agree with the committee in the resolution thatthe Act entitled an Act for preventing Abuses in printing seditious, treasonable and unlicensed Pamphlets, and for regulating of Printing andPrinting Presses, be continued. " The Speaker pronounced that the Noeshad it; and the Ayes did not think fit to divide. 

A bill for continuing all the other temporary Acts, which, in theopinion of the Committee, could not properly be suffered to expire, wasbrought in, passed and sent to the Lords. In a short time this bill cameback with an important amendment. The Lords had inserted in the list ofActs to be continued the Act which placed the press under the control oflicensers. The Commons resolved not to agree to the amendment, demandeda conference, and appointed a committee of managers. The leadingmanager was Edward Clarke, a stanch Whig, who represented Taunton, thestronghold, during fifty troubled years, of civil and religious freedom. 

Clarke delivered to the Lords in the Painted Chamber a paper containingthe reasons which had determined the Lower House not to renew theLicensing Act. This paper completely vindicates the resolution to whichthe Commons had come. But it proves at the same time that they knew notwhat they were doing, what a revolution they were making, what a powerthey were calling into existence. They pointed out concisely, clearly, forcibly, and sometimes with a grave irony which is not unbecoming, theabsurdities and iniquities of the statute which was about to expire. Butall their objections will be found to relate to matters of detail. Onthe great question of principle, on the question whether the liberty ofunlicensed printing be, on the whole, a blessing or a curse to society, not a word is said. The Licensing Act is condemned, not as a thingessentially evil, but on account of the petty grievances, the exactions, the jobs, the commercial restrictions, the domiciliary visits which wereincidental to it. It is pronounced mischievous because it enablesthe Company of Stationers to extort money from publishers, becauseit empowers the agents of the government to search houses under theauthority of general warrants, because it confines the foreign booktrade to the port of London; because it detains valuable packages ofbooks at the Custom House till the pages are mildewed. The Commonscomplain that the amount of the fee which the licenser may demand is notfixed. They complain that it is made penal in an officer of the Customsto open a box of books from abroad, except in the presence of one of thecensors of the press. How, it is very sensibly asked, is the officer toknow that there are books in the box till he has opened it? Such werethe arguments which did what Milton's Areopagitica had failed to do. 

The Lords yielded without a contest. They probably expected that someless objectionable bill for the regulation of the press would soon besent up to them; and in fact such a bill was brought into the House ofCommons, read twice, and referred to a select committee. But the sessionclosed before the committee had reported; and English literaturewas emancipated, and emancipated for ever, from the control of thegovernment. [563] This great event passed almost unnoticed. Evelyn andLuttrell did not think it worth mentioning in their diaries. TheDutch minister did not think it worth mentioning in his despatches. No allusion to it is to be found in the Monthly Mercuries. The publicattention was occupied by other and far more exciting subjects. 

One of those subjects was the death of the most accomplished, the mostenlightened, and, in spite of great faults, the most estimable of thestatesmen who were formed in the corrupt and licentious Whitehall ofthe Restoration. About a month after the splendid obsequies of Mary, afuneral procession of almost ostentatious simplicity passed round theshrine of Edward the Confessor to the Chapel of Henry the Seventh. There, at the distance of a few feet from her coffin, lies the coffin ofGeorge Savile, Marquess of Halifax. 

Halifax and Nottingham had long been friends; and Lord Eland, nowHalifax's only son, had been affianced to the Lady Mary Finch, Nottingham's daughter. The day of the nuptials was fixed; a joyouscompany assembled at Burley on the Hill, the mansion of the bride'sfather, which, from one of the noblest terraces in the island, looksdown on magnificent woods of beech and oak, on the rich valley ofCatmos, and on the spire of Oakham. The father of the bridegroom wasdetained to London by indisposition, which was not supposed to bedangerous. On a sudden his malady took an alarming form. He was toldthat he had but a few hours to live. He received the intimation withtranquil fortitude. It was proposed to send off an express to summon hisson to town. But Halifax, good natured to the last, would not disturbthe felicity of the wedding day. He gave strict orders that hisinterment should be private, prepared himself for the great change bydevotions which astonished those who had called him an atheist, and diedwith the serenity of a philosopher and of a Christian, while his friendsand kindred, not suspecting his danger, were tasting the sack posset anddrawing the curtain. [564] His legitimate male posterity and his titlessoon became extinct. No small portion, however, of his wit and eloquencedescended to his daughter's son, Philip Stanhope, fourth Earlof Chesterfield. But it is perhaps not generally known that someadventurers, who, without advantages of fortune or position, madethemselves conspicuous by the mere force of ability, inherited the bloodof Halifax. He left a natural son, Henry Carey, whose dramas once drewcrowded audiences to the theatres, and some of whose gay and spiritedverses still live in the memory of hundreds of thousands. From HenryCarey descended that Edmund Kean, who, in our time, transformed himselfso marvellously into Shylock, Iago and Othello. 

More than one historian has been charged with partiality to Halifax. Thetruth is that the memory of Halifax is entitled in an especial mannerto the protection of history. For what distinguishes him from all otherEnglish statesmen is this, that, through a long public life, and throughfrequent and violent revolutions of public feeling, he almost invariablytook that view of the great questions of his time which history hasfinally adopted. He was called inconstant, because the relative positionin which he stood to the contending factions was perpetually varying. Aswell might the pole star be called inconstant because it is sometimes tothe east and sometimes to the west of the pointers. To have defended theancient and legal constitution of the realm against a seditious populaceat one conjuncture and against a tyrannical government at another; tohave been the foremost defender of order in the turbulent Parliament of1680 and the foremost defender of liberty in the servile Parliament of1685; to have been just and merciful to Roman Catholics in the days ofthe Popish plot and to Exclusionists in the days of the Rye House Plot;to have done all in his power to save both the head of Stafford andthe head of Russell; this was a course which contemporaries, heatedby passion and deluded by names and badges, might not unnaturally callfickle, but which deserves a very different name from the late justiceof posterity. 

There is one and only one deep stain on the memory of this eminent man. It is melancholy to think that he, who had acted so great a part in theConvention, could have afterwards stooped to hold communication withSaint Germains. The fact cannot be disputed; yet for him there areexcuses which cannot be pleaded for others who were guilty of the samecrime. He did not, like Marlborough, Russell, Godolphin and Shrewsbury, betray a master by whom he was trusted, and with whose benefits he wasloaded. It was by the ingratitude and malice of the Whigs that he wasdriven to take shelter for a moment among the Jacobites. It may be addedthat he soon repented of the error into which he had been hurried bypassion, that, though never reconciled to the Court, he distinguishedhimself by his zeal for the vigorous prosecution of the war, andthat his last work was a tract in which he exhorted his countrymen toremember that the public burdens, heavy as they might seem, were lightwhen compared with the yoke of France and of Rome. [565]

About a fortnight after the death of Halifax, a fate far more cruel thandeath befell his old rival and enemy, the Lord President. That able, ambitious and daring statesman was again hurled down from power. In hisfirst fall, terrible as it was, there had been something of dignity; andhe had, by availing himself with rare skill of an extraordinary crisisin public affairs, risen once more to the most elevated position amongEnglish subjects. The second ruin was indeed less violent than thefirst; but it was ignominious and irretrievable. 

The peculation and venality by which the official men of that age werein the habit of enriching themselves had excited in the public minda feeling such as could not but vent itself, sooner or later, insome formidable explosion. But the gains were immediate; the day ofretribution was uncertain; and the plunderers of the public were asgreedy and as audacious as ever, when the vengeance, long threatenedand long delayed, suddenly overtook the proudest and most powerful amongthem. 

The first mutterings of the coming storm did not at all indicate thedirection which it would take, or the fury with which it would burst. An infantry regiment, which was quartered at Royston, had leviedcontributions on the people of that town and of the neighbourhood. Thesum exacted was not large. In France or Brabant the moderation of thedemand would have been thought wonderful. But to English shopkeepersand farmers military extortion was happily quite new and quiteinsupportable. A petition was sent up to the Commons. The Commonssummoned the accusers and the accused to the bar. It soon appeared thata grave offence had been committed, but that the offenders were notaltogether without excuse. The public money which had been issuedfrom the Exchequer for their pay and subsistence had been fraudulentlydetained by their colonel and by his agent. It was not strange thatmen who had arms and who had not necessaries should trouble themselveslittle about the Petition of Right and the Declaration of Right. But itwas monstrous that, while the citizen was heavily taxed for the purposeof paying to the soldier the largest military stipend known in Europe, the soldier should be driven by absolute want to plunder the citizen. This was strongly set forth in a representation which the Commons laidbefore William. William, who had been long struggling against abuseswhich grievously impaired the efficiency of his army, was glad to havehis hands thus strengthened. He promised ample redress, cashiered theoffending colonel, gave strict orders that the troops should receivetheir due regularly, and established a military board for the purpose ofdetecting and punishing such malpractices as had taken place at Royston. [566]

But the whole administration was in such a state that it was hardlypossible to track one offender without discovering ten others. In thecourse of the inquiry into the conduct of the troops at Royston, itwas discovered that a bribe of two hundred guineas had been receivedby Henry Guy, member of Parliament for Heydon and Secretary of theTreasury. Guy was instantly sent to the Tower, not without muchexultation on the part of the Whigs; for he was one of those tools whohad passed, together with the buildings and furniture of the publicoffices, from James to William; he affected the character of a HighChurchman; and he was known to be closely connected with some of theheads of the Tory party, and especially with Trevor. [567]

Another name, which was afterwards but too widely celebrated, firstbecame known to the public at this time. James Craggs had begun life asa barber. He had then been a footman of the Duchess of Cleveland. Hisabilities, eminently vigorous though not improved by education, hadraised him in the world; and he was now entering on a career whichwas destined to end, after a quarter of a century of prosperity, inunutterable misery and despair. He had become an army clothier. He wasexamined as to his dealings with the colonels of regiments; and, ashe obstinately refused to produce his books, he was sent to keep Guycompany in the Tower. [568]

A few hours after Craggs had been thrown into prison, a committee, whichhad been appointed to inquire into the truth of a petition signed bysome of the hackney coachmen of London, laid on the table of the House areport which excited universal disgust and indignation. It appeared thatthese poor hardworking men had been cruelly wronged by the board underthe authority of which an Act of the preceding session had placed them. They had been pillaged and insulted, not only by the commissioners, butby one commissioner's lacquey and by another commissioner's harlot. TheCommons addressed the King; and the King turned the delinquents out oftheir places. [569]

But by this time delinquents far higher in power and rank were beginningto be uneasy. At every new detection, the excitement, both within andwithout the walls of Parliament, became more intense. The frightfulprevalence of bribery, corruption and extortion was every where thesubject of conversation. A contemporary pamphleteer compares the stateof the political world at this conjuncture to the state of a city inwhich the plague has just been discovered, and in which the terriblewords, "Lord have mercy on us, " are already seen on some doors. [570]Whispers, which at another time would have speedily died away and beenforgotten, now swelled, first into murmurs, and then into clamours. Arumour rose and spread that the funds of the two wealthiest corporationsin the kingdom, the City of London and the East India Company, had beenlargely employed for the purpose of corrupting great men; and the namesof Trevor, Seymour and Leeds were mentioned. 

The mention of these names produced a stir in the Whig ranks. Trevor, Seymour and Leeds were all three Tories, and had, in different ways, greater influence than perhaps any other three Tories in the kingdom. If they could all be driven at once from public life with blastedcharacters, the Whigs would be completely predominant both in theParliament and in the Cabinet. 

Wharton was not the man to let such an opportunity escape him. AtWhite's, no doubt, among those lads of quality who were his pupils inpolitics and in debauchery, he would have laughed heartily at the furywith which the nation had on a sudden begun to persecute men for doingwhat every body had always done and was always trying to do. But ifpeople would be fools, it was the business of a politician to make useof their folly. The cant of political purity was not so familiar to thelips of Wharton as blasphemy and ribaldry; but his abilities were soversatile, and his impudence so consummate, that he ventured to appearbefore the world as an austere patriot mourning over the venality andperfidy of a degenerate age. While he, animated by that fierce partyspirit which in honest men would be thought a vice, but which in himwas almost a virtue, was eagerly stirring up his friends to demand aninquiry into the truth of the evil reports which were in circulation, the subject was suddenly and strangely forced forward. It chanced that, while a bill of little interest was under discussion in the Commons, the postman arrived with numerous letters directed to members; and thedistribution took place at the bar with a buzz of conversation whichdrowned the voices of the orators. Seymour, whose imperious temperalways prompted him to dictate and to chide, lectured the talkers on thescandalous irregularity of their conduct, and called on the Speaker toreprimand them. An angry discussion followed; and one of the offenderswas provoked into making an allusion to the stories which were currentabout both Seymour and the Speaker. "It is undoubtedly improper to talkwhile a bill is under discussion; but it is much worse to take moneyfor getting a bill passed. If we are extreme to mark a slight breach ofform, how severely ought we to deal with that corruption which is eatingaway the very substance of our institutions!" That was enough; thespark had fallen; the train was ready; the explosion was immediate andterrible. After a tumultuous debate in which the cry of "the Tower" wasrepeatedly heard, Wharton managed to carry his point. Before the Houserose a committee was appointed to examine the books of the City ofLondon and of the East India Company. [571]

Foley was placed in the chair of the committee. Within a week hereported that the Speaker, Sir John Trevor, had in the preceding sessionreceived from the City a thousand guineas for expediting a local bill. This discovery gave great satisfaction to the Whigs, who had alwayshated Trevor, and was not unpleasing to many of the Tories. During sixbusy sessions his sordid rapacity had made him an object of generalaversion. The legitimate emoluments of his post amounted to about fourthousand a year; but it was believed that he had made at least tenthousand a year. [572] His profligacy and insolence united had beentoo much even for the angelic temper of Tillotson. It was said that thegentle Archbishop had been heard to mutter something about a knave asthe Speaker passed by him. [573] Yet, great as were the offences of thisbad man, his punishment was fully proportioned to them. As soon as thereport of the committee had been read, it was moved that he had beenguilty of a high crime and misdemeanour. He had to stand up and to putthe question. There was a loud cry of Aye. He called on the Noes; andscarcely a voice was heard. He was forced to declare that the Ayeshad it. A man of spirit would have given up the ghost with remorse andshame; and the unutterable ignominy of that moment left its mark even onthe callous heart and brazen forehead of Trevor. Had he returned to theHouse on the following day, he would have had to put the question ona motion for his own expulsion. He therefore pleaded illness, and shuthimself up in his bedroom. Wharton soon brought down a royal messageauthorising the Commons to elect another Speaker. 

The Whig chiefs wished to place Littleton in the chair; but they wereunable to accomplish their object. Foley was chosen, presented andapproved. Though he had of late generally voted with the Tories, hestill called himself a Whig, and was not unacceptable to many of theWhigs. He had both the abilities and the knowledge which were necessaryto enable him to preside over the debates with dignity; but what, in thepeculiar circumstances in which the House then found itself placed, wasnot unnaturally considered as his principal recommendation, wasthat implacable hatred of jobbery and corruption which he somewhatostentatiously professed, and doubtless sincerely felt. On the day afterhe entered on his functions, his predecessor was expelled. [574]

The indiscretion of Trevor had been equal to his baseness; and his guilthad been apparent on the first inspection of the accounts of the City. The accounts of the East India Company were more obscure. The committeereported that they had sate in Leadenhall Street, had examineddocuments, had interrogated directors and clerks, but had been unableto arrive at the bottom of the mystery of iniquity. Some most suspiciousentries had been discovered, under the head of special service. Theexpenditure on this account had, in the year 1693, exceeded eightythousand pounds. It was proved that, as to the outlay of this money, the directors had placed implicit confidence in the governor, Sir ThomasCook. He had merely told them in general terms that he had been at acharge of twenty-three thousand, of twenty-five thousand, of thirtythousand pounds, in the matter of the Charter; and the Court had, without calling on him for any detailed explanation, thanked him forhis care, and ordered warrants for these great sums to be instantlymade out. It appeared that a few mutinous directors had murmured at thisimmense outlay, and had called for a detailed statement. But the onlyanswer which they had been able to extract from Cook was that there weresome great persons whom it was necessary to gratify. 

The committee also reported that they had lighted on an agreement bywhich the Company had covenanted to furnish a person named Colston withtwo hundred tons of saltpetre. At the first glance, this transactionseemed merchantlike and fair. But it was soon discovered that Colstonwas merely an agent for Seymour. Suspicion was excited. The complicatedterms of the bargain were severely examined, and were found to be framedin such a manner that, in every possible event, Seymour must be a gainerand the Company a loser to the extent of ten or twelve thousand pounds. The opinion of all who understood the matter was that the compact wasmerely a disguise intended to cover a bribe. But the disguise was soskilfully managed that the country gentlemen were perplexed, and thatthe lawyers doubted whether there were such evidence of corruption aswould be held sufficient by a court of justice. Seymour escaped withouteven a vote of censure, and still continued to take a leading part inthe debates of the Commons. [575] But the authority which he had longexercised in the House and in the western counties of England, thoughnot destroyed, was visibly diminished; and, to the end of his life, his traffic in saltpetre was a favourite theme of Whig pamphleteers andpoets. [576]

The escape of Seymour only inflamed the ardour of Wharton and ofWharton's confederates. They were determined to discover what had beendone with the eighty or ninety thousand pounds of secret service moneywhich had been entrusted to Cook by the East India Company. Cook, whowas member for Colchester, was questioned in his place; he refused toanswer; he was sent to the Tower; and a bill was brought in providingthat if, before a certain day, he should not acknowledge the wholetruth, he should be incapable of ever holding any office, should refundto the Company the whole of the immense sum which had been confided tohim, and should pay a fine of twenty thousand pounds to the Crown. Richas he was, these penalties would have reduced him to penury. TheCommons were in such a temper that they passed the bill without a singledivision. [577] Seymour, indeed, though his saltpetre contract was thetalk of the whole town, came forward with unabashed forehead to pleadfor his accomplice; but his effrontery only injured the cause whichhe defended. [578] In the Upper House the bill was condemned in thestrongest terms by the Duke of Leeds. Pressing his hand on his heart, hedeclared, on his faith, on his honour, that he had no personal interestin the question, and that he was actuated by no motive but a pure loveof justice. His eloquence was powerfully seconded by the tears andlamentations of Cook, who, from the bar, implored the Peers not tosubject him to a species of torture unknown to the mild laws of England. "Instead of this cruel bill, " he said, "pass a bill of indemnity; andI will tell you all. " The Lords thought his request not altogetherunreasonable. After some communication with the Commons, it wasdetermined that a joint committee of the two Houses should be appointedto inquire into the manner in which the secret service money of the EastIndia Company had been expended; and an Act was rapidly passed providingthat, if Cook would make to this committee a true and full discovery, heshould be indemnified for the crimes which he might confess; and that, till he made such a discovery, he should remain in the Tower. To thisarrangement Leeds gave in public all the opposition that he could withdecency give. In private those who were conscious of guilt employednumerous artifices for the purpose of averting inquiry. It was whisperedthat things might come out which every good Englishman would wish tohide, and that the greater part of the enormous sums which had passedthrough Cook's hands had been paid to Portland for His Majesty's use. But the Parliament and the nation were determined to know the truth, whoever might suffer by the disclosure. [579]

As soon as the Bill of Indemnity had received the royal assent, thejoint committee, consisting of twelve lords and twenty-four members ofthe House of Commons, met in the Exchequer Chamber. Wharton was placedin the chair; and in a few hours great discoveries were made. 

The King and Portland came out of the inquiry with unblemished honour. Not only had not the King taken any part of the secret service moneydispensed by Cook; but he had not, during some years, received even theordinary present which the Company had, in former reigns, laid annuallyat the foot of the throne. It appeared that not less than fifty thousandpounds had been offered to Portland, and rejected. The money lay duringa whole year ready to be paid to him if he should change his mind. Heat length told those who pressed this immense bribe on him, that ifthey persisted in insulting him by such an offer, they would make himan enemy of their Company. Many people wondered at the probity whichhe showed on this occasion, for he was generally thought interested andgrasping. The truth seems to be that he loved money, but that he was aman of strict integrity and honour. He took, without scruple, whateverhe thought that he could honestly take, but was incapable of stoopingto an act of baseness. Indeed, he resented as affronts the complimentswhich were paid him on this occasion. [580] The integrity of Nottinghamcould excite no surprise. Ten thousand pounds had been offered to him, and had been refused. The number of cases in which bribery was fullymade out was small. A large part of the sum which Cook had drawn fromthe Company's treasury had probably been embezzled by the brokers whomhe had employed in the work of corruption; and what had become of therest it was not easy to learn from the reluctant witnesses who werebrought before the committee. One glimpse of light however was caught;it was followed; and it led to a discovery of the highest moment. Alarge sum was traced from Cook to an agent named Firebrace, and fromFirebrace to another agent named Bates, who was well known to be closelyconnected with the High Church party and especially with Leeds. Bateswas summoned, but absconded; messengers were sent in pursuit of him;he was caught, brought into the Exchequer Chamber and sworn. The storywhich he told showed that he was distracted between the fear of losinghis ears and the fear of injuring his patron. He owned that he hadundertaken to bribe Leeds, had been for that purpose furnished with fivethousand five hundred guineas, had offered those guineas to His Grace, and had, by His Grace's permission, left them at His Grace's house inthe care of a Swiss named Robart, who was His Grace's confidentialman of business. It should seem that these facts admitted of only oneinterpretation. Bates however swore that the Duke had refused toaccept a farthing. "Why then, " it was asked, "was the gold left, byhis consent, at his house and in the hands of his servant?" "Because, "answered Bates, "I am bad at telling coin. I therefore begged His Graceto let me leave the pieces, in order that Robart might count them forme; and His Grace was so good as to give leave. " It was evident that, if this strange story had been true, the guineas would, in a few hours, have been taken-away. But Bates was forced to confess that they hadremained half a year where he had left them. The money had indeed atlast, --and this was one of the most suspicious circumstances in thecase, --been paid back by Robart on the very morning on which thecommittee first met in the Exchequer Chamber. Who could believe that, ifthe transaction had been free from all taint of corruption, the guineaswould have been detained as long as Cook was able to remain silent, andwould have been refunded on the very first day on which he was under thenecessity of speaking out? [581]

A few hours after the examination of Bates, Wharton reported to theCommons what had passed in the Exchequer Chamber. The indignationwas general and vehement. "You now understand, " said Wharton, "whyobstructions have been thrown in our way at every step, why we havehad to wring out truth drop by drop, why His Majesty's name has beenartfully used to prevent us from going into an inquiry which has broughtnothing to light but what is to His Majesty's honour. Can we think itstrange that our difficulties should have been great, when we considerthe power, the dexterity, the experience of him who was secretlythwarting us? It is time for us to prove signally to the world that itis impossible for any criminal to double so cunningly that we cannottrack him, or to climb so high that we cannot reach him. Never was therea more flagitious instance of corruption. Never was there an offenderwho had less claim to indulgence. The obligations which the Duke ofLeeds has to his country are of no common kind. One great debt wegenerously cancelled; but the manner in which our generosity has beenrequited forces us to remember that he was long ago impeached forreceiving money from France. How can we be safe while a man proved to bevenal has access to the royal ear? Our best laid enterprises have beendefeated. Our inmost counsels have been betrayed. And what wonder isit? Can we doubt that, together with this home trade in charters, aprofitable foreign trade in secrets is carried on? Can we doubt that hewho sells us to one another will, for a good price, sell us all tothe common enemy?" Wharton concluded by moving that Leeds should beimpeached of high crimes and misdemeanours. [582]

Leeds had many friends and dependents in the House of Commons; but theycould say little. Wharton's motion was carried without a division; andhe was ordered to go to the bar of the Lords, and there, in the nameof the Commons of England, to impeach the Duke. But, before this ordercould be obeyed, it was announced that His Grace was at the door andrequested an audience. 

While Wharton had been making his report to the Commons, Leeds had beenharanguing the Lords. He denied with the most solemn asseverations thathe had taken any money for himself. But he acknowledged, and indeedalmost boasted, that he had abetted Bates in getting money from theCompany, and seemed to think that this was a service which any manin power might be reasonably expected to render to a friend. Toomany persons, indeed, in that age made a most absurd and perniciousdistinction between a minister who used his influence to obtain presentsfor himself and a minister who used his influence to obtain presentsfor his dependents. The former was corrupt; the latter was merelygoodnatured. Leeds proceeded to tell with great complacency a storyabout himself, which would, in our days, drive a public man, notonly out of office, but out of the society of gentlemen. "When I wasTreasurer, in King Charles's time, my Lords, the excise was to befarmed. There were several bidders. Harry Savile, for whom I had a greatvalue, informed me that they had asked for his interest with me, andbegged me to tell them that he had done his best for them. 'What!' saidI; 'tell them all so, when only one can have the farm?' 'No matter;'said Harry: 'tell them all so; and the one who gets the farm will thinkthat he owes it to me. ' The gentlemen came. I said to every one of themseparately, 'Sir, you are much obliged to Mr. Savile;' 'Sir, Mr. Savilehas been much your friend. ' In the end Harry got a handsome present; andI wished him good luck with it. I was his shadow then. I am Mr. Bates'sshadow now. "

The Duke had hardly related this anecdote, so strikingly illustrativeof the state of political morality in that generation, when it waswhispered to him that a motion to impeach him had been made in the Houseof Commons. He hastened thither; but, before he arrived, the questionhad been put and carried. Nevertheless he pressed for admittance; andhe was admitted. A chair, according to ancient usage, was placed forhim within the bar; and he was informed that the House was ready to hearhim. 

He spoke, but with less tact and judgment than usual. He magnified hisown public services. But for him, he said, there would have beenno House of Commons to impeach him; a boast so extravagant that itnaturally made his hearers unwilling to allow him the praise which hisconduct at the time of the Revolution really deserved. As to the chargeagainst him he said little more than that he was innocent, that therehad long been a malicious design to ruin him, that he would not gointo particulars, that the facts which had been proved would bear twoconstructions, and that of the two constructions the most favourableought in candour to be adopted. He withdrew, after praying the House toreconsider the vote which had just been passed, or, if that could notbe, to let him have speedy justice. 

His friends felt that his speech was no defence, and did not attempt torescind the resolution which had been carried just before he was heard. Wharton, with a large following, went up to the Lords, and informedthem that the Commons had resolved to impeach the Duke. A committeeof managers was appointed to draw up the articles and to prepare theevidence. [583]

The articles were speedily drawn; but to the chain of evidence onelink appeared to be wanting. That link Robart, if he had been severelyexamined and confronted with other witnesses, would in all probabilityhave been forced to supply. He was summoned to the bar of the Commons. A messenger went with the summons to the house of the Duke of Leeds, andwas there informed that the Swiss was not within, that he had been threedays absent, and that where he was the porter could not tell. The Lordsimmediately presented an address to the King, requesting him to giveorders that the ports might be stopped and the fugitive arrested. ButRobart was already in Holland on his way to his native mountains. 

The flight of this man made it impossible for the Commons to proceed. They vehemently accused Leeds of having sent away the witness who alonecould furnish legal proof of that which was already established bymoral proof. Leeds, now at ease as to the event of the impeachment, gavehimself the airs of an injured man. "My Lords, " he said, "the conduct ofthe Commons is without precedent. They impeach me of a high crime; theypromise to prove it; then they find that they have not the means ofproving it; and they revile me for not supplying them with the means. Surely they ought not to have brought a charge like this, without wellconsidering whether they had or had not evidence sufficient to supportit. If Robart's testimony be, as they now say, indispensable, why didthey not send for him and hear his story before they made up theirminds? They may thank their own intemperance, their own precipitancy, for his disappearance. He is a foreigner; he is timid; he hears that atransaction in which he has been concerned has been pronounced by theHouse of Commons to be highly criminal, that his master is impeached, that his friend Bates is in prison, that his own turn is coming. Henaturally takes fright; he escapes to his own country; and, from whatI know of him, I will venture to predict that it will be long before hetrusts himself again within reach of the Speaker's warrant. But what isthat to me? Am I to lie all my life under the stigma of an accusationlike this, merely because the violence of my accusers has scared theirown witness out of England? I demand an immediate trial. I move yourLordships to resolve that, unless the Commons shall proceed before theend of the session, the impeachment shall be dismissed. " A few friendlyvoices cried out "Well moved. " But the Peers were generally unwilling totake a step which would have been in the highest degree offensive to theLower House, and to the great body of those whom that House represented. The Duke's motion fell to the ground; and a few hours later theParliament was prorogued. [584]

The impeachment was never revived. The evidence which would warrant aformal verdict of guilty was not forthcoming; and a formal verdict ofguilty would hardly have answered Wharton's purpose better thanthe informal verdict of guilty which the whole nation had alreadypronounced. The work was done. The Whigs were dominant. Leeds was nolonger chief minister, was indeed no longer a minister at all. William, from respect probably for the memory of the beloved wife whom he hadlately lost, and to whom Leeds had shown peculiar attachment, avoidedevery thing that could look like harshness. The fallen statesmanwas suffered to retain during a considerable time the title of LordPresident, and to walk on public occasions between the Great Sealand the Privy Seal. But he was told that he would do well not toshow himself at Council; the business and the patronage even of thedepartment of which he was the nominal head passed into other hands; andthe place which he ostensibly filled was considered in political circlesas really vacant. [585]

He hastened into the country, and hid himself there, during some months, from the public eye. When the Parliament met again, however, he emergedfrom his retreat. Though he was well stricken in years and cruellytortured by disease, his ambition was still as ardent as ever. Withindefatigable energy he began a third time to climb, as he flatteredhimself, towards that dizzy pinnacle which he had twice reached, andfrom which he had twice fallen. He took a prominent part in debate; but, though his eloquence and knowledge always secured to him the attentionof his hearers, he was never again, even when the Tory party was inpower, admitted to the smallest share in the direction of affairs. 

There was one great humiliation which he could not be spared. Williamwas about to take the command of the army in the Netherlands; and itwas necessary that, before he sailed, he should determine by whom thegovernment should be administered during his absence. Hitherto Mary hadacted as his vicegerent when he was out of England; but she was gone. He therefore delegated his authority to seven Lords Justices, Tenison, Archbishop of Canterbury, Somers, Keeper of the Great Seal, Pembroke, Keeper of the Privy Seal, Devonshire, Lord Steward, Dorset, LordChamberlain, Shrewsbury, Secretary of State, and Godolphin, FirstCommissioner of the Treasury. It is easy to judge from this list ofnames which way the balance of power was now leaning. Godolphin aloneof the seven was a Tory. The Lord President, still second in rank, anda few days before first in power, of the great lay dignitaries of therealm, was passed over; and the omission was universally regarded as anofficial announcement of his disgrace. [586]

There were some who wondered that the Princess of Denmark was notappointed Regent. The reconciliation, which had been begun whileMary was dying, had since her death been, in external show at least, completed. This was one of those occasions on which Sunderland waspeculiarly qualified to be useful. He was admirably fitted to manage apersonal negotiation, to soften resentment, to soothe wounded pride, toselect, among all the objects of human desire, the very bait whichwas most likely to allure the mind with which he was dealing. On thisoccasion his task was not difficult. He had two excellent assistants, Marlborough in the household of Anne, and Somers in the cabinet ofWilliam. 

Marlborough was now as desirous to support the government as he had oncebeen to subvert it. The death of Mary had produced a complete change inall his schemes. There was one event to which he looked forward withthe most intense longing, the accession of the Princess to the Englishthrone. It was certain that, on the day on which she began to reign, hewould be in her Court all that Buckingham had been in the Court of Jamesthe First. Marlborough too must have been conscious of powers of a verydifferent order from those which Buckingham had possessed, of a geniusfor politics not inferior to that of Richelieu, of a genius for war notinferior to that of Turenne. Perhaps the disgraced General, in obscurityand inaction, anticipated the day when his power to help and hurt inEurope would be equal to that of her mightiest princes, when he would beservilely flattered and courted by Caesar on one side and by Lewisthe Great on the other, and when every year would add another hundredthousand pounds to the largest fortune that had ever been accumulatedby any English subject. All this might be if Mrs. Morley were Queen. Butthat Mr. Freeman should ever see Mrs. Morley Queen had till lately beennot very probable. Mary's life was a much better life than his, andquite as good a life as her sister's. That William would have issueseemed unlikely. But it was generally expected that he would soon die. His widow might marry again, and might leave children who would succeedher. In these circumstances Marlborough might well think that he hadvery little interest in maintaining that settlement of the Crown whichhad been made by the Convention. Nothing was so likely to serve hispurpose as confusion, civil war, another revolution, another abdication, another vacancy of the throne. Perhaps the nation, incensed againstWilliam, yet not reconciled to James, and distracted between hatred offoreigners and hatred of Jesuits, might prefer both to the Dutch Kingand to the Popish King one who was at once a native of our country anda member of our Church. That this was the real explanation ofMarlborough's dark and complicated plots was, as we have seen, firmlybelieved by some of the most zealous Jacobites, and is in the highestdegree probable. It is certain that during several years he had sparedno efforts to inflame the army and the nation against the government. But all was now changed. Mary was gone. By the Bill of Rights the Crownwas entailed on Anne after the death of William. The death of Williamcould not be far distant. Indeed all the physicians who attended himwondered that he was still alive; and, when the risks of war were addedto the risks of disease, the probability seemed to be that in a fewmonths he would be in his grave. Marlborough saw that it would now bemadness to throw every thing into disorder and to put every thingto hazard. He had done his best to shake the throne while it seemedunlikely that Anne would ever mount it except by violent means. But hedid his best to fix it firmly, as soon as it became highly probably thatshe would soon be called to fill it in the regular course of nature andof law. 

The Princess was easily induced by the Churchills to write to the Kinga submissive and affectionate letter of condolence. The King, who wasnever much inclined to engage in a commerce of insincere compliments, and who was still in the first agonies of his grief, showed littledisposition to meet her advances. But Somers, who felt that everything was at stake, went to Kensington, and made his way into the royalcloset. 

William was sitting there, so deeply sunk in melancholy that he did notseem to perceive that any person had entered the room. The Lord Keeper, after a respectful pause, broke silence, and, doubtless with all thatcautious delicacy which was characteristic of him, and which eminentlyqualified him to touch the sore places of the mind without hurting them, implored His Majesty to be reconciled to the Princess. "Do what youwill, " said William; "I can think of no business. " Thus authorised, themediators speedily concluded a treaty. [587] Anne came to Kensington, and was graciously received; she was lodged in Saint James's Palace; aguard of honour was again placed at her door; and the Gazettes again, after a long interval, announced that foreign ministers had had thehonour of being presented to her. [588] The Churchills were againpermitted to dwell under the royal roof. But William did not at firstinclude them in the peace which he had made with their mistress. Marlborough remained excluded from military and political employment;and it was not without much difficulty that he was admitted into thecircle at Kensington, and permitted to kiss the royal hand. [589] Thefeeling with which he was regarded by the King explains why Anne wasnot appointed Regent. The Regency of Anne would have been the Regencyof Marlborough; and it is not strange that a man whom it was not thoughtsafe to entrust with any office in the State or the army should not havebeen entrusted with the whole government of the kingdom. 

Had Marlborough been of a proud and vindictive nature he might havebeen provoked into raising another quarrel in the royal family, and intoforming new cabals in the army. But all his passions, except ambitionand avarice, were under strict regulation. He was destitute alike of thesentiment of gratitude and of the sentiment of revenge. He had conspiredagainst the government while it was loading him with favours. Henow supported it, though it requited his support with contumely. Heperfectly understood his own interest; he had perfect command of histemper; he endured decorously the hardships of his present situation, and contented himself by looking forward to a reversion which wouldamply repay him for a few years of patience. He did not indeed ceaseto correspond with the Court of Saint Germains; but the correspondencegradually became more and more slack, and seems, on his part, to havebeen made up of vague professions and trifling excuses. 

The event which had changed all Marlborough's views had filled theminds of fiercer and more pertinacious politicians with wild hopes andatrocious projects. 

During the two years and a half which followed the execution ofGrandval, no serious design had been formed against the life of William. Some hotheaded malecontents had indeed laid schemes for kidnappingor murdering him; but those schemes were not, while his wife lived, countenanced by her father. James did not feel, and, to do him justice, was not such a hypocrite as to pretend to feel, any scruple aboutremoving his enemies by those means which he had justly thought base andwicked when employed by his enemies against himself. If any such scruplehad arisen in his mind, there was no want, under his roof, of casuistswilling and competent to soothe his conscience with sophisms such as hadcorrupted the far nobler natures of Anthony Babington and EverardDigby. To question the lawfulness of assassination, in cases whereassassination might promote the interests of the Church, was to questionthe authority of the most illustrious Jesuits, of Bellarmine and Suarez, of Molina and Mariana; nay, it was to rebel against the Chair of SaintPeter. One Pope had walked in procession at the head of his cardinals, had proclaimed a jubilee, had ordered the guns of Saint Angelo tobe fired, in honour of the perfidious butchery in which Coligni hadperished. Another Pope had in a solemn allocution hymned the murder ofHenry the Third of France in rapturous language borrowed from the ode ofthe prophet Habakkuk, and had extolled the murderer above Phinehasand Judith. [590] William was regarded at Saint Germains as a monstercompared with whom Coligni and Henry the Third were saints. NeverthelessJames, during some years, refused to sanction any attempt on hisnephew's person. The reasons which he assigned for his refusal have comedown to us, as he wrote them with his own hand. He did not affect tothink that assassination was a sin which ought to be held in horror by aChristian, or a villany unworthy of a gentleman; he merely said thatthe difficulties were great, and that he would not push his friendson extreme danger when it would not be in his power to second themeffectually. [591] In truth, while Mary lived, it might well be doubtedwhether the murder of her husband would really be a service to theJacobite cause. By his death the government would lose indeed thestrength derived from his eminent personal qualities, but would at thesame time be relieved from the load of his personal unpopularity. Hiswhole power would at once devolve on his widow; and the nation wouldprobably rally round her with enthusiasm. If her political abilitieswere not equal to his, she had not his repulsive manners, his foreignpronunciation, his partiality for every thing Dutch and for every thingCalvinistic. Many, who had thought her culpably wanting in filial piety, would be of opinion that now at least she was absolved from all duty toa father stained with the blood of her husband. The whole machineryof the administration would continue to work without that interruptionwhich ordinarily followed a demise of the Crown. There would be nodissolution of the Parliament, no suspension of the customs and excise;commissions would retain their force; and all that James would havegained by the fall of his enemy would have been a barren revenge. 

The death of the Queen changed every thing. If a dagger or a bulletshould now reach the heart of William, it was probable that there wouldinstantly be general anarchy. The Parliament and the Privy Council wouldcease to exist. The authority of ministers and judges would expire withhim from whom it was derived. It might seem not improbable that at sucha moment a restoration might be effected without a blow. 

Scarcely therefore had Mary been laid in the grave when restless andunprincipled men began to plot in earnest against the life of William. Foremost among these men in parts, in courage and in energy was RobertCharnock. He had been liberally educated, and had, in the late reign, been a fellow of Magdalene College, Oxford. Alone in that great societyhe had betrayed the common cause, had consented to be the tool of theHigh Commission, had publicly apostatized from the Church of England, and, while his college was a Popish seminary, had held the office ofVice President. The Revolution came, and altered at once the wholecourse of his life. Driven from the quiet cloister and the old grove ofoaks on the bank of the Cherwell, he sought haunts of a very differentkind. During several years he led the perilous and agitated life of aconspirator, passed and repassed on secret errands between England andFrance, changed his lodgings in London often, and was known at differentcoffeehouses by different names. His services had been requited with acaptain's commission signed by the banished King. 

With Charnock was closely connected George Porter, an adventurer whocalled himself a Roman Catholic and a Royalist, but who was in truthdestitute of all religious and of all political principle. Porter'sfriends could not deny that he was a rake and a coxcomb, that he drank, that he swore, that he told extravagant lies about his amours, and thathe had been convicted of manslaughter for a stab given in a brawl atthe playhouse. His enemies affirmed that he was addicted to nauseousand horrible kinds of debauchery, and that he procured the means ofindulging his infamous tastes by cheating and marauding; that he was oneof a gang of clippers; that he sometimes got on horseback late in theevening and stole out in disguise, and that, when he returned from thesemysterious excursions, his appearance justified the suspicion that hehad been doing business on Hounslow Heath or Finchley Common. [592]

Cardell Goodman, popularly called Scum Goodman, a knave more abandoned, if possible, than Porter, was in the plot. Goodman had been on thestage, had been kept, like some much greater men, by the Duchess ofCleveland, had been taken into her house, had been loaded by her withgifts, and had requited her by bribing an Italian quack to poison two ofher children. As the poison had not been administered, Goodman couldbe prosecuted only for a misdemeanour. He was tried, convicted andsentenced to a ruinous fine. He had since distinguished himself as oneof the first forgers of bank notes. [593]

Sir William Parkyns, a wealthy knight bred to the law, who had beenconspicuous among the Tories in the days of the Exclusion Bill, was oneof the most important members of the confederacy. He bore a much fairercharacter than most of his accomplices; but in one respect he was moreculpable than any of them. For he had, in order to retain a lucrativeoffice which he held in the Court of Chancery, sworn allegiance to thePrince against whose life he now conspired. 

The design was imparted to Sir John Fenwick, celebrated on account ofthe cowardly insult which he had offered to the deceased Queen. Fenwick, if his own assertion is to be trusted, was willing to join in aninsurrection, but recoiled from the thought of assassination, and showedso much of what was in his mind as sufficed to make him an object ofsuspicion to his less scrupulous associates. He kept their secret, however, as strictly as if he had wished them success. 

It should seem that, at first, a natural feeling restrained theconspirators from calling their design by the proper name. Even in theirprivate consultations they did not as yet talk of killing the Prince ofOrange. They would try to seize him and to carry him alive into France. If there were any resistance they might be forced to use their swordsand pistols, and nobody could be answerable for what a thrust or ashot might do. In the spring of 1695, the scheme of assassination, thusthinly veiled, was communicated to James, and his sanction was earnestlyrequested. But week followed week; and no answer arrived from him. Hedoubtless remained silent in the hope that his adherents would, aftera short delay, venture to act on their own responsibility, and that hemight thus have the advantage without the scandal of their crime. Theyseem indeed to have so understood him. He had not, they said, authorisedthe attempt; but he had not prohibited it; and, apprised as he was oftheir plan, the absence of prohibition was a sufficient warrant. Theytherefore determined to strike; but before they could make the necessaryarrangements William set out for Flanders; and the plot against his lifewas necessarily suspended till his return. 

It was on the twelfth of May that the King left Kensington forGravesend, where he proposed to embark for the Continent. Three daysbefore his departure the Parliament of Scotland had, after a recessof about two years, met again at Edinburgh. Hamilton, who had, in thepreceding session, sate on the throne and held the sceptre, was dead;and it was necessary to find a new Lord High Commissioner. The personselected was John Hay, Marquess of Tweedale, Chancellor of the Realm, aman grown old in business, well informed, prudent, humane, blameless inprivate life, and, on the whole, as respectable as any Scottish lordwho had been long and deeply concerned in the politics of those troubledtimes. 

His task was not without difficulty. It was indeed well known that theEstates were generally inclined to support the government. But it wasalso well known that there was one subject which would require the mostdexterous and delicate management. The cry of the blood shed more thanthree years before in Glencoe had at length made itself heard. Towardsthe close of the year 1693, the reports, which had at first beencontemptuously derided as factious calumnies, began to be generallythought deserving of serious attention. Many people little disposed toplace confidence in any thing that came forth from the secret presses ofthe Jacobites owned that, for the honour of the government, some inquiryought to be instituted. The amiable Mary had been much shocked by whatshe heard. William had, at her request, empowered the Duke of Hamiltonand several other Scotchmen of note to investigate the whole matter. But the Duke died; his colleagues were slack in the performance of theirduty; and the King, who knew little and cared little about Scotland, forgot to urge them. [594]

It now appeared that the government would have done wisely as well asrightly by anticipating the wishes of the country. The horrible storyrepeated by the nonjurors pertinaciously, confidently, and with somany circumstances as almost enforced belief, had at length roused allScotland. The sensibility of a people eminently patriotic was galled bythe taunts of southern pamphleteers, who asked whether there was on thenorth of the Tweed, no law, no justice, no humanity, no spirit to demandredress even for the foulest wrongs. Each of the two extreme parties, which were diametrically opposed to each other in general politics, wasimpelled by a peculiar feeling to call for inquiry. The Jacobites weredelighted by the prospect of being able to make out a case which wouldbring discredit on the usurper, and which might be set off against themany offences imputed by the Whigs to Claverhouse and Mackenzie. Thezealous Presbyterians were not less delighted at the prospect of beingable to ruin the Master of Stair. They had never forgotten or forgiventhe service which he had rendered to the House of Stuart in the time ofthe persecution. They knew that, though he had cordially concurred inthe political revolution which had freed them from the hated dynasty, hehad seen with displeasure that ecclesiastical revolution which was, intheir view, even more important. They knew that church government waswith him merely an affair of State, and that, looking at it as an affairof State, he preferred the episcopal to the synodical model. They couldnot without uneasiness see so adroit and eloquent an enemy of purereligion constantly attending the royal steps and constantly breathingcounsel in the royal ear. They were therefore impatient for aninvestigation, which, if one half of what was rumoured were true, mustproduce revelations fatal to the power and fame of the minister whomthey distrusted. Nor could that minister rely on the cordial supportof all who held office under the Crown. His genius and influence hadexcited the jealousy of many less successful courtiers, and especiallyof his fellow secretary, Johnstone. 

Thus, on the eve of the meeting of the Scottish Parliament, Glencoewas in the mouths of all Scotchmen of all factions and of all sects. William, who was just about to start for the Continent, learned that, onthis subject, the Estates must have their way, and that the best thingthat he could do would be to put himself at the head of a movement whichit was impossible for him to resist. A Commission authorising Tweedaleand several other privy councillors to examine fully into the matterabout which the public mind was so strongly excited was signed by theKing at Kensington, was sent down to Edinburgh, and was there sealedwith the Great Seal of the realm. This was accomplished just in time. [595] The Parliament had scarcely entered on business when a memberrose to move for an inquiry into the circumstances of the slaughterof Glencoe. Tweedale was able to inform the Estates that His Majesty'sgoodness had prevented their desires, that a Commission of Precognitionhad, a few hours before, passed in all the forms, and that the lords andgentlemen named in that instrument would hold their first meeting beforenight. [596] The Parliament unanimously voted thanks to the King forthis instance of his paternal care; but some of those who joined in thevote of thanks expressed a very natural apprehension that the secondinvestigation might end as unsatisfactorily as the first investigationhad ended. The honour of the country, they said, was at stake; and theCommissioners were bound to proceed with such diligence that the resultof the inquest might be known before the end of the session. Tweedalegave assurances which, for a time, silenced the murmurers. [597] But, when three weeks had passed away, many members became mutinousand suspicious. On the fourteenth of June it was moved that theCommissioners should be ordered to report. The motion was not carried;but it was renewed day after day. In three successive sittings Tweedalewas able to restrain the eagerness of the assembly. But, when he atlength announced that the report had been completed; and added that itwould not be laid before the Estates till it had been submitted to theKing, there was a violent outcry. The public curiosity was intense;for the examination had been conducted with closed doors; and bothCommissioners and clerks had been sworn to secrecy. The King was in theNetherlands. Weeks must elapse before his pleasure could be taken; andthe session could not last much longer. In a fourth debate there weresigns which convinced the Lord High Commissioner that it was expedientto yield; and the report was produced. [598]

It is a paper highly creditable to those who framed it, an excellentdigest of evidence, clear, passionless, and austerely just. No sourcefrom which valuable information was likely to be derived had beenneglected. Glengarry and Keppoch, though notoriously disaffected to thegovernment, had been permitted to conduct the case on behalf of theirunhappy kinsmen. Several of the Macdonalds who had escaped from thehavoc of that night had been examined, and among them the reigning MacIan, the eldest son of the murdered Chief. The correspondence of theMaster of Stair with the military men who commanded in the Highlands hadbeen subjected to a strict but not unfair scrutiny. The conclusion towhich the Commissioners came, and in which every intelligent and candidinquirer will concur, was that the slaughter of Glencoe was a barbarousmurder, and that of this barbarous murder the letters of the Master ofStair were the sole warrant and cause. 

That Breadalbane was an accomplice in the crime was not proved; but hedid not come off quite clear. In the course of the investigation it wasincidentally discovered that he had, while distributing the money ofWilliam among the Highland Chiefs, professed to them the warmest zealfor the interest of James, and advised them to take what they could getfrom the usurper, but to be constantly on the watch for a favourableopportunity of bringing back the rightful King. Breadalbane's defencewas that he was a greater villain than his accusers imagined, and thathe had pretended to be a Jacobite only in order to get at the bottomof the Jacobite plans. In truth the depths of this man's knavery wereunfathomable. It was impossible to say which of his treasons were, toborrow the Italian classification, single treasons, and which doubletreasons. On this occasion the Parliament supposed him to havebeen guilty only of a single treason, and sent him to the Castle ofEdinburgh. The government, on full consideration, gave credit to hisassertion that he had been guilty of a double treason, and let him outagain. [599]

The Report of the Commission was taken into immediate considerationby the Estates. They resolved, without one dissentient voice, that theorder signed by William did not authorise the slaughter of Glencoe. Theynext resolved, but, it should seem, not unanimously, that the slaughterwas a murder. [600] They proceeded to pass several votes, the sense ofwhich was finally summed up in an address to the King. How that part ofthe address which related to the Master of Stair should be framed was aquestion about which there was much debate. Several of his letters werecalled for and read; and several amendments were put to the vote. Itshould seem that the Jacobites and the extreme Presbyterians were, withbut too good cause, on the side of severity. The majority, under theskilful management of the Lord High Commissioner, acquiesced in wordswhich made it impossible for the guilty minister to retain his office, but which did not impute to him such criminality as would have affectedhis life or his estate. They censured him, but censured him in terms fartoo soft. They blamed his immoderate zeal against the unfortunate clan, and his warm directions about performing the execution by surprise. Hisexcess in his letters they pronounced to have been the original causeof the massacre; but, instead of demanding that he should be brought totrial as a murderer, they declared that, in consideration of his absenceand of his great place, they left it to the royal wisdom to deal withhim in such a manner as might vindicate the honour of the government. 

The indulgence which was shown to the principal offender was notextended to his subordinates. Hamilton, who had fled and had been vainlycited by proclamation at the City Cross to appear before the Estates, was pronounced not to be clear of the blood of the Glencoe men. Glenlyon, Captain Drummond, Lieutenant Lindsey, Ensign Lundie, andSerjeant Barbour, were still more distinctly designated as murderers;and the King was requested to command the Lord Advocate to prosecutethem. 

The Parliament of Scotland was undoubtedly, on this occasion, severe inthe wrong place and lenient in the wrong place. The cruelty and basenessof Glenlyon and his comrades excite, even after the lapse of a hundredand sixty years, emotions which make it difficult to reason calmly. Yet whoever can bring himself to look at the conduct of these men withjudicial impartiality will probably be of opinion that they couldnot, without great detriment to the commonwealth, have been treatedas assassins. They had slain nobody whom they had not been positivelydirected by their commanding officer to slay. That subordination withoutwhich an army is the worst of all rabbles would be at an end, if everysoldier were to be held answerable for the justice of every orderin obedience to which he pulls his trigger. The case of Glencoe was, doubtless, an extreme case; but it cannot easily be distinguished inprinciple from cases which, in war, are of ordinary occurrence. Veryterrible military executions are sometimes indispensable. Humanityitself may require them. Who then is to decide whether there be anemergency such as makes severity the truest mercy? Who is to determinewhether it be or be not necessary to lay a thriving town in ashes, todecimate a large body of mutineers, to shoot a whole gang of banditti?Is the responsibility with the commanding officer, or with the rank andfile whom he orders to make ready, present and fire? And if the generalrule be that the responsibility is with the commanding officer, andnot with those who obey him, is it possible to find any reason forpronouncing the case of Glencoe an exception to that rule? It isremarkable that no member of the Scottish Parliament proposed that anyof the private men of Argyle's regiment should be prosecuted for murder. Absolute impunity was granted to everybody below the rank of Serjeant. Yet on what principle? Surely, if military obedience was not a validplea, every man who shot a Macdonald on that horrible night was amurderer. And, if military obedience was a valid plea for the musketeerwho acted by order of Serjeant Barbour, why not for Barbour who actedby order of Glenlyon? And why not for Glenlyon who acted by order ofHamilton? It can scarcely be maintained that more deference is duefrom a private to a noncommissioned officer than from a noncommissionedofficer to his captain, or from a captain to his colonel. 

It may be said that the orders given to Glenlyon were of so peculiar anature that, if he had been a man of virtue, he would have thrown up hiscommission, would have braved the displeasure of colonel, general, andSecretary of State, would have incurred the heaviest penalty whicha Court Martial could inflict, rather than have performed the partassigned to him; and this is perfectly true; but the question is notwhether he acted like a virtuous man, but whether he did that for whichhe could, without infringing a rule essential to the discipline of campsand to the security of nations, be hanged as a murderer. In this case, disobedience was assuredly a moral duty; but it does not follow thatobedience was a legal crime. 

It seems therefore that the guilt of Glenlyon and his fellows was notwithin the scope of the penal law. The only punishment which couldproperly be inflicted on them was that which made Cain cry out thatit was greater than he could bear; to be vagabonds on the face of theearth, and to carry wherever they went a mark from which even bad menshould turn away sick with horror. 

It was not so with the Master of Stair. He had been solemnly pronounced, both by the Commission of Precognition and by the Estates of the Realmin full Parliament, to be the original author of the massacre. That itwas not advisable to make examples of his tools was the strongest reasonfor making an example of him. Every argument which can be urged againstpunishing the soldier who executes the unjust and inhuman orders of hissuperior is an argument for punishing with the utmost rigour of the lawthe superior who gives unjust and inhuman orders. Where there can be noresponsibility below, there should be double responsibility above. Whatthe Parliament of Scotland ought with one voice to have demanded was, not that a poor illiterate serjeant, who was hardly more accountablethan his own halbert for the bloody work which he had done, should behanged in the Grassmarket, but that the real murderer, the most politic, the most eloquent, the most powerful, of Scottish statesmen, should bebrought to a public trial, and should, if found guilty, die the death ofa felon. Nothing less than such a sacrifice could expiate such a crime. Unhappily the Estates, by extenuating the guilt of the chief offender, and, at the same time, demanding that his humble agents should betreated with a severity beyond the law, made the stain which themassacre had left on the honour of the nation broader and deeper thanbefore. 

Nor is it possible to acquit the King of a great breach of duty. Itis, indeed, highly probable that, till he received the report ofhis Commissioners, he had been very imperfectly informed as to thecircumstances of the slaughter. We can hardly suppose that he was muchin the habit of reading Jacobite pamphlets; and, if he did read them, he would have found in them such a quantity of absurd and rancorousinvective against himself that he would have been very little inclinedto credit any imputation which they might throw on his servants. Hewould have seen himself accused, in one tract, of being a concealedPapist, in another of having poisoned Jeffreys in the Tower, in a thirdof having contrived to have Talmash taken off at Brest. He would haveseen it asserted that, in Ireland, he once ordered fifty of his woundedEnglish soldiers to be burned alive. He would have seen that theunalterable affection which he felt from his boyhood to his death forthree or four of the bravest and most trusty friends that ever princehad the happiness to possess was made a ground for imputing to himabominations as foul as those which are buried under the waters of theDead Sea. He might therefore naturally be slow to believe frightfulimputations thrown by writers whom he knew to be habitual liars on astatesman whose abilities he valued highly, and to whose exertions hehad, on some great occasions, owed much. But he could not, after hehad read the documents transmitted to him from Edinburgh by Tweedale, entertain the slightest doubt of the guilt of the Master of Stair. Tovisit that guilt with exemplary punishment was the sacred duty of aSovereign who had sworn, with his hand lifted up towards heaven, that hewould, in his kingdom of Scotland, repress, in all estates and degrees, all oppression, and would do justice, without acceptance of persons, as he hoped for mercy from the Father of all mercies. William contentedhimself with dismissing the Master from office. For this great fault, afault amounting to a crime, Burnet tried to frame, not a defence, but anexcuse. He would have us believe that the King, alarmed by finding howmany persons had borne a part in the slaughter of Glencoe, thoughtit better to grant a general amnesty than to punish one massacre byanother. But this representation is the very reverse of the truth. Numerous instruments had doubtless been employed in the work of death;but they had all received their impulse, directly or indirectly, froma single mind. High above the crowd of offenders towered one offender, preeminent in parts, knowledge, rank and power. In return for manyvictims immolated by treachery, only one victim was demanded by justice;and it must ever be considered as a blemish on the fame of William thatthe demand was refused. 

On the seventeenth of July the session of the Parliament of Scotlandclosed. The Estates had liberally voted such a supply as the poorcountry which they represented could afford. They had indeed been putinto high good humour by the notion that they had found out a way ofspeedily making that poor country rich. Their attention had been dividedbetween the inquiry into the slaughter of Glencoe and some speciouscommercial projects of which the nature will be explained and the faterelated in a future chapter. 

Meanwhile all Europe was looking anxiously towards the Low Countries. The great warrior who had been victorious at Fleurus, at Steinkirk andat Landen had not left his equal behind him. But France still possessedMarshals well qualified for high command. Already Catinat and Boufflershad given proofs of skill, of resolution, and of zeal for the interestsof the state. Either of those distinguished officers would have been asuccessor worthy of Luxemburg and an antagonist worthy of William; buttheir master, unfortunately for himself, preferred to both the Duke ofVilleroy. The new general had been Lewis's playmate when they were bothchildren, had then become a favourite, and had never ceased to be so. In those superficial graces for which the French aristocracy was thenrenowned throughout Europe, Villeroy was preeminent among the Frencharistocracy. His stature was tall, his countenance handsome, his mannersnobly and somewhat haughtily polite, his dress, his furniture, hisequipages, his table, magnificent. No man told a story with morevivacity; no man sate his horse better in a hunting party; no man madelove with more success; no man staked and lost heaps of gold with moreagreeable unconcern; no man was more intimately acquainted with theadventures, the attachments, the enmities of the lords and ladieswho daily filled the halls of Versailles. There were two charactersespecially which this fine gentleman had studied during many years, andof which he knew all the plaits and windings, the character of the King, and the character of her who was Queen in every thing but name. Butthere ended Villeroy's acquirements. He was profoundly ignorant both ofbooks and of business. At the Council Board he never opened his mouthwithout exposing himself. For war he had not a single qualificationexcept that personal courage which was common to him with the wholeclass of which he was a member. At every great crisis of his politicaland of his military life he was alternately drunk with arroganceand sunk in dejection. Just before he took a momentous step hisselfconfidence was boundless; he would listen to no suggestion; he wouldnot admit into his mind the thought that failure was possible. Onthe first check he gave up every thing for lost, became incapable ofdirecting, and ran up and down in helpless despair. Lewis however lovedhim; and he, to do him justice, loved Lewis. The kindness of the masterwas proof against all the disasters which were brought on his kingdomby the rashness and weakness of the servant; and the gratitude of theservant was honourably, though not judiciously, manifested on more thanone occasion after the death of the master. [601]

Such was the general to whom the direction of the campaign in theNetherlands was confided. The Duke of Maine was sent to learn the art ofwar under this preceptor. Maine, the natural son of Lewis by the Duchessof Montespan, had been brought up from childhood by Madame de Maintenon, and was loved by Lewis with the love of a father, by Madame de Maintenonwith the not less tender love of a foster mother. 

Grave men were scandalized by the ostentatious manner in which the King, while making a high profession of piety, exhibited his partiality forthis offspring of a double adultery. Kindness, they said, was doubtlessdue from a parent to a child; but decency was also due from a Sovereignto his people. In spite of these murmurs the youth had been publiclyacknowledged, loaded with wealth and dignities, created a Duke and Peer, placed, by an extraordinary act of royal power, above Dukes and Peers ofolder creation, married to a Princess of the blood royal, and appointedGrand Master of the Artillery of the Realm. With abilities and couragehe might have played a great part in the world. But his intellect wassmall; his nerves were weak; and the women and priests who had educatedhim had effectually assisted nature. He was orthodox in belief, correctin morals, insinuating in address, a hypocrite, a mischiefmaker and acoward. 

It was expected at Versailles that Flanders would, during this year, bethe chief theatre of war. Here, therefore, a great army was collected. Strong lines were formed from the Lys to the Scheld, and Villeroy fixedhis headquarters near Tournay. Boufflers, with about twelve thousandmen, guarded the banks of the Sambre. 

On the other side the British and Dutch troops, who were under`-William's immediate command, mustered in the neighbourhood of Ghent. The Elector of Bavaria, at the head of a great force, lay near Brussels. A smaller army, consisting chiefly of Brandenburghers was encamped notfar from Huy. 

Early in June military operations commenced. The first movements ofWilliam were mere feints intended to prevent the French generals fromsuspecting his real purpose. He had set his heart on retaking Namur. The loss of Namur had been the most mortifying of all the disasters of adisastrous war. The importance of Namur in a military point of view hadalways been great, and had become greater than ever during thethree years which had elapsed since the last siege. New works, themasterpieces of Vauban, had been added to the old defences which hadbeen constructed with the utmost skill of Cohorn. So ably had the twoillustrious engineers vied with each other and cooperated with naturethat the fortress was esteemed the strongest in Europe. Over one gatehad been placed a vaunting inscription which defied the allies to wrenchthe prize from the grasp of France. 

William kept his own counsel so well that not a hint of his intentiongot abroad. Some thought that Dunkirk, some that Ypres was his object. The marches and skirmishes by which he disguised his design werecompared by Saint Simon to the moves of a skilful chess player. Feuquieres, much more deeply versed in military science than SaintSimon, informs us that some of these moves were hazardous, and that sucha game could not have been safely played against Luxemburg; and this isprobably true, but Luxemburg was gone; and what Luxemburg had been toWilliam, William now was to Villeroy. 

While the King was thus employed, the Jacobites at home, being unable, in his absence, to prosecute their design against his person, contentedthemselves with plotting against his government. They were somewhat lessclosely watched than during the preceding year; for the event ofthe trials at Manchester had discouraged Aaron Smith and his agents. Trenchard, whose vigilance and severity had made him an object of terrorand hatred, was no more, and had been succeeded, in what may be calledthe subordinate Secretaryship of State, by Sir William Trumball, alearned civilian and an experienced diplomatist, of moderate opinions, and of temper cautious to timidity. [602] The malecontents wereemboldened by the lenity of the administration. William had scarcelysailed for the Continent when they held a great meeting at one of theirfavourite haunts, the Old King's Head in Leadenhall Street. Charnock, Porter, Goodman, Parkyns and Fenwick were present. The Earl of Aylesburywas there, a man whose attachment to the exiled house was notorious, butwho always denied that he had ever thought of effecting a restorationby immoral means. His denial would be entitled to more credit if hehad not, by taking the oaths to the government against which he wasconstantly intriguing, forfeited the right to be considered as a man ofconscience and honour. In the assembly was Sir John Friend, a nonjurorwho had indeed a very slender wit, but who had made a very large fortuneby brewing, and who spent it freely in sedition. After dinner, --for theplans of the Jacobites were generally laid over wine, and generally boresome trace of the conviviality in which they had originated, --itwas resolved that the time was come for an insurrection and a Frenchinvasion, and that a special messenger should carry the sense of themeeting to Saint Germains. Charnock was selected. He undertook thecommission, crossed the Channel, saw James, and had interviews with theministers of Lewis, but could arrange nothing. The English malecontentswould not stir till ten thousand French troops were in the island; andten thousand French troops could not, without great risk, be withdrawnfrom the army which was contending against William in the Low Countries. When Charnock returned to report that his embassy had been unsuccessful, he found some of his confederates in gaol. They had during his absenceamused themselves, after their fashion, by trying to raise a riot inLondon on the tenth of June, the birthday of the unfortunate Princeof Wales. They met at a tavern in Drury Lane, and, when hot withwine, sallied forth sword in hand, headed by Porter and Goodman, beatkettledrums, unfurled banners, and began to light bonfires. But thewatch, supported by the populace, was too strong for the revellers. Theywere put to rout; the tavern where they had feasted was sacked by themob; the ringleaders were apprehended, tried, fined and imprisoned, butregained their liberty in time to bear a part in a far more criminaldesign. [603]

By this time all was ready for the execution of the plan which Williamhad formed. That plan had been communicated to the other chiefs ofthe allied forces, and had been warmly approved. Vaudemont was left inFlanders with a considerable force to watch Villeroy. The King, withthe rest of his army, marched straight on Namur. At the same moment theElector of Bavaria advanced towards the same point on one side, and theBrandenburghers on another. So well had these movements been concerted, and so rapidly were they performed, that the skilful and energeticBoufflers had but just time to throw himself into the fortress. He wasaccompanied by seven regiments of dragoons, by a strong body of gunners, sappers and miners, and by an officer named Megrigny, who was esteemedthe best engineer in the French service with the exception of Vauban. A few hours after Boufflers had entered the place the besieging forcesclosed round it on every side; and the lines of circumvallation wererapidly formed. 

The news excited no alarm at the French Court. There it was not doubtedthat William would soon be compelled to abandon his enterprise withgrievous loss and ignominy. The town was strong; the castle was believedto be impregnable; the magazines were filled with provisions andammunition sufficient to last till the time at which the armies of thatage were expected to retire into winter quarters; the garrison consistedof sixteen thousand of the best troops in the world; they were commandedby an excellent general; he was assisted by an excellent engineer; norwas it doubted that Villeroy would march with his great army to theassistance of Boufflers, and that the besiegers would then be in muchmore danger than the besieged. 

These hopes were kept up by the despatches of Villeroy. He proposed, he said, first to annihilate the army of Vaudemont, and then to driveWilliam from Namur. Vaudemont might try to avoid an action; but he couldnot escape. The Marshal went so far as to promise his master news of acomplete victory within twenty-four hours. Lewis passed a whole dayin impatient expectation. At last, instead of an officer of high rankloaded with English and Dutch standards, arrived a courier bringing newsthat Vaudemont had effected a retreat with scarcely any loss, and wassafe under the walls of Ghent. William extolled the generalship of hislieutenant in the warmest terms. "My cousin, " he wrote, "you have shownyourself a greater master of your art than if you had won a pitchedbattle. " [604] In the French camp, however, and at the French Court itwas universally held that Vaudemont had been saved less by his own skillthan by the misconduct of those to whom he was opposed. Some threwthe whole blame on Villeroy; and Villeroy made no attempt to vindicatehimself. But it was generally believed that he might, at least to agreat extent, have vindicated himself, had he not preferred royal favourto military renown. His plan, it was said, might have succeeded, had notthe execution been entrusted to the Duke of Maine. At the first glimpseof danger the bastard's heart had died within him. He had not been ableto conceal his poltroonery. He had stood trembling, stuttering, callingfor his confessor, while the old officers round him, with tears in theireyes, urged him to advance. During a short time the disgrace of the sonwas concealed from the father. But the silence of Villeroy showedthat there was a secret; the pleasantries of the Dutch gazettes soonelucidated the mystery; and Lewis learned, if not the whole truth, yetenough to make him miserable. Never during his long reign had he been somoved. During some hours his gloomy irritability kept his servants, hiscourtiers, even his priests, in terror. He so far forgot the grace anddignity for which he was renowned throughout the world that, in thesight of all the splendid crowd of gentlemen and ladies who came to seehim dine at Marli, he broke a cane on the shoulders of a lacquey, andpursued the poor man with the handle. [605]

The siege of Namur meanwhile was vigorously pressed by the allies. Thescientific part of their operations was under the direction of Cohorn, who was spurred by emulation to exert his utmost skill. He had suffered, three years before, the mortification of seeing the town, as he hadfortified it, taken by his great master Vauban. To retake it, now thatthe fortifications had received Vauban's last improvements, would be anoble revenge. 

On the second of July the trenches were opened. On the eighth a gallantsally of French dragoons was gallantly beaten back; and, late on thesame evening, a strong body of infantry, the English footguards leadingthe way, stormed, after a bloody conflict, the outworks on the Brusselsside. The King in person directed the attack; and his subjects weredelighted to learn that, when the fight was hottest, he laid his hand onthe shoulder of the Elector of Bavaria, and exclaimed, "Look, look atmy brave English!" Conspicuous in bravery even among those brave Englishwas Cutts. In that bulldog courage which flinches from no danger, however terrible, he was unrivalled. There was no difficulty in findinghardy volunteers, German, Dutch and British, to go on a forlorn hope;but Cutts was the only man who appeared to consider such an expeditionas a party of pleasure. He was so much at his ease in the hottestfire of the French batteries that his soldiers gave him the honourablenickname of the Salamander. [606]

On the seventeenth the first counterscarp of the town was attacked. The English and Dutch were thrice repulsed with great slaughter, andreturned thrice to the charge. At length, in spite of the exertions ofthe French officers, who fought valiantly sword in hand on the glacis, the assailants remained in possession of the disputed works. While theconflict was raging, William, who was giving his orders under a showerof bullets, saw with surprise and anger, among the officers of hisstaff, Michael Godfrey the Deputy Governor of the Bank of England. Thisgentleman had come to the King's headquarters in order to make somearrangements for the speedy and safe remittance of money from Englandto the army in the Netherlands, and was curious to see real war. Suchcuriosity William could not endure. "Mr. Godfrey, " he said, "you oughtnot to run these hazards; you are not a soldier; you can be of no useto us here. " "Sir, " answered Godfrey, "I run no more hazard than YourMajesty. " "Not so, " said William; "I am where it is my duty to be; andI may without presumption commit my life to God's keeping; but you--"While they were talking a cannon ball from the ramparts laid Godfreydead at the King's feet. It was not found however that the fear of beingGodfreyed, --such was during some time the cant phrase, --sufficed toprevent idle gazers from coming to the trenches. [607] Though Williamforbade his coachmen, footmen and cooks to expose themselves, herepeatedly saw them skulking near the most dangerous spots and trying toget a peep at the fighting. He was sometimes, it is said, provoked intohorsewhipping them out of the range of the French guns; and the story, whether true or false, is very characteristic. 

On the twentieth of July the Bavarians and Brandenburghers, under thedirection of Cohorn, made themselves masters, after a hard fight, of aline of works which Vauban had cut in the solid rock from the Sambre tothe Meuse. Three days later, the English and Dutch, Cutts, as usual, inthe front, lodged themselves on the second counterscarp. All was readyfor a general assault, when a white flag was hung out from the ramparts. The effective strength of the garrison was now little more than one halfof what it had been when the trenches were opened. Boufflers apprehendedthat it would be impossible for eight thousand men to defend the wholecircuit of the walls much longer; but he felt confident that such aforce would be sufficient to keep the stronghold on the summit of therock. Terms of capitulation were speedily adjusted. A gate was deliveredup to the allies. The French were allowed forty-eight hours to retireinto the castle, and were assured that the wounded men whom they leftbelow, about fifteen hundred in number, should be well treated. On thesixth the allies marched in. The contest for the possession of thetown was over; and a second and more terrible contest began for thepossession of the citadel. [608]

Villeroy had in the meantime made some petty conquests. Dixmuyde, whichmight have offered some resistance, had opened its gates to him, notwithout grave suspicion of treachery on the part of the governor. Deynse, which was less able to make any defence, had followed theexample. The garrisons of both towns were, in violation of a conventionwhich had been made for the exchange of prisoners, sent into France. TheMarshal then advanced towards Brussels in the hope, as it should seem, that, by menacing that beautiful capital, he might induce the alliesto raise the siege of the castle of Namur. During thirty-six hours herained shells and redhot bullets on the city. The Electress of Bavaria, who was within the walls, miscarried from terror. Six convents perished. Fifteen hundred houses were at once in flames. The whole lower townwould have been burned to the ground, had not the inhabitants stoppedthe conflagration by blowing up numerous buildings. Immense quantitiesof the finest lace and tapestry were destroyed; for the industry andtrade which made Brussels famous throughout the world had hitherto beenlittle affected by the war. Several of the stately piles which lookeddown on the market place were laid in ruins. The Town Hall itself, thenoblest of the many noble senate houses reared by the burghers of theNetherlands, was in imminent peril. All this devastation, however, produced no effect except much private misery. William was not to beintimidated or provoked into relaxing the firm grasp with which he heldNamur. The fire which his batteries kept up round the castle was such ashad never been known in war. The French gunners were fairly driven fromtheir pieces by the hail of balls, and forced to take refuge in vaultedgalleries under the ground. Cohorn exultingly betted the Electorof Bavaria four hundred pistoles that the place would fall by thethirty-first of August, New Style. The great engineer lost his wagerindeed, but lost it only by a few hours. [609]

Boufflers now began to feel that his only hope was in Villeroy. Villeroyhad proceeded from Brussels to Enghien; he had there collected all theFrench troops that could be spared from the remotest fortresses of theNetherlands; and he now, at the head of more than eighty thousand men, marched towards Namur. Vaudemont meanwhile joined the besiegers. Williamtherefore thought himself strong enough to offer battle to Villeroy, without intermitting for a moment the operations against Boufflers. TheElector of Bavaria was entrusted with the immediate direction of thesiege. The King of England took up, on the west of the town, a strongposition strongly intrenched, and there awaited the French, who wereadvancing from Enghien. Every thing seemed to indicate that a greatday was at hand. Two of the most numerous and best ordered armies thatEurope had ever seen were brought face to face. On the fifteenth ofAugust the defenders of the castle saw from their watchtowers the mightyhost of their countrymen. But between that host and the citadel wasdrawn up in battle order the not less mighty host of William. Villeroy, by a salute of ninety guns, conveyed to Boufflers the promise of aspeedy rescue; and at night Boufflers, by fire signals which were seenfar over the vast plain of the Meuse and Sambre, urged Villeroy tofulfil that promise without delay. In the capitals both of France andEngland the anxiety was intense. Lewis shut himself up in his oratory, confessed, received the Eucharist, and gave orders that the host shouldbe exposed in his chapel. His wife ordered all her nuns to their knees. [610] London was kept in a state of distraction by a succession ofrumours fabricated some by Jacobites and some by stockjobbers. Early onemorning it was confidently averred that there had been a battle, thatthe allies had been beaten, that the King had been killed, that thesiege had been raised. The Exchange, as soon as it was opened, wasfilled to overflowing by people who came to learn whether the bad newswas true. The streets were stopped up all day by groups of talkers andlisteners. In the afternoon the Gazette, which had been impatientlyexpected, and which was eagerly read by thousands, calmed theexcitement, but not completely; for it was known that the Jacobitessometimes received, by the agency of privateers and smugglers who put tosea in all weathers, intelligence earlier than that which came throughregular channels to the Secretary of State at Whitehall. Before night, however, the agitation had altogether subsided; but it was suddenlyrevived by a bold imposture. A horseman in the uniform of the Guardsspurred through the City, announcing that the King had been killed. Hewould probably have raised a serious tumult, had not some apprentices, zealous for the Revolution and the Protestant religion, knocked him downand carried him to Newgate. The confidential correspondent of theStates General informed them that, in spite of all the stories which thedisaffected party invented and circulated, the general persuasion wasthat the allies would be successful. The touchstone of sincerity inEngland, he said, was the betting. The Jacobites were ready enoughto prove that William must be defeated, or to assert that he had beendefeated; but they would not give the odds, and could hardly be inducedto take any moderate odds. The Whigs, on the other hand, were ready tostake thousands of guineas on the conduct and good fortune of the King. [611]

The event justified the confidence of the Whigs and the backwardness ofthe Jacobites. On the sixteenth, the seventeenth, and the eighteenthof August the army of Villeroy and the army of William confronted eachother. It was fully expected that the nineteenth would be the decisiveday. The allies were under arms before dawn. At four William mounted, and continued till eight at night to ride from post to post, disposinghis own troops and watching the movements of the enemy. The enemyapproached his lines in several places, near enough to see that it wouldnot be easy to dislodge him; but there was no fighting. He lay down torest, expecting to be attacked when the sun rose. But when the sun rosehe found that the French had fallen back some miles. He immediately sentto request that the Elector would storm the castle without delay. Whilethe preparations were making, Portland was sent to summon the garrisonfor the last time. It was plain, he said to Boufflers, that Villeroy hadgiven up all hope of being able to raise the siege. It would thereforebe an useless waste of life to prolong the contest. Boufflers howeverthought that another day of slaughter was necessary to the honour of theFrench arms; and Portland returned unsuccessful. [612]

Early in the afternoon the assault was made in four places at once byfour divisions of the confederate army. One point was assigned to theBrandenburghers, another to the Dutch, a third to the Bavarians, anda fourth to the English. The English were at first less fortunate thanthey had hitherto been. The truth is that most of the regiments whichhad seen service had marched with William to encounter Villeroy. Assoon as the signal was given by the blowing up of two barrels of powder, Cutts, at the head of a small body of grenadiers, marched first out ofthe trenches with drums beating and colours flying. This gallant bandwas to be supported by four battalions which had never been in action, and which, though full of spirit, wanted the steadiness which soterrible a service required. The officers fell fast. Every Colonel, every Lieutenant Colonel, was killed or severely wounded. Cutts receiveda shot in the head which for a time disabled him. The raw recruits, leftalmost without direction, rushed forward impetuously till they foundthemselves in disorder and out of breath, with a precipice before them, under a terrible fire, and under a shower, scarcely less terrible, of fragments of rock and wall. They lost heart, and rolled back inconfusion, till Cutts, whose wound had by this time been dressed, succeeded in rallying them. He then led them, not to the place fromwhich they had been driven back, but to another spot where a fearfulbattle was raging. The Bavarians had made their onset gallantly butunsuccessfully; their general had fallen; and they were beginning towaver when the arrival of the Salamander and his men changed the fateof the day. Two hundred English volunteers, bent on retrieving at allhazards the disgrace of the recent repulse, were the first to force away, sword in hand, through the palisades, to storm a battery which hadmade great havoc among the Bavarians, and to turn the guns against thegarrison. Meanwhile the Brandenburghers, excellently disciplined andexcellently commanded, had performed, with no great loss, the dutyassigned to them. The Dutch had been equally successful. When theevening closed in the allies had made a lodgment of a mile in extent onthe outworks of the castle. The advantage had been purchased by the lossof two thousand men. [613]

And now Boufflers thought that he had done all that his duty required. On the morrow he asked for a truce of forty-eight hours in order thatthe hundreds of corpses which choked the ditches and which would soonhave spread pestilence among both the besiegers and the besieged mightbe removed and interred. His request was granted; and, before the timeexpired, he intimated that he was disposed to capitulate. He would, hesaid, deliver up the castle in ten days, if he were not relieved sooner. He was informed that the allies would not treat with him on such terms, and that he must either consent to an immediate surrender, or preparefor an immediate assault. He yielded, and it was agreed that he and hismen should be suffered to depart, leaving the citadel, the artillery, and the stores to the conquerors. Three peals from all the guns of theconfederate army notified to Villeroy the fall of the stronghold whichhe had vainly attempted to succour. He instantly retreated towardsMons, leaving William to enjoy undisturbed a triumph which was made moredelightful by the recollection of many misfortunes. 

The twenty-sixth of August was fixed for an exhibition such as theoldest soldier in Europe had never seen, and such as, a few weeksbefore, the youngest had scarcely hoped to see. From the first battle ofConde to the last battle of Luxemburg, the tide of military success hadrun, without any serious interruption, in one direction. That tidehad turned. For the first time, men said, since France had Marshals, aMarshal of France was to deliver up a fortress to a victorious enemy. 

The allied forces, foot and horse, drawn up in two lines, formed amagnificent avenue from the breach which had lately been so desperatelycontested to the bank of the Meuse. The Elector of Bavaria, theLandgrave of Hesse, and many distinguished officers were on horsebackin the vicinity of the castle. William was near them in his coach. Thegarrison, reduced to about five thousand men, came forth with drumsbeating and ensigns flying. Boufflers and his staff closed theprocession. There had been some difficulty about the form of thegreeting which was to be exchanged between him and the alliedSovereigns. An Elector of Bavaria was hardly entitled to be saluted bythe Marshal with the sword. A King of England was undoubtedly entitledto such a mark of respect; but France did not recognise William as Kingof England. At last Boufflers consented to perform the salute withoutmarking for which of the two princes it was intended. He lowered hissword. William alone acknowledged the compliment. A short conversationfollowed. The Marshal, in order to avoid the use of the words Sire andMajesty, addressed himself only to the Elector. The Elector, with everymark of deference, reported to William what had been said; and Williamgravely touched his hat. The officers of the garrison carried back totheir country the news that the upstart who at Paris was designatedonly as Prince of Orange, was treated by the proudest potentates of theGermanic body with a respect as profound as that which Lewis exactedfrom the gentlemen of his bedchamber. [614]

The ceremonial was now over; and Boufflers passed on but he hadproceeded but a short way when he was stopped by Dykvelt who accompaniedthe allied army as deputy from the States General. "You must return tothe town, Sir, " said Dykvelt. "The King of England has ordered me toinform you that you are his prisoner. " Boufflers was in transports ofrage. His officers crowded round him and vowed to die in his defence. But resistance was out of the question; a strong body of Dutch cavalrycame up; and the Brigadier who commanded them demanded the Marshal'ssword. The Marshal uttered indignant exclamations: "This is an infamousbreach of faith. Look at the terms of the capitulation. What have I doneto deserve such an affront? Have I not behaved like a man of honour?Ought I not to be treated as such? But beware what you do, gentlemen. I serve a master who can and will avenge me. " "I am a soldier, Sir, "answered the Brigadier, "and my business is to obey orders withouttroubling myself about consequences. " Dykvelt calmly and courteouslyreplied to the Marshal's indignant exclamations. "The King of Englandhas reluctantly followed the example set by your master. The soldierswho garrisoned Dixmuyde and Deynse have, in defiance of plighted faith, been sent prisoners into France. The Prince whom they serve would bewanting in his duty to them if he did not retaliate. His Majesty mightwith perfect justice have detained all the French who were in Namur. Buthe will not follow to such a length a precedent which he disapproves. He has determined to arrest you and you alone; and, Sir, you must notregard as an affront what is in truth a mark of his very particularesteem. How can he pay you a higher compliment than by showing that heconsiders you as fully equivalent to the five or six thousand men whomyour sovereign wrongfully holds in captivity? Nay, you shall even now bepermitted to proceed if you will give me your word of honour to returnhither unless the garrisons of Dixmuyde and Deynse are released within afortnight. " "I do not at all know, " answered Boufflers, "why the King mymaster detains those men; and therefore I cannot hold out any hope thathe will liberate them. You have an army at your back; I am alone; andyou must do your pleasure. " He gave up his sword, returned to Namur, andwas sent thence to Huy, where he passed a few days in luxurious repose, was allowed to choose his own walks and rides, and was treated withmarked respect by those who guarded him. In the shortest time in whichit was possible to post from the place where he was confined to theFrench Court and back again, he received full powers to promise that thegarrisons of Dixmuyde and Deynse should be sent back. He was instantlyliberated; and he set off for Fontainebleau, where an honourablereception awaited him. He was created a Duke and a Peer. That he mightbe able to support his new dignities a considerable sum of money wasbestowed on him; and, in the presence of the whole aristocracy ofFrance, he was welcomed home by Lewis with an affectionate embrace. [615]

In all the countries which were united against France the news ofthe fall of Namur was received with joy; but here the exultation wasgreatest. During several generations our ancestors had achieved nothingconsiderable by land against foreign enemies. We had indeed occasionallyfurnished to our allies small bands of auxiliaries who had wellmaintained the honour of the nation. But from the day on which thetwo brave Talbots, father and son, had perished in the vain attempt toreconquer Guienne, till the Revolution, there had been on the Continentno campaign in which Englishmen had borne a principal part. At lengthour ancestors had again, after an interval of near two centuries and ahalf, begun to dispute with the warriors of France the palm of militaryprowess. The struggle had been hard. The genius of Luxemburg and theconsummate discipline of the household troops of Lewis had pervailedin two great battles; but the event of those battles had been longdoubtful; the victory had been dearly purchased, and the victor hadgained little more than the honour of remaining master of the fieldof slaughter. Meanwhile he was himself training his adversaries. Therecruits who survived his severe tuition speedily became veterans. Steinkirk and Landen had formed the volunteers who followed Cuttsthrough the palisades of Namur. The judgment of all the great warriorswhom all the nations of Western Europe had sent to the confluence of theSambre and the Meuse was that the English subaltern was inferior tono subaltern and the English private soldier to no private soldier inChristendom. The English officers of higher rank were thought hardlyworthy to command such an army. Cutts, indeed, had distinguished himselfby his intrepidity. But those who most admired him acknowledged that hehad neither the capacity nor the science necessary to a general. 

The joy of the conquerors was heightened by the recollection of thediscomfiture which they had suffered, three years before, on the samespot, and of the insolence with which their enemy had then triumphedover them. They now triumphed in their turn. The Dutch struck medals. The Spaniards sang Te Deums. Many poems, serious and sportive, appeared, of which one only has lived. Prior burlesqued, with admirable spiritand pleasantry, the bombastic verses in which Boileau had celebratedthe first taking of Namur. The two odes, printed side by side, were readwith delight in London; and the critics at Will's pronounced that, inwit as in arms, England had been victorious. 

The fall of Namur was the great military event of this year. The Turkishwar still kept a large part of the forces of the Emperor employed inindecisive operations on the Danube. Nothing deserving to be mentionedtook place either in Piedmont or on the Rhine. In Catalonia theSpaniards obtained some slight advantages, advantages due to theirEnglish and Dutch allies, who seem to have done all that could bedone to help a nation never much disposed to help itself. The maritimesuperiority of England and Holland was now fully established. Duringthe whole year Russell was the undisputed master of the Mediterranean, passed and repassed between Spain and Italy, bombarded Palamos, spreadterror along the whole shore of Provence, and kept the French fleetimprisoned in the harbour of Toulon. Meanwhile Berkeley was theundisputed master of the Channel, sailed to and fro in sight of thecoasts of Artois, Picardy, Normandy and Brittany, threw shells intoSaint Maloes, Calais and Dunkirk, and burned Granville to the ground. The navy of Lewis, which, five years before, had been the mostformidable in Europe, which had ranged the British seas unopposed fromthe Downs to the Land's End, which had anchored in Torbay and had laidTeignmouth in ashes, now gave no sign of existence except by pillagingmerchantmen which were unprovided with convoy. In this lucrative warthe French privateers were, towards the close of the summer, verysuccessful. Several vessels laden with sugar from Barbadoes werecaptured. The losses of the unfortunate East India Company, alreadysurrounded by difficulties and impoverished by boundless prodigality incorruption, were enormous. Five large ships returning from the Easternseas, with cargoes of which the value was popularly estimated at amillion, fell into the hands of the enemy. These misfortunes producedsome murmuring on the Royal Exchange. But, on the whole, the temper ofthe capital and of the nation was better than it had been during someyears. 

Meanwhile events which no preceding historian has condescended tomention, but which were of far greater importance than the achievementsof William's army or of Russell's fleet, were taking place in London. A great experiment was making. A great revolution was in progress. Newspapers had made their appearance. 

While the Licensing Act was in force there was no newspaper in Englandexcept the London Gazette, which was edited by a clerk in the officeof the Secretary of State, and which contained nothing but what theSecretary of State wished the nation to know. There were indeed manyperiodical papers; but none of those papers could be called a newspaper. Welwood, a zealous Whig, published a journal called the Observator; buthis Observator, like the Observator which Lestrange had formerly edited, contained, not the news, but merely dissertations on politics. A crazybookseller, named John Dunton, published the Athenian Mercury; but theAthenian Mercury merely discussed questions of natural philosophy, ofcasuistry and of gallantry. A fellow of the Royal Society, named JohnHoughton, published what he called a Collection for the Improvement ofIndustry and Trade. But his Collection contained little more than theprices of stocks, explanations of the modes of doing business inthe City, puffs of new projects, and advertisements of books, quackmedicines, chocolate, spa water, civet cats, surgeons wanting ships, valets wanting masters and ladies wanting husbands. If ever he printedany political news, he transcribed it from the Gazette. The Gazette wasso partial and so meagre a chronicle of events that, though it had nocompetitors, it had but a small circulation. Only eight thousand copieswere printed, much less than one to each parish in the kingdom. In trutha person who had studied the history of his own time only in the Gazettewould have been ignorant of many events of the highest importance. He would, for example, have known nothing about the Court Martialon Torrington, the Lancashire Trials, the burning of the Bishop ofSalisbury's Pastoral Letter or the impeachment of the Duke of Leeds. But the deficiencies of the Gazette were to a certain extent supplied inLondon by the coffeehouses, and in the country by the newsletters. 

On the third of May 1695 the law which had subjected the press to acensorship expired. Within a fortnight, a stanch old Whig, named Harris, who had, in the days of the Exclusion Bill, attempted to set up anewspaper entitled Intelligence Domestic and Foreign, and who hadbeen speedily forced to relinquish that design, announced that theIntelligence Domestic and Foreign, suppressed fourteen years beforeby tyranny, would again appear. Ten days after the first number of theIntelligence Domestic and Foreign was printed the first number of theEnglish Courant. Then came the Packet Boat from Holland and Flanders, the Pegasus, the London Newsletter, the London Post, the Flying Post, the Old Postmaster, the Postboy and the Postman. The history of thenewspapers of England from that time to the present day is a mostinteresting and instructive part of the history of the country. At firstthey were small and meanlooking. Even the Postboy and the Postman, which seem to have been the best conducted and the most prosperous, werewretchedly printed on scraps of dingy paper such as would not now bethought good enough for street ballads. Only two numbers came out in aweek, and a number contained little more matter than may be found in asingle column of a daily paper of our time. What is now called aleading article seldom appeared, except when there was a scarcity ofintelligence, when the Dutch mails were detained by the west wind, whenthe Rapparees were quiet in the Bog of Allen, when no stage coach hadbeen stopped by highwaymen, when no nonjuring congregation had beendispersed by constables, when no ambassador had made his entry with along train of coaches and six, when no lord or poet had been buried inthe Abbey, and when consequently it was difficult to fill up four scantypages. Yet the leading articles, though inserted, as it shouldseem, only in the absence of more attractive matter, are by no meanscontemptibly written. 

It is a remarkable fact that the infant newspapers were all on the sideof King William and the Revolution. This fact may be partly explainedby the circumstance that the editors were, at first, on their goodbehaviour. It was by no means clear that their trade was not in itselfillegal. The printing of newspapers was certainly not prohibited by anystatute. But, towards the close of the reign of Charles the Second, the judges had pronounced that it was a misdemeanour at common law topublish political intelligence without the King's license. It is truethat the judges who laid down this doctrine were removable at the royalpleasure and were eager on all occasions to exalt the royal prerogative. How the question, if it were again raised, would be decided by Holtand Treby was doubtful; and the effect of the doubt was to make theministers of the Crown indulgent and to make the journalists cautious. On neither side was there a wish to bring the question of right toissue. The government therefore connived at the publication of thenewspapers; and the conductors of the newspapers carefully abstainedfrom publishing any thing that could provoke or alarm the government. Itis true that, in one of the earliest numbers of one of the new journals, a paragraph appeared which seemed intended to convey an insinuation thatthe Princess Anne did not sincerely rejoice at the fall of Namur. Butthe printer made haste to atone for his fault by the most submissiveapologies. During a considerable time the unofficial gazettes, thoughmuch more garrulous and amusing than the official gazette, were scarcelyless courtly. Whoever examines them will find that the King is alwaysmentioned with profound respect. About the debates and divisions of thetwo Houses a reverential silence is preserved. There is much invective;but it is almost all directed against the Jacobites and the French. Itseems certain that the government of William gained not a little by thesubstitution of these printed newspapers, composed under constant dreadof the Attorney General, for the old newsletters, which were writtenwith unbounded license. [616]

The pamphleteers were under less restraint than the journalists; yetno person who has studied with attention the political controversiesof that time can have failed to perceive that the libels on William'sperson and government were decidedly less coarse and rancorous duringthe latter half of his reign than during the earlier half. And thereason evidently is that the press, which had been fettered during theearlier half of his reign, was free during the latter half. While thecensorship existed, no tract blaming, even in the most temperate anddecorous language, the conduct of any public department, was likely tobe printed with the approbation of the licenser. To print such atract without the approbation of the licenser was illegal. In general, therefore, the respectable and moderate opponents of the Court, notbeing able to publish in the manner prescribed by law, and not thinkingit right or safe to publish in a manner prohibited by law, held theirpeace, and left the business of criticizing the administration to twoclasses of men, fanatical nonjurors who sincerely thought that thePrince of Orange was entitled to as little charity or courtesy as thePrince of Darkness, and Grub Street hacks, coarseminded, badhearted andfoulmouthed. Thus there was scarcely a single man of judgment, temperand integrity among the many who were in the habit of writing againstthe government. Indeed the habit of writing against the government had, of itself, an unfavourable effect on the character. For whoever was inthe habit of writing against the government was in the habit of breakingthe law; and the habit of breaking even an unreasonable law tends tomake men altogether lawless. However absurd a tariff may be, a smuggleris but too likely to be a knave and a ruffian. How ever oppressive agame law may be, the transition is but too easy from a poacher to amurderer. And so, though little indeed can be said in favour of thestatutes which imposed restraints on literature, there was much riskthat a man who was constantly violating those statutes would not be aman of high honour and rigid uprightness. An author who was determinedto print, and could not obtain the sanction of the licenser, must employthe services of needy and desperate outcasts, who, hunted by the peaceofficers, and forced to assume every week new aliases and new disguises, hid their paper and their types in those dens of vice which are the pestand the shame of great capitals. Such wretches as these he must bribe tokeep his secret and to run the chance of having their backs flayed andtheir ears clipped in his stead. A man stooping to such companions andto such expedients could hardly retain unimpaired the delicacy of hissense of what was right and becoming. The emancipation of the pressproduced a great and salutary change. The best and wisest men in theranks of the opposition now assumed an office which had hitherto beenabandoned to the unprincipled or the hotheaded. Tracts against thegovernment were written in a style not misbecoming statesmen andgentlemen; and even the compositions of the lower and fiercer class ofmalecontents became somewhat less brutal and less ribald than in thedays of the licensers. 

Some weak men had imagined that religion and morality stood in need ofthe protection of the licenser. The event signally proved that theywere in error. In truth the censorship had scarcely put any restrainton licentiousness or profaneness. The Paradise Lost had narrowly escapedmutilation; for the Paradise Lost was the work of a man whose politicswere hateful to the ruling powers. But Etherege's She Would If SheCould, Wycherley's Country Wife, Dryden's Translations from the FourthBook of Lucretius, obtained the Imprimatur without difficulty; forDryden, Etherege and Wycherley were courtiers. From the day on which theemancipation of our literature was accomplished, the purification ofour literature began. That purification was effected, not by theintervention of senates or magistrates, but by the opinion of the greatbody of educated Englishmen, before whom good and evil were set, and whowere left free to make their choice. During a hundred and sixty yearsthe liberty of our press has been constantly becoming more and moreentire; and during those hundred and sixty years the restraint imposedon writers by the general feeling of readers has been constantlybecoming more and more strict. At length even that class of worksin which it was formerly thought that a voluptuous imagination wasprivileged to disport itself, love songs, comedies, novels, have becomemore decorous than the sermons of the seventeenth century. At this dayforeigners, who dare not print a word reflecting on the government underwhich they live, are at a loss to understand how it happens that thefreest press in Europe is the most prudish. 

On the tenth of October, the King, leaving his army in winter quarters, arrived in England, and was received with unwonted enthusiasm. Duringhis passage through the capital to his palace, the bells of every churchwere ringing, and every street was lighted up. It was late before hemade his way through the shouting crowds to Kensington. But, late as itwas, a council was instantly held. An important point was to be decided. Should the House of Commons be permitted to sit again, or should therebe an immediate dissolution? The King would probably have been willingto keep that House to the end of his reign. But this was not in hispower. The Triennial Act had fixed the twenty-fifth of March as thelatest day of the existence of the Parliament. If therefore there werenot a general election in 1695, there must be a general election in1696; and who could say what might be the state of the country in 1696?There might be an unfortunate campaign. There might be, indeed therewas but too good reason to believe that there would be, a terriblecommercial crisis. In either case, it was probable that there would bemuch ill humour. The campaign of 1695 had been brilliant; the nationwas in an excellent temper; and William wisely determined to seize thefortunate moment. Two proclamations were immediately published. One ofthem announced, in the ordinary form, that His Majesty had determined todissolve the old Parliament and had ordered writs to be issued for a newParliament. The other proclamation was unprecedented. It signified theroyal pleasure to be that every regiment quartered in a place where anelection was to be held should march out of that place the day beforethe nomination, and should not return till the people had made theirchoice. From this order, which was generally considered as indicatinga laudable respect for popular rights, the garrisons of fortified townsand castles were necessarily excepted. 

But, though William carefully abstained from disgusting the constituentbodies by any thing that could look like coercion or intimidation, hedid not disdain to influence their votes by milder means. He resolvedto spend the six weeks of the general election in showing himself tothe people of many districts which he had never yet visited. He hoped toacquire in this way a popularity which might have a considerableeffect on the returns. He therefore forced himself to behave with agraciousness and affability in which he was too often deficient; and theconsequence was that he received, at every stage of his progress, marksof the good will of his subjects. Before he set out he paid a visit inform to his sister in law, and was much pleased with his reception. The Duke of Gloucester, only six years old, with a little musket on hisshoulder, came to meet his uncle, and presented arms. "I am learning mydrill, " the child said, "that I may help you to beat the French. " TheKing laughed much, and, a few days later, rewarded the young soldierwith the Garter. [617]

On the seventeenth of October William went to Newmarket, now a placerather of business than of pleasure, but, in the autumns of theseventeenth century, the gayest and most luxurious spot in the island. It was not unusual for the whole Court and Cabinet to go down to themeetings. Jewellers and milliners, players and fiddlers, venal wits andvenal beauties followed in crowds. The streets were made impassable bycoaches and six. In the places of public resort peers flirted with maidsof honour; and officers of the Life Guards, all plumes and goldlace, jostled professors in trencher caps and black gowns. Forthe neighbouring University of Cambridge always sent her highestfunctionaries with loyal addresses, and selected her ablest theologiansto preach before the Sovereign and his splendid retinue. In the wilddays of the Restoration, indeed, the most learned and eloquent divinemight fail to draw a fashionable audience, particularly if Buckinghamannounced his intention of holding forth; for sometimes His Grace wouldenliven the dulness of a Sunday morning by addressing to the bevy offine gentlemen and fine ladies a ribald exhortation which he calleda sermon. But the Court of William was more decent; and the Academicdignitaries were treated with marked respect. With lords and ladies fromSaint James's and Soho, and with doctors from Trinity College and King'sCollege, were mingled the provincial aristocracy, foxhunting squires andtheir rosycheeked daughters, who had come in queerlooking family coachesdrawn by carthorses from the remotest parishes of three or four countiesto see their Sovereign. The heath was fringed by a wild gipsylike campof vast extent. For the hope of being able to feed on the leavings ofmany sumptuous tables, and to pick up some of the guineas and crownswhich the spendthrifts of London were throwing about, attractedthousands of peasants from a circle of many miles. [618]

William, after holding his court a few days at this joyous place, andreceiving the homage of Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire and Suffolk, proceeded to Althorpe. It seems strange that he should, in the courseof what was really a canvassing tour, have honoured with such a mark offavour a man so generally distrusted and hated as Sunderland. But thepeople were determined to be pleased. All Northamptonshire crowded tokiss the royal hand in that fine gallery which had been embellished bythe pencil of Vandyke and made classical by the muse of Waller; andthe Earl tried to conciliate his neighbours by feasting them at eighttables, all blazing with plate. From Althorpe the King proceeded toStamford. The Earl of Exeter, whose princely seat was, and still is, oneof the great sights of England, had never taken the oaths, and had, inorder to avoid an interview which must have been disagreeable, foundsome pretext for going up to London, but had left directions that theillustrious guest should be received with fitting hospitality. Williamwas fond of architecture and of gardening; and his nobles could notflatter him more than by asking his opinion about the improvement oftheir country seats. At a time when he had many cares pressing on hismind he took a great interest in the building of Castle Howard; and awooden model of that edifice, the finest specimen of a vicious style, was sent to Kensington for his inspection. We cannot therefore wonderthat he should have seen Burleigh with delight. He was indeed notcontent with one view, but rose early on the following morning for thepurpose of examining the building a second time. From Stamford he wenton to Lincoln, where he was greeted by the clergy in full canonicals, by the magistrates in scarlet robes, and by a multitude of baronets, knights and esquires, from all parts of the immense plain which liesbetween the Trent and the German Ocean. After attending divine servicein the magnificent cathedral, he took his departure, and journeyedeastward. On the frontier of Nottinghamshire the Lord Lieutenant of thecounty, John Holles, Duke of Newcastle, with a great following, metthe royal carriages and escorted them to his seat at Welbeck, a mansionsurrounded by gigantic oaks which scarcely seem older now than on theday when that splendid procession passed under their shade. The house inwhich William was then, during a few hours, a guest, passed long afterhis death, by female descents, from the Holleses to the Harleys, andfrom the Harleys to the Bentincks, and now contains the originals ofthose singularly interesting letters which passed between him and histrusty friend and servant Portland. At Welbeck the grandees of the northwere assembled. The Lord Mayor of York came thither with a train ofmagistrates, and the Archbishop of York with a train of divines. Williamhunted several times in that forest, the finest in the kingdom, which inold times gave shelter to Robin Hood and Little John, and which is nowportioned out into the princely domains of Welbeck, Thoresby, Clumberand Worksop. Four hundred gentlemen on horseback partook of his sport. The Nottinghamshire squires were delighted to hear him say at table, after a noble stag chase, that he hoped that this was not the last runwhich he should have with them, and that he must hire a huntingbox among their delightful woods. He then turned southward. He wasentertained during one day by the Earl of Stamford at Bradgate, theplace where Lady Jane Grey sate alone reading the last words of Socrateswhile the deer was flying through the park followed by the whirlwind ofhounds and hunters. On the morrow the Lord Brook welcomed his Sovereignto Warwick Castle, the finest of those fortresses of the middleages which have been turned into peaceful dwellings. Guy's Tower wasilluminated. A hundred and twenty gallons of punch were drunk to HisMajesty's health; and a mighty pile of faggots blazed in the middle ofthe spacious court overhung by ruins green with the ivy of centuries. The next morning the King, accompanied by a multitude ofWarwickshire gentlemen on horseback, proceeded towards the borders ofGloucestershire. He deviated from his route to dine with Shrewsbury ata secluded mansion in the Wolds, and in the evening went on to Burford. The whole population of Burford met him, and entreated him to accept asmall token of their love. Burford was then renowned for its saddles. One inhabitant of the town, in particular, was said by the English tobe the best saddler in Europe. Two of his masterpieces were respectfullyoffered to William, who received them with much grace, and ordered themto be especially reserved for his own use. [619]

At Oxford he was received with great pomp, complimented in a Latinoration, presented with some of the most beautiful productions of theAcademic press, entertained with music, and invited to a sumptuous feastin the Sheldonian theatre. He departed in a few hours, pleading asan excuse for the shortness of his stay that he had seen the collegesbefore, and that this was a visit, not of curiosity, but of kindness. Asit was well known that he did not love the Oxonians and was not lovedby them, his haste gave occasion to some idle rumours which found creditwith the vulgar. It was said that he hurried away without tasting thecostly banquet which had been provided for him, because he had beenwarned by an anonymous letter, that, if he ate or drank in the theatre, he was a dead man. But it is difficult to believe that a Prince whocould scarcely be induced, by the most earnest entreaties of hisfriends, to take the most common precautions against assassins of whosedesigns he had trustworthy evidence, would have been scared by so sillya hoax; and it is quite certain that the stages of his progress had beenmarked, and that he remained at Oxford as long as was compatible witharrangements previously made. [620]

He was welcomed back to his capital by a splendid show, which had beenprepared at great cost during his absence. Sidney, now Earl of Romneyand Master of the Ordnance, had determined to astonish London by anexhibition which had never been seen in England on so large a scale. The whole skill of the pyrotechnists of his department was employed toproduce a display of fireworks which might vie with any that had beenseen in the gardens of Versailles or on the great tank at the Hague. Saint James's Square was selected as the place for the spectacle. Allthe stately mansions on the northern, eastern and western sides werecrowded with people of fashion. The King appeared at a window ofRomney's drawing room. The Princess of Denmark, her husband and hercourt occupied a neighbouring house. The whole diplomatic body assembledat the dwelling of the minister of the United Provinces. A huge pyramidof flame in the centre of the area threw out brilliant cascades whichwere seen by hundreds of thousands who crowded the neighbouring streetsand parks. The States General were informed by their correspondent that, great as the multitude was, the night had passed without the slightestdisturbance. [621]

By this time the elections were almost completed. In every part of thecountry it had been manifest that the constituent bodies were generallyzealous for the King and for the war. The City of London, which hadreturned four Tories in 1690, returned four Whigs in 1695. Of theproceedings at Westminster an account more than usually circumstantialhas come down to us. In 1690 the electors, disgusted by the SacheverellClause, had returned two Tories. In 1695, as soon as it was known that anew Parliament was likely to be called, a meeting was held, at which itwas resolved that a deputation should be sent with an invitation to twoCommissioners of the Treasury, Charles Montague and Sir Stephen Fox. SirWalter Clarges stood on the Tory interest. On the day of nominationnear five thousand electors paraded the streets on horseback. They weredivided into three bands; and at the head of each band rode one of thecandidates. It was easy to estimate at a glance the comparative strengthof the parties. For the cavalcade which followed Clarges was the leastnumerous of the three; and it was well known that the followers ofMontague would vote for Fox, and the followers of Fox for Montague. Thebusiness of the day was interrupted by loud clamours. The Whigs criedshame on the Jacobite candidate who wished to make the English goto mass, eat frogs and wear wooden shoes. The Tories hooted the twoplacemen who were raising great estates out of the plunder of the pooroverburdened nation. From words the incensed factions proceeded toblows; and there was a riot which was with some difficulty quelled. The High Bailiff then walked round the three companies of horsemen, andpronounced, on the view, that Montague and Fox were duly elected. A pollwas demanded. The Tories exerted themselves strenuously. Neither moneynor ink was spared. Clarges disbursed two thousand pounds in a fewhours, a great outlay in times when the average income of a member ofParliament was not estimated at more than eight hundred a year. In thecourse of the night which followed the nomination, broadsides filledwith invectives against the two courtly upstarts who had raisedthemselves by knavery from poverty and obscurity to opulence and powerwere scattered all over the capital. The Bishop of London canvassedopenly against the government; for the interference of peers inelections had not yet been declared by the Commons to be a breach ofprivilege. But all was vain. Clarges was at the bottom of the pollwithout hope of rising. He withdrew; and Montague was carried on theshoulders of an immense multitude from Westminster Abbey to his officeat Whitehall. [622]

The same feeling exhibited itself in many other places. The freeholdersof Cumberland instructed their representatives to support the King, andto vote whatever supplies might be necessary for the purpose of carryingon the war with vigour; and this example was followed by severalcounties and towns. [623] Russell did not arrive in England till afterthe writs had gone out. But he had only to choose for what place hewould sit. His popularity was immense; for his villanies were secret, and his public services were universally known. He had won the battle ofLa Hogue. He had commanded two years in the Mediterranean. He had thereshut up the French fleets in the harbour of Toulon, and had stopped andturned back the French armies in Catalonia. He had taken many vessels, and among them two ships of the line; and he had not, during his longabsence in a remote sea, lost a single vessel either by war or byweather. He had made the red cross of Saint George an object of terrorto all the princes and commonwealths of Italy. The effect of hissuccesses was that embassies were on their way from Florence, Genoaand Venice, with tardy congratulations to William on his accession. Russell's merits, artfully magnified by the Whigs, made such animpression that he was returned to Parliament not only by Portsmouthwhere his official situation gave him great influence, and byCambridgeshire where his private property was considerable, but also byMiddlesex. This last distinction, indeed, he owed chiefly to the namewhich he bore. Before his arrival in England it had been generallythought that two Tories would be returned for the metropolitan county. Somers and Shrewsbury were of opinion that the only way to avert such amisfortune was to conjure with the name of the most virtuous of all themartyrs of English liberty. They entreated Lady Russell to suffer hereldest son, a boy of fifteen, who was about to commence his studies atCambridge, to be put in nomination. He must, they said, drop, for oneday, his new title of Marquess of Tavistock, and call himself LordRussell. There will be no expense. There will be no contest. Thousandsof gentlemen on horseback will escort him to the hustings; nobody willdare to stand against him; and he will not only come in himself, butbring in another Whig. The widowed mother, in a letter written withall the excellent sense and feeling which distinguished her, refusedto sacrifice her son to her party. His education, she said, would beinterrupted; his head would be turned; his triumph would be his undoing. Just at this conjuncture the Admiral arrived. He made his appearancebefore the freeholders of Middlesex assembled on the top of HampsteadHill, and was returned without opposition. [624]

Meanwhile several noted malecontents received marks of publicdisapprobation. John Knight, the most factious and insolent of thoseJacobites who had dishonestly sworn fealty to King William in order toqualify themselves to sit in Parliament, ceased to represent thegreat city of Bristol. Exeter, the capital of the west, was violentlyagitated. It had been long supposed that the ability, the eloquence, theexperience, the ample fortune, the noble descent of Seymour would makeit impossible to unseat him. But his moral character, which hadnever stood very high, had, during the last three or four years, beenconstantly sinking. He had been virulent in opposition till he had gota place. While he had a place he had defended the most unpopular actsof the government. As soon as he was out of place, he had again beenvirulent in opposition. 

His saltpetre contract had left a deep stain on his personal honour. Twocandidates were therefore brought forward against him; and a contest, the longest and fiercest of that age, fixed the attention of the wholekingdom, and was watched with interest even by foreign governments. Thepoll was open five weeks. The expense on both sides was enormous. Thefreemen of Exeter, who, while the election lasted, fared sumptuouslyevery day, were by no means impatient for the termination of theirluxurious carnival. They ate and drank heartily; they turned outevery evening with good cudgels to fight for Mother Church or for KingWilliam; but the votes came in very slowly. It was not till the eveof the meeting of Parliament that the return was made. Seymour wasdefeated, to his bitter mortification, and was forced to take refuge inthe small borough of Totness. [625]

It is remarkable that, at this election as at the preceding election, John Hampden failed to obtain a seat. He had, since he ceased to be amember of Parliament, been brooding over his evil fate and his indelibleshame, and occasionally venting his spleen in bitter pamphlets againstthe government. When the Whigs had become predominant at the Court andin the House of Commons, when Nottingham had retired, when Caermarthenhad been impeached, Hampden, it should seem, again conceived the hopethat he might play a great part in public life. But the leaders ofhis party, apparently, did not wish for an ally of so acrimonious andturbulent a spirit. He found himself still excluded from the House ofCommons. He led, during a few months, a miserable life, sometimes tryingto forget his cares among the wellbred gamblers and frail beauties whofilled the drawingroom of the Duchess of Mazarine, and sometimes sunkin religious melancholy. The thought of suicide often rose in his mind. Soon there was a vacancy in the representation of Buckinghamshire, the county which had repeatedly sent himself and his progenitors toParliament; and he expected that he should, by the help of Wharton, whose dominion over the Buckinghamshire Whigs was absolute, be returnedwithout difficulty. Wharton, however, gave his interest to anothercandidate. This was a final blow. The town was agitated by the news thatJohn Hampden had cut his throat, that he had survived his wound a fewhours, that he had professed deep penitence for his sins, had requestedthe prayers of Burnet, and had sent a solemn warning to the Duchess ofMazarine. A coroner's jury found a verdict of insanity. The wretched manhad entered on life with the fairest prospects. He bore a name which wasmore than noble. He was heir to an ample estate and to a patrimony muchmore precious, the confidence and attachment of hundreds of thousandsof his countrymen. His own abilities were considerable, and had beencarefully cultivated. Unhappily ambition and party spirit impelledhim to place himself in a situation full of danger. To that danger hisfortitude proved unequal. He stooped to supplications which saved himand dishonoured him. From that moment, he never knew peace of mind. His temper became perverse; and his understanding was perverted byhis temper. He tried to find relief in devotion and in revenge, infashionable dissipation and in political turmoil. But the dark shadenever passed away from his mind, till, in the twelfth year of hishumiliation, his unhappy life was terminated by an unhappy death. [626]

The result of the general election proved that William had chosen afortunate moment for dissolving. The number of new members was about ahundred and sixty; and most of these were known to be thoroughly wellaffected to the government. [627]

It was of the highest importance that the House of Commons should, atthat moment, be disposed to cooperate cordially with the King. For itwas absolutely necessary to apply a remedy to an internal evil which hadby slow degrees grown to a fearful magnitude. The silver coin, which wasthen the standard coin of the realm, was in a state at which the boldestand most enlightened statesmen stood aghast. [628]

Till the reign of Charles the Second our coin had been struck by aprocess as old as the thirteenth century. Edward the First had invitedhither skilful artists from Florence, which, in his time, was to Londonwhat London, in the time of William the Third, was to Moscow. Duringmany generations, the instruments which were then introduced into ourmint continued to be employed with little alteration. The metal wasdivided with shears, and afterwards shaped and stamped by the hammer. In these operations much was left to the hand and eye of the workman. Itnecessarily happened that some pieces contained a little more and somea little less than the just quantity of silver; few pieces were exactlyround; and the rims were not marked. It was therefore in the course ofyears discovered that to clip the coin was one of the easiest and mostprofitable kinds of fraud. In the reign of Elizabeth it had been thoughtnecessary to enact that the clipper should be, as the coiner had longbeen, liable to the penalties of high treason. [629] The practice ofparing down money, however, was far too lucrative to be so checked; and, about the time of the Restoration, people began to observe that a largeproportion of the crowns, halfcrowns and shillings which were passingfrom hand to hand had undergone some slight mutilation. 

That was a time fruitful of experiments and inventions in all thedepartments of science. A great improvement in the mode of shapingand striking the coin was suggested. A mill, which to a great extentsuperseded the human hand, was set up in the Tower of London. Thismill was worked by horses, and would doubtless be considered by modernengineers as a rude and feeble machine. The pieces which it produced, however, were among the best in Europe. It was not easy to counterfeitthem; and, as their shape was exactly circular, and their edges wereinscribed with a legend, clipping was not to be apprehended. [630] Thehammered coins and the milled coins were current together. They werereceived without distinction in public, and consequently in private, payments. The financiers of that age seem to have expected that the newmoney, which was excellent, would soon displace the old money which wasmuch impaired. Yet any man of plain understanding might have known that, when the State treats perfect coin and light coin as of equal value, theperfect coin will not drive the light coin out of circulation, but willitself be driven out. A clipped crown, on English ground, went as far inthe payment of a tax or a debt as a milled crown. But the milled crown, as soon as it had been flung into the crucible or carried across theChannel, became much more valuable than the clipped crown. It mighttherefore have been predicted, as confidently as any thing can bepredicted which depends on the human will, that the inferior pieceswould remain in the only market in which they could fetch the same priceas the superior pieces, and that the superior pieces would take someform or fly to some place in which some advantage could be derived fromtheir superiority. [631]

The politicians of that age, however, generally overlooked these veryobvious considerations. They marvelled exceedingly that every bodyshould be so perverse as to use light money in preference to good money. In other words, they marvelled that nobody chose to pay twelve ounces ofsilver when ten would serve the turn. The horse in the Tower still pacedhis rounds. Fresh waggon loads of choice money still came forth fromthe mill; and still they vanished as fast as they appeared. Great masseswere melted down; great masses exported; great masses hoarded; butscarcely one new piece was to be found in the till of a shop, or in theleathern bag which the farmer carried home from the cattle fair. In thereceipts and payments of the Exchequer the milled money did not exceedten shillings in a hundred pounds. A writer of that age mentions thecase of a merchant who, in a sum of thirty-five pounds, received only asingle halfcrown in milled silver. Meanwhile the shears of the clipperswere constantly at work. The comers too multiplied and prospered; forthe worse the current money became the more easily it was imitated. During more than thirty years this evil had gone on increasing. At firstit had been disregarded; but it had at length become an insupportablecurse to the country. It was to no purpose that the rigorous lawsagainst coining and clipping were rigorously executed. At every sessionthat was held at the Old Bailey terrible examples were made. Hurdles, with four, five, six wretches convicted of counterfeiting or mutilatingthe money of the realm, were dragged month after month up Holborn Hill. On one morning seven men were hanged and a woman burned for clipping;But all was vain. The gains were such as to lawless spirits seemed morethan proportioned to the risks. Some clippers were said to have madegreat fortunes. One in particular offered six thousand pounds for apardon. His bribe was indeed rejected; but the fame of his riches didmuch to counteract the effect which the spectacle of his death wasdesigned to produce. [632] Nay the severity of the punishment gaveencouragement to the crime. For the practice of clipping, pernicious asit was, did not excite in the common mind a detestation resemblingthat with which men regard murder, arson, robbery, nay, even theft. The injury done by the whole body of clippers to the whole society wasindeed immense; but each particular act of clipping was a trifle. Topass a halfcrown, after paring a pennyworth of silver from it, seemed aminute, an almost imperceptible, fault. Even while the nation was cryingout most loudly under the distress which the state of the currency hadproduced, every individual who was capitally punished for contributingto bring the currency into that state had the general sympathy on hisside. Constables were unwilling to arrest the offenders. Justices wereunwilling to commit. Witnesses were unwilling to tell the whole truth. Juries were unwilling to pronounce the word Guilty. It was vain to tellthe common people that the mutilators of the coin were causing far moremisery than all the highwaymen and housebreakers in the island. For, great as the aggregate of the evil was, only an infinitesimal part ofthat evil was brought home to the individual malefactor. There was, therefore, a general conspiracy to prevent the law from taking itscourse. The convictions, numerous as they might seem, were few indeedwhen compared with the offences; and the offenders who were convictedlooked on themselves as murdered men, and were firm in the belief thattheir sin, if sin it were, was as venial as that of a schoolboy who goesnutting in the wood of a neighbour. All the eloquence of the ordinarycould seldom induce them to conform to the wholesome usage ofacknowledging in their dying speeches the enormity of their wickedness. [633]

The evil proceeded with constantly accelerating velocity. At length inthe autumn of 1695 it could hardly be said that the country possessed, for practical purposes, any measure of the value of commodities. It wasa mere chance whether what was called a shilling was really tenpence, sixpence or a groat. The results of some experiments which were tried atthat time deserve to be mentioned. The officers of the Exchequer weighedfifty-seven thousand two hundred pounds of hammered money which hadrecently been paid in. The weight ought to have been above two hundredand twenty thousand ounces. It proved to be under one hundred andfourteen thousand ounces. [634] Three eminent London goldsmiths wereinvited to send a hundred pounds each in current silver to be tried bythe balance. Three hundred pounds ought to have weighed about twelvehundred ounces. The actual weight proved to be six hundred andtwenty-four ounces. The same test was applied in various parts of thekingdom. It was found that a hundred pounds, which should have weighedabout four hundred ounces, did actually weigh at Bristol two hundred andforty ounces, at Cambridge two hundred and three, at Exeter one hundredand eighty, and at Oxford only one hundred and sixteen. [635] Therewere, indeed, some northern districts into which the clipped money hadonly begun to find its way. An honest Quaker, who lived in one of thesedistricts, recorded, in some notes which are still extant, the amazementwith which, when he travelled southward, shopkeepers and innkeepersstared at the broad and heavy halfcrowns with which he paid his way. They asked whence he came, and where such money was to be found. Theguinea which he purchased for twenty-two shillings at Lancaster bore adifferent value at every stage of his journey. When he reached Londonit was worth thirty shillings, and would indeed have been worth more hadnot the government fixed that rate as the highest at which gold shouldbe received in the payment of taxes. [636]

The evils produced by this state of the currency were not such as havegenerally been thought worthy to occupy a prominent place in history. Yet it may well be doubted whether all the misery which had beeninflicted on the English nation in a quarter of a century by bad Kings, bad Ministers, bad Parliaments and bad judges, was equal to the miserycaused in a single year by bad crowns and bad shillings. Those eventswhich furnish the best themes for pathetic or indignant eloquence arenot always those which most affect the happiness of the great body ofthe people. The misgovernment of Charles and James, gross as it hadbeen, had not prevented the common business of life from going steadilyand prosperously on. While the honour and independence of the Statewere sold to a foreign power, while chartered rights were invaded, whilefundamental laws were violated, hundreds of thousands of quiet, honestand industrious families laboured and traded, ate their meals andlay down to rest, in comfort and security. Whether Whigs or Tories, Protestants or Jesuits were uppermost, the grazier drove his beasts tomarket; the grocer weighed out his currants; the draper measured outhis broadcloth; the hum of buyers and sellers was as loud as ever inthe towns; the harvest home was celebrated as joyously as ever in thehamlets; the cream overflowed the pails of Cheshire; the apple juicefoamed in the presses of Herefordshire; the piles of crockery glowed inthe furnaces of the Trent; and the barrows of coal rolled fast along thetimber railways of the Tyne. But when the great instrument of exchangebecame thoroughly deranged, all trade, all industry, were smitten aswith a palsy. The evil was felt daily and hourly in almost every placeand by almost every class, in the dairy and on the threshing floor, bythe anvil and by the loom, on the billows of the ocean and in the depthsof the mine. Nothing could be purchased without a dispute. Over everycounter there was wrangling from morning to night. The workman and hisemployer had a quarrel as regularly as the Saturday came round. On afair day or a market day the clamours, the reproaches, the taunts, thecurses, were incessant; and it was well if no booth was overturnedand no head broken. [637] No merchant would contract to deliver goodswithout making some stipulation about the quality of the coin in whichhe was to be paid. Even men of business were often bewildered by theconfusion into which all pecuniary transactions were thrown. The simpleand the careless were pillaged without mercy by extortioners whosedemands grew even more rapidly than the money shrank. The price ofthe necessaries of life, of shoes, of ale, of oatmeal, rose fast. Thelabourer found that the bit of metal which when he received it wascalled a shilling would hardly, when he wanted to purchase a pot of beeror a loaf of rye bread, go as far as sixpence. Where artisans of morethan usual intelligence were collected together in great numbers, as inthe dockyard at Chatham, they were able to make their complaints heardand to obtain some redress. [638] But the ignorant and helpless peasantwas cruelly ground between one class which would give money only bytale and another which would take it only by weight. Yet his sufferingshardly exceeded those of the unfortunate race of authors. Of the way inwhich obscure writers were treated we may easily form a judgment fromthe letters, still extant, of Dryden to his bookseller Tonson. One dayTonson sends forty brass shillings, to say nothing of clipped money. Another day he pays a debt with pieces so bad that none of them will go. The great poet sends them all back, and demands in their place guineasat twenty-nine shillings each. "I expect, " he says in one letter, "goodsilver, not such as I have had formerly. " "If you have any silver thatwill go, " he says in another letter, "my wife will be glad of it. I lostthirty shillings or more by the last payment of fifty pounds. " Thesecomplaints and demands, which have been preserved from destruction onlyby the eminence of the writer, are doubtless merely a fair sample of thecorrespondence which filled all the mail bags of England during severalmonths. 

In the midst of the public distress one class prospered greatly, thebankers; and among the bankers none could in skill or in luck bear acomparison with Charles Duncombe. He had been, not many years before, agoldsmith of very moderate wealth. He had probably, after the fashion ofhis craft, plied for customers under the arcades of the Royal Exchange, had saluted merchants with profound bows, and had begged to be allowedthe honour of keeping their cash. But so dexterously did he now availhimself of the opportunities of profit which the general confusion ofprices gave to a moneychanger, that, at the moment when the trade ofthe kingdom was depressed to the lowest point, he laid down near ninetythousand pounds for the estate of Helmsley in the North Riding ofYorkshire. That great property had, in a troubled time, been bestowed bythe Commons of England on their victorious general Fairfax, and had beenpart of the dower which Fairfax's daughter had brought to the brilliantand dissolute Buckingham. Thither Buckingham, having wasted in madintemperance, sensual and intellectual, all the choicest bounties ofnature and of fortune, had carried the feeble ruins of his fine personand of his fine mind; and there he had closed his chequered life underthat humble roof and on that coarse pallet which the great satiristof the succeeding generation described in immortal verse. The spaciousdomain passed to a new race; and in a few years a palace more splendidand costly than had ever been inhabited by the magnificent Villiers roseamidst the beautiful woods and waters which had been his, and was calledby the once humble name of Duncombe. 

Since the Revolution the state of the currency had been repeatedlydiscussed in Parliament. In 1689 a committee of the Commons had beenappointed to investigate the subject, but had made no report. In 1690another committee had reported that immense quantities of silver werecarried out of the country by Jews, who, it was said, would do any thingfor profit. Schemes were formed for encouraging the importation anddiscouraging the exportation of the precious metals. One foolish billafter another was brought in and dropped. At length, in the beginning ofthe year 1695, the question assumed so serious an aspect that the Housesapplied themselves to it in earnest. The only practical result of theirdeliberations, however, was a new penal law which, it was hoped, wouldprevent the clipping of the hammered coin and the melting and exportingof the milled coin. It was enacted that every person who informedagainst a clipper should be entitled to a reward of forty pounds, thatevery clipper who informed against two clippers should be entitled to apardon, and that whoever should be found in possession of silver filingsor parings should be burned in the cheek with a redhot iron. Certainofficers were empowered to search for bullion. If bullion were found ina house or on board of a ship, the burden of proving that it had neverbeen part of the money of the realm was thrown on the owner. If hefailed in making out a satisfactory history of every ingot he wasliable to severe penalties. This Act was, as might have been expected, altogether ineffective. During the following summer and autumn, thecoins went on dwindling, and the cry of distress from every county inthe realm became louder and more piercing. 

But happily for England there were among her rulers some who clearlyperceived that it was not by halters and branding irons that herdecaying industry and commerce could be restored to health. The state ofthe currency had during some time occupied the serious attention of foureminent men closely connected by public and private ties. Two ofthem were politicians who had never, in the midst of official andparliamentary business, ceased to love and honour philosophy; andtwo were philosophers, in whom habits of abstruse meditation had notimpaired the homely good sense without which even genius is mischievousin politics. Never had there been an occasion which more urgentlyrequired both practical and speculative abilities; and never had theworld seen the highest practical and the highest speculative abilitiesunited in an alliance so close, so harmonious, and so honourable as thatwhich bound Somers and Montague to Locke and Newton. 

It is much to be lamented that we have not a minute history of theconferences of the men to whom England owed the restoration of hercurrency and the long series of prosperous years which dates fromthat restoration. It would be interesting to see how the pure gold ofscientific truth found by the two philosophers was mingled by the twostatesmen with just that quantity of alloy which was necessary forthe working. It would be curious to study the many plans which werepropounded, discussed and rejected, some as inefficacious, some asunjust, some as too costly, some as too hazardous, till at length aplan was devised of which the wisdom was proved by the best evidence, complete success. 

Newton has left to posterity no exposition of his opinions touchingthe currency. But the tracts of Locke on this subject are happily stillextant; and it may be doubted whether in any of his writings, even inthose ingenious and deeply meditated chapters on language which formperhaps the most valuable part of the Essay on the Human Understanding, the force of his mind appears more conspicuously. Whether he had everbeen acquainted with Dudley North is not known. In moral characterthe two men bore little resemblance to each other. They belonged todifferent parties. Indeed, had not Locke taken shelter from tyranny inHolland, it is by no means impossible that he might have been sent toTyburn by a jury which Dudley North had packed. Intellectually, however, there was much in common between the Tory and the Whig. They hadlaboriously thought out, each for himself, a theory of politicaleconomy, substantially the same with that which Adam Smith afterwardsexpounded. Nay, in some respects the theory of Locke and North was morecomplete and symmetrical than that of their illustrious successor. AdamSmith has often been justly blamed for maintaining, in direct oppositionto all his own principles, that the rate of interest ought to beregulated by the State; and he is the more blamable because, long beforehe was born, both Locke and North had taught that it was as absurd tomake laws fixing the price of money as to make laws fixing the price ofcutlery or of broadcloth. [639]

Dudley North died in 1693. A short time before his death he published, without his name, a small tract which contains a concise sketch of aplan for the restoration of the currency. This plan appears to have beensubstantially the same with that which was afterwards fully developedand ably defended by Locke. 

One question, which was doubtless the subject of many anxiousdeliberations, was whether any thing should be done while the warlasted. In whatever way the restoration of the coin might be effected, great sacrifices must be made, the whole community or by a part of thecommunity. And to call for such sacrifices at a time when the nation wasalready paying taxes such as, ten years before, no financier would havethought it possible to raise, was undoubtedly a course full of danger. Timorous politicians were for delay; but the deliberate conviction ofthe great Whig leaders was that something must be hazarded, or thatevery thing was lost. Montague, in particular, is said to have expressedin strong language his determination to kill or cure. If indeed therehad been any hope that the evil would merely continue to be what it was, it might have been wise to defer till the return of peace an experimentwhich must severely try the strength of the body politic. But the evilwas one which daily made progress almost visible to the eye. There mighthave been a recoinage in 1691 with half the risk which must be runin 1696; and, great as would be the risk in 1696, that risk would bedoubled if the coinage were postponed till 1698. 

Those politicians whose voice was for delay gave less trouble thananother set of politicians, who were for a general and immediaterecoinage, but who insisted that the new shilling should be worth onlyninepence or ninepence halfpenny. At the head of this party was WilliamLowndes, Secretary of the Treasury, and member of Parliament for theborough of Seaford, a most respectable and industrious public servant, but much more versed in the details of his office than in the higherparts of political philosophy. He was not in the least aware that apiece of metal with the King's head on it was a commodity of which theprice was governed by the same laws which govern the price of a piece ofmetal fashioned into a spoon or a buckle, and that it was no more inthe power of Parliament to make the kingdom richer by calling a crowna pound than to make the kingdom larger by calling a furlong a mile. He seriously believed, incredible as it may seem, that, if the ounceof silver were divided into seven shillings instead of five, foreignnations would sell us their wines and their silks for a smaller numberof ounces. He had a considerable following, composed partly of dull menwho really believed what he told them, and partly of shrewd men who wereperfectly willing to be authorised by law to pay a hundred pounds witheighty. Had his arguments prevailed, the evils of a vast confiscationwould have been added to all the other evils which afflicted the nation;public credit, still in its tender and sickly infancy, would have beendestroyed; and there would have been much risk of a general mutiny ofthe fleet and army. Happily Lowndes was completely refuted by Locke ina paper drawn up for the use of Somers. Somers was delighted with thislittle treatise, and desired that it might be printed. It speedilybecame the text book of all the most enlightened politicians in thekingdom, and may still be read with pleasure and profit. The effect ofLocke's forcible and perspicuous reasoning is greatly heightened by hisevident anxiety to get at the truth, and by the singularly generousand graceful courtesy with which he treats an antagonist of powers farinferior to his own. Flamsteed, the Astronomer Royal, described thecontroversy well by saying that the point in dispute was whether fivewas six or only five. [640]

Thus far Somers and Montague entirely agreed with Locke; but as to themanner in which the restoration of the currency ought to be effectedthere was some difference of opinion. Locke recommended, as Dudley Northhad recommended, that the King should by proclamation fix a near dayafter which the hammered money should in all payments pass only byweight. The advantages of this plan were doubtless great and obvious. Itwas most simple, and, at the same time, most efficient. What searching, fining, branding, hanging, burning, had failed to do would be done in aninstant. The clipping of the hammered pieces, the melting of the milledpieces would cease. Great quantities of good coin would come forth fromsecret drawers and from behind the panels of wainscots. The mutilatedsilver would gradually flow into the mint, and would come forth again ina form which would make mutilation impossible. In a short time thewhole currency of the realm would be in a sound state, and, during theprogress of this great change, there would never at any moment be anyscarcity of money. 

These were weighty considerations; and to the joint authority of Northand Locke on such a question great respect is due. Yet it must be ownedthat their plan was open to one serious objection, which did not indeedaltogether escape their notice, but of which they seem to have thoughttoo lightly. The restoration of the currency was a benefit to the wholecommunity. On what principle then was the expense of restoring thecurrency to be borne by a part of the community? It was most desirabledoubtless that the words pound and shilling should again have a fixedsignification, that every man should know what his contracts meant andwhat his property was worth. But was it just to attain this excellentend by means of which the effect would be that every farmer who hadput by a hundred pounds to pay his rent, every trader who had scrapedtogether a hundred pounds to meet his acceptances, would find hishundred pounds reduced in a moment to fifty or sixty? It was notthe fault of such a farmer or of such a trader that his crowns andhalfcrowns were not of full weight. The government itself was to blame. The evil which the State had caused the State was bound to repair, andit would evidently have been wrong to throw the charge of the reparationon a particular class, merely because that class was so situated thatit could conveniently be pillaged. It would have been as reasonable torequire the timber merchants to bear the whole cost of fitting out theChannel fleet, or the gunsmiths to bear the whole cost of supplying armsto the regiments in Flanders, as to restore the currency of the kingdomat the expense of those individuals in whose hands the clipped sliverhappened at a particular moment to be. 

Locke declared that he regretted the loss which, if his advice weretaken, would fall on the holders of the short money. But it appeared tohim that the nation must make a choice between evils. And in truth itwas much easier to lay down the general proposition that the expensesof restoring the currency ought to be borne by the public than to deviseany mode in which they could without extreme inconvenience and danger beso borne. Was it to be announced that every person who should within aterm of a year or half a year carry to the mint a clipped crown shouldreceive in exchange for it a milled crown, and that the differencebetween the value of the two pieces should be made good out of thepublic purse? That would be to offer a premium for clipping. The shearswould be more busy than ever. The short money would every day becomeshorter. The difference which the taxpayers would have to make goodwould probably be greater by a million at the end of the term thanat the beginning; and the whole of this million would go to rewardmalefactors. If the time allowed for the bringing in of the hammeredcoin were much shortened, the danger of further clipping would beproportionally diminished; but another danger would be incurred. Thesilver would flow into the mint so much faster than it could possiblyflow out, that there must during some months be a grievous scarcity ofmoney. 

A singularly bold and ingenious expedient occurred to Somers and wasapproved by William. It was that a proclamation should be prepared withgreat secresy, and published at once in all parts of the kingdom. Thisproclamation was to announce that hammered coins would thenceforth passonly by weight. But every possessor of such coins was to be invited todeliver them up within three days, in a sealed packet, to the publicauthorities. The coins were to be examined, numbered, weighed, andreturned to the owner with a promissory note entitling him to receivefrom the Treasury at a future time the difference between the actualquantity of silver in his pieces and the quantity of silver which, according to the standard, those pieces ought to have contained. [641]Had this plan been adopted an immediate stop would have been put tothe clipping, the melting and the exporting; and the expense of therestoration of the currency would have been borne, as was right, by thepublic. The inconvenience arising from a scarcity of money would havebeen of very short duration; for the mutilated pieces would have beendetained only till they could be told and weighed; they would then havebeen sent back into circulation, and the recoinage would have takenplace gradually and without any perceptible suspension or disturbanceof trade. But against these great advantages were to be set off hazards, which Somers was prepared to brave, but from which it is not strangethat politicians of less elevated character should have shrunk. Thecourse which he recommended to his colleagues was indeed the safest forthe country, but was by no means the safest for themselves. His plancould not be successful unless the execution were sudden; the executioncould not be sudden if the previous sanction of Parliament were askedand obtained; and to take a step of such fearful importance withoutthe previous sanction of Parliament was to run the risk of censure, impeachment, imprisonment, ruin. The King and the Lord Keeper werealone in the Council. Even Montague quailed; and it was determined to donothing without the authority of the legislature. Montague undertook tosubmit to the Commons a scheme, which was not indeed without dangers andinconveniences, but which was probably the best which he could hope tocarry. 

On the twenty-second of November the Houses met. Foley was on thatday again chosen Speaker. On the following day he was presented andapproved. The King opened the session with a speech very skilfullyframed. He congratulated his hearers on the success of the campaign onthe Continent. That success he attributed, in language which must havegratified their feelings, to the bravery of the English army. He spokeof the evils which had arisen from the deplorable state of the coin, andof the necessity of applying a speedy remedy. He intimated very plainlyhis opinion that the expense of restoring the currency ought to be borneby the State; but he declared that he referred the whole matter to thewisdom of his Great Council. Before he concluded he addressed himselfparticularly to the newly elected House of Commons, and warmly expressedhis approbation of the excellent choice which his people had made. Thespeech was received with a low but very significant hum of assent bothfrom above and from below the bar, and was as favourably received by thepublic as by the Parliament. [642] In the Commons an address of thankswas moved by Wharton, faintly opposed by Musgrave, adopted without adivision, and carried up by the whole House to Kensington. At the palacethe loyalty of the crowd of gentlemen showed itself in a way whichwould now be thought hardly consistent with senatorial gravity. Whenrefreshments were handed round in the antechamber, the Speaker filledhis glass, and proposed two toasts, the health of King William, andconfusion to King Lewis; and both were drunk with loud acclamations. Yetnear observers could perceive that, though the representatives of thenation were as a body zealous for civil liberty and for the Protestantreligion, and though they were prepared to endure every thing ratherthan see their country again reduced to vassalage, they were anxious anddispirited. All were thinking of the state of the coin; all were sayingthat something must be done; and all acknowledged that they did not knowwhat could be done. "I am afraid, " said a member who expressed what manyfelt, "that the nation can bear neither the disease nor the cure. " [643]

There was indeed a minority by which the difficulties and dangers ofthat crisis were seen with malignant delight; and of that minority thekeenest, boldest and most factious leader was Howe, whom poverty hadmade more acrimonious than ever. He moved that the House should resolveitself into a Committee on the State of the Nation; and the Ministry, for that word may now with propriety be used, readily consented. Indeedthe great question touching the currency could not be brought forwardmore conveniently than in such a Committee. When the Speaker had leftthe chair, Howe harangued against the war as vehemently as he had informer years harangued for it. He called for peace, peace on any terms. The nation, he said, resembled a wounded man, fighting desperately on, with blood flowing in torrents. During a short time the spirit mightbear up the frame; but faintness must soon come on. No moral energycould long hold out against physical exhaustion. He found very littlesupport. The great majority of his hearers were fully determined to putevery thing to hazard rather than submit to France. It was sneeringlyremarked that the state of his own finances had suggested to himthe image of a man bleeding to death, and that, if a cordial wereadministered to him in the form of a salary, he would trouble himselflittle about the drained veins of the commonwealth. "We did not, " saidthe Whig orators, "degrade ourselves by suing for peace when our flagwas chased out of our own Channel, when Tourville's fleet lay at anchorin Torbay, when the Irish nation was in arms against us, when everypost from the Netherlands brought news of some disaster, when we had tocontend against the genius of Louvois in the Cabinet and of Luxemburg inthe field. And are we to turn suppliants now, when no hostile squadrondares to show itself even in the Mediterranean, when our arms arevictorious on the Continent, when God has removed the great statesmanand the great soldier whose abilities long frustrated our efforts, andwhen the weakness of the French administration indicates, in a mannernot to be mistaken, the ascendency of a female favourite?" Howe'ssuggestion was contemptuously rejected; and the Committee proceeded totake into consideration the state of the currency. [644]

Meanwhile the newly liberated presses of the capital never rested amoment. Innumerable pamphlets and broadsides about the coin lay on thecounters of the booksellers, and were thrust into the hands of membersof Parliament in the lobby. In one of the most curious and amusing ofthese pieces Lewis and his ministers are introduced, expressing thegreatest alarm lest England should make herself the richest country inthe world by the simple expedient of calling ninepence a shilling, andconfidently predicting that, if the old standard were maintained, therewould be another revolution. Some writers vehemently objected to theproposition that the public should bear the expense of restoringthe currency; some urged the government to take this opportunity ofassimilating the money of England to the money of neighbouring nations;one projector was for coining guilders; another for coining dollars. [645]

Within the walls of Parliament the debates continued during severalanxious days. At length Montague, after defeating, first those who werefor letting things remain unaltered till the peace, and then those whowere for the little shilling, carried eleven resolutions in which theoutlines of his own plan were set forth. It was resolved that the moneyof the kingdom should be recoined according to the old standard both ofweight and of fineness; that all the new pieces should be milled; thatthe loss on the clipped pieces should be borne by the public; that atime should be fixed after which no clipped money should pass, except inpayments to the government; and that a later time should be fixed, afterwhich no clipped money should pass at all. What divisions took place inthe Committee cannot be ascertained. When the resolutions were reportedthere was one division. It was on the question whether the old standardof weight should be maintained. The Noes were a hundred and fourteen;the Ayes two hundred and twenty-five. [646]

It was ordered that a bill founded on the resolutions should be broughtin. A few days later the Chancellor of the Exchequer explained to theCommons, in a Committee of Ways and Means, the plan by which he proposedto meet the expense of the recoinage. It was impossible to estimatewith precision the charge of making good the deficiencies of the clippedmoney. But it was certain that at least twelve hundred thousand poundswould be required. Twelve hundred thousand pounds the Bank of Englandundertook to advance on good security. It was a maxim received amongfinanciers that no security which the government could offer was sogood as the old hearth money had been. That tax, odious as it was to thegreat majority of those who paid it, was remembered with regret at theTreasury and in the City. It occurred to the Chancellor of the Exchequerthat it might be possible to devise an impost on houses, which might benot less productive nor less certain than the hearth money, but whichmight press less heavily on the poor, and might be collected by aless vexatious process. The number of hearths in a house could not beascertained without domiciliary visits. The windows a collectormight count without passing the threshold. Montague proposed that theinhabitants of cottages, who had been cruelly harassed by the chimneymen, should be altogether exempted from the new duty. His plan wasapproved by the Committee of Ways and Means, and was sanctioned by theHouse without a division. Such was the origin of the window tax, a taxwhich, though doubtless a great evil, must be considered as a blessingwhen compared with the curse from which it rescued the nation. [647]

Thus far things had gone smoothly. But now came a crisis which requiredthe most skilful steering. The news that the Parliament and thegovernment were determined on a reform of the currency produced anignorant panic among the common people. Every man wished to get rid ofhis clipped crowns and halfcrowns. No man liked to take them. Therewere brawls approaching to riots in half the streets of London. TheJacobites, always full of joy and hope in a day of adversity and publicdanger, ran about with eager looks and noisy tongues. The health of KingJames was publicly drunk in taverns and on ale benches. Many members ofParliament, who had hitherto supported the government, began towaver; and, that nothing might be wanting to the difficulties of theconjuncture, a dispute on a point of privilege arose between the Houses. The Recoinage Bill, framed in conformity with Montague's resolutions, had gone up to the Peers and had come back with amendments, some ofwhich, in the opinion of the Commons, their Lordships had no right tomake. The emergency was too serious to admit of delay. Montague broughtin a new bill; which was in fact his former bill modified in somepoints to meet the wishes of the Lords; the Lords, though not perfectlycontented with the new bill, passed it without any alteration; andthe royal assent was immediately given. The fourth of May, a date longremembered over the whole kingdom and especially in the capital, wasfixed as the day on which the government would cease to receive theclipped money in payment of taxes. [648]

The principles of the Recoinage Act are excellent. But some of thedetails, both of that Act and of a supplementary Act which was passed ata later period of the session, seem to prove that Montague had notfully considered what legislation can, and what it cannot, effect. Forexample, he persuaded the Parliament to enact that it should be penalto give or take more than twenty-two shillings for a guinea. It may beconfidently affirmed that this enactment was not suggested or approvedby Locke. He well knew that the high price of gold was not the evilwhich afflicted the State, but merely a symptom of that evil, and that afall in the price of gold would inevitably follow, and could by no humanpower or ingenuity be made to precede, the recoinage of the silver. Infact, the penalty seems to have produced no effect whatever, good orbad. Till the milled silver was in circulation, the guinea continued, inspite of the law, to pass for thirty shillings. When the milled silverbecame plentiful, the guinea fell, not to twenty-two shillings, whichwas the highest price allowed by the law, but to twenty-one shillingsand sixpence. [649]

Early in February the panic which had been caused by the first debateson the currency subsided; and, from that time till the fourth of May, the want of money was not very severely felt. The recoinage began. Tenfurnaces were erected, in the garden behind the Treasury; and every dayhuge heaps of pared and defaced crowns and shillings were turned intomassy ingots which were instantly sent off to the mint in the Tower. [650]

With the fate of the law which restored the currency was closelyconnected the fate of another law, which had been several years underthe consideration of Parliament, and had caused several warm disputesbetween the hereditary and the elective branch of the legislature. Thesession had scarcely commenced when the Bill for regulating Trials incases of High Treason was again laid on the table of the Commons. Ofthe debates to which it gave occasion nothing is known except oneinteresting circumstance which has been preserved by tradition. Amongthose who supported the bill appeared conspicuous a young Whig ofhigh rank, of ample fortune, and of great abilities which had beenassiduously improved by study. This was Anthony Ashley Cooper, LordAshley, eldest son of the second Earl of Shaftesbury, and grandson ofthat renowned politician who had, in the days of Charles the Second, been at one time the most unprincipled of ministers, and at anotherthe most unprincipled of demagogues. Ashley had just been returned toParliament for the borough of Poole, and was in his twenty-fifth year. In the course of his speech he faltered, stammered and seemed to losethe thread of his reasoning. The House, then, as now, indulgent tonovices, and then, as now, well aware that, on a first appearance, thehesitation which is the effect of modesty and sensibility is quiteas promising a sign as volubility of utterance and ease of manner, encouraged him to proceed. "How can I, Sir, " said the young orator, recovering himself, "produce a stronger argument in favour of thisbill than my own failure? My fortune, my character, my life, are not atstake. I am speaking to an audience whose kindness might well inspire mewith courage. And yet, from mere nervousness, from mere want of practicein addressing large assemblies, I have lost my recollection; I am unableto go on with my argument. How helpless, then, must be a poor man who, never having opened his lips in public, is called upon to reply, withouta moment's preparation, to the ablest and most experienced advocates inthe kingdom, and whose faculties are paralysed by the thought that, if he fails to convince his hearers, he will in a few hours die on agallows, and leave beggary and infamy to those who are dearest to him. "It may reasonably be suspected that Ashley's confusion and the ingenioususe which he made of it had been carefully premeditated. His speech, however, made a great impression, and probably raised expectations whichwere not fulfilled. His health was delicate; his taste was refined evento fastidiousness; he soon left politics to men whose bodies andminds were of coarser texture than his own, gave himself up to mereintellectual luxury, lost himself in the mazes of the old Academicphilosophy, and aspired to the glory of reviving the old Academiceloquence. His diction, affected and florid, but often singularlybeautiful and melodious, fascinated many young enthusiasts. He had notmerely disciples, but worshippers. His life was short; but he livedlong enough to become the founder of a new sect of English freethinkers, diametrically opposed in opinions and feelings to that sect offreethinkers of which Hobbes was the oracle. During many years theCharacteristics continued to be the Gospel of romantic and sentimentalunbelievers, while the Gospel of coldblooded and hardheaded unbelieverswas the Leviathan. 

The bill, so often brought in and so often lost, went through theCommons without a division, and was carried up to the Lords. It sooncame back with the long disputed clause altering the constitution of theCourt of the Lord High Steward. A strong party among the representativesof the people was still unwilling to grant any new privilege to thenobility; but the moment was critical. The misunderstanding whichhad arisen between the Houses touching the Recoinage Bill had producedinconveniences which might well alarm even a bold politician. It wasnecessary to purchase concession by concession. The Commons, by ahundred and ninety-two votes to a hundred and fifty, agreed to theamendment on which the Lords had, during four years, so obstinatelyinsisted; and the Lords in return immediately passed the Recoinage Billwithout any amendment. 

There had been much contention as to the time at which the new system ofprocedure in cases of high treason should come into operation; and thebill had once been lost in consequence of a dispute on this point. Manypersons were of opinion that the change ought not to take place till theclose of the war. It was notorious, they said, that the foreign enemywas abetted by too many traitors at home; and, at such a time, theseverity of the laws which protected the commonwealth against themachinations of bad citizens ought not to be relaxed. It was atlast determined that the new regulations should take effect on thetwenty-fifth of March, the first day, according to the old Calendar, ofthe year 1696. 

On the twenty-first of January the Recoinage Bill and the Bill forregulating Trials in cases of High Treason received the royal assent. Onthe following day the Commons repaired to Kensington on an errand byno means agreeable either to themselves or to the King. They were, asa body, fully resolved to support him, at whatever cost and at whateverhazard, against every foreign and domestic foe. But they were, as indeedevery assembly of five hundred and thirteen English gentlemen that couldby any process have been brought together must have been, jealous of thefavour which he showed to the friends of his youth. He had set his hearton placing the house of Bentinck on a level in wealth and splendour withthe houses of Howard and Seymour, of Russell and Cavendish. 

Some of the fairest hereditary domains of the Crown had been granted toPortland, not without murmuring on the part both of Whigs and Tories. Nothing had been done, it is true, which was not in conformity with theletter of the law and with a long series of precedents. Every Englishsovereign had from time immemorial considered the lands to which he hadsucceeded in virtue of his office as his private property. Every familythat had been great in England, from the De Veres down to the Hydes, had been enriched by royal deeds of gift. Charles the Second had carvedducal estates for his bastards out of his hereditary domain. Nor did theBill of Rights contain a word which could be construed to mean that theKing was not at perfect liberty to alienate any part of the estates ofthe Crown. At first, therefore, William's liberality to his countrymen, though it caused much discontent, called forth no remonstrance from theParliament. But he at length went too far. In 1695 he ordered the Lordsof the Treasury to make out a warrant granting to Portland a magnificentestate in Denbighshire. This estate was said to be worth more than ahundred thousand pounds. The annual income, therefore, can hardlyhave been less than six thousand pounds; and the annual rent which wasreserved to the Crown was only six and eightpence. This, however, wasnot the worst. With the property were inseparably connected extensiveroyalties, which the people of North Wales could not patiently seein the hands of any subject. More than a century before Elizabeth hadbestowed a part of the same territory on her favourite Leicester. Onthat occasion the population of Denbighshire had risen in arms; and, after much tumult and several executions, Leicester had thought itadvisable to resign his mistress's gift back to her. The opposition toPortland was less violent, but not less effective. Some of the chiefgentlemen of the principality made strong representations to theministers through whose offices the warrant had to pass, and at lengthbrought the subject under the consideration of the Lower House. Anaddress was unanimously voted requesting the King to stop the grant;Portland begged that he might not be the cause of a dispute between hismaster and the Parliament; and the King, though much mortified, yieldedto the general wish of the nation. [651]

This unfortunate affair, though it terminated without an open quarrel, left much sore feeling. The King was angry with the Commons, and stillmore angry with the Whig ministers who had not ventured to defend hisgrant. The loyal affection which the Parliament had testified to himduring the first days of the session had perceptibly cooled; and he wasalmost as unpopular as he had ever been, when an event took place whichsuddenly brought back to him the hearts of millions, and made him for atime as much the idol of the nation as he had been at the end of 1688. [652]

The plan of assassination which had been formed in the precedingspring had been given up in consequence of William's departure for theContinent. The plan of insurrection which had been formed in the summerhad been given up for want of help from France. But before the end ofthe autumn both plans were resumed. William had returned to England; andthe possibility of getting rid of him by a lucky shot or stab was againseriously discussed. The French troops had gone into winter quarters;and the force, which Charnock had in vain demanded while war was raginground Namur, might now be spared without inconvenience. Now, therefore, a plot was laid, more formidable than any that had yet threatenedthe throne and the life of William; or rather, as has more than oncehappened in our history, two plots were laid, one within the other. Theobject of the greater plot was an open insurrection, an insurrectionwhich was to be supported by a foreign army. In this plot almost all theJacobites of note were more or less concerned. Some laid in arms; somebought horses; some made lists of the servants and tenants in whom theycould place firm reliance. The less warlike members of the party couldat least take off bumpers to the King over the water, and intimate bysignificant shrugs and whispers that he would not be over the waterlong. It was universally remarked that the malecontents looked wiserthan usual when they were sober, and bragged more loudly than usual whenthey were drunk. [653] To the smaller plot, of which the object was themurder of William, only a few select traitors were privy. 

Each of these plots was under the direction of a leader speciallysent from Saint Germains. The more honourable mission was entrusted toBerwick. He was charged to communicate with the Jacobite nobility andgentry, to ascertain what force they could bring into the field, andto fix a time for the rising. He was authorised to assure them that theFrench government was collecting troops and transports at Calais, andthat, as soon as it was known there that a rebellion had broken out inEngland, his father would embark with twelve thousand veteran soldiers, and would be among them in a few hours. 

A more hazardous part was assigned to an emissary of lower rank, butof great address, activity and courage. This was Sir George Barclay, aScotch gentleman who had served with credit under Dundee, and who, when the war in the Highlands had ended, had retired to Saint Germains. Barclay was called into the royal closet, and received his orders fromthe royal lips. He was directed to steal across the Channel and torepair to London. He was told that a few select officers and soldiersshould speedily follow him by twos and threes. That they might have nodifficulty in finding him, he was to walk, on Mondays and Thursdays, inthe Piazza of Covent Garden after nightfall, with a white handkerchiefhanging from his coat pocket. He was furnished with a considerable sumof money, and with a commission which was not only signed but writtenfrom beginning to end by James himself. This commission authorised thebearer to do from time to time such acts of hostility against the Princeof Orange and that Prince's adherents as should most conduce to theservice of the King. What explanation of these very comprehensive wordswas orally given by James we are not informed. 

Lest Barclay's absence from Saint Germains should cause any suspicion, it was given out that his loose way of life had made it necessary forhim to put himself under the care of a surgeon at Paris. [654] He setout with eight hundred pounds in his portmanteau, hastened to the coast, and embarked on board of a privateer which was employed by the Jacobitesas a regular packet boat between France and England. This vesselconveyed him to a desolate spot in Romney Marsh. About half a milefrom the landing place a smuggler named Hunt lived on a dreary andunwholesome fen where he had no neighbours but a few rude shepherds. Hisdwelling was singularly well situated for a contraband traffic in Frenchwares. Cargoes of Lyons silk and Valenciennes lace sufficient to loadthirty packhorses had repeatedly been landed in that dismal solitudewithout attracting notice. But, since the Revolution, Hunt haddiscovered that of all cargoes a cargo of traitors paid best. His lonelyabode became the resort of men of high consideration, Earls and Barons, Knights and Doctors of Divinity. Some of them lodged many days underhis roof while waiting for a passage. A clandestine post was establishedbetween his house and London. The couriers were constantly going andreturning; they performed their journeys up and down on foot; but theyappeared to be gentlemen, and it was whispered that one of them was theson of a titled man. The letters from Saint Germains were few and small. Those directed to Saint Germains were numerous and bulky; they were madeup like parcels of millinery, and were buried in the morass till theywere called for by the privateer. 

Here Barclay landed in January 1696; and hence he took the roadto London. He was followed, a few days later, by a tall youth, whoconcealed his name, but who produced credentials of the highestauthority. This youth too proceeded to London. Hunt afterwardsdiscovered that his humble roof had had the honour of sheltering theDuke of Berwick. [655]

The part which Barclay had to perform was difficult and hazardous; andhe omitted no precaution. He had been little in London; and his face wasconsequently unknown to the agents of the government. Neverthelesshe had several lodgings; he disguised himself so well that his oldestfriends would not have known him by broad daylight; and yet he seldomventured into the streets except in the dark. His chief agent was a monkwho, under several names, heard confessions and said masses at the riskof his neck. This man intimated to some of the zealots with whom heconsorted a special agent of the royal family was to be spoken with inCovent Garden, on certain nights, at a certain hour, and might be knownby certain signs. [656] In this way Barclay became acquainted withseveral men fit for his purpose. The first persons to whom he fullyopened himself were Charnock and Parkyns. He talked with them about theplot which they and some of their friends had formed in the precedingspring against the life of William. Both Charnock and Parkyns declaredthat the scheme might easily be executed, that there was no want ofresolute hearts among the Royalists, and that all that was wanting wassome sign of His Majesty's approbation. 

Then Barclay produced his commission. He showed his two accomplices thatJames had expressly commanded all good Englishmen, not only to rise inarms, not only to make war on the usurping government, not only to seizeforts and towns, but also to do from time to time such other actsof hostility against the Prince of Orange as might be for the royalservice. These words, Barclay said, plainly authorised an attack on thePrince's person. Charnock and Parkyns were satisfied. How in truth wasit possible for them to doubt that James's confidential agent correctlyconstrued James's expressions? Nay, how was it possible for them tounderstand the large words of the commission in any sense but one, even if Barclay had not been there to act as commentator? If indeed thesubject had never been brought under James's consideration, it mightwell be thought that those words had dropped from his pen without anydefinite meaning. But he had been repeatedly apprised that some of hisfriends in England meditated a deed of blood, and that they were waitingonly for his approbation. They had importuned him to speak one word, to give one sign. He had long kept silence; and, now that he had brokensilence, he merely told them to do what ever might be beneficial tohimself and prejudicial to the usurper. They had his authority asplainly given as they could reasonably expect to have it given in such acase. [657]

All that remained was to find a sufficient number of courageous andtrustworthy assistants, to provide horses and weapons, and to fix thehour and the place of the slaughter. Forty or fifty men, it was thought, would be sufficient. Those troopers of James's guard who had alreadyfollowed Barclay across the Channel made up nearly half that number. James had himself seen some of these men before their departure fromSaint Germains, had given them money for their journey, had told them bywhat name each of them was to pass in England, had commanded them toact as they should be directed by Barclay, and had informed them whereBarclay was to be found and by what tokens he was to be known. [658]They were ordered to depart in small parties, and to assign differentreasons for going. Some were ill; some were weary of the service;Cassels, one of the most noisy and profane among them, announced that, since he could not get military promotion, he should enter at the Scotchcollege and study for a learned profession. Under such pretexts abouttwenty picked men left the palace of James, made their way by RomneyMarsh to London, and found their captain walking in the dim lamplight ofthe Piazza with the handkerchief hanging from his pocket. One of thesemen was Ambrose Rockwood, who held the rank of Brigadier, and who had ahigh reputation for courage and honour; another was Major John Bernardi, an adventurer of Genoese extraction, whose name has derived a melancholycelebrity from a punishment so strangely prolonged that it at lengthshocked a generation which could not remember his crime. [659]

It was in these adventurers from France that Barclay placed his chieftrust. In a moment of elation he once called them his Janissaries, andexpressed a hope that they would get him the George and Garter. Buttwenty more assassins at least were wanted. The conspirators probablyexpected valuable help from Sir John Friend, who had received aColonel's commission signed by James, and had been most active inenlisting men and providing arms against the day when the French shouldappear on the coast of Kent. The design was imparted to him; but hethought it so rash, and so likely to bring reproach and disaster on thegood cause, that he would lend no assistance to his friends, though hekept their secret religiously. [660] Charnock undertook to find eightbrave and trusty fellows. He communicated the design to Porter, not withBarclay's entire approbation; for Barclay appears to have thought thata tavern brawler, who had recently been in prison for swaggering drunkabout the streets and huzzaing in honour of the Prince of Wales, washardly to be trusted with a secret of such fearful import. Porterentered into the plot with enthusiasm, and promised to bring in otherswho would be useful. Among those whose help he engaged was his servantThomas Keyes. Keyes was a far more formidable conspirator than mighthave been expected from his station in life. The household troopsgenerally were devoted to William; but there was a taint of disaffectionamong the Blues. The chief conspirators had already been tamperingwith some Roman Catholics who were in that regiment; and Keyes wasexcellently qualified to bear a part in this work; for he had formerlybeen trumpeter of the corps, and, though he had quitted the service, hestill kept up an acquaintaince with some of the old soldiers in whosecompany he had lived at free quarter on the Somersetshire farmers afterthe battle of Sedgemoor. 

Parkyns, who was old and gouty, could not himself take a share in thework of death. But he employed himself in providing horses, saddles andweapons for his younger and more active accomplices. In this departmentof business he was assisted by Charles Cranburne, a person who had longacted as a broker between Jacobite plotters and people who dealt incutlery and firearms. Special orders were given by Barclay that theswords should be made rather for stabbing than for slashing. Barclayhimself enlisted Edward Lowick, who had been a major in the Irish army, and who had, since the capitulation of Limerick, been living obscurelyin London. The monk who had been Barclay's first confidant recommendedtwo busy Papists, Richard Fisher and Christopher Knightley; and thisrecommendation was thought sufficient. Knightley drew in Edward King, aRoman Catholic gentleman of hot and restless temper; and King procuredthe assistance of a French gambler and bully named De la Rue. [661]

Meanwhile the heads of the conspiracy held frequent meetings at treasontaverns, for the purpose of settling a plan of operations. Severalschemes were proposed, applauded, and, on full consideration, abandoned. At one time it was thought that an attack on Kensington House at deadof night might probably be successful. The outer wall might easily bescaled. If once forty armed men were in the garden, the palace wouldsoon be stormed or set on fire. Some were of opinion that it would bebest to strike the blow on a Sunday as William went from Kensingtonto attend divine service at the chapel of Saint James's Palace. Themurderers might assemble near the spot where Apsley House and HamiltonPlace now stand. Just as the royal coach passed out of Hyde Park, andwas about to enter what has since been called the Green Park, thirtyof the conspirators, well mounted, might fall on the guards. The guardswere ordinarily only five and twenty. They would be taken completelyby surprise; and probably half of them would be shot or cut down beforethey could strike a blow. Meanwhile ten or twelve resolute men on footwould stop the carriage by shooting the horses, and would then withoutdifficulty despatch the King. At last the preference was given to a planoriginally sketched by Fisher and put into shape by Porter. William wasin the habit of going every Saturday from Kensington to hunt in RichmondPark. There was then no bridge over the Thames between London andKingston. The King therefore went, in a coach escorted by some of hisbody guards, through Turnham Green to the river. There he took boat, crossed the water and found another coach and another set of guardsready to receive him on the Surrey side. The first coach and the firstset of guards awaited his return on the northern bank. The conspiratorsascertained with great precision the whole order of these journeys, andcarefully examined the ground on both sides of the Thames. They thoughtthat they should attack the King with more advantage on the Middlesexthan on the Surrey bank, and when he was returning than when he wasgoing. For, when he was going, he was often attended to the water sideby a great retinue of lords and gentlemen; but on his return he had onlyhis guards about him. The place and time were fixed. The place was to bea narrow and winding lane leading from the landingplace on the northof the rover to Turnham Green. The spot may still be easily found. The ground has since been drained by trenches. But in the seventeenthcentury it was a quagmire, through which the royal coach was withdifficulty tugged at a foot's pace. The time was to be the afternoonof Saturday the fifteenth of February. On that day the Forty were toassemble in small parties at public houses near the Green. When thesignal was given that the coach was approaching they were to take horseand repair to their posts. As the cavalcade came up this lane Charnockwas to attack the guards in the rear, Rockwood on one flank, Porter onthe other. Meanwhile Barclay, with eight trusty men, was to stop thecoach and to do the deed. That no movement of the King might escapenotice, two orderlies were appointed to watch the palace. One of thesemen, a bold and active Fleming, named Durant, was especially charged tokeep Barclay well informed. The other, whose business was to communicatewith Charnock, was a ruffian named Chambers, who had served in the Irisharmy, had received a severe wound in the breast at the Boyne, and, onaccount of that wound, bore a savage personal hatred to William. [662]

While Barclay was making all his arrangements for the assassination, Berwick was endeavouring to persuade the Jacobite aristocracy to risein arms. But this was no easy task. Several consultations were held;and there was one great muster of the party under the pretence of amasquerade, for which tickets were distributed among the initiatedat one guinea each. [663] All ended however in talking, singing anddrinking. Many men of rank and fortune indeed declared that they woulddraw their swords for their rightful Sovereign as soon as their rightfulSovereign was in the island with a French army; and Berwick had beenempowered to assure there that a French army should be sent as soon asthey had drawn the sword. But between what they asked and what hewas authorised to grant there was a difference which admitted of nocompromise. Lewis, situated as he was, would not risk ten or twelvethousand excellent soldiers on the mere faith of promises. Similarpromises had been made in 1690; and yet, when the fleet of Tourville hadappeared on the coast of Devonshire, the western counties had risen asone man in defence of the government, and not a single malecontent haddared to utter a whisper in favour of the invaders. Similar promises hadbeen made in 1692; and to the confidence which had been placed in thosepromises was to be attributed the great disaster of La Hogue. TheFrench King would not be deceived a third time. He would gladly help theEnglish royalists; but he must first see them help themselves. Therewas much reason in this; and there was reason also in what the Jacobitesurged on the other side. If, they said, they were to rise, without asingle disciplined regiment to back them, against an usurper supportedby a regular army, they should all be cut to pieces before the news thatthey were up could reach Versailles. As Berwick could hold out no hopethat there would be an invasion before there was an insurrection, andas his English friends were immovable in their determination that thereshould be no insurrection till there was an invasion, he had nothingmore to do here, and became impatient to depart. 

He was the more impatient to depart because the fifteenth of Februarydrew near. For he was in constant communication with Barclay, and wasperfectly apprised of all the details of the crime which was to beperpetrated on that day. He was generally considered as a man of sturdyand even ungracious integrity. But to such a degree had his sense ofright and wrong been perverted by his zeal for the interests of hisfamily, and by his respect for the lessons of his priests, that he didnot, as he has himself ingenuously confessed, think that he lay underany obligation to dissuade the assassins from the execution of theirpurpose. He had indeed only one objection to their design; and thatobjection he kept to himself. It was simply this, that all who wereconcerned were very likely to be hanged. That, however, was theiraffair; and, if they chose to run such a risk in the good cause, it wasnot his business to discourage them. His mission was quite distinct fromtheirs; he was not to act with them; and he had no inclination to sufferwith then. He therefore hastened down to Romney Marsh, and crossed toCalais. [664]

At Calais he found preparations making for a descent on Kent. Troopsfilled the town; transports filled the port. Boufflers had been orderedto repair thither from Flanders, and to take the command. James himselfwas daily expected. In fact he had already left Saint Germains. Berwick, however, would not wait. He took the road to Paris, met his father atClermont, and made a full report of the state of things in England. Hisembassy had failed; the Royalist nobility and gentry seemed resolvednot to rise till a French army was in the island; but there was still ahope; news would probably come within a few days that the usurper wasno more; and such news would change the whole aspect of affairs. Jamesdetermined to go on to Calais, and there to await the event ofBarclay's plot. Berwick hastened to Versailles for the purpose of givingexplanations to Lewis. What the nature of the explanations was we knowfrom Berwick's own narrative. He plainly told the French King that asmall band of loyal men would in a short time make an attempt on thelife of the great enemy of France. The next courier might bring tidingsof an event which would probably subvert the English government anddissolve the European coalition. It might have been thought that aprince who ostentatiously affected the character of a devout Christianand of a courteous knight would instantly have taken measures forconveying to his rival a caution which perhaps might still arrive intime, and would have severely reprimanded the guests who had so grosslyabused his hospitality. Such, however, was not the conduct of Lewis. Hadhe been asked to give his sanction to a murder he would probablyhave refused with indignation. But he was not moved to indignation bylearning that, without his sanction, a crime was likely to be committedwhich would be far more beneficial to his interests than ten suchvictories as that of Landen. He sent down orders to Calais that hisfleet should be in such readiness as might enable him to take advantageof the great crisis which he anticipated. At Calais James waited withstill more impatience for the signal that his nephew was no more. Thatsignal was to be given by a fire, of which the fuel was already preparedon the cliffs of Kent, and which would be visible across the straits. [665]

But a peculiar fate has, in our country, always attended suchconspiracies as that of Barclay and Charnock. The English regardassassination, and have during some ages regarded it, with a loathingpeculiar to themselves. So English indeed is this sentiment that itcannot even now be called Irish, and till a recent period, it was notScotch. In Ireland to this day the villain who shoots at his enemy frombehind a hedge is too often protected from justice by public sympathy. In Scotland plans of assassination were often, during the sixteenthand seventeenth centuries, successfully executed, though known to greatnumbers of persons. The murders of Beaton, of Rizzio, of Darnley, ofMurray, of Sharpe, are conspicuous instances. The royalists who murderedLisle in Switzerland were Irishmen; the royalists who murdered Ascham atMadrid were Irishmen; the royalists who murdered Dorislaus at the Haguewere Scotchmen. In England, as soon as such a design ceases to be asecret hidden in the recesses of one gloomy and ulcerated heart, therisk of detection and failure becomes extreme. Felton and Bellinghamreposed trust in no human being; and they were therefore able toaccomplish their evil purposes. But Babington's conspiracy againstElizabeth, Fawkes's conspiracy against James, Gerard's conspiracyagainst Cromwell, the Rye House conspiracy, the Cato Street conspiracy, were all discovered, frustrated and punished. In truth such a conspiracyis here exposed to equal danger from the good and from the bad qualitiesof the conspirators. Scarcely any Englishman, not utterly destitute ofconscience and honour, will engage in a plot for slaying an unsuspectingfellow creature; and a wretch who has neither conscience nor honour islikely to think much on the danger which he incurs by being true to hisassociates, and on the rewards which he may obtain by betraying them. There are, it is true, persons in whom religious or political fanaticismhas destroyed all moral sensibility on one particular point, and yet hasleft that sensibility generally unimpaired. Such a person was Digby. Hehad no scruple about blowing King, Lords and Commons into the air. Yetto his accomplices he was religiously and chivalrously faithful; norcould even the fear of the rack extort from him one word to theirprejudice. But this union of depravity and heroism is very rare. Thevast majority of men are either not vicious enough or not virtuousenough to be loyal and devoted members of treacherous and cruelconfederacies; and, if a single member should want either the necessaryvice or the necessary virtue, the whole confederacy is in danger. Tobring together in one body forty Englishmen, all hardened cutthroats, and yet all so upright and generous that neither the hope of opulencenor the dread of the gallows can tempt any one of them to be false tothe rest, has hitherto been found, and will, it is to be hoped, alwaysbe found impossible. 

There were among Barclay's followers both men too bad and men too goodto be trusted with such a secret as his. The first whose heart failedhim was Fisher. Even before the time and place of the crime had beenfixed, he obtained an audience of Portland, and told that lord that adesign was forming against the King's life. Some days later Fisher cameagain with more precise intelligence. But his character was not suchas entitled him to much credit; and the knavery of Fuller, of Young, ofWhitney and of Taffe, had made men of sense slow to believe stories ofplots. Portland, therefore, though in general very easily alarmed wherethe safety of his master and friend was concerned, seems to have thoughtlittle about the matter. But, on the evening of the fourteenth ofFebruary, he received a visit from a person whose testimony he could nottreat lightly. This was a Roman Catholic gentleman of known courage andhonour, named Pendergrass. He had, on the preceding day, come up to townfrom Hampshire, in consequence of a pressing summons from Porter, who, dissolute and unprincipled as he was, had to Pendergrass been amost kind friend, indeed almost a father. In a Jacobite insurrectionPendergrass would probably have been one of the foremost. But he learnedwith horror that he was expected to bear a part in a wicked and shamefuldeed. He found himself in one of those situations which most cruellytorture noble and sensitive natures. What was he to do? Was he tocommit a murder? Was he to suffer a murder which he could prevent to becommitted? Yet was he to betray one who, however culpable, had loadedhim with benefits? Perhaps it might be possible to save William withoutharming Porter? Pendergrass determined to make the attempt. "My Lord, "he said to Portland, "as you value King William's life, do not lethim hunt tomorrow. He is the enemy of my religion; yet my religionconstrains me to give him this caution. But the names of theconspirators I am resolved to conceal; some of them are my friends; oneof them especially is my benefactor; and I will not betray them. "

Portland went instantly to the King; but the King received theintelligence very coolly, and seemed determined not to be frightenedout of a good day's sport by such an idle story. Portland argued andimplored in vain. He was at last forced to threaten that he wouldimmediately make the whole matter public, unless His Majesty wouldconsent to remain within doors during the next day; and this threat wassuccessful. [666]

Saturday the fifteenth came. The Forty were all ready to mount, whenthey received intelligence from the orderlies who watched KensingtonHouse that the King did not mean to hunt that morning. "The fox, " saidChambers, with vindictive bitterness, "keeps his earth. " Then he openedhis shirt; showed the great scar in his breast, and vowed revenge onWilliam. 

The first thought of the conspirators was that their design had beendetected. But they were soon reassured. It was given out that theweather had kept the King at home; and indeed the day was cold andstormy. There was no sign of agitation at the palace. No extraordinaryprecaution was taken. No arrest was made. No ominous whisper washeard at the coffeehouses. The delay was vexatious; but Saturday thetwenty-second would do as well. 

But, before Saturday the twenty-second arrived, a third informer, Dela Rue, had presented himself at the palace. His way of life did notentitle him to much respect; but his story agreed so exactly with whathad been said by Fisher and Pendergrass that even William began tobelieve that there was real danger. 

Very late in the evening of Friday the twenty-first, Pendergrass, whohad as yet disclosed much less than either of the other informers, butwhose single word was worth much more than their joint oath, was sentfor to the royal closet. The faithful Portland and the gallant Cuttswere the only persons who witnessed the singular interview between theKing and his generous enemy. William, with courtesy and animationwhich he rarely showed, but which he never showed without making adeep impression, urged Pendergrass to speak out. "You are a man of trueprobity and honour; I am deeply obliged to you; but you must feel thatthe same considerations which have induced you to tell us so much oughtto induce you to tell us something more. The cautions which you have asyet given can only make me suspect every body that comes near me. Theyare sufficient to embitter my life, but not sufficient to preserve it. You must let me know the names of these men. " During more than half anhour the King continued to entreat and Pendergrass to refuse. At lastPendergrass said that he would give the information which was required, if he could be assured that it would be used only for the prevention ofthe crime, and not for the destruction of the criminals. "I give youmy word of honour, " said William, "that your evidence shall not be usedagainst any person without your own free consent. " It was longpast midnight when Pendergrass wrote down the names of the chiefconspirators. 

While these things were passing at Kensington, a large party of theassassins were revelling at a Jacobite tavern in Maiden Lane. Here theyreceived their final orders for the morrow. "Tomorrow or never, " saidKing. "Tomorrow, boys, " cried Cassels with a curse, "we shall have theplunder of the field. " The morrow came. All was ready; the horseswere saddled; the pistols were loaded; the swords were sharpened; theorderlies were on the alert; they early sent intelligence from thepalace that the King was certainly going a hunting; all the usualpreparations had been made; a party of guards had been sent round byKingston Bridge to Richmond; the royal coaches, each with six horses, had gone from the stables at Charing Cross to Kensington. The chiefmurderers assembled in high glee at Porter's lodgings. Pendergrass, who, by the King's command, appeared among them, was greeted with ferociousmirth. "Pendergrass, " said Porter, "you are named one of the eight whoare to do his business. I have a musquetoon for you that will carryeight balls. " "Mr. Pendergrass, " said King, "pray do not be afraid ofsmashing the glass windows. " From Porter's lodgings the party adjournedto the Blue Posts in Spring Gardens, where they meant to take somerefreshment before they started for Turnham Green. They were at tablewhen a message came from an orderly that the King had changed his mindand would not hunt; and scarcely had they recovered from their firstsurprise at this ominous news, when Keyes, who had been out scoutingamong his old comrades, arrived with news more ominous still. "Thecoaches have returned to Charing Cross. The guards that were sent roundto Richmond have just come back to Kensington at full gallop, the flanksof the horses all white with foam. I have had a word with one ofthe Blues. He told me that strange things are muttered. " Then thecountenances of the assassins fell; and their hearts died within them. Porter made a feeble attempt to disguise his uneasiness. He took upan orange and squeezed it. "What cannot be done one day may be doneanother. Come, gentlemen, before we part let us have one glass to thesqueezing of the rotten orange. " The squeezing of the rotten orange wasdrunk; and the company dispersed. [667]

A few hours elapsed before all the conspirators abandoned all hope. Someof them derived comfort from a report that the King had taken physic, and that this was his only reason for not going to Richmond. If it wereso, the blow might still be struck. Two Saturdays had been unpropitious. But Sunday was at hand. One of the plans which had formerly beendiscussed and abandoned might be resumed. The usurper might be set uponat Hyde Park Corner on his way to his chapel. Charnock was ready for anyenterprise however desperate. If the hunt was up, it was better to diebiting and scratching to the last than to be worried without resistanceor revenge. He assembled some of his accomplices at one of the numeroushouses at which he had lodgings, and plied there hard with healths tothe King, to the Queen, to the Prince, and to the Grand Monarch, as theycalled Lewis. But the terror and dejection of the gang were beyond thepower of wine; and so many had stolen away that those who were leftcould effect nothing. In the course of the afternoon it was known thatthe guards had been doubled at the palace; and soon after nightfallmessengers from the Secretary of State's office were hurrying to and frowith torches through the streets, accompanied by files and musketeers. Before the dawn of Sunday Charnock was in custody. A little later, Rockwood and Bernardi were found in bed at a Jacobite alehouse on TowerHill. Seventeen more traitors were seized before noon; and three of theBlues were put under arrest. That morning a Council was held; and, assoon as it rose, an express was sent off to call home some regimentsfrom Flanders; Dorset set out for Sussex, of which he was LordLieutenant; Romney, who was Warden of the Cinque Ports, started for thecoast of Kent; and Russell hastened down the Thames to take the commandof the fleet. In the evening the Council sate again. Some of theprisoners were examined and committed. The Lord Mayor was in attendance, was informed of what had been discovered, and was specially charged tolook well to the peace of the capital. [668]

On Monday morning all the trainbands of the City were under arms. TheKing went in state to the House of Lords, sent for the Commons, andfrom the throne told the Parliament that, but for the protection of agracious Providence, he should at that moment have been a corpse, andthe kingdom would have been invaded by a French army. The danger ofinvasion, he added, was still great; but he had already given suchorders as would, he hoped, suffice for the protection of the realm. Sometraitors were in custody; warrants were out against others; he shoulddo his part in this emergency; and he relied on the Houses to do theirs. [669]

The Houses instantly voted a joint address in which they thankfullyacknowledged the divine goodness which had preserved him to his people, and implored him to take more than ordinary care of his person. Theyconcluded by exhorting him to seize and secure all persons whom heregarded as dangerous. 

On the same day two important bills were brought into the Commons. Byone the Habeas Corpus Act was suspended. The other provided that theParliament should not be dissolved by the death of William. Sir RowlandGwyn, an honest country gentleman, made a motion of which he did notat all foresee the important consequences. He proposed that the membersshould enter into an association for the defence of their Sovereign andtheir country. Montague, who of all men was the quickest at taking andimproving a hint, saw how much such an association would strengthen thegovernment and the Whig party. [670] An instrument was immediatelydrawn tip, by which the representatives of the people, each for himself, solemnly recognised William as rightful and lawful King, and boundthemselves to stand by him and by each other against James and James'sadherents. Lastly they vowed that, if His Majesty's life should beshortened by violence, they would avenge him signally on his murderers, and would, with one heart, strenuously support the order of successionsettled by the Bill of Rights. It was ordered that the House shouldbe called over the next morning. [671] The attendance was consequentlygreat; the Association, engrossed on parchment, was on the table; andthe members went up, county by county, to sign their names. [672]

The King's speech, the joint address of both Houses, the Associationframed by the Commons, and a proclamation, containing a list ofthe conspirators and offering a reward of a thousand pounds for theapprehension of any one of them, were soon cried in all the streets ofthe capital and carried out by all the postbags. Wherever the news cameit raised the whole country. Those two hateful words, assassination andinvasion, acted like a spell. No impressment was necessary. The seamencame forth from their hiding places by thousands to man the fleet. Onlythree days after the King had appealed to the nation, Russell sailed outof the Thames with one great squadron. Another was ready for action atSpithead. The militia of all the maritime counties from the Wash tothe Land's End was under arms. For persons accused of offences merelypolitical there was generally much sympathy. But Barclay's assassinswere hunted like wolves by the whole population. The abhorrence whichthe English have, through many generations, felt for domiciliary visits, and for all those impediments which the police of continental statesthrows in the way of travellers, was for a time suspended. The gates ofthe City of London were kept many hours closed while a strict search wasmade within. The magistrates of almost every walled town in the kingdomfollowed the example of the capital. On every highway parties of armedmen were posted with orders to stop passengers of suspicious appearance. During a few days it was hardly possible to perform a journey without apassport, or to procure posthorses without the authority of a justiceof the peace. Nor was any voice raised against these precautions. Thecommon people indeed were, if possible, more eager than the publicfunctionaries to bring the traitors to justice. This eagerness mayperhaps be in part ascribed to the great rewards promised by the royalproclamation. The hatred which every good Protestant felt for Popishcutthroats was not a little strengthened by the songs in which thestreet poets celebrated the lucky hackney coachman who had caughthis traitor, had received his thousand pounds, and had set up as agentleman. [673] The zeal of the populace could in some places hardlybe kept within the limits of the law. At the country seat of Parkynsin Warwickshire, arms and accoutrements sufficient to equip a troop ofcavalry were found. As soon as this was known, a furious mob assembled, pulled down the house and laid the gardens utterly waste. [674] Parkynshimself was tracked to a garret in the Temple. Porter and Keyes, whohad fled into Surrey, were pursued by the hue and cry, stopped by thecountry people near Leatherhead, and, after some show of resistance, secured and sent to prison. Friend was found hidden in the house of aQuaker. Knightley was caught in the dress of a fine lady, and recognisedin spite of his patches and paint. In a few days all the chiefconspirators were in custody except Barclay, who succeeded in making hisescape to France. 

At the same time some notorious malecontents were arrested, and weredetained for a time on suspicion. Old Roger Lestrange, now in hiseightieth year, was taken up. Ferguson was found hidden under a bedin Gray's Inn Lane, and was, to the general joy, locked up in Newgate. [675] Meanwhile a special commission was issued for the trial of thetraitors. There was no want of evidence. For, of the conspirators whohad been seized, ten or twelve were ready to save themselves by bearingwitness against their associates. None had been deeper in guilt, and none shrank with more abject terror from death, than Porter. Thegovernment consented to spare him, and thus obtained, not only hisevidence, but the much more respectable evidence of Pendergrass. Pendergrass was in no danger; he had committed no offence; his characterwas fair; and his testimony would have far greater weight with a jurythan the testimony of a crowd of approvers swearing for their necks. Buthe had the royal word of honour that he should not be a witness withouthis own consent; and he was fully determined not to be a witness unlesshe were assured of Porter's safety. Porter was now safe; and Pendergrasshad no longer any scruple about relating the whole truth. 

Charnock, King and Keyes were set first to the bar. The Chiefs of thethree Courts of Common Law and several other judges were on the bench;and among the audience were many members of both Houses of Parliament. 

It was the eleventh of March. The new Act which regulated theprocedure in cases of high treason was not to come into force tillthe twenty-fifth. The culprits urged that, as the Legislature had, bypassing that Act, recognised the justice of allowing them to see theirindictment, and to avail themselves of the assistance of an advocate, the tribunal ought either to grant them what the highest authority haddeclared to be a reasonable indulgence, or to defer the trial for afortnight. The judges, however, would consent to no delay. They havetherefore been accused by later writers of using the mere letter ofthe law in order to destroy men who, if that law had been construedaccording to its spirit, might have had some chance of escape. Thisaccusation is unjust. The judges undoubtedly carried the real intentionof the Legislature into effect; and, for whatever injustice wascommitted, the Legislature, and not the judges, ought to be heldaccountable. The words, "twenty-fifth of March, " had not slipped intothe Act by mere inadvertence. All parties in Parliament had long beenagreed as to the principle of the new regulations. The only matter aboutwhich there was any dispute was the time at which those regulationsshould take effect. After debates extending through several sessions, after repeated divisions with various results, a compromise had beenmade; and it was surely not for the Courts to alter the terms of thatcompromise. It may indeed be confidently affirmed that, if the Houseshad foreseen the Assassination Plot, they would have fixed, not anearlier, but a later day for the commencement of the new system. Undoubtedly the Parliament, and especially the Whig party, deservedserious blame. For, if the old rules of procedure gave no unfairadvantage to the Crown, there was no reason for altering them; and if, as was generally admitted, they did give an unfair advantage to theCrown, and that against a defendant on trial for his life, they oughtnot to have been suffered to continue in force a single day. But noblame is due to the tribunals for not acting in direct opposition bothto the letter and to the spirit of the law. 

The government might indeed have postponed the trials till the new Actcame into force; and it would have been wise, as well as right, to doso; for the prisoners would have gained nothing by the delay. The caseagainst them was one on which all the ingenuity of the Inns of Courtcould have made no impression. Porter, Pendergrass, De la Rue and othersgave evidence which admitted of no answer. Charnock said the very littlethat he had to say with readiness and presence of mind. The jury foundall the defendants guilty. It is not much to the honour of that age thatthe announcement of the verdict was received with loud huzzas by thecrowd which surrounded the Courthouse. Those huzzas were renewed whenthe three unhappy men, having heard their doom, were brought forth undera guard. [676]

Charnock had hitherto shown no sign of flinching; but when he was againin his cell his fortitude gave way. He begged hard for mercy. Hewould be content, he said, to pass the rest of his days in an easyconfinement. He asked only for his life. In return for his life, hepromised to discover all that he knew of the schemes of the Jacobitesagainst the government. If it should appear that he prevaricated or thathe suppressed any thing, he was willing to undergo the utmost rigourof the law. This offer produced much excitement, and some difference ofopinion, among the councillors of William. But the King decided, as insuch cases he seldom failed to decide, wisely and magnanimously. Hesaw that the discovery of the Assassination Plot had changed the wholeposture of affairs. His throne, lately tottering, was fixed on animmovable basis. His popularity had risen impetuously to as great aheight as when he was on his march from Torbay to London. Many whohad been out of humour with his administration, and who had, in theirspleen, held some communication with Saint Germains, were shocked tofind that they had been, in some sense, leagued with murderers. He wouldnot drive such persons to despair. He would not even put them to theblush. Not only should they not be punished; they should not undergo thehumiliation of being pardoned. He would not know that they had offended. Charnock was left to his fate. [677] When he found that he had no chanceof being received as a deserter, he assumed the dignity of a martyr, andplayed his part resolutely to the close. That he might bid farewell tothe world with a better grace, he ordered a fine new coat to be hangedin, and was very particular on his last day about the powdering andcurling of his wig. [678] Just before he was turned off, he deliveredto the Sheriffs a paper in which he avowed that he had conspired againstthe life of the Prince of Orange, but solemnly denied that James hadgiven any commission authorising assassination. The denial was doubtlessliterally correct; but Charnock did not deny, and assuredly could notwith truth have denied, that he had seen a commission written and signedby James, and containing words which might without any violence beconstrued, and which were, by all to whom they were shown, actuallyconstrued, to authorise the murderous ambuscade of Turnham Green. 

Indeed Charnock, in another paper, which is still in existence, but hasnever been printed, held very different language. He plainly said that, for reasons too obvious to be mentioned, he could not tell thewhole truth in the paper which he had delivered to the Sheriffs. Heacknowledged that the plot in which he had been engaged seemed, evento many loyal subjects, highly criminal. They called him assassinand murderer. Yet what had he done more than had been done by MuciusScaevola? Nay, what had he done more than had been done by every bodywho bore arms against the Prince of Orange? If an array of twentythousand men had suddenly landed in England and surprised the usurper, this would have been called legitimate war. Did the difference betweenwar and assassination depend merely on the number of persons engaged?What then was the smallest number which could lawfully surprise anenemy? Was it five thousand, or a thousand, or a hundred? Jonathan andhis armourbearer were only two. Yet they made a great slaughter of thePhilistines. Was that assassination? It cannot, said Charnock, be themere act, it must be the cause, that makes killing assassination. Itfollowed that it was not assassination to kill one, --and here thedying man gave a loose to all his hatred, --who had declared a war ofextermination against loyal subjects, who hung, drew and quartered everyman who stood up for the right, and who had laid waste England toenrich the Dutch. Charnock admitted that his enterprise would have beenunjustifiable if it had not been authorised by James; but he maintainedthat it had been authorised, not indeed expressly, but by implication. His Majesty had indeed formerly prohibited similar attempts; buthad prohibited them, not as in themselves criminal, but merely asinexpedient at this or that conjuncture of affairs. Circumstances hadchanged. The prohibition might therefore reasonably be considered aswithdrawn. His Majesty's faithful subjects had then only to look tothe words of his commission; and those words, beyond all doubt, fullywarranted an attack on the person of the usurper. [679]

King and Keyes suffered with Charnock. King behaved with firmness anddecency. He acknowledged his crime, and said that he repented of it. Hethought it due to the Church of which he was a member, and on which hisconduct had brought reproach, to declare that he had been misled, not byany casuistry about tyrannicide, but merely by the violence of hisown evil passions. Poor Keyes was in an agony of terror. His tears andlamentations moved the pity of some of the spectators. It was said atthe time, and it has often since been repeated, that a servant drawninto crime by a master was a proper object of royal clemency. Butthose who have blamed the severity with which Keyes was treatedhave altogether omitted to notice the important circumstance whichdistinguished his case from that of every other conspirator. He had beenone of the Blues. He had kept up to the last an intercourse with hisold comrades. On the very day fixed for the murder he had contrived tomingle with them and to pick up intelligence from them. The regiment hadbeen so deeply infected with disloyalty that it had been found necessaryto confine some men and to dismiss many more. Surely, if any examplewas to be made, it was proper to make an example of the agent by whoseinstrumentality the men who meant to shoot the King communicated withthe men whose business was to guard him. 

Friend was tried next. His crime was not of so black a dye as that ofthe three conspirators who had just suffered. He had indeed invitedforeign enemies to invade the realm, and had made preparationsfor joining them. But, though he had been privy to the design ofassassination, he had not been a party to it. His large fortune however, and the use which he was well known to have made of it, marked him outas a fit object for punishment. He, like Charnock, asked for counsel, and, like Charnock, asked in vain. The judges could not relax the law;and the Attorney General would not postpone the trial. The proceedingsof that day furnish a strong argument in favour of the Act from thebenefit of which Friend was excluded. It is impossible to read themover at this distance of time without feeling compassion for a silly illeducated man, unnerved by extreme danger, and opposed to cool, astuteand experienced antagonists. Charnock had defended himself and thosewho were tried with him as well as any professional advocate could havedone. But poor Friend was as helpless as a child. He could do littlemore than exclaim that he was a Protestant, and that the witnessesagainst him were Papists, who had dispensations from their priests forperjury, and who believed that to swear away the lives of heretics wasa meritorious work. He was so grossly ignorant of law and history as toimagine that the statute of treasons, passed in the reign of Edward theThird, at a time when there was only one religion in Western Europe, contained a clause providing that no Papist should be a witness, andactually forced the Clerk of the Court to read the whole Act frombeginning to end. About his guilt it was impossible that there could bea doubt in any rational mind. He was convicted; and he would have beenconvicted if he had been allowed the privileges for which he asked. 

Parkyns came next. He had been deeply concerned in the worst part ofthe plot, and was, in one respect, less excusable than any of hisaccomplices; for they were all nonjurors; and he had taken the oathsto the existing government. He too insisted that he ought to be triedaccording to the provisions of the new Act. But the counsel for theCrown stood on their extreme right; and his request was denied. As hewas a man of considerable abilities, and had been bred to the bar, heprobably said for himself all that counsel could have said for him;and that all amounted to very little. He was found guilty, and receivedsentence of death on the evening of the twenty-fourth of March, withinsix hours of the time when the law of which he had vainly demanded thebenefit was to come into force. [680]

The execution of the two knights was eagerly expected by the populationof London. The States General were informed by their correspondent that, of all sights, that in which the English most delighted was a hanging, and that, of all hangings within the memory of the oldest man, that ofFriend and Parkyns excited the greatest interest. The multitude had beenincensed against Friend by reports touching the exceeding badness of thebeer which he brewed. It was even rumoured that he had, in his zeal forthe Jacobite cause, poisoned all the casks which he had furnished to thenavy. An innumerable crowd accordingly assembled at Tyburn. Scaffoldinghad been put up which formed an immense amphitheatre round the gallows. On this scaffolding the wealthier spectators stood, row above row; andexpectation was at the height when it was announced that the show wasdeferred. The mob broke up in bad humour, and not without many fightsbetween those who had given money for their places and those who refusedto return it. [681]

The cause of this severe disappointment was a resolution suddenly passedby the Commons. A member had proposed that a Committee should be sentto the Tower with authority to examine the prisoners, and to hold outto them the hope that they might, by a full and ingenuous confession, obtain the intercession of the House. The debate appears, from thescanty information which has come down to us, to have been a verycurious one. Parties seemed to have changed characters. It might havebeen expected that the Whigs would have been inexorably severe, andthat, if there was any tenderness for the unhappy men, that tendernesswould have been found among the Tories. But in truth many of the Whigshoped that they might, by sparing two criminals who had no power to domischief, be able to detect and destroy numerous criminals high in rankand office. On the other hand, every man who had ever had any dealingsdirect or indirect with Saint Germains, or who took an interest in anyperson likely to have had such dealings, looked forward with dread tothe disclosures which the captives might, under the strong terrors ofdeath, be induced to make. Seymour, simply because he had gone furtherin treason than almost any other member of the House, was louder thanany other member of the House in exclaiming against all indulgenceto his brother traitors. Would the Commons usurp the most sacredprerogative of the Crown? It was for His Majesty, and not for them, tojudge whether lives justly forfeited could be without danger spared. TheWhigs however carried their point. A Committee, consisting of all thePrivy Councillors in the House, set off instantly for Newgate. Friendand Parkyns were interrogated, but to no purpose. They had, aftersentence had been passed on them, shown at first some symptoms ofweakness; but their courage had been fortified by the exhortations ofnonjuring divines who had been admitted to the prison. The rumourwas that Parkyns would have given way but for the entreaties of hisdaughter, who adjured him to suffer like a man for the good cause. Thecriminals acknowledged that they had done the acts of which they hadbeen convicted, but, with a resolution which is the more respectablebecause it seems to have sprung, not from constitutional hardihood, butfrom sentiments of honour and religion, refused to say any thing whichcould compromise others. [682]

In a few hours the crowd again assembled at Tyburn; and this time thesightseers were not defrauded of their amusement. They saw indeedone sight which they had not expected, and which produced a greatersensation than the execution itself. Jeremy Collier and two othernonjuring divines of less celebrity, named Cook and Snatt, had attendedthe prisoners in Newgate, and were in the cart under the gallows. Whenthe prayers were over, and just before the hangman did his office, thethree schismatical priests stood up, and laid their hands on the headsof the dying men who continued to kneel. Collier pronounced a form ofabsolution taken from the service for the Visitation of the Sick, andhis brethren exclaimed "Amen!"

This ceremony raised a great outcry; and the outcry became louderwhen, a few hours after the execution, the papers delivered by the twotraitors to the Sheriffs were made public. It had been supposed thatParkyns at least would express some repentance for the crime which hadbrought him to the gallows. Indeed he had, before the Committee of theCommons, owned that the Assassination Plot could not be justified. But, in his last declaration, he avowed his share in that plot, not onlywithout a word indicating remorse, but with something which resembledexultation. Was this a man to be absolved by Christian divines, absolvedbefore the eyes of tens of thousands, absolved with rites evidentlyintended to attract public attention, with rites of which there was notrace in the Book of Common Prayer or in the practice of the Church ofEngland?

In journals, pamphlets and broadsides, the insolence of the threeLevites, as they were called, was sharply reprehended. Warrants weresoon out. Cook and Snatt were taken and imprisoned; but Collier was ableto conceal himself, and, by the help of one of the presses which were atthe service of his party, sent forth from his hiding place a defence ofhis conduct. He declared that he abhorred assassination as much as anyof those who railed against him; and his general character warrants usin believing that this declaration was perfectly sincere. But therash act into which he had been hurried by party spirit furnished hisadversaries with very plausible reasons for questioning his sincerity. A crowd of answers to his defence appeared. Preeminent among them inimportance was a solemn manifesto signed by the two Archbishops and byall the Bishops who were then in London, twelve in number. Even Creweof Durham and Sprat of Rochester set their names to this document. Theycondemned the proceedings of the three nonjuring divines, as in formirregular and in substance impious. To remit the sins of impenitentsinners was a profane abuse of the power which Christ had delegatedto his ministers. It was not denied that Parkyns had planned anassassination. It was not pretended that he had professed any repentancefor planning an assassination. The plain inference was that the divineswho absolved him did not think it sinful to assassinate King William. Collier rejoined; but, though a pugnacious controversialist, he on thisoccasion shrank from close conflict, and made his escape as well as hecould under a cloud of quotations from Tertullian, Cyprian and Jerome, Albaspinaeus and Hammond, the Council of Carthage and the Council ofToledo. The public feeling was strongly against the three absolvers. Thegovernment however wisely determined not to confer on them the honour ofmartyrdom. A bill was found against them by the grand jury of Middlesex;but they were not brought to trial. Cook and Snatt were set at libertyafter a short detention; and Collier would have been treated with equallenity if he would have consented to put in bail. But he was determinedto do no act which could be construed into a recognition of the usurpinggovernment. He was therefore outlawed; and when he died, more thanthirty years later, his outlawry had not been reversed. [683]

Parkyns was the last Englishman who was tried for high treason under theold system of procedure. The first who was tried under the new systemwas Rockwood. He was defended by Sir Bartholomew Shower, who in thepreceding reign had made himself unenviably conspicuous as a servile andcruel sycophant, who had obtained from James the Recordership ofLondon when Holt honourably resigned it, and who had, as Recorder, sent soldiers to the gibbet for breaches of military discipline. Byhis servile cruelty he had earned the nickname of the Manhunter. Showerdeserved, if any offender deserved, to be excepted from the Act ofIndemnity, and left to the utmost rigour of those laws which he had soshamelessly perverted. But he had been saved by the clemency of William, and had requited that clemency by pertinacious and malignant opposition. [684] It was doubtless on account of Shower's known leaning towardsJacobitism that he was employed on this occasion. He raised sometechnical objections which the Court overruled. On the merits of thecase he could make no defence. The jury returned a verdict of guilty. Cranburne and Lowick were then tried and convicted. They suffered withRookwood; and there the executions stopped. [685]

The temper of the nation was such that the government might have shedmuch more blood without incurring the reproach of cruelty. The feelingwhich had been called forth by the discovery of the plot continuedduring several weeks to increase day by day. Of that feeling the ablemen who were at the head of the Whig party made a singularly skilfuluse. They saw that the public enthusiasm, if left without guidance, would exhaust itself in huzzas, healths and bonfires, but might, ifwisely guided, be the means of producing a great and lasting effect. TheAssociation, into which the Commons had entered while the King's speechwas still in their ears, furnished the means of combining four fifths ofthe nation in one vast club for the defence of the order of successionwith which were inseparably combined the dearest liberties of theEnglish people, and of establishing a test which would distinguish thosewho were zealous for that order of succession from those who sullenlyand reluctantly acquiesced in it. Of the five hundred and thirty membersof the Lower House about four hundred and twenty voluntarily subscribedthe instrument which recognised William as rightful and lawful King ofEngland. It was moved in the Upper House that the same form should beadopted; but objections were raised by the Tories. Nottingham, everconscientious, honourable and narrow minded, declared that he could notassent to the words "rightful and lawful. " He still held, as he hadheld from the first, that a prince who had taken the Crown, not bybirthright, but by the gift of the Convention, could not properly be sodescribed. William was doubtless King in fact, and, as King in fact, wasentitled to the obedience of Christians. "No man, " said Nottingham, "hasserved or will serve His Majesty more faithfully than I. But to thisdocument I cannot set my hand. " Rochester and Normanby held similarlanguage. Monmouth, in a speech of two hours and a half, earnestlyexhorted the Lords to agree with the Commons. Burnet was vehement on thesame side. Wharton, whose father had lately died, and who was now LordWharton, appeared in the foremost rank of the Whig peers. But no mandistinguished himself more in the debate than one whose life, bothpublic and private, had been one long series of faults and disasters, the incestuous lover of Henrietta Berkeley, the unfortunate lieutenantof Monmouth. He had recently ceased to be called by the tarnished nameof Grey of Wark, and was now Earl of Tankerville. He spoke on that daywith great force and eloquence for the words, "rightful and lawful. "Leeds, after expressing his regret that a question about a mere phraseshould have produced dissension among noble persons who were all equallyattached to the reigning Sovereign, undertook the office of mediator. He proposed that their Lordships, instead of recognising William asrightful and lawful King, should declare that William had the rightby law to the English Crown, and that no other person had any rightwhatever to that Crown. Strange to say, almost all the Tory peers wereperfectly satisfied with what Leeds had suggested. Among the Whigs therewas some unwillingness to consent to a change which, slight as it was, might be thought to indicate a difference of opinion between the twoHouses on a subject of grave importance. But Devonshire and Portlanddeclared themselves content; their authority prevailed; and thealteration was made. How a rightful and lawful possessor is to bedistinguished from a possessor who has the exclusive right by law isa question which a Whig may, without any painful sense of shame, acknowledge to be beyond the reach of his faculties, and leave to bediscussed by High Churchmen. Eighty-three peers immediately affixedtheir names to the amended form of association; and Rochester was amongthem. Nottingham, not yet quite satisfied, asked time for consideration. [686]

Beyond the walls of Parliament there was none of this verbal quibbling. The language of the House of Commons was adopted by the whole country. The City of London led the way. Within thirty-six hours after theAssociation had been published under the direction of the Speaker itwas subscribed by the Lord Mayor, by the Aldermen, and by almost all themembers of the Common Council. The municipal corporations all over thekingdom followed the example. The spring assizes were just beginning;and at every county town the grand jurors and the justices of the peaceput down their names. Soon shopkeepers, artisans, yeomen, farmers, husbandmen, came by thousands to the tables where the parchments werelaid out. In Westminster there were thirty-seven thousand associators, in the Tower Hamlets eight thousand, in Southwark eighteen thousand. Therural parts of Surrey furnished seventeen thousand. At Ipswich all thefreemen signed except two. At Warwick all the male inhabitants who hadattained the age of sixteen signed, except two Papists and two Quakers. At Taunton, where the memory of the Bloody Circuit was fresh, every manwho could write gave in his adhesion to the government. All the churchesand all the meeting houses in the town were crowded, as they had neverbeen crowded before, with people who came to thank God for havingpreserved him whom they fondly called William the Deliverer. Of all thecounties of England Lancashire was the most Jacobitical. Yet Lancashirefurnished fifty thousand signatures. Of all the great towns of EnglandNorwich was the most Jacobitical. The magistrates of that city weresupposed to be in the interest of the exiled dynasty. The nonjurors werenumerous, and had, just before the discovery of the plot, seemed to bein unusual spirits and ventured to take unusual liberties. One of thechief divines of the schism had preached a sermon there which gave riseto strange suspicions. He had taken for his text the verse in which theProphet Jeremiah announced that the day of vengeance was come, thatthe sword would be drunk with blood, that the Lord God of Hosts had asacrifice in the north country by the river Euphrates. Very soon it wasknown that, at the time when this discourse was delivered, swords hadactually been sharpening, under the direction of Barclay and Parkyns, for a bloody sacrifice on the north bank of the river Thames. Theindignation of the common people of Norwich was not to be restrained. They came in multitudes, though discouraged by the municipalauthorities, to plight faith to William, rightful and lawful King. InNorfolk the number of signatures amounted to forty-eight thousand, inSuffolk to seventy thousand. Upwards of five hundred rolls went upto London from every part of England. The number of names attached totwenty-seven of those rolls appears from the London Gazette to have beenthree hundred and fourteen thousand. After making the largest allowancefor fraud, it seems certain that the Association included the greatmajority of the adult male inhabitants of England who were able to signtheir names. The tide of popular feeling was so strong that a man whowas known not to have signed ran considerable risk of being publiclyaffronted. In many places nobody appeared without wearing in his hat ared riband on which were embroidered the words, "General Associationfor King William. " Once a party of Jacobites had the courage to paradea street in London with an emblematic device which seemed to indicatetheir contempt for the new Solemn League and Covenant. They wereinstantly put to rout by the mob, and their leader was well ducked. Theenthusiasm spread to secluded isles, to factories in foreign countries, to remote colonies. The Association was signed by the rude fishermenof the Scilly Rocks, by the English merchants of Malaga, by the Englishmerchants of Genoa, by the citizens of New York, by the tobacco plantersof Virginia and by the sugar planters of Barbadoes. [687]

Emboldened by success, the Whig leaders ventured to proceed a stepfurther. They brought into the Lower House a bill for the securing ofthe King's person and government. By this bill it was provided thatwhoever, while the war lasted, should come from France into Englandwithout the royal license should incur the penalties of treason, thatthe suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act should continue to the end ofthe year 1696, and that all functionaries appointed by William shouldretain their offices, notwithstanding his death, till his successorshould be pleased to dismiss them. The form of Association which theHouse of Commons had adopted was solemnly ratified; and it was providedthat no person should sit in that House or should hold any office, civilor military, without signing. The Lords were indulged in the use oftheir own form; and nothing was said about the clergy. 

The Tories, headed by Finch and Seymour, complained bitterly of thisnew test, and ventured once to divide, but were defeated. Finch seems tohave been heard patiently; but, notwithstanding all Seymour's eloquence, the contemptuous manner in which he spoke of the Association raised astorm against which he could not stand. Loud cries of "the Tower, theTower, " were heard. Haughty and imperious as he was, he was forced toexplain away his words, and could scarcely, by apologizing in a mannerto which he was little accustomed, save himself from the humiliation ofbeing called to the bar and reprimanded on his knees. The bill went upto the Lords, and passed with great speed in spite of the opposition ofRochester and Nottingham. [688]

The nature and extent of the change which the discovery of theAssassination Plot had produced in the temper of the House of Commonsand of the nation is strikingly illustrated by the history of a billentitled a Bill for the further Regulation of Elections of Membersof Parliament. The moneyed interest was almost entirely Whig, and wastherefore an object of dislike to the Tories. The rapidly growing powerof that interest was generally regarded with jealousy by landownerswhether they were Whigs or Tories. It was something new and monstrousto see a trader from Lombard Street, who had no tie to the soil of ourisland, and whose wealth was entirely personal and movable, post down toDevonshire or Sussex with a portmanteau full of guineas, offer himselfas candidate for a borough in opposition to a neighbouring gentlemanwhose ancestors had been regularly returned ever since the Wars of theRoses, and come in at the head of the poll. Yet even this was not theworst. More than one seat in Parliament, it was said, had been boughtand sold over a dish of coffee at Garraway's. The purchaser had not beenrequired even to go through the form of showing himself to the electors. Without leaving his counting house in Cheapside, he had been chosen torepresent a place which he had never seen. Such things were intolerable. No man, it was said, ought to sit in the English legislature who wasnot master of some hundreds of acres of English ground. [689] A bill wasaccordingly brought in which provided that every member of the House ofCommons must have a certain estate in land. For a knight of a shire thequalification was fixed at five hundred a year; for a burgess at twohundred a year. Early in February this bill was read a second time andreferred to a Select Committee. A motion was made that the Committeeshould be instructed to add a clause enacting that all elections shouldbe by ballot. Whether this motion proceeded from a Whig or a Tory, bywhat arguments it was supported and on what grounds it was opposed, we have now no means of discovering. We know only that it was rejectedwithout a division. 

Before the bill came back from the Committee, some of the mostrespectable constituent bodies in the kingdom had raised their voicesagainst the new restriction to which it was proposed to subject them. There had in general been little sympathy between the commercial townsand the Universities. For the commercial towns were the chief seats ofWhiggism and Non conformity; and the Universities were zealous for theCrown and the Church. Now, however, Oxford and Cambridge made commoncause with London and Bristol. It was hard, said the Academics, that agrave and learned man, sent by a large body of grave and learned men tothe Great Council of the nation, should be thought less fit to sit inthat Council than a boozing clown who had scarcely literature enoughto entitle him to the benefit of clergy. It was hard, said the traders, that a merchant prince, who had been the first magistrate of the firstcity in the world, whose name on the back of a bill commanded entireconfidence at Smyrna and at Genoa, at Hamburg and at Amsterdam, whohad at sea ships every one of which was worth a manor, and who hadrepeatedly, when the liberty and religion of the kingdom were in peril, advanced to the government, at an hour's notice, five or ten thousandpounds, should be supposed to have a less stake in the prosperity of thecommonwealth than a squire who sold his own bullocks and hops over a potof ale at the nearest market town. On the report, it was moved that theUniversities should be excepted; but the motion was lost by a hundredand fifty-one votes to a hundred and forty-three. On the third readingit was moved that the City of London should be excepted; but it was notthought advisable to divide. The final question that the bill do pass, was carried by a hundred and seventy-three votes to a hundred and fiftyon the day which preceded the discovery of the Assassination Plot. TheLords agreed to the bill without any amendment. 

William had to consider whether he would give or withhold his assent. The commercial towns of the kingdom, and among them the City of London, which had always stood firmly by him, and which had extricated himmany times from great embarrassments, implored his protection. It wasrepresented to him that the Commons were far indeed from being unanimouson this subject; that, in the last stage, the majority had been onlytwenty-three in a full House; that the motion to except the Universitieshad been lost by a majority of only eight. On full consideration heresolved not to pass the bill. Nobody, he said, could accuse him ofacting selfishly on this occasion; his prerogative was not concerned inthe matter; and he could have no objection to the proposed law exceptthat it would be mischievous to his people. 

On the tenth of April 1696, therefore, the Clerk of the Parliament wascommanded to inform the Houses that the King would consider of the Billfor the further Regulation of Elections. Some violent Tories in theHouse of Commons flattered themselves that they might be able to carrya resolution reflecting on the King. They moved that whoever had advisedHis Majesty to refuse his assent to their bill was an enemy to him andto the nation. Never was a greater blunder committed. The temper ofthe House was very different from what it had been on the day when theaddress against Portland's grant had been voted by acclamation. Thedetection of a murderous conspiracy, the apprehension of a Frenchinvasion, had changed every thing. The King was popular. Every day tenor twelve bales of parchment covered with the signatures of associatorswere laid at his feet. Nothing could be more imprudent than to propose, at such a time, a thinly disguised vote of censure on him. Themoderate Tories accordingly separated themselves from their angryand unreasonable brethren. The motion was rejected by two hundred andnineteen votes to seventy; and the House ordered the question and thenumbers on both sides to be published, in order that the world mightknow how completely the attempt to produce a quarrel between the Kingand the Parliament had failed. [690]

The country gentlemen might perhaps have been more inclined to resentthe loss of their bill, had they not been put into high goodhumour byanother bill which they considered as even more important. The projectof a Land Bank had been revived; not in the form in which it had, twoyears before, been brought under the consideration of the House ofCommons, but in a form much less shocking to common sense and lessopen to ridicule. Chamberlayne indeed protested loudly against allmodifications of his plan, and proclaimed, with undiminished confidence, that he would make all his countrymen rich if they would only lethim. He was not, he said, the first great discoverer whom princes andstatesmen had regarded as a dreamer. Henry the Seventh had, in an evilhour, refused to listen to Christopher Columbus; the consequence hadbeen that England had lost the mines of Mexico and Peru; yet what werethe mines of Mexico and Peru to the riches of a nation blessed with anunlimited paper currency? But the united force of reason and ridiculehad reduced the once numerous sect which followed Chamberlayne to asmall and select company of incorrigible fools. Few even of the squiresnow believed in his two great doctrines; the doctrine that the Statecan, by merely calling a bundle of old rags ten millions sterling, addten millions sterling to the riches of the nation; and the doctrinethat a lease of land for a term of years may be worth many times the feesimple. But it was still the general opinion of the country gentlementhat a bank, of which it should be the special business to advance moneyon the security of land, might be a great blessing to the nation. Harley and the Speaker Foley now proposed that such a bank should beestablished by Act of Parliament, and promised that, if their planwas adopted, the King should be amply supplied with money for the nextcampaign. 

The Whig leaders, and especially Montague, saw that the scheme was adelusion, that it must speedily fail, and that, before it failed, itmight not improbably ruin their own favourite institution, the Bank ofEngland. But on this point they had against them, not only the wholeTory party, but also their master and many of their followers. Thenecessities of the State were pressing. The offers of the projectorswere tempting. The Bank of England had, in return for its charter, advanced to the State only one million at eight per cent. The LandBank would advance more than two millions and a half at seven per cent. William, whose chief object was to procure money for the service of theyear, was little inclined to find fault with any source from which twomillions and a half could be obtained. Sunderland, who generallyexerted his influence in favour of the Whig leaders, failed them on thisoccasion. The Whig country gentlemen were delighted by the prospect ofbeing able to repair their stables, replenish their cellars, and giveportions to their daughters. It was impossible to contend against such acombination of force. A bill was passed which authorised the governmentto borrow two million five hundred and sixty-four thousand pounds atseven per cent. A fund, arising chiefly from a new tax on salt, was setapart for the payment of the interest. If, before the first of August, the subscription for one half of this loan should have been filled, and if one half of the sum subscribed should have been paid into theExchequer, the subscribers were to become a corporate body, under thename of the National Land Bank. As this bank was expressly intended toaccommodate country gentlemen, it was strictly interdicted from lendingmoney on any private security other than a mortgage of land, and wasbound to lend on mortgage at least half a million annually. The intereston this half million was not to exceed three and a half per cent. , ifthe payments were quarterly, or four per cent. , if the payments werehalf yearly. At that time the market rate of interest on the bestmortgages was full six per cent. The shrewd observers at the DutchEmbassy therefore thought that capitalists would eschew all connectionwith what must necessarily be a losing concern, and that thesubscription would never be half filled up; and it seems strange thatany sane person should have thought otherwise. [691]

It was vain however to reason against the general infatuation. TheTories exultingly predicted that the Bank of Robert Harley wouldcompletely eclipse the Bank of Charles Montague. The bill passed bothHouses. On the twenty-seventh of April it received the royal assent; andthe Parliament was immediately afterwards prorogued. 

CHAPTER XXII

 Military Operations in the Netherlands--Commercial Crisis in England--Financial Crisis--Efforts to restore the Currency--Distress of the People; their Temper and Conduct--Negotiations with France; the Duke of Savoy deserts the Coalition--Search for Jacobite Conspirators in England; Sir John Fenwick--Capture of Fenwick--Fenwick's Confession--Return of William to England--Meeting of Parliament; State of the Country; Speech of William at the Commencement of the Session--Resolutions of the House of Commons--Return of Prosperity--Effect of the Proceedings of the House of Commons on Foreign Governments--Restoration of the Finances--Effects of Fenwick's Confession--Resignation of Godolphin--Feeling of the Whigs about Fenwick--William examines Fenwick--Disappearance of Goodman--Parliamentary Proceedings touching Fenwick's Confession--Bill for attainting Fenwick--Debates of the Commons on the Bill of Attainder--The Bill of Attainder carried up to the Lords--Artifices of Monmouth--Debates of the Lords on the Bill of Attainder--Proceedings against Monmouth--Position and Feelings of Shrewsbury--The Bill of Attainder passed; Attempts to save Fenwick--Fenwick's Execution; Bill for the Regulating of Elections--Bill for the Regulation of the Press--Bill abolishing the Privileges of Whitefriars and the Savoy--Close of the Session; Promotions and Appointments--State of Ireland--State of Scotland--A Session of Parliament at Edinburgh; Act for the Settling of Schools--Case of Thomas Aikenhead--Military Operations in the Netherlands--Terms of Peace offered by France--Conduct of Spain; Conduct of the Emperor--Congress of Ryswick--William opens a distinct Negotiation--Meetings of Portland and Boufflers--Terms of Peace between France and England settled--Difficulties caused by Spain and the Emperor--Attempts of James to prevent a general Pacification--The Treaty of Ryswick signed; Anxiety in England--News of the Peace arrives in England--Dismay of the Jacobites--General Rejoicing--The King's Entry into London--The Thanksgiving Day

ON the seventh of May 1696, William landed in Holland. [692] Thence heproceeded to Flanders, and took the command of the allied forces, whichwere collected in the neighbourhood of Ghent. Villeroy and Boufflerswere already in the field. All Europe waited impatiently for great newsfrom the Netherlands, but waited in vain. No aggressive movement wasmade. The object of the generals on both sides was to keep their troopsfrom dying of hunger; and it was an object by no means easily attained. The treasuries both of France and England were empty. Lewis had, during the winter, created with great difficulty and expense a giganticmagazine at Givet on the frontier of his kingdom. The buildings werecommodious and of vast extent. The quantity of provender laid up inthem for horses was immense. The number of rations for men was commonlyestimated at from three to four millions. But early in the springAthlone and Cohorn had, by a bold and dexterous move, surprised Givet, and had utterly destroyed both storehouses and stores. [693] France, already fainting from exhaustion, was in no condition to repair such aloss. Sieges such as those of Mons and Namur were operations too costlyfor her means. The business of her army now was, not to conquer, but tosubsist. 

The army of William was reduced to straits not less painful. Thematerial wealth of England, indeed, had not been very seriously impairedby the drain which the war had caused; but she was suffering severelyfrom the defective state of that instrument by which her material wealthwas distributed. 

Saturday, the second of May, had been fixed by Parliament as the lastday on which the clipped crowns, halfcrowns and shillings were to bereceived by tale in payment of taxes. [694] The Exchequer was besiegedfrom dawn till midnight by an immense multitude. It was necessary tocall in the guards for the purpose of keeping order. On the followingMonday began a cruel agony of a few months, which was destined to besucceeded by many years of almost unbroken prosperity. [695]

Most of the old silver had vanished. The new silver had scarcely madeits appearance. About four millions sterling, in ingots and hammeredcoin, were lying in the vaults of the Exchequer; and the milled money asyet came forth very slowly from the Mint. [696] Alarmists predicted thatthe wealthiest and most enlightened kingdom in Europe would be reducedto the state of those barbarous societies in which a mat is bought witha hatchet, and a pair of mocassins with a piece of venison. 

There were, indeed, some hammered pieces which had escaped mutilation;and sixpences not clipped within the innermost ring were still current. This old money and the new money together made up a scanty stock ofsilver, which, with the help of gold, was to carry the nation throughthe summer. [697] The manufacturers generally contrived, though withextreme difficulty, to pay their workmen in coin. [698] The upperclasses seem to have lived to a great extent on credit. Even an opulentman seldom had the means of discharging the weekly bills of his bakerand butcher. [699] A promissory note, however, subscribed by such a man, was readily taken in the district where his means and character werewell known. The notes of the wealthy moneychangers of Lombard Streetcirculated widely. [700] The paper of the Bank of England did muchservice, and would have done more, but for the unhappy error into whichthe Parliament had recently been led by Harley and Foley. The confidencewhich the public had felt in that powerful and opulent Company had beenshaken by the Act which established the Land Bank. It might well bedoubted whether there would be room for the two rival institutions; andof the two, the younger seemed to be the favourite of the government andof the legislature. The stock of the Bank of England had gone rapidlydown from a hundred and ten to eighty-three. Meanwhile the goldsmiths, who had from the first been hostile to that great corporation, wereplotting against it. They collected its paper from every quarter; and onthe fourth of May, when the Exchequer had just swallowed up most of theold money, and when scarcely any of the new money had been issued, theyflocked to Grocers' Hall, and insisted on immediate payment. A singlegoldsmith demanded thirty thousand pounds. The Directors, in thisextremity, acted wisely and firmly. They refused to cash the notes whichhad been thus maliciously presented, and left the holders to seek aremedy in Westminster Hall. Other creditors, who came in good faith toask for their due, were paid. The conspirators affected to triumph overthe powerful body, which they hated and dreaded. The bank which hadrecently begun to exist under such splendid auspices, which had seemeddestined to make a revolution in commerce and in finance, which had beenthe boast of London and the envy of Amsterdam, was already insolvent, ruined, dishonoured. Wretched pasquinades were published, the Trialof the Land Bank for murdering the Bank of England, the last Will andTestament of the Bank of England, the Epitaph of the Bank of England, the Inquest on the Bank of England. But, in spite of all this clamourand all this wit, the correspondents of the States General reported, that the Bank of England had not really suffered in the public esteem, and that the conduct of the goldsmiths was generally condemned. [701]

The Directors soon found it impossible to procure silver enough to meetevery claim which was made on them in good faith. They then bethoughtthem of a new expedient. They made a call of twenty per cent. On theproprietors, and thus raised a sum which enabled them to give everyapplicant fifteen per cent. In milled money on what was due to him. Theyreturned him his note, after making a minute upon it that part hadbeen paid. [702] A few notes thus marked are still preserved among thearchives of the Bank, as memorials of that terrible year. The paperof the Corporation continued to circulate, but the value fluctuatedviolently from day to day, and indeed from hour to hour; for the publicmind was in so excitable a state that the most absurd lie which astockjobber could invent sufficed to send the price up or down. At onetime the discount was only six per cent. , at another time twenty-fourper cent. A tenpound note, which had been taken in the morning as worthmore than nine pounds, was often worth less than eight pounds beforenight. [703]

Another, and, at that conjuncture, a more effectual substitute fora metallic currency, owed its existence to the ingenuity of CharlesMontague. He had succeeded in engrafting on Harley's Land Bank Bill aclause which empowered the government to issue negotiable paper bearinginterest at the rate of threepence a day on a hundred pounds. In themidst of the general distress and confusion appeared the first ExchequerBills, drawn for various amounts from a hundred pounds down to fivepounds. These instruments were rapidly distributed over the kingdom bythe post, and were every where welcome. The Jacobites talked violentlyagainst them in every coffeehouse, and wrote much detestable verseagainst them, but to little purpose. The success of the plan was such, that the ministers at one time resolved to issue twentyshilling bills, and even fifteenshilling bills, for the payment of the troops. But itdoes not appear that this resolution was carried into effect. [704]

It is difficult to imagine how, without the Exchequer Bills, thegovernment of the country could have been carried on during that year. Every source of revenue had been affected by the state of the currency;and one source, on which the Parliament had confidently reckoned for themeans of defraying more than half the charge of the war, had yielded nota single farthing. 

The sum expected from the Land Bank was near two million six hundredthousand pounds. Of this sum one half was to be subscribed, and onequarter paid up by the first of August. The King, just before hisdeparture, had signed a warrant appointing certain commissioners, amongwhom Harley and Foley were the most eminent, to receive the names of thecontributors. [705] A great meeting of persons interested in the schemewas held in the Hall of the Middle Temple. One office was opened atExeter Change, another at Mercers' Hall. Forty agents went down into thecountry, and announced to the landed gentry of every shire the approachof the golden age of high rents and low interest. The Council ofRegency, in order to set an example to the nation, put down the King'sname for five thousand pounds; and the newspapers assured the world thatthe subscription would speedily be filled. [706] But when three weekshad passed away, it was found that only fifteen hundred pounds had beenadded to the five thousand contributed by the King. Many wondered atthis; yet there was little cause for wonder. The sum which the friendsof the project had undertaken to raise was a sum which only the enemiesof the project could furnish. The country gentlemen wished well toHarley's scheme; but they wished well to it because they wanted toborrow money on easy terms; and, wanting to borrow money, they of coursewere not able to lend it. The moneyed class alone could supply whatwas necessary to the existence of the Land Bank; and the Land Bank wasavowedly intended to diminish the profits, to destroy the politicalinfluence and to lower the social position of the moneyed class. As theusurers did not choose to take on themselves the expense of putting downusury, the whole plan failed in a manner which, if the aspect of publicaffairs had been less alarming, would have been exquisitely ludicrous. The day drew near. The neatly ruled pages of the subscription book atMercers' Hall were still blank. The Commissioners stood aghast. Intheir distress they applied to the government for indulgence. Many greatcapitalists, they said, were desirous to subscribe, but stood aloofbecause the terms were too hard. There ought to be some relaxation. Would the Council of Regency consent to an abatement of three hundredthousand pounds? The finances were in such a state, and the letters inwhich the King represented his wants were so urgent, that the Councilof Regency hesitated. The Commissioners were asked whether they wouldengage to raise the whole sum, with this abatement. Their answer wasunsatisfactory. They did not venture to say that they could commandmore than eight hundred thousand pounds. The negotiation was, therefore, broken off. The first of August came; and the whole amount contributedby the whole nation to the magnificent undertaking from which so muchhad been expected was two thousand one hundred pounds. [707]

Just at this conjuncture Portland arrived from the Continent. He hadbeen sent by William with charge to obtain money, at whatever costand from whatever quarter. The King had strained his private creditin Holland to procure bread for his army. But all was insufficient. Hewrote to his Ministers that, unless they could send him a speedy supply, his troops would either rise in mutiny or desert by thousands. He knew, he said, that it would be hazardous to call Parliament together duringhis absence. But, if no other resource could be devised, that hazardmust be run. [708] The Council of Regency, in extreme embarrassment, began to wish that the terms, hard as they were, which had been offeredby the Commissioners at Mercers' Hall had been accepted. The negotiationwas renewed. Shrewsbury, Godolphin and Portland, as agents for theKing, had several conferences with Harley and Foley, who had recentlypretended that eight hundred thousand pounds were ready to be subscribedto the Land Bank. The Ministers gave assurances, that, if, at thisconjuncture, even half that sum were advanced, those who had done thisservice to the State should, in the next session, be incorporated as aNational Land Bank. Harley and Foley at first promised, with an air ofconfidence, to raise what was required. But they soon went back fromtheir word; they showed a great inclination to be punctilious andquarrelsome about trifles; at length the eight hundred thousand poundsdwindled to forty thousand; and even the forty thousand could be hadonly on hard conditions. [709] So ended the great delusion of the LandBank. The commission expired; and the offices were closed. 

And now the Council of Regency, almost in despair, had recourse to theBank of England. Two hundred thousand pounds was the very smallest sumwhich would suffice to meet the King's most pressing wants. Would theBank of England advance that sum? The capitalists who lead the chiefsway in that corporation were in bad humour, and not without reason. Butfair words, earnest entreaties and large promises were not spared; allthe influence of Montague, which was justly great, was exerted; theDirectors promised to do their best; but they apprehended that it wouldbe impossible for them to raise the money without making a second callof twenty per cent. On their constituents. It was necessary that thequestion should be submitted to a General Court; in such a court morethan six hundred persons were entitled to vote; and the result mightwell be doubted. The proprietors were summoned to meet on the fifteenthof August at Grocers' Hall. During the painful interval of suspense, Shrewsbury wrote to his master in language more tragic than is oftenfound in official letters. "If this should not succeed, God knows whatcan be done. Any thing must be tried and ventured rather than lie downand die. " [710] On the fifteenth of August, a great epoch in the historyof the Bank, the General Court was held. In the chair sate Sir JohnHoublon, the Governor, who was also Lord Mayor of London, and, whatwould in our time be thought strange, a Commissioner of the Admiralty. Sir John, in a speech, every word of which had been written and had beencarefully considered by the Directors, explained the case, and imploredthe assembly to stand by King William. There was at first a littlemurmuring. "If our notes would do, " it was said, "we should be mostwilling to assist His Majesty; but two hundred thousand pounds in hardmoney at a time like this. " The Governor announced explicitly thatnothing but gold or silver would supply the necessities of the army inFlanders. At length the question was put to the vote; and every hand inthe Hall was held up for sending the money. The letters from the DutchEmbassy informed the States General that the events of that day hadbound the Bank and the government together in close alliance, and thatseveral of the ministers had, immediately after the meeting, purchasedstock merely in order to give a pledge of their attachment to the bodywhich had rendered so great a service to the State. [711]

Meanwhile strenuous exertions were making to hasten the recoinage. Sincethe Restoration the Mint had, like every other public establishment inthe kingdom, been a nest of idlers and jobbers. The important office ofWarden, worth between six and seven hundred a year, had become a meresinecure, and had been filled by a succession of fine gentlemen, who were well known at the hazard table of Whitehall, but who nevercondescended to come near the Tower. This office had just become vacant, and Montague had obtained it for Newton. [712] The ability, the industryand the strict uprightness of the great philosopher speedily produceda complete revolution throughout the department which was under hisdirection. [713] He devoted himself to his task with an activity whichleft him no time to spare for those pursuits in which he had surpassedArchimedes and Galileo. Till the great work was completely done, heresisted firmly, and almost angrily, every attempt that was made by menof science, here or on the Continent, to draw him away from his officialduties. [714] The old officers of the Mint had thought it a great featto coin silver to the amount of fifteen thousand pounds in a week. When Montague talked of thirty or forty thousand, these men of formand precedent pronounced the thing impracticable. But the energy ofthe young Chancellor of the Exchequer and of his friend the Wardenaccomplished far greater wonders. Soon nineteen mills were going at oncein the Tower. As fast as men could be trained to the work in London, bands of them were sent off to other parts of the kingdom. Mintswere established at Bristol, York, Exeter, Norwich and Chester. Thisarrangement was in the highest degree popular. The machinery and theworkmen were welcomed to the new stations with the ringing of bells andthe firing of guns. The weekly issue increased to sixty thousand pounds, to eighty thousand, to a hundred thousand, and at length to a hundredand twenty thousand. [715] Yet even this issue, though great, not onlybeyond precedent, but beyond hope, was scanty when compared with thedemands of the nation. Nor did all the newly stamped silver pass intocirculation; for during the summer and autumn those politicians who werefor raising the denomination of the coin were active and clamorous;and it was generally expected that, as soon as the Parliament shouldreassemble, the standard would be lowered. Of course no person whothought it probable that he should, at a day not far distant, be ableto pay a debt of a pound with three crown pieces instead of four, waswilling to part with a crown piece, till that day arrived. Most of themilled pieces were therefore hoarded. [716] May, June and July passedaway without any perceptible increase in the quantity of good money. Itwas not till August that the keenest observer could discern the firstfaint signs of returning prosperity. [717]

The distress of the common people was severe, and was aggravated by thefollies of magistrates and by the arts of malecontents. A squire who wasone of the quorum would sometimes think it his duty to administer to hisneighbours, at this trying conjuncture, what seemed to him to be equity;and as no two of these rural praetors had exactly the same notion ofwhat was equitable, their edicts added confusion to confusion. In oneparish people were, in outrageous violation of the law, threatened withthe stocks, if they refused to take clipped shillings by tale. In thenext parish it was dangerous to pay such shillings except by weight. [718] The enemies of the government, at the same time, labouredindefatigably in their vocation. They harangued in every place of publicresort, from the Chocolate House in Saint James's Street to the sandedkitchen of the alehouse on the village green. In verse and prose theyincited the suffering multitude to rise up in arms. Of the tractswhich they published at this time, the most remarkable was written bya deprived priest named Grascombe, of whose ferocity and scurrility themost respectable nonjurors had long been ashamed. He now did his bestto persuade the rabble to tear in pieces those members of Parliamentwho had voted for the restoration of the currency. [719] It would be toomuch to say that the malignant industry of this man and of men like himproduced no effect on a population which was doubtless severely tried. There were riots in several parts of the country, but riots which weresuppressed with little difficulty, and, as far as can be discovered, without the shedding of a drop of blood. [720] In one place a crowd ofpoor ignorant creatures, excited by some knavish agitator, besieged thehouse of a Whig member of Parliament, and clamorously insisted on havingtheir short money changed. The gentleman consented, and desired to knowhow much they had brought. After some delay they were able to produce asingle clipped halfcrown. [721] Such tumults as this were at a distanceexaggerated into rebellions and massacres. At Paris it was gravelyasserted in print that, in an English town which was not named, asoldier and a butcher had quarrelled about a piece of money, that thesoldier had killed the butcher, that the butcher's man had snatched upa cleaver and killed the soldier, that a great fight had followed, andthat fifty dead bodies had been left on the ground. [722] The truthwas, that the behaviour of the great body of the people was beyondall praise. The judges when, in September, they returned from theircircuits, reported that the temper of the nation was excellent. [723]There was a patience, a reasonableness, a good nature, a good faith, which nobody had anticipated. Every body felt that nothing but mutualhelp and mutual forbearance could prevent the dissolution of society. Ahard creditor, who sternly demanded payment to the day in milled money, was pointed at in the streets, and was beset by his own creditors withdemands which soon brought him to reason. Much uneasiness had been feltabout the troops. It was scarcely possible to pay them regularly; ifthey were not paid regularly, it might well be apprehended that theywould supply their wants by rapine; and such rapine it was certain thatthe nation, altogether unaccustomed to military exaction and oppression, would not tamely endure. But, strange to say, there was, through thistrying year, a better understanding than had ever been known betweenthe soldiers and the rest of the community. The gentry, the farmers, the shopkeepers supplied the redcoats with necessaries in a mannerso friendly and liberal that there was no brawling and no marauding. "Severely as these difficulties have been felt, " L'Hermitage writes, "they have produced one happy effect; they have shown how good thespirit of the country is. No person, however favourable his opinionof the English may have been, could have expected that a time of suchsuffering would have been a time of such tranquillity. " [724]

Men who loved to trace, in the strangely complicated maze of humanaffairs, the marks of more than human wisdom, were of opinion that, butfor the interference of a gracious Providence, the plan so elaboratelydevised by great statesmen and great philosophers would have failedcompletely and ignominiously. Often, since the Revolution, the Englishhad been sullen and querulous, unreasonably jealous of the Dutch, anddisposed to put the worst construction on every act of the King. Hadthe fourth of May found our ancestors in such a mood, it can scarcely bedoubted that sharp distress, irritating minds already irritable, wouldhave caused an outbreak which must have shaken and might have subvertedthe throne of William. Happily, at the moment at which the loyalty ofthe nation was put to the most severe test, the King was more popularthan he had ever been since the day on which the Crown was tendered tohim in the Banqueting House. The plot which had been laid against hislife had excited general disgust and horror. His reserved manners, hisforeign attachments were forgotten. He had become an object of personalinterest and of personal affection to his people. They were every wherecoming in crowds to sign the instrument which bound them to defend andto avenge him. They were every where carrying about in their hats thebadges of their loyalty to him. They could hardly be restrained frominflicting summary punishment on the few who still dared openly toquestion his title. Jacobite was now a synonyme for cutthroat. NotedJacobite laymen had just planned a foul murder. Noted Jacobite priestshad, in the face of day, and in the administration of a solemn ordinanceof religion, indicated their approbation of that murder. Many honest andpious men, who thought that their allegiance was still due to James, hadindignantly relinquished all connection with zealots who seemed to thinkthat a righteous end justified the most unrighteous means. Such wasthe state of public feeling during the summer and autumn of 1696; andtherefore it was that hardships which, in any of the seven precedingyears, would certainly have produced a rebellion, and might perhapshave produced a counterrevolution, did not produce a single tumult tooserious to be suppressed by the constable's staff. 

Nevertheless, the effect of the commercial and financial crisis inEngland was felt through all the fleets and armies of the coalition. Thegreat source of subsidies was dry. No important military operation couldany where be attempted. Meanwhile overtures tending to peace had beenmade, and a negotiation had been opened. Callieres, one of the ablestof the many able envoys in the service of France, had been sent tothe Netherlands, and had held many conferences with Dykvelt. Thoseconferences might perhaps have come to a speedy and satisfactory close, had not France, at this time, won a great diplomatic victory in anotherquarter. Lewis had, during seven years, been scheming and labouring invain to break the great array of potentates whom the dread of his mightand of his ambition had brought together and kept together. But, duringseven years, all his arts had been baffled by the skill of William; and, when the eighth campaign opened, the confederacy had not been weakenedby a single desertion. Soon however it began to be suspected that theDuke of Savoy was secretly treating with the enemy. He solemnly assuredGalway, who represented England at the Court of Turin, that therewas not the slightest ground for such suspicions, and sent to Williamletters filled with professions of zeal for the common cause, and withearnest entreaties for more money. This dissimulation continued till aFrench army, commanded by Catinat, appeared in Piedmont. Then the Dukethrew off his disguise, concluded peace with France, joined his troopsto those of Catinat, marched into the Milanese, and informed the allieswhom he had just abandoned that, unless they wished to have him for anenemy, they must declare Italy neutral ground. The Courts of Viennaand Madrid, in great dismay, submitted to the terms which he dictated. William expostulated and protested in vain. His influence was no longerwhat it had been. The general opinion of Europe was, that the richesand the credit of England were completely exhausted; and both herconfederates and her enemies imagined that they might safely treat herwith indignity. Spain, true to her invariable maxim that every thingought to be done for her and nothing by her, had the effrontery toreproach the Prince to whom she owed it that she had not lost theNetherlands and Catalonia, because he had not sent troops and shipsto defend her possessions in Italy. The Imperial ministers formed andexecuted resolutions gravely affecting the interests of the coalitionwithout consulting him who had been the author and the soul of thecoalition. [725] Lewis had, after the failure of the Assassination Plot, made up his mind to the disagreeable necessity of recognising William, and had authorised Callieres to make a declaration to that effect. Butthe defection of Savoy, the neutrality of Italy, the disunion among theallies, and, above all, the distresses of England, exaggerated as theywere in all the letters which the Jacobites of Saint Germains receivedfrom the Jacobites of London, produced a change. The tone of Callieresbecame high and arrogant; he went back from his word, and refused togive any pledge that his master would acknowledge the Prince of Orangeas King of Great Britain. The joy was great among the nonjurors. Theyhad always, they said, been certain that the Great Monarch would not beso unmindful of his own glory and of the common interest of Sovereignsas to abandon the cause of his unfortunate guests, and to call anusurper his brother. They knew from the best authority that His MostChristian Majesty had lately, at Fontainebleau, given satisfactoryassurances on this subject to King James. Indeed, there is reasonto believe that the project of an invasion of our island was againseriously discussed at Versailles. [726] Catinat's army was now atliberty. France, relieved from all apprehension on the side of Savoy, might spare twenty thousand men for a descent on England; and, if themisery and discontent here were such as was generally reported, thenation might be disposed to receive foreign deliverers with open arms. 

So gloomy was the prospect which lay before William, when, in theautumn of 1696, he quitted his camp in the Netherlands for England. Hisservants here meanwhile were looking forward to his arrival with verystrong and very various emotions. The whole political world hadbeen thrown into confusion by a cause which did not at first appearcommensurate to such an effect. 

During his absence, the search for the Jacobites who had been concernedin the plots of the preceding winter had not been intermitted; and ofthese Jacobites none was in greater peril than Sir John Fenwick. Hisbirth, his connections, the high situations which he had filled, theindefatigable activity with which he had, during several years, labouredto subvert the government, and the personal insolence with which he hadtreated the deceased Queen, marked him out as a man fit to be made anexample. He succeeded, however, in concealing himself from the officersof justice till the first heat of pursuit was over. In his hiding placehe thought of an ingenious device which might, as he conceived, save himfrom the fate of his friends Charnock and Parkyns. Two witnesses werenecessary to convict him. It appeared from what had passed on the trialsof his accomplices, that there were only two witnesses who could provehis guilt, Porter and Goodman. His life was safe if either of these mencould be persuaded to abscond. 

Fenwick was not the only person who had strong reason to wish thatPorter or Goodman, or both, might be induced to leave England. Aylesburyhad been arrested, and committed to the Tower; and he well knew that, ifthese men appeared against him, his head would be in serious danger. Hisfriends and Fenwick's raised what was thought a sufficient sum; and twoIrishmen, or, in the phrase of the newspapers of that day, bogtrotters, a barber named Clancy, and a disbanded captain named Donelagh, undertookthe work of corruption. 

The first attempt was made on Porter. Clancy contrived to fall in withhim at a tavern, threw out significant hints, and, finding that thosehints were favourably received, opened a regular negotiation. The termsoffered were alluring; three hundred guineas down, three hundred more assoon as the witness should be beyond sea, a handsome annuity for life, a free pardon from King James, and a secure retreat in France. Porterseemed inclined, and perhaps was really inclined, to consent. He saidthat he still was what he had been, that he was at heart attached tothe good cause, but that he had been tried beyond his strength. Life wassweet. It was easy for men who had never been in danger to say that nonebut a villain would save himself by hanging his associates; but a fewhours in Newgate, with the near prospect of a journey on a sledgeto Tyburn, would teach such boasters to be more charitable. Afterrepeatedly conferring with Clancy, Porter was introduced to Fenwick'swife, Lady Mary, a sister of the Earl of Carlisle. Every thing was soonsettled. Donelagh made the arrangements for the flight. A boat was inwaiting. The letters which were to secure to the fugitive the protectionof King James were prepared by Fenwick. The hour and place were fixed atwhich Porter was to receive the first instalment of the promised reward. But his heart misgave him. He had, in truth, gone such lengths that itwould have been madness in him to turn back. He had sent Charnock, King, Keyes, Friend, Parkyns, Rookwood, Cranburne, to the gallows. It wasimpossible that such a Judas could ever be really forgiven. In France, among the friends and comrades of those whom he had destroyed, his lifewould not be worth one day's purchase. No pardon under the Great Sealwould avert the stroke of the avenger of blood. Nay, who could say thatthe bribe now offered was not a bait intended to lure the victim to theplace where a terrible doom awaited him? Porter resolved to be trueto that government under which alone he could be safe; he carriedto Whitehall information of the whole intrigue; and he received fullinstructions from the ministers. On the eve of the day fixed for hisdeparture he had a farewell meeting with Clancy at a tavern. Threehundred guineas were counted out on the table. Porter pocketed them, and gave a signal. Instantly several messengers from the office of theSecretary of State rushed into the room, and produced a warrant. The unlucky barber was carried off to prison, tried for his offence, convicted and pilloried. [727]

This mishap made Fenwick's situation more perilous than ever. At thenext sessions for the City of London a bill of indictment against him, for high treason, was laid before the grand jury. Porter and Goodmanappeared as witnesses for the Crown; and the bill was found. Fenwicknow thought that it was high time to steal away to the Continent. Arrangements were made for his passage. He quitted his hiding place, andrepaired to Romney Marsh. There he hoped to find shelter till the vesselwhich was to convey him across the Channel should arrive. For, thoughHunt's establishment had been broken up, there were still in that drearyregion smugglers who carried on more than one lawless trade. It chancedthat two of these men had just been arrested on a charge of harbouringtraitors. The messenger who had taken them into custody was returning toLondon with them, when, on the high road, he met Fenwick face to face. Unfortunately for Fenwick, no face in England was better known than his. "It is Sir John, " said the officer to the prisoners: "Stand by me, mygood fellows, and, I warrant you, you will have your pardons, and abag of guineas besides. " The offer was too tempting to be refused; butFenwick was better mounted than his assailants; he dashed through them, pistol in hand, and was soon out of sight. They pursued him; the hue andcry was raised; the bells of all the parish churches of the Marsh rangout the alarm; the whole country was up; every path was guarded; everythicket was beaten; every hut was searched; and at length the fugitivewas found in bed. Just then a bark, of very suspicious appearance, camein sight; she soon approached the shore, and showed English colours; butto the practised eyes of the Kentish fishermen she looked much likea French privateer. It was not difficult to guess her errand. Afterwaiting a short time in vain for her passenger, she stood out to sea. [728]

Fenwick, unluckily for himself, was able so far to elude the vigilanceof those who had charge of him as to scrawl with a lead pencil a shortletter to his wife. Every line contained evidence of his guilt. All, hewrote, was over; he was a dead man, unless, indeed, his friends could, by dint of solicitation, obtain a pardon for him. Perhaps the unitedentreaties of all the Howards might succeed. He would go abroad; hewould solemnly promise never again to set foot on English ground, andnever to draw sword against the government. Or would it be possibleto bribe a juryman or two to starve out the rest? "That, " he wrote, "ornothing can save me. " This billet was intercepted in its way to thepost, and sent up to Whitehall. Fenwick was soon carried to London andbrought before the Lords Justices. At first he held high language andbade defiance to his accusers. He was told that he had not always beenso confident; and his letter to his wife was laid before him. He had nottill then been aware that it had fallen into hands for which it was notintended. His distress and confusion became great. He felt that, ifhe were instantly sent before a jury, a conviction was inevitable. One chance remained. If he could delay his trial for a short time, thejudges would leave town for their circuits; a few weeks would be gained;and in the course of a few weeks something might be done. 

He addressed himself particularly to the Lord Steward, Devonshire, withwhom he had formerly had some connection of a friendly kind. The unhappyman declared that he threw himself entirely on the royal mercy, and offered to disclose all that he knew touching the plots of theJacobites. That he knew much nobody could doubt. Devonshire advised hiscolleagues to postpone the trial till the pleasure of William could beknown. This advice was taken. The King was informed of what hadpassed; and he soon sent an answer directing Devonshire to receive theprisoner's confession in writing, and to send it over to the Netherlandswith all speed. [729]

Fenwick had now to consider what he should confess. Had he, according tohis promise, revealed all that he knew, there can be no doubt that hisevidence would have seriously affected many Jacobite noblemen, gentlemenand clergymen. But, though he was very unwilling to die, attachment tohis party was in his mind a stronger sentiment than the fear of death. The thought occurred to him that he might construct a story, which mightpossibly be considered as sufficient to earn his pardon, which would atleast put off his trial some months, yet which would not injure asingle sincere adherent of the banished dynasty, nay, which would causedistress and embarrassment to the enemies of that dynasty, and whichwould fill the Court, the Council, and the Parliament of William withfears and animosities. He would divulge nothing that could affect thosetrue Jacobites who had repeatedly awaited, with pistols loaded andhorses saddled, the landing of the rightful King accompanied by a Frencharmy. But if there were false Jacobites who had mocked their banishedSovereign year after year with professions of attachment and promisesof service, and yet had, at every great crisis, found some excuse fordisappointing him, and who were at that moment among the chief supportsof the usurper's throne, why should they be spared? That there weresuch false Jacobites, high in political office and in military command, Fenwick had good reason to believe. He could indeed say nothing againstthem to which a Court of Justice would have listened; for none of themhad ever entrusted him with any message or letter for France; and allthat he knew about their treachery he had learned at second handand third hand. But of their guilt he had no doubt. One of them wasMarlborough. He had, after betraying James to William, promised to makereparation by betraying William to James, and had, at last, after muchshuffling, again betrayed James and made peace with William. Godolphinhad practised similar deception. He had long been sending fair words toSaint Germains; in return for those fair words he had received apardon; and, with this pardon in his secret drawer, he had continued toadminister the finances of the existing government. To ruin such a manwould be a just punishment for his baseness, and a great service to KingJames. Still more desirable was it to blast the fame and to destroy theinfluence of Russell and Shrewsbury. Both were distinguished membersof that party which had, under different names, been, during threegenerations, implacably hostile to the Kings of the House of Stuart. Both had taken a great part in the Revolution. The names of both weresubscribed to the instrument which had invited the Prince of Orangeto England. One of them was now his Minister for Maritime Affairs; theother his Principal Secretary of State; but neither had been constantlyfaithful to him. Both had, soon after his accession, bitterly resentedhis wise and magnanimous impartiality, which, to their minds, disorderedby party spirit, seemed to be unjust and ungrateful partiality for theTory faction; and both had, in their spleen, listened to agents fromSaint Germains. Russell had vowed by all that was most sacred that hewould himself bring back his exiled Sovereign. But the vow was broken assoon as it had been uttered; and he to whom the royal family had lookedas to a second Monk had crushed the hopes of that family at La Hogue. Shrewsbury had not gone such lengths. Yet he too, while out of humourwith William, had tampered with the agents of James. With the power andreputation of these two great men was closely connected the power andreputation of the whole Whig party. That party, after some quarrels, which were in truth quarrels of lovers, was now cordially reconciled toWilliam, and bound to him by the strongest ties. If those ties could bedissolved, if he could be induced to regard with distrust and aversionthe only set of men which was on principle and with enthusiasm devotedto his interests, his enemies would indeed have reason to rejoice. 

With such views as these Fenwick delivered to Devonshire a paper socunningly composed that it would probably have brought some severecalamity on the Prince to whom it was addressed, had not that Princebeen a man of singularly clear judgment and singularly lofty spirit. Thepaper contained scarcely any thing respecting those Jacobite plots inwhich the writer had been himself concerned, and of which he intimatelyknew all the details. It contained nothing which could be of thesmallest prejudice to any person who was really hostile to the existingorder of things. The whole narrative was made up of stories, too truefor the most part, yet resting on no better authority than hearsay, about the intrigues of some eminent warriors and statesmen, who, whatever their former conduct might have been, were now at least heartyin support of William. Godolphin, Fenwick averred, had accepted a seatat the Board of Treasury, with the sanction and for the benefit of KingJames. Marlborough had promised to carry over the army, Russell tocarry over the fleet. Shrewsbury, while out of office, had plotted withMiddleton against the government and King. Indeed the Whigs were now thefavourites at Saint Germains. Many old friends of hereditary rightwere moved to jealousy by the preference which James gave to the newconverts. Nay, he had been heard to express his confident hope that themonarchy would be set up again by the very hands which had pulled itdown. 

Such was Fenwick's confession. Devonshire received it and sent it byexpress to the Netherlands, without intimating to any of his fellowcouncillors what it contained. The accused ministers afterwardscomplained bitterly of this proceeding. Devonshire defended himselfby saying that he had been specially deputed by the King to take theprisoner's information, and was bound, as a true servant of the Crown, to transmit that information to His Majesty and to His Majesty alone. 

The messenger sent by Devonshire found William at Loo. The King read theconfession, and saw at once with what objects it had been drawn up. Itcontained little more than what he had long known, and had long, withpolitic and generous dissimulation, affected not to know. If he spared, employed and promoted men who had been false to him, it was not becausehe was their dupe. His observation was quick and just; his intelligencewas good; and he had, during some years, had in his hands proofs of muchthat Fenwick had only gathered from wandering reports. It has seemedstrange to many that a Prince of high spirit and acrimonious tempershould have treated servants, who had so deeply wronged him, with akindness hardly to be expected from the meekest of human beings. ButWilliam was emphatically a statesman. Ill humour, the natural andpardonable effect of much bodily and much mental suffering, mightsometimes impel him to give a tart answer. But never did he on anyimportant occasion indulge his angry passions at the expense of thegreat interests of which he was the guardian. For the sake of thoseinterests, proud and imperious as he was by nature, he submittedpatiently to galling restraints, bore cruel indignities anddisappointments with the outward show of serenity, and not only forgave, but often pretended not to see, offences which might well have moved himto bitter resentment. He knew that he must work with such tools ashe had. If he was to govern England he must employ the public men ofEngland; and in his age, the public men of England, with much of apeculiar kind of ability, were, as a class, lowminded and immoral. Therewere doubtless exceptions. Such was Nottingham among the Tories, andSomers among the Whigs. But the majority, both of the Tory and of theWhig ministers of William, were men whose characters had taken the plyin the days of the Antipuritan reaction. They had been formed intwo evil schools, in the most unprincipled of courts, and the mostunprincipled of oppositions, a court which took its character fromCharles, an opposition headed by Shaftesbury. From men so trainedit would have been unreasonable to expect disinterested and stedfastfidelity to any cause. But though they could not be trusted, they mightbe used and they might be useful. No reliance could be placed on theirprinciples but much reliance might be placed on their hopes and on theirfears; and of the two Kings who laid claim to the English crown, theKing from whom there was most to hope and most to fear was the Kingin possession. If therefore William had little reason to esteem thesepoliticians his hearty friends, he had still less reason to number themamong his hearty foes. Their conduct towards him, reprehensible as itwas, might be called upright when compared with their conduct towardsJames. To the reigning Sovereign they had given valuable service; to thebanished Sovereign little more than promises and professions. Shrewsburymight, in a moment of resentment or of weakness, have trafficked withJacobite agents; but his general conduct had proved that he was as faras ever from being a Jacobite. Godolphin had been lavish of fair wordsto the dynasty which was out; but he had thriftily and skilfully managedthe revenues of the dynasty which was in. Russell had sworn that hewould desert with the English fleet; but he had burned the French fleet. Even Marlborough's known treasons, --for his share in the disaster ofBrest and the death of Talmash was unsuspected--, had not done so muchharm as his exertions at Walcourt, at Cork and at Kinsale had donegood. William had therefore wisely resolved to shut his eyes to perfidy, which, however disgraceful it might be, had not injured him, and stillto avail himself, with proper precautions, of the eminent talents whichsome of his unfaithful counsellors possessed, Having determined on thiscourse, and having long followed it with happy effect, he could not butbe annoyed and provoked by Fenwick's confession. Sir John, it was plain, thought himself a Machiavel. If his trick succeeded, the Princess, whomit was most important to keep in good humour, would be alienated fromthe government by the disgrace of Marlborough. The whole Whig party, the firmest support of the throne, would be alienated by the disgrace ofRussell and Shrewsbury. In the meantime not one of those plotters whomFenwick knew to have been deeply concerned in plans of insurrection, invasion, assassination, would be molested. This cunning schemer shouldfind that he had not to do with a novice. William, instead of turninghis accused servants out of their places, sent the confession toShrewsbury, and desired that it might be laid before the Lords Justices. "I am astonished, " the King wrote, "at the fellow's effrontery. You knowme too well to think that such stories as his can make any impressionon me. Observe this honest man's sincerity. He has nothing to sayexcept against my friends. Not a word about the plans of his brotherJacobites. " The King concluded by directing the Lords justices to sendFenwick before a jury with all speed. [730]

The effect produced by William's letter was remarkable. Every one of theaccused persons behaved himself in a manner singularly characteristic. Marlborough, the most culpable of all, preserved a serenity, mild, majestic and slightly contemptuous. Russell, scarcely less criminalthan Marlborough, went into a towering passion, and breathed nothing butvengeance against the villanous informer. Godolphin, uneasy, but wary, reserved and selfpossessed, prepared himself to stand on the defensive. But Shrewsbury, who of all the four was the least to blame, was utterlyoverwhelmed. He wrote in extreme distress to William, acknowledged withwarm expressions of gratitude the King's rare generosity, and protestedthat Fenwick had malignantly exaggerated and distorted mere trifles intoenormous crimes. "My Lord Middleton, "--such was the substance of theletter, --"was certainly in communication with me about the time ofthe battle of La Hogue. We are relations; we frequently met; we suppedtogether just before he returned to France; I promised to take care ofhis interests here; he in return offered to do me good offices there;but I told him that I had offended too deeply to be forgiven, and thatI would not stoop to ask forgiveness. " This, Shrewsbury averred, was thewhole extent of his offence. [731] It is but too fully proved that thisconfession was by no means ingenuous; nor is it likely that Williamwas deceived. But he was determined to spare the repentant traitor thehumiliation of owning a fault and accepting a pardon. "I can see, " theKing wrote, "no crime at all in what you have acknowledged. Be assuredthat these calumnies have made no unfavourable impression on me. Nay, you shall find that they have strengthened my confidence in you. " [732]A man hardened in depravity would have been perfectly contented with anacquittal so complete, announced in language so gracious. But Shrewsburywas quite unnerved by a tenderness which he was conscious that he hadnot merited. He shrank from the thought of meeting the master whom hehad wronged, and by whom he had been forgiven, and of sustaining thegaze of the peers, among whom his birth and his abilities had gained forhim a station of which he felt that he was unworthy. The campaign inthe Netherlands was over. The session of Parliament was approaching. The King was expected with the first fair wind. Shrewsbury left town andretired to the Wolds of Gloucestershire. In that district, then one ofthe wildest in the south of the island, he had a small country seat, surrounded by pleasant gardens and fish-ponds. William had, in hisprogress a year before, visited this dwelling, which lay far from thenearest high road and from the nearest market town, and had been muchstruck by the silence and loneliness of the retreat in which he foundthe most graceful and splendid of English courtiers. 

At one in the morning of the sixth of October, the King landed atMargate. Late in the evening he reached Kensington. The followingmorning a brilliant crowd of ministers and nobles pressed to kiss hishand; but he missed one face which ought to have been there, and askedwhere the Duke of Shrewsbury was, and when he was expected in town. Thenext day came a letter from the Duke, averring that he had just had abad fall in hunting. His side had been bruised; his lungs had suffered;he had spit blood, and could not venture to travel. [733] That he hadfallen and hurt himself was true; but even those who felt most kindlytowards him suspected, and not without strong reason, that he made themost of his convenient misfortune, and, that if he had not shrunk fromappearing in public, he would have performed the journey with littledifficulty. His correspondents told him that, if he was really as illas he thought himself, he would do well to consult the physicians andsurgeons of the capital. Somers, especially, implored him in the mostearnest manner to come up to London. Every hour's delay was mischievous. His Grace must conquer his sensibility. He had only to face calumnycourageously, and it would vanish. [734] The King, in a few kind lines, expressed his sorrow for the accident. "You are much wanted here, " hewrote: "I am impatient to embrace you, and to assure you that my esteemfor you is undiminished. " [735] Shrewsbury answered that he had resolvedto resign the seals. [736] Somers adjured him not to commit so fatal anerror. If at that moment His Grace should quit office, what could theworld think, except that he was condemned by his own conscience? Hewould, in fact, plead guilty; he would put a stain on his own honour, and on the honour of all who lay under the same accusation. It would nolonger be possible to treat Fenwick's story as a romance. "Forgive me, "Somers wrote, "for speaking after this free manner; for I do own I canscarce be temperate in this matter. " [737] A few hours later Williamhimself wrote to the same effect. "I have so much regard for you, that, if I could, I would positively interdict you from doing what mustbring such grave suspicions on you. At any time, I should consider yourresignation as a misfortune to myself but I protest to you that, at thistime, it is on your account more than on mine that I wish you to remainin my service. " [738] Sunderland, Portland, Russell and Wharton joinedtheir entreaties to their master's; and Shrewsbury consented to remainSecretary in name. But nothing could induce him to face the Parliamentwhich was about to meet. A litter was sent down to him from London, butto no purpose. He set out, but declared that he found it impossible toproceed, and took refuge again in his lonely mansion among the hills. [739]

While these things were passing, the members of both Houses were fromevery part of the kingdom going up to Westminster. To the opening of thesession, not only England, but all Europe, looked forward with intenseanxiety. Public credit had been deeply injured by the failure ofthe Land Bank. The restoration of the currency was not yet halfaccomplished. The scarcity of money was still distressing. Much of themilled silver was buried in private repositories as fast as it cameforth from the Mint. Those politicians who were bent on raising thedenomination of the coin had found too ready audience from a populationsuffering under severe pressure; and, at one time, the general voice ofthe nation had seemed to be on their side. [740] Of course every personwho thought it likely that the standard would be lowered, hoarded asmuch money as he could hoard; and thus the cry for little shillingsaggravated the pressure from which it had sprung. [741] Both the alliesand the enemies of England imagined that her resources were spent, that her spirit was broken, that the Commons, so often querulous andparsimonious even in tranquil and prosperous times, would now positivelyrefuse to bear any additional burden, and would, with an importunity notto be withstood, insist on having peace at any price. 

But all these prognostications were confounded by the firmness andability of the Whig leaders, and by the steadiness of the Whig majority. On the twentieth of October the Houses met. William addressed to thema speech remarkable even among all the remarkable speeches in whichhis own high thoughts and purposes were expressed in the dignified andjudicious language of Somers. There was, the King said, great reasonfor congratulation. It was true that the funds voted in the precedingsession for the support of the war had failed, and that the recoinagehad produced great distress. Yet the enemy had obtained no advantageabroad; the State had been torn by no convulsion at home; the loyaltyshown by the army and by the nation under severe trials had disappointedall the hopes of those who wished evil to England. Overtures tending topeace had been made. What might be the result of those overtures, was uncertain; but this was certain, that there could be no safe orhonourable peace for a nation which was not prepared to wage vigorouswar. "I am sure we shall all agree in opinion that the only way oftreating with France is with our swords in our hands. "

The Commons returned to their chamber; and Foley read the speech fromthe chair. A debate followed which resounded through all Christendom. That was the proudest day of Montague's life, and one of the proudestdays in the history of the English Parliament. In 1798, Burke held upthe proceedings of that day as an example to the statesmen whose heartshad failed them in the conflict with the gigantic power of the Frenchrepublic. In 1822, Huskisson held up the proceedings of that day as anexample to a legislature which, under the pressure of severe distress, was tempted to alter the standard of value and to break faith withthe public creditor. Before the House rose the young Chancellor of theExchequer, whose ascendency, since the ludicrous failure of the Toryscheme of finance, was undisputed, proposed and carried three memorableresolutions. The first, which passed with only one muttered No, declaredthat the Commons would support the King against all foreign and domesticenemies, and would enable him to prosecute the war with vigour. Thesecond, which passed, not without opposition, but without a division, declared that the standard of money should not be altered in fineness, weight or denomination. The third, against which not a single opponentof the government dared to raise his voice, pledged the House to makegood all the deficiencies of all parliamentary fund's established sincethe King's accession. The task of framing an answer to the royal speechwas entrusted to a Committee exclusively composed of Whigs. Montaguewas chairman; and the eloquent and animated address which he drew up maystill be read in the journals with interest and pride. [742]

Within a fortnight two millions and a half were granted for the militaryexpenditure of the approaching year, and nearly as much for the maritimeexpenditure. Provision was made without any dispute for forty thousandseamen. About the amount of the land force there was a division. TheKing asked for eighty-seven thousand soldiers; and the Tories thoughtthat number too large. The vote was carried by two hundred andtwenty-three to sixty-seven. 

The malecontents flattered themselves, during a short time, thatthe vigorous resolutions of the Commons would be nothing more thanresolutions, that it would be found impossible to restore public credit, to obtain advances from capitalists, or to wring taxes out of thedistressed population, and that therefore the forty thousand seamen andthe eighty-seven thousand soldiers would exist only on paper. Howe, who had been more cowed than was usual with him on the first day of thesession, attempted, a week later, to make a stand against the Ministry. "The King, " he said, "must have been misinformed; or His Majesty neverwould have felicitated Parliament on the tranquil state of the country. I come from Gloucestershire. I know that part of the kingdom well. Thepeople are all living on alms, or ruined by paying alms. The soldierhelps himself, sword in hand, to what he wants. There have been seriousriots already; and still more serious riots are to be apprehended. "The disapprobation of the House was strongly expressed. Severalmembers declared that in their counties every thing was quiet. IfGloucestershire were in a more disturbed state than the rest of England, might not the cause be that Gloucestershire was cursed with a moremalignant and unprincipled agitator than all the rest of England couldshow? Some Gloucestershire gentlemen took issue with Howe on the facts. There was no such distress, they said, no such discontent, no suchrioting as he had described. In that county, as in every other county, the great body of the population was fully determined to support theKing in waging a vigorous war till he could make an honourable peace. [743]

In fact the tide had already turned. From the moment at which theCommons notified their fixed determination not to raise the denominationof the coin, the milled money began to come forth from a thousand strongboxes and private drawers. There was still pressure; but that pressurewas less and less felt day by day. The nation, though still suffering, was joyful and grateful. Its feelings resembled those of a man who, having been long tortured by a malady which has embittered his life, hasat last made up his mind to submit to the surgeon's knife, who has gonethrough a cruel operation with safety, and who, though still smartingfrom the steel, sees before him many years of health and enjoyment, andthanks God that the worst is over. Within four days after the meeting ofParliament there was a perceptible improvement in trade. The discounton bank notes had diminished by one third. The price of those woodentallies, which, according to an usage handed to us from a rude age, were given as receipts for sums paid into the Exchequer, had risen. Theexchanges, which had during many months been greatly against England, had begun to turn. [744] Soon the effect of the magnanimous firmness ofthe House of Commons was felt at every Court in Europe. So high indeedwas the spirit of that assembly that the King had some difficulty inpreventing the Whigs from moving and carrying a resolution that anaddress should be presented to him, requesting him to enter into nonegotiation with France, till she should have acknowledged him as Kingof England. [745] Such an address was unnecessary. The votes of theParliament had already forced on Lewis the conviction that there was nochance of a counterrevolution. There was as little chance that he wouldbe able to effect that compromise of which he had, in the course ofthe negotiations, thrown out hints. It was not to be hoped that eitherWilliam or the English nation would ever consent to make the settlementof the English crown a matter of bargain with France. And even hadWilliam and the English nation been disposed to purchase peace by such asacrifice of dignity, there would have been insuperable difficulties inanother quarter. James could not endure to hear of the expedient whichLewis had suggested. "I can bear, " the exile said to his benefactor, "Ican bear with Christian patience to be robbed by the Prince of Orange;but I never will consent to be robbed by my own son. " Lewis never againmentioned the subject. Callieres received orders to make the concessionon which the peace of the civilised world depended. He and Dykvelt cametogether at the Hague before Baron Lilienroth, the representative ofthe King of Sweden, whose mediation the belligerent powers had accepted. Dykvelt informed Lilienroth that the Most Christian King had engaged, whenever the Treaty of Peace should be signed, to recognise the Princeof Orange as King of Great Britain, and added, with a very intelligibleallusion to the compromise proposed by France, that the recognitionwould be without restriction, condition or reserve. Callieres thendeclared that he confirmed, in the name of his master, what Dykvelt hadsaid. [746] A letter from Prior, containing the good news, was deliveredto James Vernon, the Under Secretary of State, in the House of Commons. The tidings ran along the benches--such is Vernon's expression--likefire in a field of stubble. A load was taken away from every heart;and all was joy and triumph. [747] The Whig members might indeed wellcongratulate each other. For it was to the wisdom and resolution whichthey had shown, in a moment of extreme danger and distress, that theircountry was indebted for the near prospect of an honourable peace. 

Meanwhile public credit, which had, in the autumn, sunk to the lowestpoint, was fast reviving. Ordinary financiers stood aghast when theylearned that more than five millions were required to make good thedeficiencies of past years. But Montague was not an ordinary financier. A bold and simple plan proposed by him, and popularly called the GeneralMortgage, restored confidence. New taxes were imposed; old taxeswere augmented or continued; and thus a consolidated fund was formedsufficient to meet every just claim on the State. The Bank of Englandwas at the same time enlarged by a new subscription; and the regulationsfor the payment of the subscription were framed in such a manner as toraise the value both of the notes of the corporation and of the publicsecurities. 

Meanwhile the mints were pouring forth the new silver faster than ever. The distress which began on the fourth of May 1696, which was almostinsupportable during the five succeeding months, and which becamelighter from the day on which the Commons declared their immutableresolution to maintain the old standard, ceased to be painfully felt inMarch 1697. Some months were still to elapse before credit completelyrecovered from the most tremendous shock that it has ever sustained. Butalready the deep and solid foundation had been laid on which was to risethe most gigantic fabric of commercial prosperity that the world hadever seen. The great body of the Whigs attributed the restoration of thehealth of the State to the genius and firmness of their leader Montague. His enemies were forced to confess, sulkily and sneeringly, that everyone of his schemes had succeeded, the first Bank subscription, thesecond Bank subscription, the Recoinage, the General Mortgage, theExchequer Bills. But some Tories muttered that he deserved no morepraise than a prodigal who stakes his whole estate at hazard, and hasa run of good luck. England had indeed passed safely through a terriblecrisis, and was the stronger for having passed through it. But she hadbeen in imminent danger of perishing; and the minister who had exposedher to that danger deserved, not to be praised, but to be hanged. Othersadmitted that the plans which were popularly attributed to Montague wereexcellent, but denied that those plans were Montague's. The voice ofdetraction, however, was for a time drowned by the loud applauses ofthe Parliament and the City. The authority which the Chancellor ofthe Exchequer exercised in the House of Commons was unprecedented andunrivalled. In the Cabinet his influence was daily increasing. He had nolonger a superior at the Board of Treasury. In consequence of Fenwick'sconfession, the last Tory who held a great and efficient office in theState had been removed, and there was at length a purely Whig Ministry. 

It had been impossible to prevent reports about that confession fromgetting abroad. The prisoner, indeed, had found means of communicatingwith his friends, and had doubtless given them to understand that hehad said nothing against them, and much against the creatures of theusurper. William wished the matter to be left to the ordinary tribunals, and was most unwilling that it should be debated elsewhere. But hiscounsellors, better acquainted than himself with the temper of largeand divided assemblies, were of opinion that a parliamentary discussion, though perhaps undesirable, was inevitable. It was in the power of asingle member of either House to force on such a discussion; and in bothHouses there were members who, some from a sense of duty, some from merelove of mischief, were determined to know whether the prisoner had, as it was rumoured, brought grave charges against some of the mostdistinguished men in the kingdom. If there must be an inquiry, it wassurely desirable that the accused statesmen should be the first todemand it. There was, however, one great difficulty. The Whigs, whoformed the majority of the Lower House, were ready to vote, as one man, for the entire absolution of Russell and Shrewsbury, and had no wish toput a stigma on Marlborough, who was not in place, and therefore excitedlittle jealousy. But a strong body of honest gentlemen, as Whartoncalled them, could not, by any management, be induced to join in aresolution acquitting Godolphin. To them Godolphin was an eyesore. Allthe other Tories who, in the earlier years of William's reign, hadborne a chief part in the direction of affairs, had, one by one, beendismissed. Nottingham, Trevor, Leeds, were no longer in power. Pembrokecould hardly be called a Tory, and had never been really in power. ButGodolphin still retained his post at Whitehall; and to the men of theRevolution it seemed intolerable that one who had sate at the CouncilBoard of Charles and James, and who had voted for a Regency, should bethe principal minister of finance. Those who felt thus had learned withmalicious delight that the First Lord of the Treasury was named inthe confession about which all the world was talking; and they weredetermined not to let slip so good an opportunity of ejecting him fromoffice. On the other hand, every body who had seen Fenwick's paper, andwho had not, in the drunkenness of factious animosity, lost all senseof reason and justice, must have felt that it was impossible to makea distinction between two parts of that paper, and to treat all thatrelated to Shrewsbury and Russell as false, and all that related toGodolphin as true. This was acknowledged even by Wharton, who of allpublic men was the least troubled by scruples or by shame. [748] IfGodolphin had stedfastly refused to quit his place, the Whig leaderswould have been in a most embarrassing position. But a politician of nocommon dexterity undertook to extricate them from their difficulties. In the art of reading and managing the minds of men Sunderland had noequal; and he was, as he had been during several years, desirous tosee all the great posts in the kingdom filled by Whigs. By his skilfulmanagement Godolphin was induced to go into the royal closet, and torequest permission to retire from office; and William granted thatpermission with a readiness by which Godolphin was much more surprisedthan pleased. [749]

One of the methods employed by the Whig junto, for the purpose ofinstituting and maintaining through all the ranks of the Whig party adiscipline never before known, was the frequent holding of meetings ofmembers of the House of Commons. Some of those meetings were numerous;others were select. The larger were held at the Rose, a tavernfrequently mentioned in the political pasquinades of that time; [750]the smaller at Russell's in Covent Garden, or at Somers's in Lincoln'sInn Fields. 

On the day on which Godolphin resigned his great office two selectmeetings were called. In the morning the place of assembly was Russell'shouse. In the afternoon there was a fuller muster at the Lord Keeper's. Fenwick's confession, which, till that time, had probably been knownonly by rumour to most of those who were present, was read. Theindignation of the hearers was strongly excited, particularly by onepassage, of which the sense seemed to be that not only Russell, not onlyShrewsbury, but the great body of the Whig party was, and had longbeen, at heart Jacobite. "The fellow insinuates, " it was said, "that theAssassination Plot itself was a Whig scheme. " The general opinion wasthat such a charge could not be lightly passed over. There must be asolemn debate and decision in Parliament. The best course would be thatthe King should himself see and examine the prisoner, and that Russellshould then request the royal permission to bring the subject before theHouse of Commons. As Fenwick did not pretend that he had any authorityfor the stories which he had told except mere hearsay, there could be nodifficulty in carrying a resolution branding him as a slanderer, and anaddress to the throne requesting that he might be forthwith brought totrial for high treason. [751]

The opinion of the meeting was conveyed to William by his ministers;and he consented, though not without reluctance, to see the prisoner. Fenwick was brought into the royal closet at Kensington. A few ofthe great officers of state and the Crown lawyers were present. "Yourpapers, Sir John, " said the King, "are altogether unsatisfactory. Instead of giving me an account of the plots formed by you and youraccomplices, plots of which all the details must be exactly known toyou, you tell me stories, without authority, without date, withoutplace, about noblemen and gentlemen with whom you do not pretend tohave had any intercourse. In short your confession appears to be acontrivance intended to screen those who are really engaged in designsagainst me, and to make me suspect and discard those in whom I have goodreason to place confidence. If you look for any favour from me, give me, this moment and on this spot, a full and straightforward account ofwhat you know of your own knowledge. " Fenwick said that he was takenby surprise, and asked for time. "No, Sir, " said the King. "For whatpurpose can you want time? You may indeed want time if you mean to drawup another paper like this. But what I require is a plain narrative ofwhat you have yourself done and seen; and such a narrative you can give, if you will, without pen and ink. " Then Fenwick positively refused tosay any thing. "Be it so, " said William. "I will neither hear you norhear from you any more. " [752] Fenwick was carried back to his prison. He had at this audience shown a boldness and determination whichsurprised those who had observed his demeanour. He had, ever since hehad been in confinement, appeared to be anxious and dejected; yet now, at the very crisis of his fate, he had braved the displeasure ofthe Prince whose clemency he had, a short time before, submissivelyimplored. In a very few hours the mystery was explained. Just beforehe had been summoned to Kensington, he had received from his wifeintelligence that his life was in no danger, that there was onlyone witness against him, that she and her friends had succeeded incorrupting Goodman. [753]

Goodman had been allowed a liberty which was afterwards, with somereason, made matter of charge against the government. For his testimonywas most important; his character was notoriously bad; the attemptswhich had been made to seduce Porter proved that, if money could saveFenwick's life, money would not be spared; and Goodman had not, likePorter, been instrumental in sending Jacobites to the gallows, andtherefore was not, like Porter, bound to the cause of William by anindissoluble tie. The families of the imprisoned conspirators employedthe agency of a cunning and daring adventurer named O'Brien. Thisman knew Goodman well. Indeed they had belonged to the same gang ofhighwaymen. They met at the Dog in Drury Lane, a tavern which wasfrequented by lawless and desperate men. O'Brien was accompanied byanother Jacobite of determined character. A simple choice was offered toGoodman, to abscond and to be rewarded with an annuity of five hundreda year, or to have his throat cut on the spot. He consented, half fromcupidity, half from fear. O'Brien was not a man to be tricked as Clancyhad been. He never parted company with Goodman from the moment when thebargain was struck till they were at Saint Germains. [754]

On the afternoon of the day on which Fenwick was examined by the King atKensington it began to be noised abroad that Goodman was missing. He hadbeen many hours absent from his house. He had not been seen at his usualhaunts. At first a suspicion arose that he had been murdered bythe Jacobites; and this suspicion was strengthened by a singularcircumstance. Just after his disappearance, a human head was foundsevered from the body to which it belonged, and so frightfully mangledthat no feature could be recognised. The multitude, possessed by thenotion that there was no crime which an Irish Papist might not be foundto commit, was inclined to believe that the fate of Godfrey had befallenanother victim. On inquiry however it seemed certain that Goodman haddesignedly withdrawn himself. A proclamation appeared promising a rewardof a thousand pounds to any person who should stop the runaway; but itwas too late. [755]

This event exasperated the Whigs beyond measure. No jury could now findFenwick guilty of high treason. Was he then to escape? Was a long seriesof offences against the State to go unpunished merely because to thoseoffences had now been added the offence of bribing a witness to suppresshis evidence and to desert his bail? Was there no extraordinary methodby which justice might strike a criminal who, solely because he wasworse than other criminals, was beyond the reach of the ordinary law?Such a method there was, a method authorised by numerous precedents, amethod used both by Papists and by Protestants during the troubles ofthe sixteenth century, a method used both by Roundheads and by Cavaliersduring the troubles of the seventeenth century, a method which scarcelyany leader of the Tory party could condemn without condemning himself, amethod of which Fenwick could not decently complain, since he had, a fewyears before, been eager to employ it against the unfortunate Monmouth. To that method the party which was now supreme in the State determinedto have recourse. 

Soon after the Commons had met, on the morning of the sixth of November, Russell rose in his place and requested to be heard. The task which hehad undertaken required courage not of the most respectable kind; but tohim no kind of courage was wanting. Sir John Fenwick, he said, had sentto the King a paper in which grave accusations were brought against someof His Majesty's servants; and His Majesty had, at the request of hisaccused servants, graciously given orders that this paper should belaid before the House. The confession was produced and read. The Admiralthen, with spirit and dignity worthy of a better man, demanded justicefor himself and Shrewsbury. "If we are innocent, clear us. If we areguilty, punish us as we deserve. I put myself on you as on my country, and am ready to stand or fall by your verdict. "

It was immediately ordered that Fenwick should be brought to thebar with all speed. Cutts, who sate in the House as member forCambridgeshire, was directed to provide a sufficient escort, and wasespecially enjoined to take care that the prisoner should have noopportunity of making or receiving any communication, oral or written, on the road from Newgate to Westminster. The House then adjourned tillthe afternoon. 

At five o'clock, then a late hour, the mace was again put on the table;candles were lighted; and the House and lobby were carefully cleared ofstrangers. Fenwick was in attendance under a strong guard. He was calledin, and exhorted from the chair to make a full and ingenuous confession. He hesitated and evaded. "I cannot say any thing without the King'spermission. His Majesty may be displeased if what ought to be known onlyto him should be divulged to others. " He was told that his apprehensionswere groundless. The King well knew that it was the right and the dutyof his faithful Commons to inquire into whatever concerned the safety ofhis person and of his government. "I may be tried in a few days, " saidthe prisoner. "I ought not to be asked to say any thing which may riseup in judgment against me. " "You have nothing to fear, " replied theSpeaker, "if you will only make a full and free discovery. No manever had reason to repent of having dealt candidly with the Commons ofEngland. " Then Fenwick begged for delay. He was not a ready orator; hismemory was bad; he must have time to prepare himself. He was told, as hehad been told a few days before in the royal closet, that, prepared orunprepared, he could not but remember the principal plots in which hehad been engaged, and the names of his chief accomplices. If hewould honestly relate what it was quite impossible that he could haveforgotten, the House would make all fair allowances, and would grant himtime to recollect subordinate details. Thrice he was removed from thebar; and thrice he was brought back. He was solemnly informed that theopportunity then given him of earning the favour of the Commons wouldprobably be the last. He persisted in his refusal, and was sent back toNewgate. 

It was then moved that his confession was false and scandalous. Coningsby proposed to add that it was a contrivance to create jealousiesbetween the King and good subjects for the purpose of screening realtraitors. A few implacable and unmanageable Whigs, whose hatred ofGodolphin had not been mitigated by his resignation, hinted their doubtswhether the whole paper ought to be condemned. But after a debatein which Montague particularly distinguished himself the motion wascarried. One or two voices cried "No;" but nobody ventured to demand adivision. 

Thus far all had gone smoothly; but in a few minutes the storm brokeforth. The terrible words, Bill of Attainder, were pronounced; and allthe fiercest passions of both the great factions were instantly roused. The Tories had been taken by surprise, and many of them had left thehouse. Those who remained were loud in declaring that they never wouldconsent to such a violation of the first principles of justice. Thespirit of the Whigs was not less ardent, and their ranks were unbroken. The motion for leave to bring in a bill attainting Sir John Fenwickwas carried very late at night by one hundred and seventy-nine votes tosixty-one; but it was plain that the struggle would be long and hard. [756]

In truth party spirit had seldom been more strongly excited. On bothsides there was doubtless much honest zeal; and on both sides anobservant eye might have detected fear, hatred, and cupidity disguisedunder specious pretences of justice and public good. The baleful heatof faction rapidly warmed into life poisonous creeping things which hadlong been lying torpid, discarded spies and convicted false witnesses, the leavings of the scourge, the branding iron and the shears. EvenFuller hoped that he might again find dupes to listen to him. The worldhad forgotten him since his pillorying. He now had the effrontery towrite to the Speaker, begging to be heard at the bar and promising muchimportant information about Fenwick and others. On the ninth of Novemberthe Speaker informed the House that he had received this communication;but the House very properly refused even to suffer the letter of sonotorious a villain to be read. 

On the same day the Bill of Attainder, having been prepared by theAttorney and Solicitor General, was brought in and read a first time. The House was full and the debate sharp. John Manley, member forBossiney, one of those stanch Tories who, in the preceding session, had long refused to sign the Association, accused the majority, in nomeasured terms, of fawning on the Court and betraying the liberties ofthe people. His words were taken down; and, though he tried to explainthem away, he was sent to the Tower. Seymour spoke strongly againstthe bill, and quoted the speech which Caesar made in the Roman Senateagainst the motion that the accomplices of Catiline should be put todeath in an irregular manner. A Whig orator keenly remarked that theworthy Baron had forgotten that Caesar was grievously suspected ofhaving been himself concerned in Catiline's plot. [757] In this stagea hundred and ninety-six members voted for the bill, a hundred andfour against it. A copy was sent to Fenwick, in order that he mightbe prepared to defend himself. He begged to be heard by counsel; hisrequest was granted; and the thirteenth was fixed for the hearing. 

Never within the memory of the oldest member had there been such a stirround the House as on the morning of the thirteenth. The approacheswere with some difficulty cleared; and no strangers, except peers, weresuffered to come within the doors. Of peers the throng was so great thattheir presence had a perceptible influence on the debate. Even Seymour, who, having formerly been Speaker, ought to have been peculiarly mindfulof the dignity of the Commons, so strangely forgot himself as once tosay "My Lords. " Fenwick, having been formally given up by the Sheriffsof London to the Serjeant at Arms, was put to the bar, attended by twobarristers who were generally employed by Jacobite culprits, SirThomas Powis and Sir Bartholomew Shower. Counsel appointed by the Houseappeared in support of the bill. 

The examination of the witnesses and the arguments of the advocatesoccupied three days. Porter was called in and interrogated. It wasestablished, not indeed by legal proof, but by such moral proof asdetermines the conduct of men in the affairs of common life, thatGoodman's absence was to be attributed to a scheme planned and executedby Fenwick's friends with Fenwick's privity. Secondary evidence of whatGoodman, if he had been present, would have been able to prove, was, after a warm debate, admitted. His confession, made on oath andsubscribed by his hand, was put in. Some of the grand jurymen who hadfound the bill against Sir John gave an account of what Goodman hadsworn before them; and their testimony was confirmed by some of thepetty jurymen who had convicted another conspirator. No evidence wasproduced in behalf of the prisoner. After counsel for him and againsthim had been heard, he was sent back to his cell. [758] Then the realstruggle began. It was long and violent. The House repeatedly sate fromdaybreak till near midnight. Once the Speaker was in the chair fifteenhours without intermission. Strangers were freely admitted; for it wasfelt that, since the House chose to take on itself the functions of acourt of justice, it ought, like a court of justice, to sit withopen doors. [759] The substance of the debates has consequently beenpreserved in a report, meagre, indeed, when compared with the reportsof our time, but for that age unusually full. Every man of note in theHouse took part in the discussion. The bill was opposed by Finch withthat fluent and sonorous rhetoric which had gained him the name ofSilvertongue, and by Howe with all the sharpness both of his wit and ofhis temper, by Seymour with characteristic energy, and by Harley withcharacteristic solemnity. On the other side Montague displayedthe powers of a consummate debater, and was zealously supported byLittleton. Conspicuous in the front ranks of the hostile parties weretwo distinguished lawyers, Simon Harcourt and William Cowper. 

Both were gentlemen of honourable descent; both were distinguishedby their fine persons and graceful manners; both were renowned foreloquence; and both loved learning and learned men. It may be added thatboth had early in life been noted for prodigality and love of pleasure. Dissipation had made them poor; poverty had made them industrious; andthough they were still, as age is reckoned at the Inns of Court, veryyoung men, Harcourt only thirty-six, Cowper only thirty-two, theyalready had the first practice at the bar. They were destined to risestill higher, to be the bearers of the great seal of the realm, andthe founders of patrician houses. In politics they were diametricallyopposed to each other. Harcourt had seen the Revolution with disgust, had not chosen to sit in the Convention, had with difficulty reconciledhis conscience to the oaths, and had tardily and unwillingly signed theAssociation. Cowper had been in arms for the Prince of Orange and a freeParliament, and had, in the short and tumultuary campaign which precededthe flight of James, distinguished himself by intelligence and courage. Since Somers had been removed to the Woolsack, the law officers of theCrown had not made a very distinguished figure in the Lower House, orindeed any where else; and their deficiencies had been more than oncesupplied by Cowper. His skill had, at the trial of Parkyns, recoveredthe verdict which the mismanagement of the Solicitor General had, for amoment, put in jeopardy. He had been chosen member for Hertford atthe general election of 1695, and had scarcely taken his seat when heattained a high place among parliamentary speakers. Chesterfield manyyears later, in one of his letters to his son, described Cowper as anorator who never spoke without applause, but who reasoned feebly, andwho owed the influence which he long exercised over great assemblies tothe singular charm of his style, his voice and his action. Chesterfieldwas, beyond all doubt, intellectually qualified to form a correctjudgment on such a subject. But it must be remembered that the object ofhis letters was to exalt good taste and politeness in opposition to muchhigher qualities. He therefore constantly and systematically attributedthe success of the most eminent persons of his age to their superiority, not in solid abilities and acquirements, but in superficial graces ofdiction and manner. He represented even Marlborough as a man of veryordinary capacity, who, solely because he was extremely well bred andwell spoken, had risen from poverty and obscurity to the height of powerand glory. It may confidently be pronounced that both to Marlborough andto Cowper Chesterfield was unjust. The general who saved the Empire andconquered the Low Countries was assuredly something more than a finegentleman; and the judge who presided during nine years in the Court ofChancery with the approbation of all parties must have been somethingmore than a fine declaimer. 

Whoever attentively and impartially studies the report of the debateswill be of opinion that, on many points which were discussed at greatlength and with great animation, the Whigs had a decided superiority inargument, but that on the main question the Tories were in the right. 

It was true that the crime of high treason was brought home to Fenwickby proofs which could leave no doubt on the mind of any man of commonsense, and would have been brought home to him according to the strictrules of law, if he had not, by committing another crime, eluded thejustice of the ordinary tribunals. It was true that he had, in the veryact of professing repentance and imploring mercy, added a new offenceto his former offences, that, while pretending to make a perfectlyingenuous confession, he had, with cunning malice, concealed every thingwhich it was for the interest of the government that he should divulge, and proclaimed every thing which it was for the interest of thegovernment to bury in silence. It was a great evil that he should bebeyond the reach of punishment; it was plain that he could be reachedonly by a bill of pains and penalties; and it could not be denied, either that many such bills had passed, or that no such bill had everpassed in a clearer case of guilt or after a fairer hearing. 

All these propositions the Whigs seem to have fully established. They had also a decided advantage in the dispute about the rule whichrequires two witnesses in cases of high treason. The truth is that therule is absurd. It is impossible to understand why the evidence whichwould be sufficient to prove that a man has fired at one of his fellowsubjects should not be sufficient to prove that he has fired at hisSovereign. It can by no means be laid down as a general maxim thatthe assertion of two witnesses is more convincing to the mind than theassertion of one witness. The story told by one witness may be in itselfprobable. The story told by two witnesses may be extravagant. Thestory told by one witness may be uncontradicted. The story told by twowitnesses may be contradicted by four witnesses. The story told by onewitness may be corroborated by a crowd of circumstances. The story toldby two witnesses may have no such corroboration. The one witness may beTillotson or Ken. The two witnesses may be Oates and Bedloe. 

The chiefs of the Tory party, however, vehemently maintained thatthe law which required two witnesses was of universal and eternalobligation, part of the law of nature, part of the law of God. Seymourquoted the book of Numbers and the book of Deuteronomy to prove thatno man ought to be condemned to death by the mouth of a single witness. "Caiaphas and his Sanhedrim, " said Harley, "were ready enough to set upthe plea of expediency for a violation of justice; they said, --and wehave heard such things said, --'We must slay this man, or the Romanswill come and take away our place and nation. ' Yet even Caiaphas and hisSanhedrim, in that foulest act of judicial murder, did not venture toset aside the sacred law which required two witnesses. " "Even Jezebel, "said another orator, "did not dare to take Naboth's vineyard from himtill she had suborned two men of Belial to swear falsely. " "If thetestimony of one grave elder had been sufficient, " it was asked, "whatwould have become of the virtuous Susannah?" This last allusion calledforth a cry of "Apocrypha, Apocrypha, " from the ranks of the LowChurchmen. [760]

Over these arguments, which in truth can scarcely have imposed on thosewho condescended to use them, Montague obtained a complete and easyvictory. "An eternal law! Where was this eternal law before the reign ofEdward the Sixth? Where is it now, except in statutes which relate onlyto one very small class of offences. If these texts from the Pentateuchand these precedents from the practice of the Sanhedrim prove any thing, they prove the whole criminal jurisprudence of the realm to be a mass ofinjustice and impiety. One witness is sufficient to convict a murderer, a burglar, a highwayman, an incendiary, a ravisher. Nay, there are casesof high treason in which only one witness is required. One witness cansend to Tyburn a gang of clippers and comers. Are you, then, prepared tosay that the whole law of evidence, according to which men have duringages been tried in this country for offences against life and property, is vicious and ought to be remodelled? If you shrink from saying this, you must admit that we are now proposing to dispense, not with a divineordinance of universal and perpetual obligation, but simply with anEnglish rule of procedure, which applies to not more than two or threecrimes, which has not been in force a hundred and fifty years, whichderives all its authority from an Act of Parliament, and which maytherefore be by another, Act abrogated or suspended without offence toGod or men. "

It was much less easy to answer the chiefs of the opposition when theyset forth the danger of breaking down the partition which separates thefunctions of the legislator from those of the judge. "This man, " it wassaid, "may be a bad Englishman; and yet his cause may be the cause ofall good Englishmen. Only last year we passed an Act to regulate theprocedure of the ordinary courts in cases of treason. We passed thatAct because we thought that, in those courts, the life of a subjectobnoxious to the government was not then sufficiently secured. Yet thelife of a subject obnoxious to the government was then far more securethan it will be if this House takes on itself to be the supreme criminaljudicature in political cases. " Warm eulogies were pronounced on theancient national mode of trial by twelve good men and true; and indeedthe advantages of that mode of trial in political cases are obvious. Theprisoner is allowed to challenge any number of jurors with cause, and aconsiderable number without cause. The twelve, from the moment at whichthey are invested with their short magistracy, till the moment when theylay it down, are kept separate from the rest of the community. Everyprecaution is taken to prevent any agent of power from soliciting orcorrupting them. Every one of them must hear every word of the evidenceand every argument used on either side. The case is then summed up by ajudge who knows that, if he is guilty of partiality, he may be called toaccount by the great inquest of the nation. In the trial of Fenwick atthe bar of the House of Commons all these securities were wanting. Somehundreds of gentlemen, every one of whom had much more than half madeup his mind before the case was opened, performed the functions both ofjudge and jury. They were not restrained, as a judge is restrained, bythe sense of responsibility; for who was to punish a Parliament? Theywere not selected, as a jury is selected, in a manner which enables theculprit to exclude his personal and political enemies. The arbiters ofhis fate came in and went out as they chose. They heard a fragment hereand there of what was said against him, and a fragment here and there ofwhat was said in his favour. During the progress of the bill they wereexposed to every species of influence. One member was threatened by theelectors of his borough with the loss of his seat; another might obtaina frigate for his brother from Russell; the vote of a third might besecured by the caresses and Burgundy of Wharton. In the debatesarts were practised and passions excited which are unknown to wellconstituted tribunals, but from which no great popular assembly dividedinto parties ever was or ever will be free. The rhetoric of one oratorcalled forth loud cries of "Hear him. " Another was coughed and scrapeddown. A third spoke against time in order that his friends who weresupping might come in to divide. [761] If the life of the most worthlessman could be sported with thus, was the life of the most virtuous mansecure?

The opponents of the bill did not, indeed, venture to say that therecould be no public danger sufficient to justify an Act of Attainder. They admitted that there might be cases in which the general rule mustbend to an overpowering necessity. But was this such a case? Even if itwere granted, for the sake of argument, that Strafford and Monmouth werejustly attainted, was Fenwick, like Strafford, a great minister who hadlong ruled England north of Trent, and all Ireland, with absolute power, who was high in the royal favour, and whose capacity, eloquence andresolution made him an object of dread even in his fall? Or was Fenwick, like Monmouth, a pretender to the Crown and the idol of the commonpeople? Were all the finest youths of three counties crowding to enlistunder his banners? What was he but a subordinate plotter? He had indeedonce had good employments; but he had long lost them. He had once hada good estate; but he had wasted it. Eminent abilities and weight ofcharacter he had never had. He was, no doubt, connected by marriagewith a very noble family; but that family did not share his politicalprejudices. What importance, then, had he, except that importance whichhis persecutors were most unwisely giving him by breaking through allthe fences which guard the lives of Englishmen in order to destroy him?Even if he were set at liberty, what could he do but haunt Jacobitecoffeehouses, squeeze oranges, and drink the health of King James andthe Prince of Wales? If, however, the government, supported by the Lordsand the Commons, by the fleet and the army, by a militia one hundred andsixty thousand strong, and by the half million of men who had signed theAssociation, did really apprehend danger from this poor ruined baronet, the benefit of the Habeas Corpus Act might be withheld from him. Hemight be kept within four walls as long as there was the least chance ofhis doing mischief. It could hardly be contended that he was an enemy soterrible that the State could be safe only when he was in the grave. 

It was acknowledged that precedents might be found for this bill, oreven for a bill far more objectionable. But it was said that whoeverreviewed our history would be disposed to regard such precedents ratheras warnings than as examples. It had many times happened that an Act ofAttainder, passed in a fit of servility or animosity, had, when fortunehad changed, or when passion had cooled, been repealed and solemnlystigmatized as unjust. Thus, in old times, the Act which was passedagainst Roger Mortimer, in the paroxysm of a resentment not unprovoked, had been, at a calmer moment, rescinded on the ground that, howeverguilty he might have been, he had not had fair play for his life. Thus, within the memory of the existing generation, the law which attaintedStrafford had been annulled, without one dissentient voice. Nor, itwas added, ought it to be left unnoticed that, whether by virtue of theordinary law of cause and effect, or by the extraordinary judgment ofGod, persons who had been eager to pass bills of pains and penalties, had repeatedly perished by such bills. No man had ever made a moreunscrupulous use of the legislative power for the destruction of hisenemies than Thomas Cromwell; and it was by an unscrupulous use of thelegislative power that he was himself destroyed. If it were true thatthe unhappy gentleman whose fate was now trembling in the balance hadhimself formerly borne a part in a proceeding similar to that which wasnow instituted against him, was not this a fact which ought to suggestvery serious reflections? Those who tauntingly reminded Fenwick that hehad supported the bill which attainted Monmouth might perhaps themselvesbe tauntingly reminded, in some dark and terrible hour, that they hadsupported the bill which had attainted Fenwick. "Let us remember whatvicissitudes we have seen. Let us, from so many signal examples of theinconstancy of fortune, learn moderation in prosperity. How littlewe thought, when we saw this man a favourite courtier at Whitehall, ageneral surrounded with military pomp at Hounslow, that we should liveto see him standing at our bar, and awaiting his doom from our lips! Andhow far is it from certain that we may not one day, in the bitterness ofour souls, vainly invoke the protection of those mild laws which we nowtreat so lightly! God forbid that we should ever again be subject totyranny! But God forbid, above all, that our tyrants should ever be ableto plead, in justification of the worst that they can inflict upon us, precedents furnished by ourselves!"

These topics, skilfully handled, produced a great effect on manymoderate Whigs. Montague did his best to rally his followers. Westill possess the rude outline of what must have been a most effectiveperoration. "Gentlemen warn us"--this, or very nearly this, seems tohave been what he said--"not to furnish King James with a precedentwhich, if ever he should be restored, he may use against ourselves. Dothey really believe that, if that evil day shall ever come, this justand necessary law will be the pattern which he will imitate? No, Sir, his model will be, not our bill of attainder, but his own; not our bill, which, on full proof, and after a most fair hearing, inflicts deservedretribution on a single guilty head; but his own bill, which, withouta defence, without an investigation, without an accusation, doomed nearthree thousand people, whose only crimes were their English blood andtheir Protestant faith, the men to the gallows and the women to thestake. That is the precedent which he has set, and which he will follow. In order that he never may be able to follow it, in order that the fearof a righteous punishment may restrain those enemies of our country whowish to see him ruling in London as he ruled at Dublin, I give my votefor this bill. "

In spite of all the eloquence and influence of the ministry, theminority grew stronger and stronger as the debates proceeded. Thequestion that leave should be given to bring in the bill had beencarried by nearly three to one. On the question that the bill should becommitted, the Ayes were a hundred and eighty-six, the Noes a hundredand twenty-eight. On the question that the bill should pass, the Ayeswere a hundred and eighty-nine, the Noes a hundred and fifty-six. 

On the twenty-sixth of November the bill was carried up to the Lords. Before it arrived, the Lords had made preparations to receive it. Everypeer who was absent from town had been summoned up: every peer whodisobeyed the summons and was unable to give a satisfactory explanationof his disobedience was taken into custody by Black Rod. On the dayfixed for the first reading, the crowd on the benches was unprecedented. The whole number of temporal Lords, exclusive of minors, Roman Catholicsand nonjurors, was about a hundred and forty. Of these a hundred andfive were in their places. Many thought that the Bishops ought to havebeen permitted, if not required, to withdraw; for, by an ancient canon, those who ministered at the altars of God were forbidden to take anypart in the infliction of capital punishment. On the trial of a peerimpeached of high treason, the prelates always retire, and leave theculprit to be absolved or condemned by laymen. And surely, if it beunseemly that a divine should doom his fellow creatures to death as ajudge, it must be still more unseemly that he should doom them to deathas a legislator. In the latter case, as in the former, he contractsthat stain of blood which the Church regards with horror; and it willscarcely be denied that there are some grave objections to the sheddingof blood by Act of Attainder which do not apply to the shedding of bloodin the ordinary course of justice. In fact, when the bill for takingaway the life of Strafford was under consideration, all the spiritualpeers withdrew. Now, however, the example of Cranmer, who had votedfor some of the most infamous acts of attainder that ever passed, wasthought more worthy of imitation; and there was a great muster of lawnsleeves. It was very properly resolved that, on this occasion, theprivilege of voting by proxy should be suspended, that the House shouldbe called over at the beginning and at the end of every sitting, andthat every member who did not answer to his name should be taken intocustody. [762]

Meanwhile the unquiet brain of Monmouth was teeming with strangedesigns. He had now reached a time of life at which youth could nolonger be pleaded as an excuse for his faults; but he was more waywardand eccentric than ever. Both in his intellectual and in his moralcharacter there was an abundance of those fine qualities which may becalled luxuries, and a lamentable deficiency of those solid qualitieswhich are of the first necessity. He had brilliant wit and readyinvention without common sense, and chivalrous generosity and delicacywithout common honesty. He was capable of rising to the part of theBlack Prince; and yet he was capable of sinking to the part of Fuller. His political life was blemished by some most dishonourable actions;yet he was not under the influence of those motives to which most of thedishonourable actions of politicians are to be ascribed. He valuedpower little and money less. Of fear he was utterly insensible. If hesometimes stooped to be a villain, --for no milder word will come up tothe truth, --it was merely to amuse himself and to astonish other people. In civil as in military affairs, he loved ambuscades, surprises, nightattacks. He now imagined that he had a glorious opportunity of makinga sensation, of producing a great commotion; and the temptation wasirresistible to a spirit so restless as his. 

He knew, or at least strongly suspected, that the stories which Fenwickhad told on hearsay, and which King, Lords and Commons, Whigs andTories, had agreed to treat as calumnies, were, in the main, true. Wasit impossible to prove that they were true, to cross the wise policy ofWilliam, to bring disgrace at once on some of the most eminent menof both parties, to throw the whole political world into inextricableconfusion?

Nothing could be done without the help of the prisoner; and with theprisoner it was impossible to communicate directly. It was necessary toemploy the intervention of more than one female agent. The Duchess ofNorfolk was a Mordaunt, and Monmouth's first cousin. Her gallantrieswere notorious; and her husband had, some years before, tried to inducehis brother nobles to pass a bill for dissolving his marriage; but theattempt had been defeated, in consequence partly of the zeal withwhich Monmouth had fought the battle of his kinswoman. The lady, thoughseparated from her lord, lived in a style suitable to her rank, andassociated with many women of fashion, among others, with Lady MaryFenwick, and with a relation of Lady Mary, named Elizabeth Lawson. Bythe instrumentality of the Duchess, Monmouth conveyed to the prisonerseveral papers containing suggestions framed with much art. Let SirJohn, --such was the substance of these suggestions, --boldly affirm thathis confession is true, that he has brought accusations, on hearsayindeed, but not on common hearsay, that he has derived his knowledge ofthe facts which he has asserted from the highest quarters; and let himpoint out a mode in which his veracity may be easily brought to thetest. Let him pray that the Earls of Portland and Romney, who are wellknown to enjoy the royal confidence, may be called upon to declarewhether they are not in possession of information agreeing with what hehas related. Let him pray that the King may be requested to lay beforeParliament the evidence which caused the sudden disgrace of LordMarlborough, and any letters which may have been intercepted whilepassing between Saint Germains and Lord Godolphin. "Unless, " saidMonmouth to his female agents, "Sir John is under a fate, unless heis out of his mind, he will take my counsel. If he does, his life andhonour are safe. If he does not, he is a dead man. " Then this strangeintriguer, with his usual license of speech, reviled William for whatwas in truth one of William's best titles to glory. "He is the worstof men. He has acted basely. He pretends not to believe these chargesagainst Shrewsbury, Russell, Marlborough, Godolphin. And yet heknows, "--and Monmouth confirmed the assertion by a tremendous oath, --"heknows that every word of the charges is true. "

The papers written by Monmouth were delivered by Lady Mary to herhusband. If the advice which they contained had been followed, there canbe little doubt that the object of the adviser would have been attained. The King would have been bitterly mortified; there would have been ageneral panic among public men of every party; even Marlborough's serenefortitude would have been severely tried; and Shrewsbury would probablyhave shot himself. But that Fenwick would have put himself in a bettersituation is by no means clear. Such was his own opinion. He saw thatthe step which he was urged to take was hazardous. He knew that he wasurged to take that step, not because it was likely to save himself, butbecause it was certain to annoy others; and he was resolved not to beMonmouth's tool. 

On the first of December the bill went through the earliest stagewithout a division. Then Fenwick's confession, which had, by the royalcommand, been laid on the table, was read; and then Marlborough stoodup. "Nobody can wonder, " he said, "that a man whose head is in dangershould try to save himself by accusing others. I assure Your Lordshipsthat, since the accession of his present Majesty, I have had nointercourse with Sir John on any subject whatever; and this I declareon my word of honour. " [763] Marlborough's assertion may have been true;but it was perfectly compatible with the truth of all that Fenwick hadsaid. Godolphin went further. "I certainly did, " he said, "continue tothe last in the service of King James and of his Queen. I was esteemedby them both. But I cannot think that a crime. It is possible that theyand those who are about them may imagine that I am still attached totheir interest. That I cannot help. But it is utterly false that I havehad any such dealings with the Court of Saint Germains as are describedin the paper which Your Lordships have heard read. " [764]

Fenwick was then brought in, and asked whether he had any furtherconfession to make. Several peers interrogated him, but to no purpose. Monmouth, who could not believe that the papers which he had sent toNewgate had produced no effect, put, in a friendly and encouragingmanner, several questions intended to bring out answers which would havebeen by no means agreeable to the accused Lords. No such answer howeverwas to be extracted from Fenwick. Monmouth saw that his ingeniousmachinations had failed. Enraged and disappointed, he suddenly turnedround, and became more zealous for the bill than any other peer in theHouse. Every body noticed the rapid change in his temper and manner; butthat change was at first imputed merely to his well known levity. 

On the eighth of December the bill was again taken into consideration;and on that day Fenwick, accompanied by his counsel, was in attendance. But, before he was called in, a previous question was raised. Severaldistinguished Tories, particularly Nottingham, Rochester, Normanby andLeeds, said that, in their opinion, it was idle to inquire whether theprisoner was guilty or not guilty, unless the House was of opinion thathe was a person so formidable that, if guilty, he ought to be attaintedby Act of Parliament. They did not wish, they said, to hear anyevidence. For, even on the supposition that the evidence left no doubtof his criminality, they should still think it better to leave himunpunished than to make a law for punishing him. The general sense, however, was decidedly for proceeding. [765] The prisoner and hiscounsel were allowed another week to prepare themselves; and, at length, on the fifteenth of December, the struggle commenced in earnest. 

The debates were the longest and the hottest, the divisions were thelargest, the protests were the most numerously signed that had ever beenknown in the whole history of the House of Peers. Repeatedly the benchescontinued to be filled from ten in the morning till past midnight. [766]The health of many lords suffered severely; for the winter was bitterlycold; but the majority was not disposed to be indulgent. One eveningDevonshire was unwell; he stole away and went to bed; but Black Rod wassoon sent to bring him back. Leeds, whose constitution was extremelyinfirm, complained loudly. "It is very well, " he said, "for younggentlemen to sit down to their suppers and their wine at two o'clock inthe morning; but some of us old men are likely to be of as much use hereas they; and we shall soon be in our graves if we are forced to keepsuch hours at such a season. " [767] So strongly was party spiritexcited that this appeal was disregarded, and the House continued to sitfourteen or fifteen hours a day. The chief opponents of the bill wereRochester, Nottingham, Normanby and Leeds. The chief orators on theother side were Tankerville, who, in spite of the deep stains whicha life singularly unfortunate had left on his public and privatecharacter, always spoke with an eloquence which riveted the attentionof his hearers; Burnet, who made a great display of historical learning;Wharton, whose lively and familiar style of speaking, acquired in theHouse of Commons, sometimes shocked the formality of the Lords; andMonmouth, who had always carried the liberty of debate to the verge oflicentiousness, and who now never opened his lips without inflictinga wound on the feelings of some adversary. A very few nobles of greatweight, Devonshire, Dorset, Pembroke and Ormond, formed a third party. They were willing to use the Bill of Attainder as an instrument oftorture for the purpose of wringing a full confession out of theprisoner. But they were determined not to give a final vote for sendinghim to the scaffold. 

The first division was on the question whether secondary evidence ofwhat Goodman could have proved should be admitted. On this occasionBurnet closed the debate by a powerful speech which none of the Toryorators could undertake to answer without premeditation. A hundred andtwenty-six lords were present, a number unprecedented in our history. There were seventy-three Contents, and fifty-three Not Contents. Thirty-six of the minority protested against the decision of the House. [768]

The next great trial of strength was on the question whether the billshould be read a second time. The debate was diversified by a curiousepisode. Monmouth, in a vehement declamation, threw some severe and wellmerited reflections on the memory of the late Lord Jeffreys. The titleand part of the ill gotten wealth of Jeffreys had descended to his son, a dissolute lad, who had lately come of age, and who was then sitting inthe House. The young man fired at hearing his father reviled. The Housewas forced to interfere, and to make both the disputants promise thatthe matter should go no further. On this day a hundred and twenty-eightpeers were present. The second reading was carried by seventy-three tofifty-five; and forty-nine of the fifty-five protested. [769]

It was now thought by many that Fenwick's courage would give way. Itwas known that he was very unwilling to die. Hitherto he might haveflattered himself with hopes that the bill would miscarry. But now thatit had passed one House, and seemed certain to pass the other, it wasprobable that he would save himself by disclosing all that he knew. Hewas again put to the bar and interrogated. He refused to answer, on theground that his answers might be used against him by the Crown at theOld Bailey. He was assured that the House would protect him; but hepretended that this assurance was not sufficient; the House was notalways sitting; he might be brought to trial during a recess, and hangedbefore their Lordships met again. The royal word alone, he said, wouldbe a complete guarantee. The Peers ordered him to be removed, andimmediately resolved that Wharton should go to Kensington, and shouldentreat His Majesty to give the pledge which the prisoner required. Wharton hastened to Kensington, and hastened back with a graciousanswer. Fenwick was again placed at the bar. The royal word, he wastold, had been passed that nothing which he might say there should beused against him in any other place. Still he made difficulties. Hemight confess all that he knew, and yet might be told that he was stillkeeping something back. In short, he would say nothing till he had apardon. He was then, for the last time, solemnly cautioned from theWoolsack. He was assured that, if he would deal ingenuously with theLords, they would be intercessors for him at the foot of the throne, and that their intercession would not be unsuccessful. If he continuedobstinate, they would proceed with the bill. A short interval wasallowed him for consideration; and he was then required to give hisfinal answer. "I have given it, " he said; "I have no security. If I had, I should be glad to satisfy the House. " He was then carried back to hiscell; and the Peers separated, having sate far into the night. [770]

At noon they met again. The third reading was moved. Tenison spoke forthe bill with more ability than was expected from him, and Monmouth withas much sharpness as in the previous debates. But Devonshire declaredthat he could go no further. He had hoped that fear would induce Fenwickto make a frank confession; that hope was at an end; the questionnow was simply whether this man should be put to death by an Act ofParliament; and to that question Devonshire said that he must answer, "Not Content. " It is not easy to understand on what principle he canhave thought himself justified in threatening to do what he did notthink himself justified in doing. He was, however, followed by Dorset, Ormond, Pembroke, and two or three others. Devonshire, in the name ofhis little party, and Rochester, in the name of the Tories, offeredto waive all objections to the mode of proceeding, if the penalty werereduced from death to perpetual imprisonment. But the majority, though weakened by the defection of some considerable men, was still amajority, and would hear of no terms of compromise. The third readingwas carried by only sixty-eight votes to sixty-one. Fifty-three Lordsrecorded their dissent; and forty-one subscribed a protest, in whichthe arguments against the bill were ably summed up. [771] The peers whomFenwick had accused took different sides. Marlborough steadily votedwith the majority, and induced Prince George to do the same. Godolphinas steadily voted with the minority, but, with characteristic wariness, abstained from giving any reasons for his votes. No part of his lifewarrants us in ascribing his conduct to any exalted motive. It isprobable that, having been driven from office by the Whigs and forcedto take refuge among the Tories, he thought it advisable to go with hisparty. [772]

As soon as the bill had been read a third time, the attention of thePeers was called to a matter which deeply concerned the honour of theirorder. Lady Mary Fenwick had been, not unnaturally, moved to the highestresentment by the conduct of Monmouth. He had, after professing a greatdesire to save her husband, suddenly turned round, and become the mostmerciless of her husband's persecutors; and all this solely becausethe unfortunate prisoner would not suffer himself to be used as aninstrument for the accomplishing of a wild scheme of mischief. She mightbe excused for thinking that revenge would be sweet. In her rage sheshowed to her kinsman the Earl of Carlisle the papers which she hadreceived from the Duchess of Norfolk. Carlisle brought the subjectbefore the Lords. The papers were produced. Lady Mary declared that shehad received them from the Duchess. The Duchess declared that she hadreceived them from Monmouth. Elizabeth Lawson confirmed the evidence ofher two friends. All the bitter things which the petulant Earl had saidabout William were repeated. The rage of both the great factionsbroke forth with ungovernable violence. The Whigs were exasperated bydiscovering that Monmouth had been secretly labouring to bring to shameand ruin two eminent men with whose reputation the reputation ofthe whole party was bound up. The Tories accused him of dealingtreacherously and cruelly by the prisoner and the prisoner's wife. Bothamong the Whigs and among the Tories Monmouth had, by his sneers andinvectives, made numerous personal enemies, whom fear of his wit andof his sword had hitherto kept in awe. [773] All these enemies were nowopenmouthed against him. There was great curiosity to know what he wouldbe able to say in his defence. His eloquence, the correspondent of theStates General wrote, had often annoyed others. He would now want itall to protect himself. [774] That eloquence indeed was of a kind muchbetter suited to attack than to defence. Monmouth spoke near three hoursin a confused and rambling manner, boasted extravagantly of his servicesand sacrifices, told the House that he had borne a great part in theRevolution, that he had made four voyages to Holland in the evil times, that he had since refused great places, that he had always held lucrein contempt. "I, " he said, turning significantly to Nottingham, "havebought no great estate; I have built no palace; I am twenty thousandpounds poorer than when I entered public life. My old hereditary mansionis ready to fall about my ears. Who that remembers what I have done andsuffered for His Majesty will believe that I would speak disrespectfullyof him?" He solemnly declared, --and this was the most serious of themany serious faults of his long and unquiet life, --that he had nothingto do with the papers which had caused so much scandal. The Papists, he said, hated him; they had laid a scheme to ruin him; his ungratefulkinswoman had consented to be their implement, and had requited thestrenuous efforts which he had made in defence of her honour by tryingto blast his. When he concluded there was a long silence. He askedwhether their Lordships wished him to withdraw. Then Leeds, to whom hehad once professed a strong attachment, but whom he had deserted withcharacteristic inconstancy and assailed with characteristic petulance, seized the opportunity of revenging himself. "It is quite unnecessary, "the shrewd old statesman said, "that the noble Earl should withdrawat present. The question which we have now to decide is merely whetherthese papers do or do not deserve our censure. Who wrote them is aquestion which may be considered hereafter. " It was then moved andunanimously resolved that the papers were scandalous, and that theauthor had been guilty of a high crime and misdemeanour. Monmouthhimself was, by these dexterous tactics, forced to join in condemninghis own compositions. [775] Then the House proceeded to consider thecharge against him. The character of his cousin the Duchess did notstand high; but her testimony was confirmed both by direct and bycircumstantial evidence. Her husband said, with sour pleasantry, that hegave entire faith to what she had deposed. "My Lord Monmouth thought hergood enough to be wife to me; and, if she is good enough to be wife tome, I am sure that she is good enough to be a witness against him. " In aHouse of near eighty peers only eight or ten seemed inclined to show anyfavour to Monmouth. He was pronounced guilty of the act of which he had, in the most solemn manner, protested that he was innocent; he was sentto the Tower; he was turned out of all his places; and his name wasstruck out of the Council Book. [776] It might well have been thoughtthat the ruin of his fame and of his fortunes was irreparable. But therewas about his nature an elasticity which nothing could subdue. In hisprison, indeed, he was as violent as a falcon just caged, and would, ifhe had been long detained, have died of mere impatience. His only solacewas to contrive wild and romantic schemes for extricating himself fromhis difficulties and avenging himself on his enemies. When he regainedhis liberty, he stood alone in the world, a dishonoured man, more hatedby the Whigs than any Tory, and by the Tories than any Whig, and reducedto such poverty that he talked of retiring to the country, living likea farmer, and putting his Countess into the dairy to churn and to makecheeses. Yet even after this fall, that mounting spirit rose again, androse higher than ever. When he next appeared before the world, he hadinherited the earldom of the head of his family; he had ceased to becalled by the tarnished name of Monmouth; and he soon added new lustreto the name of Peterborough. He was still all air and fire. Hisready wit and his dauntless courage made him formidable; some amiablequalities which contrasted strangely with his vices, and some greatexploits of which the effect was heightened by the careless levity withwhich they were performed, made him popular; and his countrymen werewilling to forget that a hero of whose achievements they were proud, andwho was not more distinguished by parts and valour than by courtesy andgenerosity, had stooped to tricks worthy of the pillory. 

It is interesting and instructive to compare the fate of Shrewsbury withthe fate of Peterborough. The honour of Shrewsbury was safe. He had beentriumphantly acquitted of the charges contained in Fenwick's confession. He was soon afterwards still more triumphantly acquitted of a still moreodious charge. A wretched spy named Matthew Smith, who thought thathe had not been sufficiently rewarded, and was bent on being revenged, affirmed that Shrewsbury had received early information of theAssassination Plot, but had suppressed that information, and had takenno measures to prevent the conspirators from accomplishing their design. That this was a foul calumny no person who has examined the evidencecan doubt. The King declared that he could himself prove his minister'sinnocence; and the Peers, after examining Smith, pronounced theaccusation unfounded. Shrewsbury was cleared as far as it was in thepower of the Crown and of the Parliament to clear him. He had power andwealth, the favour of the King and the favour of the people. No man hada greater number of devoted friends. He was the idol of the Whigs; yethe was not personally disliked by the Tories. It should seem thathis situation was one which Peterborough might well have envied. Buthappiness and misery are from within. Peterborough had one of thoseminds of which the deepest wounds heal and leave no scar. Shrewsburyhad one of those minds in which the slightest scratch may fester tothe death. He had been publicly accused of corresponding with SaintGermains; and, though King, Lords and Commons had pronounced himinnocent, his conscience told him that he was guilty. The praises whichhe knew that he had not deserved sounded to him like reproaches. Henever regained his lost peace of mind. He left office; but one cruelrecollection accompanied him into retirement. He left England; but onecruel recollection pursued him over the Alps and the Apennines. On amemorable day, indeed, big with the fate of his country, he again, aftermany inactive and inglorious years, stood forth the Shrewsbury of 1688. Scarcely any thing in history is more melancholy than that late andsolitary gleam, lighting up the close of a life which had dawned sosplendidly, and which had so early become hopelessly troubled andgloomy. 

On the day on which the Lords passed the Bill of Attainder, theyadjourned over the Christmas holidays. The fate of Fenwick consequentlyremained during more than a fortnight in suspense. In the interval plansof escape were formed; and it was thought necessary to place a strongmilitary guard round Newgate. [777] Some Jacobites knew William solittle as to send him anonymous letters, threatening that he shouldbe shot or stabbed if he dared to touch a hair of the prisoner's head. [778] On the morning of the eleventh of January he passed the bill. Heat the same time passed a bill which authorised the government to detainBernardi and some other conspirators in custody during twelve months. On the evening of that day a deeply mournful event was the talk of allLondon. The Countess of Aylesbury had watched with intense anxiety theproceedings against Sir John. Her lord had been as deep as Sir John intreason, was, like Sir John, in confinement, and had, like Sir John, been a party to Goodman's flight. She had learned with dismay thatthere was a method by which a criminal who was beyond the reach of theordinary law might be punished. Her terror had increased at every stagein the progress of the Bill of Attainder. On the day on which the royalassent was to be given, her agitation became greater than her framecould support. When she heard the sound of the guns which announced thatthe King was on his way to Westminster, she fell into fits, and died ina few hours. [779]

Even after the bill had become law, strenuous efforts were made to saveFenwick. His wife threw herself at William's feet, and offered him apetition. He took the petition, and said, very gently, that it should beconsidered, but that the matter was one of public concern, and that hemust deliberate with his ministers before he decided. [780] She thenaddressed herself to the Lords. She told them that her husband hadnot expected his doom, that he had not had time to prepare himself fordeath, that he had not, during his long imprisonment, seen a divine. They were easily induced to request that he might be respited for aweek. A respite was granted; but, forty-eight hours before it expired, Lady Mary presented to the Lords another petition, imploring them tointercede with the King that her husband's punishment might be commutedto banishment. The House was taken by surprise; and a motion to adjournwas with difficulty carried by two votes. [781] On the morrow, the lastday of Fenwick's life, a similar petition was presented to the Commons. But the Whig leaders were on their guard; the attendance was full; anda motion for reading the Orders of the Day was carried by a hundred andfifty-two to a hundred and seven. [782] In truth, neither branch of thelegislature could, without condemning itself, request William to spareFenwick's life. Jurymen, who have, in the discharge of a painful duty, pronounced a culprit guilty, may, with perfect consistency, recommendhim to the favourable consideration of the Crown. But the Houses oughtnot to have passed the Bill of Attainder unless they were convinced, notmerely that Sir John had committed high treason, but also that he couldnot, without serious danger to the Commonwealth, be suffered to live. Hecould not be at once a proper object of such a bill and a proper objectof the royal mercy. 

On the twenty-eighth of January the execution took place. In complimentto the noble families with which Fenwick was connected, orders weregiven that the ceremonial should be in all respects the same as when apeer of the realm suffers death. A scaffold was erected on Tower Hilland hung with black. The prisoner was brought from Newgate in the coachof his kinsman the Earl of Carlisle, which was surrounded by a troopof the Life Guards. Though the day was cold and stormy, the crowd ofspectators was immense; but there was no disturbance, and no sign thatthe multitude sympathized with the criminal. He behaved with a firmnesswhich had not been expected from him. He ascended the scaffold withsteady steps, and bowed courteously to the persons who were assembledon it, but spoke to none, except White, the deprived Bishop ofPeterborough. White prayed with him during about half an hour. In theprayer the King was commended to the Divine protection; but no namewhich could give offence was pronounced. Fenwick then delivered a sealedpaper to the Sheriffs, took leave of the Bishop, knelt down, laid hisneck on the block, and exclaimed, "Lord Jesus, receive my soul. " Hishead was severed from his body at a single blow. His remains wereplaced in a rich coffin, and buried that night, by torchlight, underthe pavement of Saint Martin's Church. No person has, since that day, suffered death in England by Act of Attainder. [783]

Meanwhile an important question, about which public feeling was muchexcited, had been under discussion. As soon as the Parliament met, aBill for Regulating Elections, differing little in substance from thebill which the King had refused to pass in the preceding session, wasbrought into the House of Commons, was eagerly welcomed by the countrygentlemen, and was pushed through every stage. On the report itwas moved that five thousand pounds in personal estate should be asufficient qualification for the representative of a city or borough. But this amendment was rejected. On the third reading a rider wasadded, which permitted a merchant possessed of five thousand poundsto represent the town in which he resided; but it was provided that noperson should be considered as a merchant because he was a proprietor ofBank Stock or East India Stock. The fight was hard. Cowper distinguishedhimself among the opponents of the bill. His sarcastic remarks on thehunting, hawking boors, who wished to keep in their own hands the wholebusiness of legislation, called forth some sharp rustic retorts. A plainsquire, he was told, was as likely to serve the country well as the mostfluent gownsman, who was ready, for a guinea, to prove that black waswhite. On the question whether the bill should pass, the Ayes were twohundred, the Noes a hundred and sixty. [784]

The Lords had, twelve months before, readily agreed to a similar bill;but they had since reconsidered the subject and changed their opinion. The truth is that, if a law requiring every member of the House ofCommons to possess an estate of some hundreds of pounds a year in landcould have been strictly enforced, such a law would have been veryadvantageous to country gentlemen of moderate property, but would havebeen by no means advantageous to the grandees of the realm. A lord of asmall manor would have stood for the town in the neighbourhood of whichhis family had resided during centuries, without any apprehension thathe should be opposed by some alderman of London, whom the electors hadnever seen before the day of nomination, and whose chief title to theirfavour was a pocketbook full of bank notes. But a great nobleman, whohad an estate of fifteen or twenty thousand pounds a year, and whocommanded two or three boroughs, would no longer be able to put hisyounger son, his younger brother, his man of business, into Parliament, or to earn a garter or a step in the peerage by finding a seat for aLord of the Treasury or an Attorney General. On this occasion thereforethe interest of the chiefs of the aristocracy, Norfolk and Somerset, Newcastle and Bedford, Pembroke and Dorset, coincided with that of thewealthy traders of the City and of the clever young aspirants of theTemple, and was diametrically opposed to the interest of a squire ofa thousand or twelve hundred a year. On the day fixed for the secondreading the attendance of lords was great. Several petitions fromconstituent bodies, which thought it hard that a new restriction shouldbe imposed on the exercise of the elective franchise, were presented andread. After a debate of some hours the bill was rejected by sixty-twovotes to thirty-seven. [785] Only three days later, a strong party inthe Commons, burning with resentment, proposed to tack the bill whichthe Peers had just rejected to the Land Tax Bill. This motion wouldprobably have been carried, had not Foley gone somewhat beyond theduties of his place, and, under pretence of speaking to order, shownthat such a tack would be without a precedent in parliamentary history. When the question was put, the Ayes raised so loud a cry that it wasbelieved that they were the majority; but on a division they provedto be only a hundred and thirty-five. The Noes were a hundred andsixty-three. [786]

Other parliamentary proceedings of this session deserve mention. Whilethe Commons were busily engaged in the great work of restoring thefinances, an incident took place which seemed, during a short time, likely to be fatal to the infant liberty of the press, but whicheventually proved the means of confirming that liberty. Among themany newspapers which had been established since the expiration of thecensorship, was one called the Flying Post. The editor, John Salisbury, was the tool of a band of stockjobbers in the City, whose interest ithappened to be to cry down the public securities. He one day published afalse and malicious paragraph, evidently intended to throw suspicion onthe Exchequer Bills. On the credit of the Exchequer Bills depended, atthat moment, the political greatness and the commercial prosperity ofthe realm. The House of Commons was in a flame. The Speaker issued hiswarrant against Salisbury. It was resolved without a division that abill should be brought in to prohibit the publishing of news without alicense. Forty-eight hours later the bill was presented and read. Butthe members had now had time to cool. There was scarcely one of themwhose residence in the country had not, during the preceding summer, been made more agreeable by the London journals. Meagre as thosejournals may seem to a person who has the Times daily on his breakfasttable, they were to that generation a new and abundant source ofpleasure. No Devonshire or Yorkshire gentleman, Whig or Tory, could bearthe thought of being again dependent, during seven months of every year, for all information about what was doing in the world, on newsletters. If the bill passed, the sheets, which were now so impatiently expectedtwice a week at every country seat in the kingdom, would contain nothingbut what it suited the Secretary of State to make public; they would be, in fact, so many London Gazettes; and the most assiduous reader of theLondon Gazette might be utterly ignorant of the most important events ofhis time. A few voices, however, were raised in favour of a censorship. "These papers, " it was said, "frequently contain mischievousmatter. " "Then why are they not prosecuted?" was the answer. "Has theAttorney-General filed an information against any one of them? And isit not absurd to ask us to give a new remedy by statute, when the oldremedy afforded by the common law has never been tried?" On the questionwhether the bill should be read a second time, the Ayes were onlysixteen, the Noes two hundred. [787]

Another bill, which fared better, ought to be noticed as an instance ofthe slow, but steady progress of civilisation. The ancient immunitiesenjoyed by some districts of the capital, of which the largest and themost infamous was Whitefriars, had produced abuses which could no longerbe endured. The Templars on one side of Alsatia, and the citizens on theother, had long been calling on the government and the legislature toput down so monstrous a nuisance. Yet still, bounded on the west by thegreat school of English jurisprudence, and on the east by the great martof English trade, stood this labyrinth of squalid, tottering houses, close packed, every one, from cellar to cockloft, with outcasts whoselife was one long war with society. The best part of the populationconsisted of debtors who were in fear of bailiffs. The rest wereattorneys struck off the roll, witnesses who carried straw in theirshoes as a sign to inform the public where a false oath might beprocured for half a crown, sharpers, receivers of stolen goods, clippersof coin, forgers of bank notes, and tawdry women, blooming with paintand brandy, who, in their anger, made free use of their nails and theirscissors, yet whose anger was less to be dreaded than their kindness. With these wretches the narrow alleys of the sanctuary swarmed. Therattling of dice, the call for more punch and more wine, and the noiseof blasphemy and ribald song never ceased during the whole night. Thebenchers of the Inner Temple could bear the scandal and the annoyance nolonger. They ordered the gate leading into Whitefriars to be bricked up. The Alsatians mustered in great force, attacked the workmen, killed oneof them, pulled down the wall, knocked down the Sheriff who came to keepthe peace, and carried off his gold chain, which, no doubt, was soon inthe melting pot. The riot was not suppressed till a company of the FootGuards arrived. This outrage excited general indignation. The City, indignant at the outrage offered to the Sheriff, cried loudly forjustice. Yet, so difficult was it to execute any process in the dens ofWhitefriars, that near two years elapsed before a single ringleader wasapprehended. [788]

The Savoy was another place of the same kind, smaller indeed, and lessrenowned, but inhabited by a not less lawless population. An unfortunatetailor, who ventured to go thither for the purpose of demanding paymentof a debt, was set upon by the whole mob of cheats, ruffians andcourtesans. He offered to give a full discharge to his debtor and atreat to the rabble, but in vain. He had violated their franchises;and this crime was not to be pardoned. He was knocked down, stripped, tarred, feathered. A rope was tied round his waist. He was dragged nakedup and down the streets amidst yells of "A bailiff! A bailiff!" Finallyhe was compelled to kneel down and to curse his father and mother. Having performed this ceremony he was permitted, --and the permission wasblamed by many of the Savoyards, --to limp home without a rag upon him. [789] The Bog of Allen, the passes of the Grampians, were not moreunsafe than this small knot of lanes, surrounded by the mansions of thegreatest nobles of a flourishing and enlightened kingdom. 

At length, in 1697, a bill for abolishing the franchises of these placespassed both Houses, and received the royal assent. The Alsatiansand Savoyards were furious. Anonymous letters, containing menaces ofassassination, were received by members of Parliament who had madethemselves conspicuous by the zeal with which they had supported thebill; but such threats only strengthened the general conviction thatit was high time to destroy these nests of knaves and ruffians. Afortnight's grace was allowed; and it was made known that, when thattime had expired, the vermin who had been the curse of London would beunearthed and hunted without mercy. There was a tumultuous flight toIreland, to France, to the Colonies, to vaults and garrets in lessnotorious parts of the capital; and when, on the prescribed day, theSheriff's officers ventured to cross the boundary, they found thosestreets where, a few weeks before, the cry of "A writ!" would have drawntogether a thousand raging bullies and vixens, as quiet as the cloisterof a cathedral. [790]

On the sixteenth of April, the King closed the session with a speech, in which he returned warm and well merited thanks to the Houses for thefirmness and wisdom which had rescued the nation from commercial andfinancial difficulties unprecedented in our history. Before he set outfor the Continent, he conferred some new honours, and made somenew ministerial arrangements. Every member of the Whig junto wasdistinguished by some conspicuous mark of royal favour. Somers deliveredup the seal, of which he was Keeper; he received it back again with thehigher title of Chancellor, and was immediately commanded to affix it toa patent, by which he was created Baron Somers of Evesham. [791] Russellbecame Earl of Orford and Viscount Barfleur. No English title hadever before been taken from a place of battle lying within a foreignterritory. But the precedent then set has been repeatedly followed; andthe names of Saint Vincent, Trafalgar, Camperdown, and Douro are nowborne by the successors of great commanders. Russell seems to haveaccepted his earldom, after his fashion, not only without gratitude, butgrumblingly, and as if some great wrong had been done him. What wasa coronet to him? He had no child to inherit it. The only distinctionwhich he should have prized was the garter; and the garter had beengiven to Portland. Of course, such things were for the Dutch; and it wasstrange presumption in an Englishman, though he might have won a victorywhich had saved the State, to expect that his pretensions would beconsidered till all the Mynheers about the palace had been served. [792]

Wharton, still retaining his place of Comptroller of the Household, obtained the lucrative office of Chief Justice in Eyre, South of Trent;and his brother, Godwin Wharton, was made a Lord of the Admiralty. [793]

Though the resignation of Godolphin had been accepted in October, no newcommission of Treasury was issued till after the prorogation. Who shouldbe First Commissioner was a question long and fiercely disputed. ForMontague's faults had made him many enemies, and his merits many more, Dull formalists sneered at him as a wit and poet, who, no doubt, showedquick parts in debate, but who had already been raised far higher thanhis services merited or than his brain would bear. It would be absurdto place such a young coxcomb, merely because he could talk fluently andcleverly, in an office on which the wellbeing of the kingdom depended. Surely Sir Stephen Fox was, of all the Lords of the Treasury, thefittest to be at the head of the Board. He was an elderly man, grave, experienced, exact, laborious; and he had never made a verse in hislife. The King hesitated during a considerable time between the twocandidates; but time was all in Montague's favour; for, from the firstto the last day of the session, his fame was constantly rising. Thevoice of the House of Commons and of the City loudly designated him aspreeminently qualified to be the chief minister of finance. At lengthSir Stephen Fox withdrew from the competition, though not with a verygood grace. He wished it to be notified in the London Gazette that theplace of First Lord had been offered to him, and declined by him. Sucha notification would have been an affront to Montague; and Montague, flushed with prosperity and glory, was not in a mood to put up withaffronts. The dispute was compromised. Montague became First Lord ofthe Treasury; and the vacant seat at the Board was filled by Sir ThomasLittleton, one of the ablest and most consistent Whigs in the Houseof Commons. But, from tenderness to Fox, these promotions were notannounced in the Gazette. [794]

Dorset resigned the office of Chamberlain, but not in ill humour, and retired loaded with marks of royal favour. He was succeeded bySunderland, who was also appointed one of the Lords Justices, notwithout much murmuring from various quarters. [795] To the ToriesSunderland was an object of unmixed detestation. Some of the Whigleaders had been unable to resist his insinuating address; and otherswere grateful for the services which he had lately rendered to theparty. But the leaders could not restrain their followers. Plain men, who were zealous for civil liberty and for the Protestant religion, whowere beyond the range of Sunderland's irresistible fascination, andwho knew that he had sate in the High Commission, concurred in theDeclaration of Indulgence, borne witness against the Seven Bishops, andreceived the host from a Popish priest, could not, without indignationand shame, see him standing, with the staff in his hand, close to thethrone. Still more monstrous was it that such a man should be entrustedwith the administration of the government during the absence of theSovereign. William did not understand these feelings. Sunderland wasable; he was useful; he was unprincipled indeed; but so were all theEnglish politicians of the generation which had learned, under thesullen tyranny of the Saints, to disbelieve in virtue, and which had, during the wild jubilee of the Restoration, been utterly dissolved invice. He was a fair specimen of his class, a little worse, perhaps, thanLeeds or Godolphin, and about as bad as Russell or Marlborough. Why hewas to be hunted from the herd the King could not imagine. 

Notwithstanding the discontent which was caused by Sunderland'selevation, England was, during this summer, perfectly quiet and inexcellent temper. All but the fanatical Jacobites were elated by therapid revival of trade and by the near prospect of peace. Nor wereIreland and Scotland less tranquil. 

In Ireland nothing deserving to be minutely related had taken placesince Sidney had ceased to be Lord Lieutenant. The government hadsuffered the colonists to domineer unchecked over the native population;and the colonists had in return been profoundly obsequious to thegovernment. The proceedings of the local legislature which sate atDublin had been in no respect more important or more interesting thanthe proceedings of the Assembly of Barbadoes. Perhaps the most momentousevent in the parliamentary history of Ireland at this time was a disputebetween the two Houses which was caused by a collision between the coachof the Speaker and the coach of the Chancellor. There were, indeed, factions, but factions which sprang merely from personal pretensions andanimosities. The names of Whig and Tory had been carried across SaintGeorge's Channel, but had in the passage lost all their meaning. A manwho was called a Tory at Dublin would have passed at Westminster for asstanch a Whig as Wharton. The highest Churchmen in Ireland abhorredand dreaded Popery so much that they were disposed to consider everyProtestant as a brother. They remembered the tyranny of James, therobberies, the burnings, the confiscations, the brass money, the Actof Attainder, with bitter resentment. They honoured William as theirdeliverer and preserver. Nay, they could not help feeling a certainrespect even for the memory of Cromwell; for, whatever else he mighthave been, he had been the champion and the avenger of their race. Between the divisions of England, therefore, and the divisions ofIreland, there was scarcely any thing in common. In England there weretwo parties, of the same race and religion, contending with each other. In Ireland there were two castes, of different races and religions, onetrampling on the other. 

Scotland too was quiet. The harvest of the last year had indeed beenscanty; and there was consequently much suffering. But the spirit ofthe nation was buoyed up by wild hopes, destined to end in crueldisappointment. A magnificent daydream of wealth and empire socompletely occupied the minds of men that they hardly felt the presentdistress. How that dream originated, and by how terrible an awakening itwas broken, will be related hereafter. 

In the autumn of 1696 the Estates of Scotland met at Edinburgh. Theattendance was thin; and the session lasted only five weeks. A supplyamounting to little more than a hundred thousand pounds sterling wasvoted. Two Acts for the securing of the government were passed. One ofthose Acts required all persons in public trust to sign an Associationsimilar to the Association which had been so generally subscribed inthe south of the island. The other Act provided that the Parliament ofScotland should not be dissolved by the death of the King. But by farthe most important event of this short session was the passing of theAct for the settling of Schools. By this memorable law it was, in theScotch phrase, statuted and ordained that every parish in the realmshould provide a commodious schoolhouse and should pay a moderatestipend to a schoolmaster. The effect could not be immediately felt. But, before one generation had passed away, it began to be evidentthat the common people of Scotland were superior in intelligence tothe common people of any other country in Europe. To whatever land theScotchman might wander, to whatever calling he might betake himself, inAmerica or in India, in trade or in war, the advantage which he derivedfrom his early training raised him above his competitors. If he wastaken into a warehouse as a porter, he soon became foreman. If heenlisted in the army, he soon became a serjeant. Scotland, meanwhile, in spite of the barrenness of her soil and the severity of her climate, made such progress in agriculture, in manufactures, in commerce, inletters, in science, in all that constitutes civilisation, as the OldWorld had never seen equalled, and as even the New World has scarcelyseen surpassed. 

This wonderful change is to be attributed, not indeed solely, butprincipally, to the national system of education. But to the men by whomthat system was established posterity owes no gratitude. They knewnot what they were doing. They were the unconscious instruments ofenlightening the understandings and humanising the hearts of millions. But their own understandings were as dark and their own hearts asobdurate as those of the Familiars of the Inquisition at Lisbon. In thevery month in which the Act for the settling of Schools was touched withthe sceptre, the rulers of the Church and State in Scotland began tocarry on with vigour two persecutions worthy of the tenth century, a persecution of witches and a persecution of infidels. A crowd ofwretches, guilty only of being old and miserable, were accused oftrafficking with the devil. The Privy Council was not ashamed to issuea Commission for the trial of twenty-two of these poor creatures. [796]The shops of the booksellers of Edinburgh were strictly searched forheretical works. Impious books, among which the sages of the Presbyteryranked Thomas Burnet's Sacred Theory of the Earth, were strictlysuppressed. [797] But the destruction of mere paper and sheepskin wouldnot satisfy the bigots. Their hatred required victims who could feel, and was not appeased till they had perpetrated a crime such as has neversince polluted the island. 

A student of eighteen, named Thomas Aikenhead, whose habits werestudious and whose morals were irreproachable, had, in the course of hisreading, met with some of the ordinary arguments against the Bible. Hefancied that he had lighted on a mine of wisdom which had been hiddenfrom the rest of mankind, and, with the conceit from which half educatedlads of quick parts are seldom free, proclaimed his discoveries to fouror five of his companions. Trinity in unity, he said, was as much acontradiction as a square circle. Ezra was the author of the Pentateuch. The Apocalypse was an allegorical book about the philosopher's stone. Moses had learned magic in Egypt. Christianity was a delusion whichwould not last till the year 1800. For this wild talk, of which, in allprobability, he would himself have been ashamed long before he was fiveand twenty, he was prosecuted by the Lord Advocate. The Lord Advocatewas that James Stewart who had been so often a Whig and so often aJacobite that it is difficult to keep an account of his apostasies. Hewas now a Whig for the third if not for the fourth time. Aikenheadmight undoubtedly have been, by the law of Scotland, punished withimprisonment till he should retract his errors and do penance before thecongregation of his parish; and every man of sense and humanity wouldhave thought this a sufficient punishment for the prate of a forwardboy. But Stewart, as cruel as he was base, called for blood. There wasamong the Scottish statutes one which made it a capital crime to revileor curse the Supreme Being or any person of the Trinity. Nothing thatAikenhead had said could, without the most violent straining, be broughtwithin the scope of this statute. But the Lord Advocate exerted all hissubtlety. The poor youth at the bar had no counsel. He was altogetherunable to do justice to his own cause. He was convicted, and sentencedto be hanged and buried at the foot of the gallows. It was in vain thathe with tears abjured his errors and begged piteously for mercy. Someof those who saw him in his dungeon believed that his recantation wassincere; and indeed it is by no means improbable that in him, as in manyother pretenders to philosophy who imagine that they have completelyemancipated themselves from the religion of their childhood, the nearprospect of death may have produced an entire change of sentiment. Hepetitioned the Privy Council that, if his life could not be spared, hemight be allowed a short respite to make his peace with the God whomhe had offended. Some of the Councillors were for granting this smallindulgence. Others thought that it ought not to be granted unless theministers of Edinburgh would intercede. The two parties were evenlybalanced; and the question was decided against the prisoner by thecasting vote of the Chancellor. The Chancellor was a man who has beenoften mentioned in the course of this history, and never mentioned withhonour. He was that Sir Patrick Hume whose disputatious and factioustemper had brought ruin on the expedition of Argyle, and had caused nota little annoyance to the government of William. In the Club which hadbraved the King and domineered over the Parliament there had been nomore noisy republican. But a title and a place had produced a wonderfulconversion. Sir Patrick was now Lord Polwarth; he had the custody of theGreat Seal of Scotland; he presided in the Privy Council; and thus hehad it in his power to do the worst action of his bad life. 

It remained to be seen how the clergy of Edinburgh would act. Thatdivines should be deaf to the entreaties of a penitent who asks, not forpardon, but for a little more time to receive their instructions and topray to Heaven for the mercy which cannot be extended to him on earth, seems almost incredible. Yet so it was. The ministers demanded, notonly the poor boy's death, but his speedy death, though it should be hiseternal death. Even from their pulpits they cried out for cutting himoff. It is probable that their real reason for refusing him a respiteof a few days was their apprehension that the circumstances of his casemight be reported at Kensington, and that the King, who, while recitingthe Coronation Oath, had declared from the throne that he would not be apersecutor, might send down positive orders that the sentence shouldnot be executed. Aikenhead was hanged between Edinburgh and Leith. Heprofessed deep repentance, and suffered with the Bible in his hand. Thepeople of Edinburgh, though assuredly not disposed to think lightly ofhis offence, were moved to compassion by his youth, by his penitence, and by the cruel haste with which he was hurried out of the world. Itseems that there was some apprehension of a rescue; for a strong body offusileers was under arms to support the civil power. The preachers whowere the boy's murderers crowded round him at the gallows, and, whilehe was struggling in the last agony, insulted Heaven with prayers moreblasphemous than any thing that he had ever uttered. Wodrow has told noblacker story of Dundee. [798]

On the whole, the British islands had not, during ten years, been sofree from internal troubles as when William, at the close of April 1697, set out for the Continent. The war in the Netherlands was a little, and but a little, less languid than in the preceding year. The Frenchgenerals opened the campaign by taking the small town of Aeth. They thenmeditated a far more important conquest. They made a sudden push forBrussels, and would probably have succeeded in their design but for theactivity of William. He was encamped on ground which lies withinsight of the Lion of Waterloo, when he received, late in the evening, intelligence that the capital of the Netherlands was in danger. Heinstantly put his forces in motion, marched all night, and, havingtraversed the field destined to acquire, a hundred and eighteen yearslater, a terrible renown, and threaded the long defiles of the Forest ofSoignies, he was at ten in the morning on the spot from which Brusselshad been bombarded two years before, and would, if he had been onlythree hours later, have been bombarded again. Here he surrounded himselfwith entrenchments which the enemy did not venture to attack. This wasthe most important military event which, during that summer, took placein the Low Countries. In both camps there was an unwillingness to runany great risk on the eve of a general pacification. 

Lewis had, early in the spring, for the first time during his longreign, spontaneously offered equitable and honourable conditions to hisfoes. He had declared himself willing to relinquish the conquests whichhe had made in the course of the war, to cede Lorraine to its own Duke, to give back Luxemburg to Spain, to give back Strasburg to the Empireand to acknowledge the existing government of England. [799]

Those who remembered the great woes which his faithless and mercilessambition had brought on Europe might well suspect that this unwontedmoderation was not to be ascribed to sentiments of justice or humanity. But, whatever might be his motive for proposing such terms, it wasplainly the interest and the duty of the Confederacy to accept them. For there was little hope indeed of wringing from him by war concessionslarger than those which he now tendered as the price of peace. The mostsanguine of his enemies could hardly expect a long series of campaignsas successful as the campaign of 1695. Yet in a long series ofcampaigns, as successful as that of 1695, the allies would hardly beable to retake all that he now professed himself ready to restore. William, who took, as usual, a clear and statesmanlike view of the wholesituation, now gave his voice as decidedly for concluding peace as hehad in former years given it for vigorously prosecuting the war; and hewas backed by the public opinion both of England and of Holland. But, unhappily, just at the time when the two powers which alone, amongthe members of the coalition, had manfully done their duty in the longstruggle, were beginning to rejoice in the near prospect of repose, someof those governments which had never furnished their full contingents, which had never been ready in time, which had been constantly sendingexcuses in return for subsidies, began to raise difficulties such asseemed likely to make the miseries of Europe eternal. 

Spain had, as William, in the bitterness of his spirit, wrote toHeinsius, contributed nothing to the common cause but rodomontades. Shehad made no vigorous effort even to defend her own territories againstinvasion. She would have lost Flanders and Brabant but for the Englishand Dutch armies. She would have lost Catalonia but for the Englishand Dutch fleets. The Milanese she had saved, not by arms, but byconcluding, in spite of the remonstrances of the English and Dutchgovernments, an ignominious treaty of neutrality. She had not a ship ofwar able to weather a gale. She had not a regiment that was not ill paidand ill disciplined, ragged and famished. Yet repeatedly, within thelast two years, she had treated both William and the States General withan impertinence which showed that she was altogether ignorant of herplace among states. She now became punctilious, demanded from Lewisconcessions which the events of the war gave her no right to expect, andseemed to think it hard that allies, whom she was constantly treatingwith indignity, were not willing to lavish their blood and treasure forher during eight years more. 

The conduct of Spain is to be attributed merely to arrogance and folly. But the unwillingness of the Emperor to consent even to the fairestterms of accommodation was the effect of selfish ambition. The CatholicKing was childless; he was sickly; his life was not worth three years'purchase; and when he died, his dominions would be left to be struggledfor by a crowd of competitors. Both the House of Austria and the Houseof Bourbon had claims to that immense heritage. It was plainly for theinterest of the House of Austria that the important day, come when itmight, should find a great European coalition in arms against the Houseof Bourbon. The object of the Emperor therefore was that the war shouldcontinue to be carried on, as it had hitherto been carried on, at alight charge to him and a heavy charge to England and Holland, not tilljust conditions of peace could be obtained, but simply till the Kingof Spain should die. "The ministers of the Emperor, " William wrote toHeinsius, "ought to be ashamed of their conduct. It is intolerablethat a government which is doing every thing in its power to make thenegotiations fail, should contribute nothing to the common defence. "[800]

It is not strange that in such circumstances the work of pacificationshould have made little progress. International law, like other law, hasits chicanery, its subtle pleadings, its technical forms, which maytoo easily be so employed as to make its substance inefficient. Thoselitigants therefore who did not wish the litigation to come to a speedyclose had no difficulty in interposing delays. There was a long disputeabout the place where the conferences should be held. The Emperorproposed Aix la Chapelle. The French objected, and proposed the Hague. Then the Emperor objected in his turn. At last it was arranged that theministers of the Allied Powers should meet at the Hague, and that theFrench plenipotentiaries should take up their abode five miles offat Delft. [801] To Delft accordingly repaired Harlay, a man ofdistinguished wit and good breeding, sprung from one of the greatfamilies of the robe; Crecy, a shrewd, patient and laboriousdiplomatist; and Cailleres, who, though he was named only third in thecredentials, was much better informed than either of his colleaguestouching all the points which were likely to be debated. [802] At theHague were the Earl of Pembroke and Edward, Viscount Villiers, whorepresented England. Prior accompanied them with the rank of Secretary. At the head of the Imperial Legation was Count Kaunitz; at the head ofthe Spanish Legation was Don Francisco Bernardo de Quiros; the ministersof inferior rank it would be tedious to enumerate. [803]

Half way between Delft and the Hague is a village named Ryswick; andnear it then stood, in a rectangular garden, which was bounded bystraight canals, and divided into formal woods, flower beds and melonbeds, a seat of the Princes of Orange. The house seemed to have beenbuilt expressly for the accommodation of such a set of diplomatists aswere to meet there. In the centre was a large hall painted by Honthorst. On the right hand and on the left were wings exactly corresponding toeach other. Each wing was accessible by its own bridge, its own gate andits own avenue. One wing was assigned to the Allies, the other to theFrench, the hall in the centre to the mediator. [804] Some preliminaryquestions of etiquette were, not without difficulty, adjusted; andat length, on the ninth of May, many coaches and six, attended byharbingers, footmen and pages, approached the mansion by differentroads. The Swedish Minister alighted at the grand entrance. Theprocession from the Hague came up the side alley on the right. Theprocession from Delft came up the side alley on the left. At the firstmeeting, the full powers of the representatives of the belligerentgovernments were delivered to the mediator. At the second meeting, forty-eight hours later, the mediator performed the ceremony ofexchanging these full powers. Then several meetings were spent insettling how many carriages, how many horses, how many lacqueys, howmany pages, each minister should be entitled to bring to Ryswick;whether the serving men should carry canes; whether they should wearswords; whether they should have pistols in their holsters; who shouldtake the upper hand in the public walks, and whose carriage should breakthe way in the streets. It soon appeared that the mediator would have tomediate, not only between the coalition and the French, but also betweenthe different members of the coalition. The Imperial Ambassadors claimeda right to sit at the head of the table. The Spanish Ambassador wouldnot admit this pretension, and tried to thrust himself in between twoof them. The Imperial Ambassadors refused to call the Ambassadors ofElectors and Commonwealths by the title of Excellency. "If I am notcalled Excellency, " said the Minister of the Elector of Brandenburg, "mymaster will withdraw his troops from Hungary. " The Imperial Ambassadorsinsisted on having a room to themselves in the building, and on havinga special place assigned to their carriages in the court. All theother Ministers of the Confederacy pronounced this a most unjustifiabledemand, and a whole sitting was wasted in this childish dispute. It mayeasily be supposed that allies who were so punctilious in their dealingswith each other were not likely to be very easy in their intercoursewith the common enemy. The chief business of Earlay and Kaunitz was towatch each other's legs. Neither of them thought it consistent with thedignity of the Crown which he served to advance towards the other fasterthan the other advanced towards him. If therefore one of them perceivedthat he had inadvertently stepped forward too quick, he went back to thedoor, and the stately minuet began again. The ministers of Lewis drewup a paper in their own language. The German statesmen protested againstthis innovation, this insult to the dignity of the Holy Roman Empire, this encroachment on the rights of independent nations, and would notknow any thing about the paper till it had been translated from goodFrench into bad Latin. In the middle of April it was known to every bodyat the Hague that Charles the Eleventh, King of Sweden, was dead, andhad been succeeded by his son; but it was contrary to etiquette that anyof the assembled envoys should appear to be acquainted with this facttill Lilienroth had made a formal announcement; it was not less contraryto etiquette that Lilienroth should make such an announcement till hisequipages and his household had been put into mourning; and some weekselapsed before his coachmakers and tailors had completed their task. Atlength, on the twelfth of June, he came to Ryswick in a carriage linedwith black and attended by servants in black liveries, and there, infull congress, proclaimed that it had pleased God to take to himselfthe most puissant King Charles the Eleventh. All the Ambassadors thencondoled with him on the sad and unexpected news, and went home to putoff their embroidery and to dress themselves in the garb of sorrow. Insuch solemn trifling week after week passed away. No real progress wasmade. Lilienroth had no wish to accelerate matters. While the congresslasted, his position was one of great dignity. He would willingly havegone on mediating for ever; and he could not go on mediating, unless theparties on his right and on his left went on wrangling. [805]

In June the hope of peace began to grow faint. Men remembered that thelast war had continued to rage, year after year, while a congress wassitting at Nimeguen. The mediators had made their entrance into thattown in February 1676. The treaty had not been signed till February1679. Yet the negotiation of Nimeguen had not proceeded more slowlythan the negotiation of Ryswick. It seemed but too probable that theeighteenth century would find great armies still confronting each otheron the Meuse and the Rhine, industrious populations still ground downby taxation, fertile provinces still lying waste, the ocean still madeimpassable by corsairs, and the plenipotentiaries still exchangingnotes, drawing up protocols, and wrangling about the place where thisminister should sit, and the title by which that minister should becalled. 

But William was fully determined to bring this mummery to a speedyclose. He would have either peace or war. Either was, in his view, better than this intermediate state which united the disadvantages ofboth. While the negotiation was pending there could be no diminutionof the burdens which pressed on his people; and yet he could expectno energetic action from his allies. If France was really disposed toconclude a treaty on fair terms, that treaty should be concluded inspite of the imbecility of the Catholic King and in spite of the selfishcunning of the Emperor. If France was insecure, the sooner the truth wasknown, the sooner the farce which was acting at Ryswick was over, thesooner the people of England and Holland, --for on them every thingdepended, --were told that they must make up their minds to greatexertions and sacrifices, the better. 

Pembroke and Villiers, though they had now the help of a veterandiplomatist, Sir Joseph Williamson, could do little or nothing toaccelerate the proceedings of the Congress. For, though France hadpromised that, whenever peace should be made, she would recognise thePrince of Orange as King of Great Britain and Ireland, she had not yetrecognised him. His ministers had therefore had no direct intercoursewith Harlay, Crecy and Cailleres. William, with the judgment anddecision of a true statesman, determined to open a communicationwith Lewis through one of the French Marshals who commanded in theNetherlands. Of those Marshals Villeroy was the highest in rank. ButVilleroy was weak, rash, haughty, irritable. Such a negotiator wasfar more likely to embroil matters than to bring them to an amicablesettlement. Boufflers was a man of sense and temper; and fortunately hehad, during the few days which he had passed at Huy after the fall ofNamur, been under the care of Portland, by whom he had been treated withthe greatest courtesy and kindness. A friendship had sprung up betweenthe prisoner and his keeper. They were both brave soldiers, honourablegentlemen, trusty servants. William justly thought that they were farmore likely to come to an understanding than Harlay and Kaunitz evenwith the aid of Lilienroth. Portland indeed had all the essentialqualities of an excellent diplomatist. In England, the people wereprejudiced against him as a foreigner; his earldom, his garter, hislucrative places, his rapidly growing wealth, excited envy; his dialectwas not understood; his manners were not those of the men of fashionwho had been formed at Whitehall; his abilities were therefore greatlyunderrated; and it was the fashion to call him a blockhead, fit onlyto carry messages. But, on the Continent, where he was judged withoutmalevolence, he made a very different impression. It is a remarkablefact that this man, who in the drawingrooms and coffeehouses of Londonwas described as an awkward, stupid, Hogan Mogan, --such was the phraseat that time, --was considered at Versailles as an eminently polishedcourtier and an eminently expert negotiator. [806] His chiefrecommendation however was his incorruptible integrity. It was certainthat the interests which were committed to his care would be as dear tohim as his own life, and that every report which he made to his masterwould be literally exact. 

Towards the close of June Portland sent to Boufflers a friendly message, begging for an interview of half an hour. Boufflers instantly sent offan express to Lewis, and received an answer in the shortest time inwhich it was possible for a courier to ride post to Versailles and backagain. Lewis directed the Marshal to comply with Portland's request, tosay as little as possible, and to learn as much as possible. [807]

On the twenty-eighth of June, according to the Old Style, the meetingtook place in the neighbourhood of Hal, a town which lies about tenmiles from Brussels, on the road to Mons. After the first civilitieshad been exchanged, Boufflers and Portland dismounted; their attendantsretired; and the two negotiators were left alone in an orchard. Herethey walked up and down during two hours, and, in that time, didmuch more business than the plenipotentiaries at Ryswick were able todespatch in as many months. [808]

Till this time the French government had entertained a suspicion, natural indeed, but altogether erroneous, that William was bent onprotracting the war, that he had consented to treat merely becausehe could not venture to oppose himself to the public opinion bothof England and of Holland, but that he wished the negotiation to beabortive, and that the perverse conduct of the House of Austria and thedifficulties which had arisen at Ryswick were to be chiefly ascribedto his machinations. That suspicion was now removed. Compliments, cold, austere and full of dignity, yet respectful, were exchanged between thetwo great princes whose enmity had, during a quarter of a century, keptEurope in constant agitation. The negotiation between Boufflers andPortland proceeded as fast as the necessity of frequent reference toVersailles would permit. Their first five conferences were held in theopen air; but, at their sixth meeting, they retired into a small housein which Portland had ordered tables, pens, ink and paper to be placed;and here the result of their labours was reduced to writing. 

The really important points which had been in issue were four. Williamhad at first demanded two concessions from Lewis; and Lewis had demandedtwo concessions from William. 

William's first demand was that France should bind herself to give nohelp or countenance, directly or indirectly, to any attempt which mightbe made by James, or by James's adherents, to disturb the existing orderof things in England. 

William's second demand was that James should no longer be suffered toreside at a place so dangerously near to England as Saint Germains. 

To the first of these demands Lewis replied that he was perfectlyready to bind himself by the most solemn engagements not to assist orcountenance, in any manner, any attempt to disturb the existing order ofthings in England; but that it was inconsistent with his honour that thename of his kinsman and guest should appear in the treaty. 

To the second demand Lewis replied that he could not refuse hishospitality to an unfortunate king who had taken refuge in hisdominions, and that he could not promise even to indicate a wish thatJames would quit Saint Germains. But Boufflers, as if speaking his ownthoughts, though doubtless saying nothing but what he knew to be inconformity to his master's wishes, hinted that the matter would probablybe managed, and named Avignon as a place where the banished family mightreside without giving any umbrage to the English government. 

Lewis, on the other side, demanded, first, that a general amnesty shouldbe granted to the Jacobites; and secondly, that Mary of Modena shouldreceive her jointure of fifty thousand pounds a year. 

With the first of these demands William peremptorily refused to comply. He should always be ready, of his own free will, to pardon the offencesof men who showed a disposition to live quietly for the future underhis government; but he could not consent to make the exercise of hisprerogative of mercy a matter of stipulation with any foreign power. Theannuity claimed by Mary of Modena he would willingly pay, if he couldonly be satisfied that it would not be expended in machinations againsthis throne and his person, in supporting, on the coast of Kent, anotherestablishment like that of Hunt, or in buying horses and arms foranother enterprise like that of Turnham Green. Boufflers had mentionedAvignon. If James and his Queen would take up their abode there, nodifficulties would be made about the jointure. 

At length all the questions in dispute were settled. After muchdiscussion an article was framed by which Lewis pledged his word ofhonour that he would not favour, in any manner, any attempt to subvertor disturb the existing government of England. William, in return, gavehis promise not to countenance any attempt against the government ofFrance. This promise Lewis had not asked, and at first seemed inclinedto consider as an affront. His throne, he said, was perfectly secure, his title undisputed. There were in his dominions no nonjurors, noconspirators; and he did not think it consistent with his dignity toenter into a compact which seemed to imply that he was in fear of plotsand insurrections such as a dynasty sprung from a revolution mightnaturally apprehend. On this point, however, he gave way; and it wasagreed that the covenants should be strictly reciprocal. William ceasedto demand that James should be mentioned by name; and Lewis ceased todemand that an amnesty should be granted to James's adherents. It wasdetermined that nothing should be said in the treaty, either about theplace where the banished King of England should reside, or about thejointure of his Queen. But William authorised his plenipotentiaries atthe Congress to declare that Mary of Modena should have whatever, onexamination, it should appear that she was by law entitled to have. What she was by law entitled to have was a question which it would havepuzzled all Westminster Hall to answer. But it was well understood thatshe would receive, without any contest, the utmost that she could haveany pretence for asking as soon as she and her husband should retire toProvence or to Italy. [809]

Before the end of July every thing was settled, as far as Franceand England were concerned. Meanwhile it was known to the ministersassembled at Ryswick that Boufflers and Portland had repeatedly metin Brabant, and that they were negotiating in a most irregular andindecorous manner, without credentials, or mediation, or notes, orprotocols, without counting each other's steps, and without calling eachother Excellency. So barbarously ignorant were they of the rudiments ofthe noble science of diplomacy that they had very nearly accomplishedthe work of restoring peace to Christendom while walking up and downan alley under some apple trees. The English and Dutch loudly applaudedWilliam's prudence and decision. He had cut the knot which the Congresshad only twisted and tangled. He had done in a month what all theformalists and pedants assembled at the Hague would not have done inten years. Nor were the French plenipotentiaries ill pleased. "Itis curious, " said Harlay, a man of wit and sense, "that, while theAmbassadors are making war, the generals should be making peace. " [810]But Spain preserved the same air of arrogant listlessness; and theministers of the Emperor, forgetting apparently that their master had, a few months before, concluded a treaty of neutrality for Italy withoutconsulting William, seemed to think it most extraordinary that Williamshould presume to negotiate without consulting their master. It becamedaily more evident that the Court of Vienna was bent on prolonging thewar. On the tenth of July the French ministers again proposed fairand honourable terms of peace, but added that, if those terms were notaccepted by the twenty-first of August, the Most Christian King wouldnot consider himself bound by his offer. [811] William in vain exhortedhis allies to be reasonable. The senseless pride of one branch of theHouse of Austria and the selfish policy of the other were proof to allargument. The twenty-first of August came and passed; the treaty had notbeen signed. 

France was at liberty to raise her demands; and she did so. For just atthis time news arrived of two great blows which had fallen on Spain, one in the Old and one in the New World. A French army, commanded byVendome, had taken Barcelona. A French squadron had stolen out of Brest, had eluded the allied fleets, had crossed the Atlantic, had sackedCarthagena, and had returned to France laden with treasure. [812] TheSpanish government passed at once from haughty apathy to abject terror, and was ready to accept any conditions which the conqueror mightdictate. The French plenipotentiaries announced to the Congress thattheir master was determined to keep Strasburg, and that, unless theterms which he had offered, thus modified, were accepted by the tenthof September, he should hold himself at liberty to insist on furthermodifications. Never had the temper of William been more severely tried. He was provoked by the perverseness of his allies; he was provoked bythe imperious language of the enemy. It was not without a hard struggleand a sharp pang that he made up his mind to consent to what France nowproposed. But he felt that it would be utterly impossible, even if itwere desirable, to prevail on the House of Commons and on the StatesGeneral to continue the war for the purpose of wresting from France asingle fortress, a fortress in the fate of which neither England norHolland had any immediate interest, a fortress, too, which had been lostto the Empire solely in consequence of the unreasonable obstinacy of theImperial Court. He determined to accept the modified terms, anddirected his Ambassadors at Ryswick to sign on the prescribed day. TheAmbassadors of Spain and Holland received similar instructions. Therewas no doubt that the Emperor, though he murmured and protested, wouldsoon follow the example of his confederates. That he might have time tomake up his mind, it was stipulated that he should be included in thetreaty if he notified his adhesion by the first of November. 

Meanwhile James was moving the mirth and pity of all Europe by hislamentations and menaces. He had in vain insisted on his right to send, as the only true King of England, a minister to the Congress. [813]He had in vain addressed to all the Roman Catholic princes of theConfederacy a memorial in which he adjured them to join with France ina crusade against England for the purpose of restoring him to hisinheritance, and of annulling that impious Bill of Rights which excludedmembers of the true Church from the throne. [814] When he found thatthis appeal was disregarded, he put forth a solemn protest against thevalidity of all treaties to which the existing government of Englandshould be a party. He pronounced all the engagements into which hiskingdom had entered since the Revolution null and void. He gave noticethat he should not, if he should regain his power, think himself boundby any of those engagements. He admitted that he might, by breakingthose engagements, bring great calamities both on his own dominions andon all Christendom. But for those calamities he declared that he shouldnot think himself answerable either before God or before man. It seemsalmost incredible that even a Stuart, and the worst and dullest of theStuarts, should have thought that the first duty, not merely of his ownsubjects, but of all mankind, was to support his rights; that Frenchmen, Germans, Italians, Spaniards, were guilty of a crime if they did notshed their blood and lavish their wealth, year after year, in his cause;that the interests of the sixty millions of human beings to whom peacewould be a blessing were of absolutely no account when compared with theinterests of one man. [815]

In spite of his protests the day of peace drew nigh. On the tenth ofSeptember the Ambassadors of France, England, Spain and the UnitedProvinces, met at Ryswick. Three treaties were to be signed, and therewas a long dispute on the momentous question which should be signedfirst. It was one in the morning before it was settled that the treatybetween France and the States General should have precedence; and theday was breaking before all the instruments had been executed. Then theplenipotentiaries, with many bows, congratulated each other on havinghad the honour of contributing to so great a work. [816]

A sloop was in waiting for Prior. He hastened on board, and on thethird day, after weathering an equinoctial gale, landed on the coast ofSuffolk. [817]

Very seldom had there been greater excitement in London than during themonth which preceded his arrival. When the west wind kept back theDutch packets, the anxiety of the people became intense. Every morninghundreds of thousands rose up hoping to hear that the treaty was signed;and every mail which came in without bringing the good news causedbitter disappointment. The malecontents, indeed, loudly asserted thatthere would be no peace, and that the negotiation would, even at thislate hour, be broken off. One of them had seen a person just arrivedfrom Saint Germains; another had had the privilege of reading a letterin the handwriting of Her Majesty; and all were confident that Lewiswould never acknowledge the usurper. Many of those who held thislanguage were under so strong a delusion that they backed their opinionby large wagers. When the intelligence of the fall of Barcelona arrived, all the treason taverns were in a ferment with nonjuring priestslaughing, talking loud, and shaking each other by the hand. [818]

At length, in the afternoon of the thirteenth of September, somespeculators in the City received, by a private channel, certainintelligence that the treaty had been signed before dawn on the morningof the eleventh. They kept their own secret, and hastened to make aprofitable use of it; but their eagerness to obtain Bank stock, andthe high prices which they offered, excited suspicion; and there wasa general belief that on the next day something important would beannounced. On the next day Prior, with the treaty, presented himselfbefore the Lords justices at Whitehall. Instantly a flag was hoisted onthe Abbey, another on Saint Martin's Church. The Tower guns proclaimedthe glad tidings. All the spires and towers from Greenwich to Chelseamade answer. It was not one of the days on which the newspapersordinarily appeared; but extraordinary numbers, with headings in largecapitals, were, for the first time, cried about the streets. The priceof Bank stock rose fast from eighty-four to ninety-seven. In a fewhours triumphal arches began to rise in some places. Huge bonfires wereblazing in others. The Dutch ambassador informed the States General thathe should try to show his joy by a bonfire worthy of the commonwealthwhich he represented; and he kept his word; for no such pyre had everbeen seen in London. A hundred and forty barrels of pitch roared andblazed before his house in Saint James's Square, and sent up a flamewhich made Pall Mall and Piccadilly as bright as at noonday. [819]

Among the Jacobites the dismay was great. Some of those who had betteddeep on the constancy of Lewis took flight. One unfortunate zealot ofdivine right drowned himself. But soon the party again took heart. Thetreaty had been signed; but it surely would never be ratified. In ashort time the ratification came; the peace was solemnly proclaimed bythe heralds; and the most obstinate nonjurors began to despair. Somedivines, who had during eight years continued true to James, now sworeallegiance to William. They were probably men who held, with Sherlock, that a settled government, though illegitimate in its origin, isentitled to the obedience of Christians, but who had thought that thegovernment of William could not properly be said to be settled whilethe greatest power in Europe not only refused to recognise him, butstrenuously supported his competitor. [820] The fiercer and moredetermined adherents of the banished family were furious against Lewis. He had deceived, he had betrayed his suppliants. It was idle to talkabout the misery of his people. It was idle to say that he had drainedevery source of revenue dry, and that, in all the provinces of hiskingdom, the peasantry were clothed in rags, and were unable to eattheir fill even of the coarsest and blackest bread. His first duty wasthat which he owed to the royal family of England. The Jacobitestalked against him, and wrote against him, as absurdly, and almost asscurrilously, as they had long talked and written against William. Oneof their libels was so indecent that the Lords justices ordered theauthor to be arrested and held to bail. [821]

But the rage and mortification were confined to a very small minority. Never, since the year of the Restoration, had there been such signsof public gladness. In every part of the kingdom where the peace wasproclaimed, the general sentiment was manifested by banquets, pageants, loyal healths, salutes, beating of drums, blowing of trumpets, breakingup of hogsheads. At some places the whole population, of its own accord, repaired to the churches to give thanks. At others processions of girls, clad all in white, and crowned with laurels, carried banners inscribedwith "God bless King William. " At every county town a long cavalcade ofthe principal gentlemen, from a circle of many miles, escorted the mayorto the market cross. Nor was one holiday enough for the expression ofso much joy. On the fourth of November, the anniversary of the King'sbirth, and on the fifth, the anniversary of his landing at Torbay, thebellringing, the shouting, and the illuminations were renewed both inLondon and all over the country. [822] On the day on which he returnedto his capital no work was done, no shop was opened, in the two thousandstreets of that immense mart. For that day the chiefs streets had, mileafter mile, been covered with gravel; all the Companies had provided newbanners; all the magistrates new robes. Twelve thousand pounds had beenexpended in preparing fireworks. Great multitudes of people from all theneighbouring shires had come up to see the show. Never had the City beenin a more loyal or more joyous mood. The evil days were past. The guineahad fallen to twenty-one shillings and sixpence. The bank note had risento par. The new crowns and halfcrowns, broad, heavy and sharplymilled, were ringing on all the counters. After some days of impatientexpectation it was known, on the fourteenth of November, that HisMajesty had landed at Margate. Late on the fifteenth he reachedGreenwich, and rested in the stately building which, under his auspices, was turning from a palace into a hospital. On the next morning, a brightand soft morning, eighty coaches and six, filled with nobles, prelates, privy councillors and judges, came to swell his train. In Southwark hewas met by the Lord Mayor and the Aldermen in all the pomp of office. The way through the Borough to the bridge was lined by the Surreymilitia; the way from the bridge to Walbrook by three regiments of themilitia of the City. All along Cheapside, on the right hand and on theleft, the livery were marshalled under the standards of their trades. Atthe east end of Saint Paul's churchyard stood the boys of the school ofEdward the Sixth, wearing, as they still wear, the garb of the sixteenthcentury. Round the Cathedral, down Ludgate Hill and along Fleet Street, were drawn up three more regiments of Londoners. From Temple Bar toWhitehall gate the trainbands of Middlesex and the Foot Guards wereunder arms. The windows along the whole route were gay with tapestry, ribands and flags. But the finest part of the show was the innumerablecrowd of spectators, all in their Sunday clothing, and such clothingas only the upper classes of other countries could afford to wear. "Inever, " William wrote that evening to Heinsius, "I never saw such amultitude of welldressed people. " Nor was the King less struck by theindications of joy and affection with which he was greeted from thebeginning to the end of his triumph. His coach, from the moment whenhe entered it at Greenwich till he alighted from it in the court ofWhitehall, was accompanied by one long huzza. Scarcely had he reachedhis palace when addresses of congratulation, from all the greatcorporations of his kingdom, were presented to him. It was remarked thatthe very foremost among those corporations was the University of Oxford. The eloquent composition in which that learned body extolled the wisdom, the courage and the virtue of His Majesty, was read with cruel vexationby the nonjurors, and with exultation by the Whigs. [823]

The rejoicings were not yet over. At a council which was held afew hours after the King's public entry, the second of December wasappointed to be the day of thanksgiving for the peace. The Chapter ofSaint Paul's resolved that, on that day, their noble Cathedral, whichhad been long slowly rising on the ruins of a succession of paganand Christian temples, should be opened for public worship. Williamannounced his intention of being one of the congregation. But it wasrepresented to him that, if he persisted in that intention, threehundred thousand people would assemble to see him pass, and all theparish churches of London would be left empty. He therefore attendedthe service in his own chapel at Whitehall, and heard Burnet preach asermon, somewhat too eulogistic for the place. [824] At Saint Paul's themagistrates of the City appeared in all their state. Compton ascended, for the first time, a throne rich with the sculpture of Gibbons, andthence exhorted a numerous and splendid assembly. His discourse has notbeen preserved; but its purport may be easily guessed; for he preachedon that noble Psalm: "I was glad when they said unto me, Let us gointo the house of the Lord. " He doubtless reminded his hearers that, inaddition to the debt which was common to them with all Englishmen, theyowed as Londoners a peculiar debt of gratitude to the divine goodness, which had permitted them to efface the last trace of the ravages of thegreat fire, and to assemble once more, for prayer and praise, afterso many years, on that spot consecrated by the devotions of thirtygenerations. Throughout London, and in every part of the realm, evento the remotest parishes of Cumberland and Cornwall, the churches werefilled on the morning of that day; and the evening was an evening offestivity. [825]

These was indeed reason for joy and thankfulness. England had passedthrough severe trials, and had come forth renewed in health andvigour. Ten years before, it had seemed that both her liberty and herindependence were no more. Her liberty she had vindicated by a just andnecessary revolution. Her independence she had reconquered by a notless just and necessary war. She had successfully defended the order ofthings established by the Bill of Rights against the mighty monarchy ofFrance, against the aboriginal population of Ireland, against the avowedhostility of the nonjurors, against the more dangerous hostility oftraitors who were ready to take any oath, and whom no oath could bind. Her open enemies had been victorious on many fields of battle. Hersecret enemies had commanded her fleets and armies, had been in chargeof her arsenals, had ministered at her altars, had taught at herUniversities, had swarmed in her public offices, had sate in herParliament, had bowed and fawned in the bedchamber of her King. More than once it had seemed impossible that any thing could averta restoration which would inevitably have been followed, first byproscriptions and confiscations, by the violation of fundamental laws, and the persecution of the established religion, and then by a thirdrising up of the nation against that House which two depositions and twobanishments had only made more obstinate in evil. To the dangers ofwar and the dangers of treason had recently been added the dangers ofa terrible financial and commercial crisis. But all those dangers wereover. There was peace abroad and at home. The kingdom, after many yearsof ignominious vassalage, had resumed its ancient place in the firstrank of European powers. Many signs justified the hope that theRevolution of 1688 would be our last Revolution. The ancientconstitution was adapting itself, by a natural, a gradual, a peacefuldevelopment, to the wants of a modern society. Already freedom ofconscience and freedom of discussion existed to an extent unknown in anypreceding age. The currency had been restored. Public credit had beenreestablished. Trade had revived. The Exchequer was overflowing. Therewas a sense of relief every where, from the Royal Exchange to themost secluded hamlets among the mountains of Wales and the fensof Lincolnshire. The ploughmen, the shepherds, the miners of theNorthumbrian coalpits, the artisans who toiled at the looms of Norwichand the anvils of Birmingham, felt the change, without understandingit; and the cheerful bustle in every seaport and every market townindicated, not obscurely, the commencement of a happier age. 

***** *****

[Footnote 1: Relation de la Voyage de Sa Majeste Britannique enHollande, enrichie de planches tres curieuses, 1692; Wagenaar; LondonGazette, Jan. 29. 1693; Burnet, ii. 71]

[Footnote 2: The names of these two great scholars are associated in avery interesting letter of Bentley to Graevius, dated April 29. 1698. "Sciunt omnes qui me norunt, et si vitam mihi Deus O. M. Prorogaverit, scient etiam posteri, ut te et ton panu Spanhemium, geminos hujusaevi Dioscuros, lucida literarum sidera, semper praedicaverim, semperveneratus sim. "]

[Footnote 3: Relation de la Voyage de Sa Majeste Britannique en Hollande1692; London Gazette, Feb. 2. 1691, ; Le Triomphe Royal ou l'on voitdescrits les Arcs de Triomphe, Pyramides, Tableaux et Devises an Nombrede 65, erigez a la Haye a l'hounneur de Guillaume Trois, 1692; LeCarnaval de la Haye, 1691. This last work is a savage pasquinade onWilliam. ]

[Footnote 4: London Gazette, Feb. 5. 1693; His Majesty's Speech to theAssembly of the States General of the United Provinces at the Hague the7th of February N. S. , together with the Answer of their High and MightyLordships, as both are extracted out of the Register of the Resolutionsof the States General, 1691. ]

[Footnote 5: Relation de la Voyage de Sa Majeste Britannique enHollande; Burnet, ii. 72. ; London Gazette, Feb. 12. 19. 23. 1690/1;Memoires du Comte de Dohna; William Fuller's Memoirs. ]

[Footnote 6: Wagenaar, lxii. ; Le Carnaval de la Haye, Mars 1691; LeTabouret des Electeurs, April 1691; Ceremonial de ce qui s'est passea la Haye entre le Roi Guillaume et les Electeurs de Baviere et deBrandebourg. This last tract is a MS. Presented to the British Museum byGeorge IV, ]

[Footnote 7: London Gazette, Feb. 23. 1691. ]

[Footnote 8: The secret article by which the Duke of Savoy bound himselfto grant toleration to the Waldenses is in Dumont's collection. It wassigned Feb. 8, 1691. ]

[Footnote 9: London Gazette from March 26. To April 13. 1691; MonthlyMercuries of March and April; William's Letters to Heinsius of March18. And 29. , April 7. 9. ; Dangeau's Memoirs; The Siege of Mons, atragi-comedy, 1691. In this drama the clergy, who are in the interest ofFrance, persuade the burghers to deliver up the town. This treason callsforth an indignant exclamation, "Oh priestcraft, shopcraft, how do ye effeminate The minds of men!"]

[Footnote 10: Trial of Preston in the Collection of State Trials. Aperson who was present gives the following account of Somers's openingspeech: "In the opening the evidence, there was no affected exaggerationof matters, nor ostentation of a putid eloquence, one after another, asin former trials, like so many geese cackling in a row. Here was nothingbesides fair matter of fact, or natural and just reflections from thencearising. " The pamphlet from which I quote these words is entitled, AnAccount of the late horrid Conspiracy by a Person who was present at theTrials, 1691. ]

[Footnote 11: State Trials. ]

[Footnote 12: Paper delivered by Mr. Ashton, at his execution, to SirFrancis Child, Sheriff of London; Answer to the Paper delivered by Mr. Ashton. The Answer was written by Dr. Edward Fowler, afterwards Bishopof Gloucester. Burnet, ii. 70. ; Letter from Bishop Lloyd to Dodwell, inthe second volume of Gutch's Collectanea Curiosa. ]

[Footnote 13: Narcissus Luttrell's Diary. ]

[Footnote 14: Narcissus Luttrell's Diary; Burnet, ii. 71. ]

[Footnote 15: Letter of Collier and Cook to Sancroft among the TannerMSS. ]

[Footnote 16: Caermarthen to William, February 3. 1690/1; Life of James, ii. 443. ]

[Footnote 17: That this account of what passed is true in substance issufficiently proved by the Life of James, ii. 443. I have taken one ortwo slight circumstances from Dalrymple, who, I believe, took them frompapers, now irrecoverably lost, which he had seen in the Scotch Collegeat Paris. ]

[Footnote 18: The success of William's "seeming clemency" is admitted bythe compiler of the Life of James. The Prince of Orange's method, it isacknowledged, "succeeded so well that, whatever sentiments those Lordswhich Mr. Penn had named night have had at that time, they proved ineffect most bitter enemies to His Majesty's cause afterwards. "-ii. 443. ]

[Footnote 19: See his Diary; Evelyn's Diary, Mar. 25. , April 22. , July11. 1691; Burnet, ii. 71. ; Letters of Rochester to Burnet, March 21. AndApril 2. 1691. ]

[Footnote 20: Life of James, ii. 443. 450. ; Legge Papers in theMackintosh Collection. ]

[Footnote 21: Burnet, ii. 71; Evelyn's Diary, Jan. 4. And 18. 1690, ;Letter from Turner to Sancroft, Jan. 19. 1690/1; Letter from Sancroft toLloyd of Norwich April 2. 1692. These two letters are among the TannerMSS. In the Bodleian, and are printed in the Life of Ken by a Layman. Turner's escape to France is mentioned in Narcissus Luttrell's Diaryfor February 1690. See also a Dialogue between the Bishop of Ely andhis Conscience, 16th February 1690/1. The dialogue is interrupted by thesound of trumpets. The Bishop hears himself proclaimed a traitor, andcries out, "Come, brother Pen, 'tis time we both were gone. "]

[Footnote 22: For a specimen of his visions, see his Journal, page 13;for his casting out of devils, page 26. I quote the folio edition of1765. ]

[Footnote 23: Journal, page 4]

[Footnote 24: Ibid. Page 7. ]

[Footnote 25: "What they know, they know naturally, who turn from thecommand and err from the spirit, whose fruit withers, who saith thatHebrew, Greek, and Latine is the original: before Babell was, the earthwas of one language; and Nimrod the cunning hunter, before the Lordwhich came out of cursed Ham's stock, the original and builder ofBabell, whom God confounded with many languages, and this they say isthe original who erred from the spirit and command; and Pilate had hisoriginal Hebrew, Greek and Latine, which crucified Christ and set overhim. "--A message from the Lord to the Parliament of England by G. Fox, 1654. The same argument will be found in the journals, but has been putby the editor into a little better English. "Dost thou think to makeministers of Christ by these natural confused languages which sprungfrom Babell, are admired in Babylon, and set atop of Christ, the Life, by a persecutor?"-Page 64. ]

[Footnote 26: His journal, before it was published, was revised by menof more sense and knowledge than himself, and therefore, absurd as itis, gives us no notion of his genuine style. The following is a fairspecimen. It is the exordium of one of his manifestoes. "Them which theworld who are without the fear of God calls Quakers in scorn do deny allopinions, and they do deny all conceivings, and they do deny all sects, and they do deny all imaginations, and notions, and judgments whichriseth out of the will and the thoughts, and do deny witchcraft and alloaths, and the world and the works of it, and their worships and theircustoms with the light, and do deny false ways and false worships, seducers and deceivers which are now seen to be in the world with thelight, and with it they are condemned, which light leadeth to peace andlife from death which now thousands do witness the new teacher Christ, him by whom the world was made, who raigns among the children of light, and with the spirit and power of the living God, doth let them see andknow the chaff from the wheat, and doth see that which must be shakenwith that which cannot be shaken nor moved, what gives to see that whichis shaken and moved, such as live in the notions, opinions, conceivings, and thoughts and fancies these be all shaken and comes to be on heaps, which they who witness those things before mentioned shaken and removedwalks in peace not seen and discerned by them who walks in those thingsunremoved and not shaken. "--A Warning to the World that are Groping inthe Dark, by G. Fox, 1655. ]

[Footnote 27: See the piece entitled, Concerning Good morrow and Goodeven, the World's Customs, but by the Light which into the World is comeby it made manifest to all who be in the Darkness, by G. Fox, 1657. ]

[Footnote 28: Journal, page 166. ]

[Footnote 29: Epistle from Harlingen, 11th of 6th month, 1677. ]

[Footnote 30: Of Bowings, by G. Fox, 1657. ]

[Footnote 31: See, for example, the Journal, pages 24. 26. And 51. ]

[Footnote 32: See, for example, the Epistle to Sawkey, a justice ofthe peace, in the journal, page 86. ; the Epistle to William Larnpitt, a clergyman, which begins, "The word of the Lord to thee, oh Lampitt, "page 80. ; and the Epistle to another clergyman whom he calls PriestTatham, page 92. ]

[Footnote 33: Journal, page 55. ]

[Footnote 34: Ibid. Page 300. ]

[Footnote 35: Ibid. Page 323. ]

[Footnote 36: Ibid. Page 48. ]

[Footnote 37: "Especially of late, " says Leslie, the keenest of all theenemies of the sect, "some of them have made nearer advances towardsChristianity than ever before; and among them the ingenious Mr. Penn hasof late refined some of their gross notions, and brought them into someform, and has made them speak sense and English, of both which GeorgeFox, their first and great apostle, was totally ignorant. .. .. Theyendeavour all they can to make it appear that their doctrine was uniformfrom the beginning, and that there has been no alteration; and thereforethey take upon them to defend all the writings of George Fox, and othersof the first Quakers, and turn and wind them to make them (but it isimpossible) agree with what they teach now at this day. " (The Snake inthe Grass, 3rd ed. 1698. Introduction. ) Leslie was always more civil tohis brother Jacobite Penn than to any other Quaker. Penn himself says ofhis master, "As abruptly and brokenly as sometimes his sentences wouldfall from him about divine things; it is well known they were often astexts to many fairer declarations. " That is to say, George Fox talkednonsense and some of his friends paraphrased it into sense. ]

[Footnote 38: In the Life of Penn which is prefixed to his works, weare told that the warrants were issued on the 16th of January 1690, inconsequence of an accusation backed by the oath of William Fuller, whois truly designated as a wretch, a cheat and. An impostor; and thisstory is repeated by Mr. Clarkson. It is, however, certainly false. Caermarthen, writing to William on the 3rd of February, says that therewas then only one witness against Penn, and that Preston was that onewitness. It is therefore evident that Fuller was not the informer onwhose oath the warrant against Penn was issued. In fact Fullerappears from his Life of himself, to have been then at the Hague. WhenNottingham wrote to William on the 26th of June, another witness hadcome forward. ]

[Footnote 39: Sidney to William, Feb. 27. 1690, . The letter is inDalrymple's Appendix, Part II. Book vi. Narcissus Luttrell in his Diaryfor September 1691, mentions Penn's escape from Shoreham to France. Onthe 5th of December 1693 Narcissus made the following entry: "WilliamPenn the Quaker, having for some time absconded, and having compromisedthe matters against him, appears now in public, and, on Friday last, held forth at the Bull and Month, in Saint Martin's. " On December 18/28. 1693 was drawn up at Saint Germains, under Melfort's direction, a papercontaining a passage of which the following is a translation

"Mr. Penn says that Your Majesty has had several occasions, but neverany so favourable, as the present; and he hopes that Your Majestywill be earnest with the most Christian King not to neglect it: that adescent with thirty thousand men will not only reestablish Your Majesty, but according to all appearance break the league. " This paper is amongthe Nairne MSS. , and was translated by Macpherson. ]

[Footnote 40: Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, April 11. 1691. ]

[Footnote 41: Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, August 1691; Letter fromVernon to Wharton, Oct. 17. 1691, in the Bodleian. ]

[Footnote 42: The opinion of the Jacobites appears from a letter whichis among the archives of the French War Office. It was written in Londonon the 25th of June 1691. ]

[Footnote 43: Welwood's Mercurius Reformatus, April 11. 24. 1691;Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, April 1691; L'Hermitage to the StatesGeneral, June 19/29 1696; Calamy's Life. The story of Fenwick's rudenessto Mary is told in different ways. I have followed what seems to me themost authentic, and what is certainly the last disgraceful, version. ]

[Footnote 44: Burnet, ii. 71. ]

[Footnote 45: Lloyd to Sancroft, Jan. 24. 1691. The letter is among theTanner MSS. , and is printed in the Life of Ken by a Layman. ]

[Footnote 46: London Gazette, June 1. 1691; Birch's Life of Tillotson;Congratulatory Poem to the Reverend Dr. Tillotson on his Promotion, 1691; Vernon to Wharton, May 28. And 30. 1691. These letters toWharton are in the Bodleian Library, and form part of a highly curiouscollection, which was kindly pointed out to me by Dr. Bandinel. ]

[Footnote 47: Birch's Life of Tillotson; Leslie's Charge of Socinianismagainst Dr. Tillotson considered, by a True Son of the Church 1695;Hickes's Discourses upon Dr. Burnet and Dr. Tillotson, 1695; Catalogueof Books of the Newest Fashion to be Sold by Auction at the Whigs CoffeeHouse, evidently printed in 1693. More than sixty years later Johnsondescribed a sturdy Jacobite as firmly convinced that Tillotson died anAtheist; Idler, No, 10. ]

[Footnote 48: Tillotson to Lady Russell, June 23. 1691. ]

[Footnote 49: Birch's Life of Tillotson; Memorials of Tillotson by hispupil John Beardmore; Sherlock's sermon preached in the Temple Church onthe death of Queen Mary, 1694/5. ]

[Footnote 50: Wharton's Collectanea quoted in Birch's Life ofTillotson. ]

[Footnote 51: Wharton's Collectanea quoted in D'Oyly's Life of Sancroft;Narcissus Luttrell's Diary. ]

[Footnote 52: The Lambeth MS. Quoted in D'Oyly's Life of Sancroft;Narcissus Luttrell's Diary; Vernon to Wharton, June 9. 11. 1691. ]

[Footnote 53: See a letter of R. Nelson, dated Feb. 21. 1709/10, inthe appendix to N. Marshall's Defence of our Constitution in Church andState, 1717; Hawkins's Life of Ken; Life of Ken by a Layman. ]

[Footnote 54: See a paper dictated by him on the 15th Nov. 1693, inWagstaffe's letter from Suffolk. ]

[Footnote 55: Kettlewell's Life, iii. 59. ]

[Footnote 56: See D'Oyly's Life of Sancroft, Hallam's ConstitutionalHistory, and Dr. Lathbury's History of the Nonjurors. ]

[Footnote 57: See the autobiography of his descendant and namesake thedramatist. See also Onslow's note on Burnet, ii. 76. ]

[Footnote 58: A vindication of their Majesties' authority to fill thesees of the deprived Bishops, May 20. 1691; London Gazette, April 27. And June 15. 1691; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, May 1691. Among theTanner MSS. Are two letters from Jacobites to Beveridge, one mild anddecent, the other scurrilous even beyond the ordinary scurrility of thenonjurors. The former will be found in the Life of Ken by a Layman. ]

[Footnote 59: It does not seem quite clear whether Sharp's scruple aboutthe deprived prelates was a scruple of conscience or merely a scruple ofdelicacy. See his Life by his Son. ]

[Footnote 60: See Overall's Convocation Book, chapter 28. Nothing can beclearer or more to the purpose than his language

"When, having attained their ungodly desires, whether ambitious kingsby bringing any country into their subjection, or disloyal subjectsby rebellious rising against their natural sovereigns, they haveestablished any of the said degenerate governments among their people, the authority either so unjustly established, or wrung by force from thetrue and lawful possessor, being always God's authority, and thereforereceiving no impeachment by the wickedness of those that have it, isever, when such alterations are thoroughly settled, to be reverencedand obeyed; and the people of all sorts, as well of the clergy as of thelaity, are to be subject unto it, not only for fear, but likewise forconscience sake. "

Then follows the canon

"If any man shall affirm that, when any such new forms of government, begun by rebellion, are after thoroughly settled, the authority in themis not of God, or that any who live within the territories of any suchnew governments are not bound to be subject to God's authority which isthere executed, but may rebel against the same, he doth greatly err. "]

[Footnote 61: A list of all the pieces which I have read relating toSherlock's apostasy would fatigue the reader. I will mention a fewof different kinds. Parkinson's Examination of Dr. Sherlock's Case ofAllegiance, 1691; Answer to Dr. Sherlock's Case of Allegiance, by aLondon Apprentice, 1691; the Reasons of the New Converts taking theOaths to the present Government, 1691; Utrum horum? or God's ways ofdisposing of Kingdoms and some Clergymen's ways of disposing ofthem, 1691; Sherlock and Xanthippe 1691; Saint Paul's Triumph in hisSufferings for Christ, by Matthew Bryan, LL. D. , dedicated Ecclesim subcruce gementi; A Word to a wavering Levite; The Trimming Court Divine;Proteus Ecclesiasticus, or observations on Dr. Sh--'s late Case ofAllegiance; the Weasil Uncased; A Whip for the Weasil; the Anti-Weasils. Numerous allusions to Sherlock and his wife will be found in the ribaldwritings of Tom Brown, Tom Durfey, and Ned Ward. See Life of James, ii. 318. Several curious letters about Sherlock's apostasy are among theTanner MSS. I will give two or three specimens of the rhymes which theCase of Allegiance called forth. 

 "When Eve the fruit had tasted, She to her husband hasted, And chuck'd him on the chin-a. Dear Bud, quoth she, come taste this fruit; 'Twill finly with your palate suit, To eat it is no sin-a. "

 "As moody Job, in shirtless ease, With collyflowers all o'er his face, Did on the dunghill languish, His spouse thus whispers in his ear, Swear, husband, as you love me, swear, 'Twill ease you of your anguish. "

 "At first he had doubt, and therefore did pray That heaven would instruct him in the right way, Whether Jemmy or William he ought to obey, Which nobody can deny, "The pass at the Boyne determin'd that case; And precept to Providence then did give place; To change his opinion he thought no disgrace; Which nobody can deny. 

 "But this with the Scripture can never agree, As by Hosea the eighth and the fourth you may see; 'They have set up kings, but yet not by me, ' Which nobody can deny. "]

[Footnote 62: The chief authority for this part of my history is theLife of James, particularly the highly important and interesting passagewhich begins at page 444. And ends at page 450. Of the second volume. ]

[Footnote 63: Russell to William, May 10 1691, in Dalrymple's Appendix, Part II. Book vii. See also the Memoirs of Sir John Leake. ]

[Footnote 64: Commons' Journals, Mar. 21. 24. 1679; Grey's Debates;Observator. ]

[Footnote 65: London Gazette, July 21. 1690. ]

[Footnote 66: Life of James, ii. 449. ]

[Footnote 67: Shadwell's Volunteers. ]

[Footnote 68: Story's Continuation; Proclamation of February 21. 1690/1;the London Gazette of March 12. ]

[Footnote 69: Story's Continuation. ]

[Footnote 70: Story's Impartial History; London Gazette, Nov. 17. 1690. ]

[Footnote 71: Story's Impartial History. The year 1684 had beenconsidered as a time of remarkable prosperity, and the revenue from theCustoms had been unusually large. But the receipt from all the portsof Ireland, during the whole year, was only a hundred and twenty-seventhousand pounds. See Clarendon's Memoirs. ]

[Footnote 72: Story's History and Continuation; London Gazettes ofSeptember 29. 1690, and Jan. 8. And Mar. 12. 1690/1. ]

[Footnote 73: See the Lords' Journals of March 2. And 4. 1692/3 and theCommons' Journals of Dec. 16. 1693, and Jan. 29. 1695/4. The story, badenough at best, was told by the personal and political enemies of theLords justices with additions which the House of Commons evidentlyconsidered as calumnious, and which I really believe to have beenso. See the Gallienus Redivivus. The narrative which Colonel RobertFitzgerald, a Privy Councillor and an eyewitness delivered in writing tothe House of Lords, under the sanction of an oath, seems to me perfectlytrustworthy. It is strange that Story, though he mentions the murder ofthe soldiers, says nothing about Gafney. ]

[Footnote 74: Burnet, ii. 66. ; Leslie's Answer to King. ]

[Footnote 75: Macariae Excidium; Fumeron to Louvois Jan 31/Feb 10 1691. It is to be observed that Kelly, the author of the Macariae Excidium andFumeron, the French intendant, are most unexceptionable witnesses. They were both, at this time, within the walls of Limerick. There is noreason to doubt the impartiality of the Frenchman; and the Irishman waspartial to his own countrymen. ]

[Footnote 76: Story's Impartial History and Continuation and the LondonGazettes of December, January, February, and March 1690/1. ]

[Footnote 77: It is remarkable that Avaux, though a very shrewd judgeof men, greatly underrated Berwick. In a letter to Louvois, dated Oct. 15/25. 1689, Avaux says: "Je ne puis m'empescher de vous dire qu'il estbrave de sa personne, a ce que l'on dit mais que c'est un aussy mechantofficie, qu'il en ayt, et qu'il n'a pas le sens commun. "]

[Footnote 78: Leslie's Answer to King, Macariae Excidium. ]

[Footnote 79: Macariae Excidium. ]

[Footnote 80: Macariae Excidium; Life of James, ii. 422. ; Memoirs ofBerwick. ]

[Footnote 81: Macariae Excidium. ]

[Footnote 82: Life of James, ii. 422, 423. ; Memoires de Berwick. ]

[Footnote 83: Life of James, ii. 433-457. ; Story's Continuation. ]

[Footnote 84: Life of James, ii. 438. ; Light to the Blind; Fumeron toLouvois, April 22/May 2 1691. ]

[Footnote 85: Macariae Excidium; Memoires de Berwick; Life of James, ii. 451, 452. ]

[Footnote 86: Macariae Excidium; Burnet, ii. 78. ; Dangeau; The MercuriusReformatus, June 5. 1691. ]

[Footnote 87: An exact journal of the victorious progress of theirMajesties' forces under the command of General Ginckle this summer inIreland, 1691; Story's Continuation; Mackay's Memoirs. ]

[Footnote 88: London Gazette, June 18. 22. 1691; Story's Continuation;Life of James, ii. 452. The author of the Life accuses the Governor oftreachery or cowardice. ]

[Footnote 89: London Gazette, June 22. 25. July 2. 1691; Story'sContinuation; Exact Journal. ]

[Footnote 90: Life of James, ii. 373. 376. 377]

[Footnote 91: Macariae Excidium. I may observe that this is one ofthe many passages which lead me to believe the Latin text to be theoriginal. The Latin is: "Oppidum ad Salaminium amnis latus recentibus acsumptuosioribus aedificiis attollebatur; antiquius et ipsa vetustate incultius quod in Paphiis finibus exstructum erat. " The English versionis: "The town on Salaminia side was better built than that in Paphia. "Surely there is in the Latin the particularity which we might expectfrom a person who had known Athlone before the war. The Englishversion is contemptibly bad, I need hardly say that the Paphian side isConnaught, and the Salaminian side Leinster. ]

[Footnote 92: I have consulted several contemporary maps of Athlone. Onewill be found in Story's Continuation. ]

[Footnote 93: Diary of the Siege of Athlone, by an Engineer of the Army, a Witness of the Action, licensed July 11. 1691; Story's Continuation;London Gazette, July 2. 1691; Fumeron to Louvois, June 28/July 8. 1691. The account of this attack in the Life of James, ii. 453. , is an absurdromance. It does not appear to have been taken from the King's originalMemoirs. ]

[Footnote 94: Macariae Excidium. Here again I think that I see clearproof that the English version of this curious work is only abad translation from the Latin. The English merely says:"Lysander, "--Sarsfield, --"accused him, a few days before, in thegeneral's presence, " without intimating what the accusation was. TheLatin original runs thus: "Acriter Lysander, paucos ante dies, corampraefecto copiarum illi exprobraverat nescio quid, quod in aula Syriacain Cypriorum opprobrium effutivisse dicebatur. " The English translatorhas, by omitting the most important words, and by using the aoristinstead of the preterpluperfect tense, made the whole passageunmeaning. ]

[Footnote 95: Story's Continuation; Macariae Excidium; Daniel Macneal toSir Arthur Rawdon, June 28. 1691, in the Rawdon Papers. ]

[Footnote 96: London Gazette, July 6. 1691; Story's Continuation;Macariae Excidium; Light to the Blind. ]

[Footnote 97: Macariae Excidium; Light to the Blind. ]

[Footnote 98: Life of James, ii. 460. ; Life of William, 1702. ]

[Footnote 99: Story's Continuation; Mackay's Memoirs; Exact Journal;Diary of the Siege of Athlone. ]

[Footnote 100: Story's Continuation. ; Macariae Excid. ; Burnet, ii. 78, 79. ; London Gaz. 6. 13. 1689; Fumeron to Louvois June 30/July 10 1690;Diary of the Siege of Athlone; Exact Account. ]

[Footnote 101: Story's Continuation; Life of James, ii. 455. Fumeron toLouvois June 30/July 10 1691; London Gazette, July 13. ]

[Footnote 102: The story, as told by the enemies of Tyrconnel, will befound in the Macariae Excidium, and in a letter written by Felix O'Neillto the Countess of Antrim on the 10th of July 1691. The letter was foundon the corpse of Felix O'Neill after the battle of Aghrim. It is printedin the Rawdon Papers. The other story is told in Berwick's Memoirs andin the Light to the Blind. ]

[Footnote 103: Macariae Excidium; Life of James, ii 456. ; Light to theBlind. ]

[Footnote 104: Macariae Excidium. ]

[Footnote 105: Story's Continuation. ]

[Footnote 106: Burnet, ii. 79. ; Story's Continuation. ]

[Footnote 107: "They maintained their ground much longer than they hadbeen accustomed to do, " says Burnet. "They behaved themselves like menof another nation, " says Story. "The Irish were never known to fightwith more resolution, " says the London Gazette. ]

[Footnote 108: Story's Continuation; London Gazette, July 20. 23. 1691;Memoires de Berwick; Life of James, ii. 456. ; Burnet, ii. 79. ; MacariaeExcidium; Light to the Blind; Letter from the English camp to Sir ArthurRawdon, in the Rawdon Papers; History of William the Third, 1702. ]

The narratives to which I have referred differ very widely fromeach other. Nor can the difference be ascribed solely or chiefly topartiality. For no two narratives differ more widely than that whichwill be found in the Life of James, and that which will be found in thememoirs of his son. ]

In consequence, I suppose, of the fall of Saint Ruth, and of the absenceof D'Usson, there is at the French War Office no despatch containing adetailed account of the battle. ]

[Footnote 109: Story's Continuation. ]

[Footnote 110: Story's Continuation; Macariae Excidium; Life of James, ii. 464. ; London Gazette, July 30. , Aug. 17. 1691; Light to the Blind. ]

[Footnote 111: Story's Continuation; Macariae Excidium; Life of James, ii. 459; London Gazette, July 30. , Aug. 3. 1691. ]

[Footnote 112: He held this language in a letter to Louis XIV. , datedthe 5/15th of August. This letter, written in a hand which it is noteasy to decipher, is in the French War Office. Macariae Excidium; Lightto the Blind. ]

[Footnote 113: Macariae Excidium; Life of James, ii. 461, 462. ]

[Footnote 114: Macariae Excidium; Life of James, ii. 459. 462. ;London Gazette, Aug. 31 1691; Light to the Blind; D'Usson and Tesse toBarbesieux, Aug. 13/23. ]

[Footnote 115: Story's Continuation; D'Usson and Tesse to BarbesieuxAug. 169r. An unpublished letter from Nagle to Lord Merion of Auk. 15. This letter is quoted by Mr. O'Callaghan in a note on MacariaeExcidium. ]

[Footnote 116: Macariae Excidium; Story's Continuation. ]

[Footnote 117: Story's Continuation; London Gazette, Sept. 28. 1691;Life of James, ii. 463. ; Diary of the Siege of Lymerick, 1692; Light tothe Blind. In the account of the siege which is among the archives ofthe French War Office, it is said that the Irish cavalry behaved worsethan the infantry. ]

[Footnote 118: Story's Continuation; Macariae Excidium; R. Douglas toSir A. Rawdon, Sept. 25. 1691, in the Rawdon Papers; London Gazette, October 8. ; Diary of the Siege of Lymerick; Light to the Blind; Accountof the Siege of Limerick in the archives of the French War Office. 

The account of this affair in the Life of James, ii. 464. , deserves tobe noticed merely for its preeminent absurdity. The writer tells usthat seven hundred of the Irish held out some time against a much largerforce, and warmly praises their heroism. He did not know, or didnot choose to mention, one fact which is essential to the rightunderstanding of the story; namely, that these seven hundred men were ina fort. That a garrison should defend a fort during a few hours againstsuperior numbers is surely not strange. Forts are built because they canbe defended by few against many. ]

[Footnote 119: Account of the Siege of Limerick in the archives of theFrench War Office; Story's Continuation. ]

[Footnote 120: D'Usson to Barbesieux, Oct. 4/14. 1691. ]

[Footnote 121: Macariae Excidium. ]

[Footnote 122: Story's Continuation; Diary of the Siege of Lymerick. ]

[Footnote 123: London Gazette, Oct. S. 1691; Story's Continuation; Diaryof the Siege of Lymerick. ]

[Footnote 124: Life of James, 464, 465. ]

[Footnote 125: Story's Continuation. ]

[Footnote 126: Story's Continuation; Diary of the Siege of Lymerick;Burnet, ii. 81. ; London Gazette, Oct. 12. 1691. ]

[Footnote 127: Story's Continuation; Diary of the Siege of Lymerick;London Gazette, Oct. 15. 1691. ]

[Footnote 128: The articles of the civil treaty have often beenreprinted. ]

[Footnote 129: Story's Continuation; Diary of the Siege of Lymerick. ]

[Footnote 130: Story's Continuation; Diary of the Siege of Lymerick. ]

[Footnote 131: Story's Continuation. His narrative is confirmed by thetestimony which an Irish Captain who was present has left us in badLatin. "Hic apud sacrum omnes advertizantur a capellanis ire potius inGalliam. "]

[Footnote 132: D'Usson and Tesse to Barbesieux, Oct. 17. 1691. ]

[Footnote 133: That there was little sympathy between the Celts ofUlster and those of the Southern Provinces is evident from the curiousmemorial which the agent of Baldearg O'Donnel delivered to Avaux. ]

[Footnote 134: Treasury Letter Book, June 19. 1696; Journals of theIrish House of Commons Nov. 7. 1717. ]

[Footnote 135: This I relate on Mr. O'Callaghan's authority. History ofthe Irish Brigades Note 47. ]

[Footnote 136: There is, Junius wrote eighty years after thecapitulation of Limerick, "a certain family in this country on whichnature seems to have entailed a hereditary baseness of disposition. Asfar as their history has been known, the son has regularly improved uponthe vices of the father, and has taken care to transmit them pure andundiminished into the bosom of his successors. " Elsewhere he says of themember for Middlesex, "He has degraded even the name of Luttrell. " Heexclaims, in allusion to the marriage of the Duke of Cumberland and Mrs. Horton who was born a Luttrell: "Let Parliament look to it. A Luttrellshall never succeed to the Crown of England. " It is certain that veryfew Englishmen can have sympathized with Junius's abhorrence ofthe Luttrells, or can even have understood it. Why then did he useexpressions which to the great majority of his readers must have beenunintelligible? My answer is that Philip Francis was born, and passedthe first ten years of his life, within a walk of Luttrellstown. ]

[Footnote 137: Story's Continuation; London Gazette, Oct. 22. 1691;D'Usson and Tesse to Lewis, Oct. 4/14. , and to Barbesieux, Oct. 7/17. ;Light to the Blind. ]

[Footnote 138: Story's Continuation; London Gazette Jan. 4. 1691/2]

[Footnote 139: Story's Continuation; Macariae Excidium, and Mr. O'Callaghan's note; London Gazette, Jan. 4. 1691/2. ]

[Footnote 140: Some interesting facts relating to Wall, who was ministerof Ferdinand the Sixth and Charles the Third, will be found in theletters of Sir Benjamin Keene and Lord Bristol, published in Coxe'sMemoirs of Spain. ]

[Footnote 141: This is Swift's language, language held not once, butrepeatedly and at long intervals. In the Letter on the Sacramental Test, written in 1708, he says: "If we (the clergy) were under any real fearof the Papists in this kingdom, it would be hard to think us so stupidas not to be equally apprehensive with others, since we are likely to bethe greater and more immediate sufferers; but, on the contrary, welook upon them to be altogether as inconsiderable as the women andchildren. .. . The common people without leaders, without discipline, ornatural courage, being little better than hewers of wood and drawers ofwater, are out of all capacity of doing any mischief, if they were everso well inclined. " In the Drapier's Sixth Letter, written in 1724, hesays: "As to the people of this kingdom, they consist either of IrishPapists, who are as inconsiderable, in point of power, as the women andchildren, or of English Protestants. " Again, in the Presbyterian's Pleaof Merit written in 1731, he says, "The estates of Papists are very few, crumbling into small parcels, anddaily diminishing; their common people are sunk in poverty, ignoranceand cowardice, and of as little consequence as women and children. Theirnobility and gentry are at least one half ruined, banished or converted. They all soundly feel the smart of what they suffered in the last Irishwar. Some of them are already retired into foreign countries; others, asI am told, intend to follow them; and the rest, I believe to a man, whostill possess any lands, are absolutely resolved never to hazard themagain for the sake of establishing their superstition. "

I may observe that, to the best of my belief, Swift never, in any thingthat he wrote, used the word Irishman to denote a person of Anglosaxonrace born in Ireland. He no more considered himself as an Irishman thanan Englishman born at Calcutta considers himself as a Hindoo. ]

[Footnote 142: In 1749 Lucas was the idol of the democracy of his owncaste. It is curious to see what was thought of him by those who werenot of his own caste. One of the chief Pariah, Charles O'Connor, wrotethus: "I am by no means interested, nor is any of our unfortunatepopulation, in this affair of Lucas. A true patriot would not havebetrayed such malice to such unfortunate slaves as we. " He adds, withtoo much truth, that those boasters the Whigs wished to have liberty allto themselves. ]

[Footnote 143: On this subject Johnson was the most liberal politicianof his time. "The Irish, " he said with great warmth, "are in a mostunnatural state for we see there the minority prevailing over themajority. " I suspect that Alderman Beckford and Alderman Sawbridgewould have been far from sympathizing with him. Charles O'Connor, whoseunfavourable opinion of the Whig Lucas I have quoted, pays, in thePreface to the Dissertations on Irish History, a high compliment to theliberality of the Tory Johnson. ]

[Footnote 144: London Gazette, Oct. 22. 1691. ]

[Footnote 145: Burnet, ii. 78, 79. ; Burchett's Memoirs of Transactionsat Sea; Journal of the English and Dutch fleet in a Letter from anOfficer on board the Lennox, at Torbay, licensed August 21. 1691. Thewriter says: "We attribute our health, under God, to the extraordinarycare taken in the well ordering of our provisions, both meat anddrink. "]

[Footnote 146: Lords' and Commons' Journals, Oct. 22. 1691. ]

[Footnote 147: This appears from a letter written by Lowther, after hebecame Lord Lonsdale, to his son. A copy of this letter is among theMackintosh MSS. ]

[Footnote 148: See Commons' Journals, Dec. 3. 1691; and Grey's Debates. It is to be regretted that the Report of the Commissioners of Accountshas not been preserved. Lowther, in his letter to his son, alludes tothe badgering of this day with great bitterness. "What man, " he asks, "that hath bread to eat, can endure, after having served with all thediligence and application mankind is capable of, and after having givensatisfaction to the King from whom all officers of State derive theirauthoritie, after acting rightly by all men, to be hated by men who doit to all people in authoritie?"]

[Footnote 149: Commons' Journals, Dec. 12. 1691. ]

[Footnote 150: Commons' Journals, Feb. 15. 1690/1; Baden to the StatesGeneral, Jan 26/Feb 5]

[Footnote 151: Stat. 3 W. & M. C. 2. , Lords' Journals; Lords' Journals, 16 Nov. 1691; Commons' Journals, Dec. 1. 9. 5. ]

[Footnote 152: The Irish Roman Catholics complained, and with buttoo much reason, that, at a later period, the Treaty of Limerick wasviolated; but those very complaints are admissions that the Statute 3 W. & M. C. 2. Was not a violation of the Treaty. Thus the author of A Lightto the Blind speaking of the first article, says: "This article, inseven years after, was broken by a Parliament in Ireland summoned by thePrince of Orange, wherein a law was passed for banishing the Catholicbishops, dignitaries, and regular clergy. " Surely he never would havewritten thus, if the article really had, only two months after it wassigned, been broken by the English Parliament. The Abbe Mac Geoghegan, too, complains that the Treaty was violated some years after it wasmade. But he does not pretend that it was violated by Stat. 3 W. & M. C. 2. ]

[Footnote 153: Stat. 21 Jac. 1. C. 3. ]

[Footnote 154: See particularly Two Letters by a Barrister concerningthe East India Company (1676), and an Answer to the Two Letterspublished in the same year. See also the judgment of Lord Jeffreysconcerning the Great Case of Monopolies. This judgment was publishedin 1689, after the downfall of Jeffreys. It was thought necessary toapologize in the preface for printing anything that bore so odious aname. "To commend this argument, " says the editor, "I'll not undertakebecause of the author. But yet I may tell you what is told me, that itis worthy any gentleman's perusal. " The language of Jeffreys is mostoffensive, sometimes scurrilous, sometimes basely adulatory; buthis reasoning as to the mere point of law is certainly able, if notconclusive. ]

[Footnote 155: Addison's Clarinda, in the week of which she kept ajournal, read nothing but Aurengzebe; Spectator, 323. She dreamed thatMr. Froth lay at her feet, and called her Indamora. Her friend MissKitty repeated, without book, the eight best lines of the play; those, no doubt, which begin, "Trust on, and think to-morrow will repay. " Thereare not eight finer lines in Lucretius. ]

[Footnote 156: A curious engraving of the India House of the seventeenthcentury will be found in the Gentleman's Magazine for December 1784. ]

[Footnote 157: See Davenant's Letter to Mulgrave. ]

[Footnote 158: Answer to Two Letters concerning the East India Company, 1676. ]

[Footnote 159: Anderson's Dictionary; G. White's Account of the Trade tothe East Indies, 1691; Treatise on the East India Trade by Philopatris, 1681. ]

[Footnote 160: Reasons for constituting a New East India Company inLondon, 1681; Some Remarks upon the Present State of the East IndiaCompany's Affairs, 1690. ]

[Footnote 161: Evelyn, March 16. 1683]

[Footnote 162: See the State Trials. ]

[Footnote 163: Pepys's Diary, April 2. And May 10 1669. ]

[Footnote 164: Tench's Modest and Just Apology for the East IndiaCompany, 1690. ]

[Footnote 165: Some Remarks on the Present State of the East IndiaCompany's Affairs, 1690; Hamilton's New Account of the East Indies. ]

[Footnote 166: White's Account of the East India Trade, 1691; PierceButler's Tale, 1691. ]

[Footnote 167: White's Account of the Trade to the East Indies, 1691;Hamilton's New Account of the East Indies; Sir John Wyborne to Pepysfrom Bombay, Jan. 7. 1688. ]

[Footnote 168: London Gazette, Feb. 16/26 1684. ]

[Footnote 169: Hamilton's New Account of the East Indies. ]

[Footnote 170: Papillon was of course reproached with his inconsistency. Among the pamphlets of that time is one entitled "A Treatise concerningthe East India Trade, wrote at the instance of Thomas Papillon, Esquire, and in his House, and printed in the year 1680, and now reprinted forthe better Satisfaction of himself and others. "]

[Footnote 171: Commons' Journals, June 8. 1689. ]

[Footnote 172: Among the pamphlets in which Child is most fiercelyattacked are Some Remarks on the Present State of the East IndiaCompany's Affairs, 1690; fierce Butler's Tale, 1691; and White's Accountof the Trade to the East Indies, 1691. ]

[Footnote 173: Discourse concerning the East India Trade, showing itto be unprofitable to the Kingdom, by Mr. Cary; pierce Butler's Tale, representing the State of the Wool Case, or the East India Case trulystated, 1691. Several petitions to the same effect will be found in theJournals of the House of Commons. ]

[Footnote 174: Reasons against establishing an East India Company with ajoint Stock, exclusive to all others, 1691. ]

[Footnote 175: The engagement was printed, and has been several timesreprinted. As to Skinners' Hall, see Seymour's History of London, 1734]

[Footnote 176: London Gazette, May 11. 1691; White's Account of the EastIndia Trade. ]

[Footnote 177: Commons' Journals, Oct. 28. 1691. ]

[Footnote 178: Ibid. Oct. 29. 1691. ]

[Footnote 179: Rowe, in the Biter, which was damned, and deserved to beso, introduced an old gentleman haranguing his daughter thus: "Thou hastbeen bred up like a virtuous and a sober maiden; and wouldest thou takethe part of a profane wretch who sold his stock out of the Old EastIndia Company?"]

[Footnote 180: Hop to the States General, Oct 30/Nov. 9 1691. ]

[Footnote 181: Hop mentions the length and warmth of the debates; Nov. 12/22. 1691. See the Commons' Journals, Dec. 17. And 18. ]

[Footnote 182: Commons' Journals, Feb 4. And 6. 1691. ]

[Footnote 183: Ibid. Feb. 11. 1691. ]

[Footnote 184: The history of this bill is to be collected from thebill itself, which is among the Archives of the Upper House, fromthe Journals of the two Houses during November and December 1690, andJanuary 1691; particularly from the Commons' Journals of December 11. And January 13. And 25. , and the Lords' Journals of January 20. And 28. See also Grey's Debates. ]

[Footnote 185: The letter, dated December 1. 1691, is in the Life ofJames, ii. 477. ]

[Footnote 186: Burnet, ii. 85. ; and Burnet MS. Harl. 6584. See also amemorial signed by Holmes, but consisting of intelligence furnishedby Ferguson, among the extracts from the Nairne Papers, printed byMacpherson. It bears date October 1691. "The Prince of Orange, " saysHolmes, "is mortally hated by the English. They see very fairly that hehath no love for them; neither doth he confide in them, but all in hisDutch. .. It's not doubted but the Parliament will not be for foreignersto ride them with a caveson. "]

[Footnote 187: Evelyn's Diary, Jan. 24. ; Hop to States General, Jan22/Feb 1 1691; Bader to States General, Feb. 16/26]

[Footnote 188: The words of James are these; they were written inNovember 1692:--"Mes amis, l'annee passee, avoient dessein de merappeler par le Parlement. La maniere etoit concertee; et MilordChurchill devoit proposer dans le Parlement de chasser tous lesetrangers tant des conseils et de l'armee que du royaume. Si le Princed'Orange avoit consenti a cette proposition ils l'auroient eu entreleurs mains. S'il l'avoit refusee, il auroit fait declarer le Parlementcontre lui; et en meme temps Milord Churchill devoir se declarer avecl'armee pour le Parlement; et la flotte devoit faire de meme; et l'ondevoit me rappeler. L'on avoit deja commence d'agir dans ce projet; eton avoit gagne un gros parti, quand quelques fideles sujets indiscrets, croyant me servir, et s'imaginant que ce que Milord Churchill faisoitn'etoit pas pour moi, mais pour la Princesse de Danemarck, eurentl'imprudence de decouvrir le tout a Benthing, et detournerent ainsi lecoup. "

A translation of this most remarkable passage, which at once solves manyinteresting and perplexing problems, was published eighty years ago byMacpherson. But, strange to say, it attracted no notice, and has never, as far as I know, been mentioned by any biographer of Marlborough. 

The narrative of James requires no confirmation; but it is stronglyconfirmed by the Burnet MS. Harl. 6584. "Marleburrough, " Burnet wrote inSeptember 1693, "set himself to decry the King's conduct and to lessenhim in all his discourses, and to possess the English with an aversionto the Dutch, who, as he pretended, had a much larger share of theKing's favour and confidence than they, "--the English, I suppose, --"had. This was a point on which the English, who are too apt to despise allother nations, and to overvalue themselves, were easily enough inflamed. So it grew to be the universal subject of discourse, and was theconstant entertainment at Marleburrough's, where there was a constantrandivous of the English officers. " About the dismission of Marlborough, Burnet wrote at the same time: "The King said to myself upon it thathe had very good reason to believe that he had made his peace with KingJames and was engaged in a correspondence with France. It is certain hewas doing all he could to set on a faction in the army and the nationagainst the Dutch. "

It is curious to compare this plain tale, told while the facts wererecent, with the shuffling narrative which Burnet prepared for thepublic eye many years later, when Marlborough was closely united to theWhigs, and was rendering great and splendid services to the country. Burnet, ii. 90. 

The Duchess of Marlborough, in her Vindication, had the effrontery todeclare that she "could never learn what cause the King assigned for hisdispleasure. " She suggests that Young's forgery may have been the cause. Now she must have known that Young's forgery was not committed till somemonths after her husband's disgrace. She was indeed lamentably deficientin memory, a faculty which is proverbially said to be necessary topersons of the class to which she belonged. Her own volume convicts herof falsehood. She gives us a letter from Mary to Anne, in which Marysays, "I need not repeat the cause my Lord Marlborough has given theKing to do what he has done. " These words plainly imply that Anne hadbeen apprised of the cause. If she had not been apprised of the causewould she not have said so in her answer? But we have her answer; and itcontains not a word on the subject. She was then apprised of the cause;and is it possible to believe that she kept it a secret from her adoredMrs. Freeman?]

[Footnote 189: My account of these transactions I have been forced totake from the narrative of the Duchess of Marlborough, a narrative whichis to be read with constant suspicion, except when, as is often thecase, she relates some instance of her own malignity and insolence. ]

[Footnote 190: The Duchess of Marlborough's Vindication; Dartmouth'sNote on Burnet, ii. 92. ; Verses of the Night Bellman of Piccadilly andmy Lord Nottingham's Order thereupon, 1691. There is a bitter lampoon onLady Marlborough of the same date, entitled The Universal Health, a trueUnion to the Queen and Princess. ]

[Footnote 191: It must not be supposed that Anne was a reader ofShakspeare. She had no doubt, often seen the Enchanted Island. Thatmiserable rifacimento of the Tempest was then a favourite with the town, on account of the machinery and the decorations. ]

[Footnote 192: Burnet MS. Harl. 6584. ]

[Footnote 193: The history of an abortive attempt to legislate on thissubject may be studied in the Commons' Journals of 1692/3. ]

[Footnote 194: North's Examen, ]

[Footnote 195: North's Examen; Ward's London Spy; Crosby's EnglishBaptists, vol. Iii. Chap. 2. ]

[Footnote 196: The history of this part of Fuller's life I have takenfrom his own narrative. ]

[Footnote 197: Commons' Journals, Dec. 2. And 9. 1691; Grey's Debates. ]

[Footnote 198: Commons' Journals, Jan. 4. 1691/2 Grey's Debates. ]

[Footnote 199: Commons' Journals, Feb. 22, 23, and 24. 1691/2. ]

[Footnote 200: Fuller's Original Letters of the late King James andothers to his greatest Friends in England. ]

[Footnote 201: Burnet, ii. 86. Burnet had evidently forgotten what thebill contained. Ralph knew nothing about it but what he had learned fromBurnet. I have scarcely seen any allusion to the subject in any ofthe numerous Jacobite lampoons of that day. But there is a remarkablepassage in a pamphlet which appeared towards the close of William'sreign, and which is entitled The Art of Governing by Parties. The writersays, "We still want an Act to ascertain some fund for the salaries ofthe judges; and there was a bill, since the Revolution, past both Housesof Parliament to this purpose; but whether it was for being any waydefective or otherwise that His Majesty refused to assent to it, Icannot remember. But I know the reason satisfied me at that time. And Imake no doubt but he'll consent to any good bill of this nature whenever'tis offered. " These words convinced me that the bill was open tosome grave objection which did not appear in the title, and which nohistorian had noticed. I found among the archives of the House of Lordsthe original parchment, endorsed with the words "Le Roy et La Roynes'aviseront. " And it was clear at the first glance what the objectionwas. ]

There is a hiatus in that part of Narcissus Luttrell's Diary whichrelates to this matter. "The King, " he wrote, "passed ten public billsand thirty-four private ones, and rejected that of the--"]

As to the present practice of the House of Commons in such cases, seeHatsell's valuable work, ii. 356. I quote the edition of 1818. Hatsellsays that many bills which affect the interest of the Crown may bebrought in without any signification of the royal consent, and that itis enough if the consent be signified on the second reading, or evenlater; but that, in a proceeding which affects the hereditary revenue, the consent must be signified in the earliest stage. ]

[Footnote 202: The history of these ministerial arrangements I havetaken chiefly from the London Gazette of March 3. And March 7. 1691/2and from Narcissus Luttrell's Diary for that month. Two or three slighttouches are from contemporary pamphlets. ]

[Footnote 203: William to Melville, May 22. 1690. ]

[Footnote 204: See the preface to the Leven and Melville Papers. I havegiven what I believe to be a true explanation of Burnet's hostility toMelville. Melville's descendant who has deserved well of all studentsof history by the diligence and fidelity with which he has performed hiseditorial duties, thinks that Burnet's judgment was blinded by zeal forPrelacy and hatred of Presbyterianism. This accusation will surprise andamuse English High Churchmen. ]

[Footnote 205: Life of James, ii. 468, 469. ]

[Footnote 206: Burnet, ii. 88. ; Master of Stair to Breadalbane, Dee. 2. 1691. ]

[Footnote 207: Burnet, i. 418. ]

[Footnote 208: Crawford to Melville, July 23. 1689; The Master ofStair to Melville, Aug. 16. 1689; Cardross to Melville, Sept. 9. 1689;Balcarras's Memoirs; Annandale's Confession, Aug. I4. 1690. ]

[Footnote 209: Breadalbane to Melville, Sept. 17. 1690. ]

[Footnote 210: The Master of Stair to Hamilton, Aug. 17/27. 1691; Hillto Melville, June 26. 1691; The Master of Stair to Breadalbane, Aug. 24. 1691. ]

[Footnote 211: "The real truth is, they were a branch of the Macdonalds(who were a brave courageous people always), seated among the Campbells, who (I mean the Glencoe men) are all Papists, if they have any religion, were always counted a people much given to rapine and plunder, orsorners as we call it, and much of a piece with your highwaymen inEngland. Several governments desired to bring them to justice; but theircountry was inaccessible to small parties. " See An impartial Account ofsome of the Transactions in Scotland concerning the Earl of Breadalbane, Viscount and Master of Stair, Glenco Men, &c. , London, 1695. ]

[Footnote 212: Report of the Commissioners, signed at Holyrood, June 20. 1695. ]

[Footnote 213: Gallienus Redivivus; Burnet, ii. 88. ; Report of theCommission of 1695. ]

[Footnote 214: Report of the Glencoe Commission, 1695. ]

[Footnote 215: Hill to Melville, May 15. 1691. ]

[Footnote 216: Ibid. June 3. 1691. ]

[Footnote 217: Burnet, ii. 8, 9. ; Report of the Glencoe Commission. Theauthorities quoted in this part of the Report were the depositions ofHill, of Campbell of Ardkinglass, and of Mac Ian's two sons. ]

[Footnote 218: Johnson's Tour to the Hebrides. ]

[Footnote 219: Proclamation of the Privy Council of Scotland, Feb. Q. 1589. I give this reference on the authority of Sir Walter Scott. Seethe preface to the Legend of Montrose. ]

[Footnote 220: Johnson's Tour to the Hebrides. ]

[Footnote 221: Lockhart's Memoirs. ]

[Footnote 222: "What under heaven was the Master's byass in this matter?I can imagine none. " Impartial Account, 1695. "Nor can any man ofcandour and ingenuity imagine that the Earl of Stair, who had neitherestate, friendship nor enmity in that country, nor so much as knowledgeof these persons, and who was never noted for cruelty in his temper, should have thirsted after the blood of these wretches. " CompleteHistory of Europe, 1707. ]

[Footnote 223: Dalrymple, in his Memoirs, relates this story, withoutreferring to any authority. His authority probably was family tradition. That reports were current in 1692 of horrible crimes committed by theMacdonalds of Glencoe, is certain from the Burnet MS. Marl. 6584. "Theyhad indeed been guilty of many black murthers, " were Burnet's words, written in 1693. He afterwards softened down this expression. ]

[Footnote 224: That the plan originally framed by the Master of Stairwas such as I have represented it, is clear from parts of his letterswhich are quoted in the Report of 1695; and from his letters toBreadalbane of October 27. , December 2. , and December 3. 1691. Of theseletters to Breadalbane the last two are in Dalrymple's Appendix. Thefirst is in the Appendix to the first volume of Mr. Burtons valuableHistory of Scotland. "It appeared, " says Burnet (ii. 157. ), "that ablack design was laid, not only to cut off the men of Glencoe, buta great many more clans, reckoned to be in all above six thousandpersons. "]

[Footnote 225: This letter is in the Report of 1695. ]

[Footnote 226: London Gazette, January 14and 18. 1691. ]

[Footnote 227: "I could have wished the Macdonalds had not divided; andI am sorry that Keppoch and Mackian of Glenco are safe. "--Letter of theMaster of Stair to Levingstone, Jan. 9. 1691/2 quoted in the Report of1695. ]

[Footnote 228: Letter of the Master of Stair to Levingstone, Jan. 111692, quoted in the Report of 1695. ]

[Footnote 229: Burnet, in 1693, wrote thus about William:--"He suffersmatters to run till there is a great heap of papers; and then he signsthem as much too fast as he was before too slow in despatching them. "Burnet MS. Harl. 6584. There is no sign either of procrastination orof undue haste in William's correspondence with Heinsius. The truth is, that the King understood Continental politics thoroughly, and gave hiswhole mind to them. To English business he attended less, and to Scotchbusiness least of all. ]

[Footnote 230: Impartial Account, 1695. ]

[Footnote 231: See his letters quoted in the Report of 1695, and in theMemoirs of the Massacre of Glencoe. ]

[Footnote 232: Report of 1695. ]

[Footnote 233: Deposition of Ronald Macdonald in the Report of 1695;Letters from the Mountains, May 17. 1773. I quote Mrs. Grant's authorityonly for what she herself heard and saw. Her account of the massacrewas written apparently without the assistance of books, and is grosslyincorrect. Indeed she makes a mistake of two years as to the date. ]

[Footnote 234: I have taken the account of the Massacre of Glencoechiefly from the Report of 1695, and from the Gallienus Redivivus. Anunlearned, and indeed a learned, reader may be at a loss to guess whythe Jacobites should have selected so strange a title for a pamphlet onthe massacre of Glencoe. The explanation will be found in a letter ofthe Emperor Gallienus, preserved by Trebellius Pollio in the Life ofIngenuus. Ingenuus had raised a rebellion in Moesia. He was defeated andkilled. Gallienus ordered the whole province to be laid waste, and wroteto one of his lieutenants in language to which that of the Master ofStair bore but too much resemblance. "Non mihi satisfacies si tantumarmatos occideris, quos et fors belli interimere potuisset. Perimendusest omnis sexus virilis. Occidendus est quicunque maledixit. Occidendusest quicunque male voluit. Lacera. Occide. Concide. "]

[Footnote 235: What I have called the Whig version of the story isgiven, as well as the Jacobite version, in the Paris Gazette of April 7. 1692. ]

[Footnote 236: I believe that the circumstances which give so peculiar acharacter of atrocity to the Massacre of Glencoe were first published inprint by Charles Leslie in the Appendix to his answer to King. The dateof Leslie's answer is 1692. But it must be remembered that the date of1692 was then used down to what we should call the 25th of March 1693. Leslie's book contains some remarks on a sermon by Tillotson whichwas not printed till November 1692. The Gallienus Redivivus speedilyfollowed. ]

[Footnote 237: Gallienus Redivivus. ]

[Footnote 238: Hickes on Burnet and Tillotson, 1695. ]

[Footnote 239: Report of 1695. ]

[Footnote 240: Gallienus Redivivus. ]

[Footnote 241: Report of 1695. ]

[Footnote 242: London Gazette, Mar. 7. 1691/2]

[Footnote 243: Burnet (ii. 93. ) says that the King was not at this timeinformed of the intentions of the French Government. Ralph contradictsBurnet with great asperity. But that Burnet was in the right is provedbeyond dispute, by William's correspondence with Heinsius. So late asApril 24/May 4 William wrote thus: "Je ne puis vous dissimuler que jecommence a apprehender une descente en Angleterre, quoique je n'aye pule croire d'abord: mais les avis sont si multiplies de tous les cotes, et accompagnes de tant de particularites, qu'il n'est plus guerepossible d'en douter. " I quote from the French translation among theMackintosh MSS. ]

[Footnote 244: Burnet, ii. 95. And Onslow's note; Memoires de SaintSimon; Memoires de Dangeau. ]

[Footnote 245: Life of James ii. 411, 412. ]

[Footnote 246: Memoires de Dangeau; Memoires de Saint Simon. Saint Simonwas on the terrace and, young as he was, observed this singular scenewith an eye which nothing escaped. ]

[Footnote 247: Memoires de Saint Simon; Burnet, ii. 95. ; Guardian No. 48. See the excellent letter of Lewis to the Archbishop of Rheims, whichis quoted by Voltaire in the Siecle de Louis XIV. ]

[Footnote 248: In the Nairne papers printed by Macpherson are twomemorials from James urging Lewis to invade England. Both were writtenin January 1692. ]

[Footnote 249: London Gazette, Feb. 15. 1691/2]

[Footnote 250: Memoires de Berwick; Burnet, ii. 92. ; Life of James, ii. 478. 491. ]

[Footnote 251: History of the late Conspiracy, 1693. ]

[Footnote 252: Life of James, ii. 479. 524. Memorials furnished byFerguson to Holmes in the Nairne Papers. ]

[Footnote 253: Life of James, ii. 474. ]

[Footnote 254: See the Monthly Mercuries of the spring of 1692. ]

[Footnote 255: Narcissus Luttrell's Diary for April and May 1692; LondonGazette, May 9. And 12. ]

[Footnote 256: Sheridan MS. ; Life of James, ii. 492. ]

[Footnote 257: Life of James, ii. 488. ]

[Footnote 258: James told Sheridan that the Declaration was written byMelfort. Sheridan MS. ]

[Footnote 259: A Letter to a Friend concerning a French Invasion torestore the late King James to his Throne, and what may be expected fromhim should he be successful in it, 1692; A second Letter to a Friendconcerning a French Invasion, in which the Declaration lately dispersedunder the Title of His Majesty's most gracious Declaration to all hisloving Subjects, commanding their Assistance against the P. Of O. And his Adherents, is entirely and exactly published according tothe dispersed Copies, with some short Observations upon it, 1692; ThePretences of the French Invasion examined, 1692; Reflections on the lateKing James's Declaration, 1692. The two Letters were written, I believe, by Lloyd Bishop of Saint Asaph. Sheridan says, "The King's Declarationpleas'd none, and was turn'd into ridicule burlesque lines in England. "I do not believe that a defence of this unfortunate Declaration is to befound in any Jacobite tract. A virulent Jacobite writer, in a reply toDr. Welwood, printed in 1693, says, "As for the Declaration that wasprinted last year. .. I assure you that it was as much misliked bymany, almost all, of the King's friends, as it can be exposed by hisenemies. "]

[Footnote 260: Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, April 1692. ]

[Footnote 261: Sheridan MS. ; Memoires de Dangeau. ]

[Footnote 262: London Gazette, May 12. 16. 1692; Gazette de Paris, May31. 1692. ]

[Footnote 263: London Gazette, April 28. 1692]

[Footnote 264: Ibid. May 2. 5. 12. 16. ]

[Footnote 265: London Gazette, May 16. 1692; Burchett. ]

[Footnote 266: Narcissus Luttrell's Diary; London Gazette, May 19. 1692. ]

[Footnote 267: Russell's Letter to Nottingham, May 20. 1692, in theLondon Gazette of May 23. ; Particulars of Another Letter from the Fleetpublished by authority; Burchett; Burnet, ii. 93. ; Life of James, ii. 493, 494. ; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary; Memoires de Berwick. See also thecontemporary ballad on the battle one of the best specimens of Englishstreet poetry, and the Advice to a Painter, 1692. ]

[Footnote 268: See Delaval's Letter to Nottingham, dated Cherburg, May22. , in the London Gazette of May 26. ]

[Footnote 269: London Gaz. , May 26. 1692; Burchett's Memoirs ofTransactions at Sea; Baden to the States General, May 24/June 3; Life ofJames, ii. 494; Russell's Letters in the Commons' Journals of Nov. 28. 1692; An Account of the Great Victory, 1692; Monthly Mercuries for Juneand July 1692; Paris Gazette, May 28/June 7; Van Almonde's despatchto the States General, dated May 24/June 3. 1692. The French officialaccount will be found in the Monthly Mercury for July. A report drawn upby Foucault, Intendant of the province of Normandy, will be found in M. Capefigue's Louis XIV. ]

[Footnote 270: An Account of the late Great Victory, 1692; MonthlyMercury for June; Baden to the States General, May 24/ June 3; NarcissusLuttrell's Diary. ]

[Footnote 271: London Gazette, June 2. 1692; Monthly Mercury; Baden tothe States General, June 14/24. Narcissus Luttrell's Diary. ]

[Footnote 272: Narcissus Luttrell's Diary; Monthly Mercury. ]

[Footnote 273: London Gazette, June 9. ; Baden to the States General, June 7/17]

[Footnote 274: Baden to the States General, June. 3/13]

[Footnote 275: Baden to the States General, May 24/June 3; NarcissusLuttrell's Diary. ]

[Footnote 276: An Account of the late Great Victory, 1692; NarcissusLuttrell's Diary. ]

[Footnote 277: Baden to the States General, June 7/17. 1692. ]

[Footnote 278: Narcissus Luttrell's Diary. ]

[Footnote 279: I give one short sentence as a specimen: "O fie that everit should be said that a clergyman have committed such durty actions!"]

[Footnote 280: Gutch, Collectanea Curiosa. ]

[Footnote 281: My account of this plot is chiefly taken from Sprat'sRelation of the late Wicked Contrivance of Stephen Blackhead and RobertYoung, 1692. There are very few better narratives in the language. ]

[Footnote 282: Baden to the States General, Feb. 14/24 1693. ]

[Footnote 283: Postman, April 13. And 20. 1700; Postboy, April 18. ;Flying Post, April 20. ]

[Footnote 284: London Gazette, March 14. 1692. ]

[Footnote 285: The Swedes came, it is true, but not till the campaignwas over. London Gazette, Sept, 10 1691, ]

[Footnote 286: William to Heinsius March 14/24. 1692. ]

[Footnote 287: William to Heinsius, Feb. 2/12 1692. ]

[Footnote 288: Ibid. Jan 12/22 1692. ]

[Footnote 289: Ibid. Jan. 19/29. 1692. ]

[Footnote 290: Burnet, ii. 82 83. ; Correspondence of William andHeinsius, passim. ]

[Footnote 291: Memoires de Torcy. ]

[Footnote 292: William to Heinsius, Oct 28/Nov 8 1691. ]

[Footnote 293: Ibid. Jan. 19/29. 1692. ]

[Footnote 294: His letters to Heinsius are full of this subject. ]

[Footnote 295: See the Letters from Rome among the Nairne Papers. Thosein 1692 are from Lytcott; those in 1693 from Cardinal Howard; those in1694 from Bishop Ellis; those in 1695 from Lord Perth. They all tell thesame story. ]

[Footnote 296: William's correspondence with Heinsius; London Gazette, Feb. 4. 1691. In a pasquinade published in 1693, and entitled "La Foired'Ausbourg, Ballet Allegorique, " the Elector of Saxony is introducedsaying, "Moy, je diray naivement, Qu'une jartiere d'Angleterre Feroit tout Mon empressement; Et je ne vois rien sur la terre Ou je trouve plus d'agrement. "]

[Footnote 297: William's correspondence with Heinsius. There is acurious account of Schoening in the Memoirs of Count Dohna. ]

[Footnote 298: Burnet, ii. 84. ]

[Footnote 299: Narcissus Luttrell's Diary. ]

[Footnote 300: Monthly Mercuries of January and April 1693; Burnet, ii. 84. In the Burnet MS. Hail. 6584, is a warm eulogy on the Elector ofBavaria. When the MS. Was written he was allied with England againstFrance. In the History, which was prepared for publication when he wasallied with France against England, the eulogy is omitted. ]

[Footnote 301: "Nec pluribus impar. "]

[Footnote 302: Memoires de Saint Simon; Dangeau; Racine's Letters, andNarrative entitled Relation de ce qui s'est passe au Siege de Namur;Monthly Mercury, May 1692. ]

[Footnote 303: Memoires de Saint Simon; Racine to Boileau, May 21. 1692. ]

[Footnote 304: Monthly Mercury for June; William to Heinsius May 26/June 5 1692. ]

[Footnote 305: William to Heinsius, May 26/June 5 1692. ]

[Footnote 306: Monthly Mercuries of June and July 1692; London Gazettesof June; Gazette de Paris; Memoires de Saint Simon; Journal de Dangeau;William to Heinsius, May 30/June 9 June 2/12 June 11/21; Vernon'sLetters to Colt, printed in Tindal's History; Racine's Narrative, andLetters to Boileau of June 15. And 24. ]

[Footnote 307: Memoires de Saint Simon. ]

[Footnote 308: London Gazette, May 30. 1692; Memoires de Saint Simon;Journal de Dangeau; Boyer's History of William III. ]

[Footnote 309: Memoires de Saint Simon; Voltaire, Siecle de Louis XIV. Voltaire speaks with a contempt which is probably just of the accountof this affair in the Causes Celebres. See also the Letters of Madamede Sevigne during the months of January and February 1680. In severalEnglish lampoons Luxemburg is nicknamed Aesop, from his deformity, andcalled a wizard, in allusion to his dealings with La Voisin. In oneJacobite allegory he is the necromancer Grandorsio. In NarcissusLuttrell's Diary for June 1692 he is called a conjuror. I have seen twoor three English caricatures of Luxemburg's figure. ]

[Footnote 310: Memoires de Saint Simon; Memoires de Villars; Racine toBoileau, May 21. 1692. ]

[Footnote 311: Narcissus Luttrell, April 28. 1692. ]

[Footnote 312: London Gazette Aug. 4. 8. 11. 1692; Gazette de Paris, Aug. 9. 16. ; Voltaire, Siecle de Louis XIV. ; Burnet, ii. 97; Memoiresde Berwick; Dykvelt's Letter to the States General dated August 4. 1692. See also the very interesting debate which took place in the House ofCommons on Nov. 21. 1692. An English translation of Luxemburg's veryelaborate and artful despatch will be found in the Monthly Mercuryfor September 1692. The original has recently been printed in the newedition of Dangeau. Lewis pronounced it the best despatch that he hadever seen. The editor of the Monthly Mercury maintains that it wasmanufactured at Paris. "To think otherwise, " he says, "is mere folly;as if Luxemburg could be at so much leisure to write such a long letter, more like a pedant than a general, or rather the monitor of a school, giving an account to his master how the rest of the boys behavedthemselves. " In the Monthly Mercury will be found also the Frenchofficial list of killed and wounded. Of all the accounts of the battlethat which seems to me the best is in the Memoirs of Feuquieres. Itis illustrated by a map. Feuquieres divides his praise and blame veryfairly between the generals. The traditions of the English mess tableshave been preserved by Sterne, who was brought up at the knees ofold soldiers of William. "'There was Cutts's' continued the Corporal, clapping the forefinger of his right hand upon the thumb of his left, and counting round his hand; 'there was Cutts's, Mackay's Angus's, Graham's and Leven's, all cut to pieces; and so had the EnglishLifeguards too, had it not been for some regiments on the right, whomarched up boldly to their relief, and received the enemy's fire intheir faces before any one of their own platoons discharged a musket. They'll go to heaven for it, ' added Trim. "]

[Footnote 313: Voltaire, Siecle de Louis XIV. ]

[Footnote 314: Langhorne, the chief lay agent of the Jesuits in England, always, as he owned to Tillotson, selected tools on this principle. Burnet, i. 230. ]

[Footnote 315: I have taken the history of Grandval's plot chiefly fromGrandval's own confession. I have not mentioned Madame de Maintenon, because Grandval, in his confession, did not mention her. The accusationbrought against her rests solely on the authority of Dumont. See alsoa True Account of the horrid Conspiracy against the Life of His mostSacred Majesty William III. 1692; Reflections upon the late horridConspiracy contrived by some of the French Court to murder His Majestyin Flanders 1692: Burnet, ii. 92. ; Vernon's letters from the campto Colt, published by Tindal; the London Gazette, Aug, 11. The ParisGazette contains not one word on the subject, --a most significantsilence. ]

[Footnote 316: London Gazette, Oct. 20. 24. 1692. ]

[Footnote 317: See his report in Burchett. ]

[Footnote 318: London Gazette, July 28. 1692. See the resolutions of theCouncil of War in Burchett. In a letter to Nottingham, dated July 10, Russell says, "Six weeks will near conclude what we call summer. " LordsJournals, Dec. 19. 1692. ]

[Footnote 319: Monthly Mercury, Aug. And Sept. 1692. ]

[Footnote 320: Evelyn's Diary, July 25. 1692; Burnet, ii. 94, 95. , andLord Dartmouth's Note. The history of the quarrel between Russell andNottingham will be best learned from the Parliamentary Journals andDebates of the Session of 1692/3. ]

[Footnote 321: Commons' Journals, Nov. 19. 1692; Burnet, ii. 95. ;Grey's Debates, Nov. 21. 1692; Paris Gazettes of August and September;Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, Sept. ]

[Footnote 322: See Bart's Letters of Nobility, and the Paris Gazettes ofthe autumn of 1692. ]

[Footnote 323: Memoires de Du Guay Trouin. ]

[Footnote 324: London Gazette, Aug. 11. 1692; Evelyn's Diary, Aug. 10. ; Monthly Mercury for September; A Full Account of the late dreadfulEarthquake at Port Royal in Jamaica, licensed Sept. 9. 1692. ]

[Footnote 325: Evelyn's Diary, June 25. Oct. 1. 1690; NarcissusLuttrell's Diary, June 1692, May 1693; Monthly Mercury, April, May, andJune 1693; Tom Brown's Description of a Country Life, 1692. ]

[Footnote 326: Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, Nov. 1692. ]

[Footnote 327: See, for example, the London Gazette of Jan. 12. 1692]

[Footnote 328: Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, Dec. 1692. ]

[Footnote 329: Ibid. Jan. 1693. ]

[Footnote 330: Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, July 1692. ]

[Footnote 331: Evelyn's Diary, Nov. 20. 1692: Narcissus Luttrell'sDiary; London Gazette, Nov. 24. ; Hop to the Greffier of the StatesGeneral, Nov. 18/28]

[Footnote 332: London Gazette, Dec. 19. 1692. ]

[Footnote 333: Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, Dec. 1692. ]

[Footnote 334: Ibid. Nov. 1692. ]

[Footnote 335: Ibid. August 1692. ]

[Footnote 336: Hop to the Greffier of the States General, Dec 23/Jan2 1693. The Dutch despatches of this year are filled with stories ofrobberies. ]

[Footnote 337: Hop to the Greffier of the States General, Dec 23/Jan 21693; Historical Records of the Queen's Bays, published by authority;Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, Nov. 15. ]

[Footnote 338: Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, Dee. 22. ]

[Footnote 339: Ibid. Dec. 1692; Hop, Jan. 3/13 Hop calls Whitney, "denbefaamsten roover in Engelandt. "]

[Footnote 340: London Gazette January 2. 1692/3. ]

[Footnote 341: Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, Jan. 1692/3. ]

[Footnote 342: Ibid. Dec. 1692. ]

[Footnote 343: Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, January and February; Hop Jan31/Feb 10 and Feb 3/13 1693; Letter to Secretary Trenchard, 1694; NewCourt Contrivances or more Sham Plots still, 1693. ]

[Footnote 344: Lords' and Commons' Journals, Nov. 4. , Jan. 1692. ]

[Footnote 345: Commons' Journals, Nov. 10 1692. ]

[Footnote 346: See the Lords' Journals from Nov. 7. To Nov. 18. 1692;Burnet, ii. 102. Tindall's account of these proceedings was taken fromletters addressed by Warre, Under Secretary of State, to Colt, envoy atHanover. Letter to Mr. Secretary Trenchard, 1694. ]

[Footnote 347: Lords' Journals, Dec. 7. ; Tindal, from the Colt Papers;Burnet, ii. 105. ]

[Footnote 348: Grey's Debates, Nov. 21. And 23. 1692. ]

[Footnote 349: Grey's Debates, Nov. 21. 1692; Colt Papers in Tindal. ]

[Footnote 350: Tindal, Colt Papers; Commons' Journals, Jan. 11. 1693. ]

[Footnote 351: Colt Papers in Tindal; Lords' Journals from Dec. 6. ToDec. 19. 1692; inclusive, ]

[Footnote 352: As to the proceedings of this day in the House ofCommons, see the Journals, Dec. 20, and the letter of Robert Wilmot, M. P. For Derby, to his colleague Anchitel Grey, in Grey's Debates. ]

[Footnote 353: Commons' Journals, Jan. 4. 1692/3. ]

[Footnote 354: Colt Papers in Tindal; Commons' Journals, Dec. 16. 1692, Jan. 11 1692; Burnet ii. 104. ]

[Footnote 355: The peculiar antipathy of the English nobles to the Dutchfavourites is mentioned in a highly interesting note written by Renaudotin 1698, and preserved among the Archives of the French Foreign Office. ]

[Footnote 356: Colt Papers in Tindal; Lords' Journals, Nov. 28. And 29. 1692, Feb. 18. And 24. 1692/3. ]

[Footnote 357: Grey's Debates, Nov 18. 1692; Commons' Journals, Nov. 18. , Dec. 1. 1692. ]

[Footnote 358: See Cibber's Apology, and Mountford's Greenwich Park. ]

[Footnote 359: See Cibber's Apology, Tom Brown's Works, and indeed theworks of every man of wit and pleasure about town. ]

[Footnote 360: The chief source of information about this case is thereport of the trial, which will be found in Howell's Collection. SeeEvelyn's Diary, February 4. 1692/3. I have taken some circumstances fromNarcissus Luttrell's Diary, from a letter to Sancroft which is among theTanner MSS in the Bodleian Library, and from two letters addressed byBrewer to Wharton, which are also in the Bodleian Library. ]

[Footnote 361: Commons' Journals, Nov. 14. 1692. ]

[Footnote 362: Commons' Journals of the Session, particularly of Nov. 17. , Dec. 10. , Feb. 25. , March 3. ; Colt Papers in Tindal. ]

[Footnote 363: Commons' Journals, Dec. 10. ; Tindal, Colt Papers. ]

[Footnote 364: See Coke's Institutes, part iv. Chapter 1. In 1566 asubsidy was 120, 000L. ; in 1598, 78, 000L. ; when Coke wrote hisInstitutes, about the end of the reign of James I. 70, 000L. Clarendontells us that, in 1640, twelve subsidies were estimated at about600, 000L. ]

[Footnote 365: See the old Land Tax Acts, and the debates on the LandTax Redemption Bill of 1798. ]

[Footnote 366: Lords' Journals Jan. 16, 17, 18, 19, 20. ; Commons'Journals, Jan. 17, 18. 20. 1692; Tindal, from the Colt Papers; Burnet, ii. 104, 105. Burnet has used an incorrect expression, which Tindal, Ralph and others have copied. He says that the question was whether theLords should tax themselves. The Lords did not claim any right to alterthe amount of taxation laid on them by the bill as it came up to them. They only demanded that their estates should be valued, not by theordinary commissioners, but by special commissioners of higher rank. ]

[Footnote 367: Commons' Journals, Dec. 2/12. 1692, ]

[Footnote 368: For this account of the origin of stockjobbing in theCity of London I am chiefly indebted to a most curious periodical paper, entitled, "Collection for the Improvement of Husbandry and Trade, byJ. Houghton, F. R. S. " It is in fact a weekly history of the commercialspeculations of that time. I have looked through the files of severalyears. In No. 33. , March 17. 1693, Houghton says: "The buying andselling of Actions is one of the great trades now on foot. I find agreat many do not understand the affair. " On June 13. And June 22. 1694, he traces the whole progress of stockjobbing. On July 13. Of the sameyear he makes the first mention of time bargains. Whoever is desirousto know more about the companies mentioned in the text may consultHoughton's Collection and a pamphlet entitled Anglia Tutamen, publishedin 1695. ]

[Footnote 369: Commons' Journals; Stat. 4 W. & M. C. 3. ]

[Footnote 370: See a very remarkable note in Hume's History of England, Appendix III. ]

[Footnote 371: Wealth of Nations, book v. Chap. Iii. ]

[Footnote 372: Wesley was struck with this anomaly in 1745. See hisJournal. ]

[Footnote 373: Pepys, June 10. 1668. ]

[Footnote 374: See the Politics, iv. 13. ]

[Footnote 375: The bill will be found among the archives of the House ofLords. ]

[Footnote 376: Lords' Journals, Jan. 3. 1692/3. ]

[Footnote 377: Introduction to the Copies and Extracts of some Letterswritten to and from the Earl of Danby, now Duke of Leeds, published byHis Grace's Direction, 1710. ]

[Footnote 378: Commons' Journals; Grey's Debates. The bill itself isamong the archives of the House of Lords. ]

[Footnote 379: Dunton's Life and Errors; Autobiography of Edmund Bohun, privately printed in 1853. This autobiography is, in the highest degree, curious and interesting. ]

[Footnote 380: Vox Cleri, 1689. ]

[Footnote 381: Bohun was the author of the History of the Desertion, published immediately after the Revolution. In that work he propoundedhis favourite theory. "For my part, " he says, "I am amazed to see menscruple the submitting to the present King; for, if ever man had a justcause of war, he had; and that creates a right to the thing gained byit. The King by withdrawing and disbanding his army yielded him thethrone; and if he had, without any more ceremony, ascended it, he haddone no more than all other princes do on the like occasions. "]

[Footnote 382: Character of Edmund Bohun, 1692. ]

[Footnote 383: Dryden, in his Life of Lucian, speaks in too high termsof Blount's abilities. But Dryden's judgment was biassed; for Blount'sfirst work was a pamphlet in defence of the Conquest of Granada. ]

[Footnote 384: See his Appeal from the Country to the City for thePreservation of His Majesty's Person, Liberty, Property, and theProtestant Religion. ]

[Footnote 385: See the article on Apollonius in Bayle's Dictionary. I say that Blount made his translation from the Latin; for his workscontain abundant proofs that he was not competent to translate from theGreek. ]

[Footnote 386: See Gildon's edition of Blount's Works, 1695. ]

[Footnote 387: Wood's Athenae Oxonienses under the name Henry Blount(Charles Blount's father); Lestrange's Observator, No. 290. ]

[Footnote 388: This piece was reprinted by Gildon in 1695 among Blount'sWorks. ]

[Footnote 389: That the plagiarism of Blount should have been detectedby few of his contemporaries is not wonderful. But it is wonderfulthat in the Biographia Britannica his just Vindication should be warmlyextolled, without the slightest hint that every thing good in it isstolen. The Areopagitica is not the only work which he pillaged on thisoccasion. He took a noble passage from Bacon without acknowledgment. ]

[Footnote 390: I unhesitatingly attribute this pamphlet to Blount, though it was not reprinted among his works by Gildon. If Blount did notactually write it he must certainly have superintended the writing. Thattwo men of letters, acting without concert, should bring out withina very short time two treatises, one made out of one half of theAreopagitica and the other made out of the other half, is incredible. Why Gildon did not choose to reprint the second pamphlet will appearhereafter. ]

[Footnote 391: Bohun's Autobiography. ]

[Footnote 392: Bohun's Autobiography; Commons' Journals, Jan. 20. 1692/3. ]

[Footnote 393: Ibid. Jan. 20, 21. 1692/3]

[Footnote 394: Oldmixon; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, Nov. And Dec. 1692;Burnet, ii. 334; Bohun's Autobiography. ]

[Footnote 395: Grey's Debates; Commons' Journals Jan. 21. 23. 1692/3. ;Bohun's Autobiography; Kennet's Life and Reign of King William and QueenMary. ]

[Footnote 396: "Most men pitying the Bishop. "--Bohun's Autobiography. ]

[Footnote 397: The vote of the Commons is mentioned, with much feelingin the memoirs which Burnet wrote at the time. "It look'd, " he says, "somewhat extraordinary that I, who perhaps was the greatest assertorof publick liberty, from my first setting out, of any writer of the age, should be so severely treated as an enemy to it. But the truth was theToryes never liked me, and the Whiggs hated me because I went not intotheir notions and passions. But even this, and worse things that mayhappen to me shall not, I hope, be able to make me depart from moderateprinciples and the just asserting the liberty of mankind. "--Burnet MS. Harl. 6584. ]

[Footnote 398: Commons' Journals, Feb. 27. 1692/3; Lords' Journals, Mar. 4. ]

[Footnote 399: Lords' Journals, March 8. 1692/3. ]

[Footnote 400: In the article on Blount in the Biographia Britannica heis extolled as having borne a principal share in the emancipation of thepress. But the writer was very imperfectly informed as to the facts. 

It is strange that the circumstances of Blount's death should be souncertain. That he died of a wound inflicted by his own hand, and thathe languished long, are undisputed facts. The common story was that heshot himself; and Narcissus Luttrell at the time, made an entry to thiseffect in his Diary. On the other hand, Pope, who had the very bestopportunities of obtaining accurate information, asserts that Blount, "being in love with a near kinswoman of his, and rejected, gave himselfa stab in the arm, as pretending to kill himself, of the consequence ofwhich he really died. "--Note on the Epilogue to the Satires, Dialogue I. Warburton, who had lived first with the heroes of the Dunciad, and thenwith the most eminent men of letters of his time ought to have knownthe truth; and Warburton, by his silence, confirms Pope's assertion. Gildon's rhapsody about the death of his friend will suit either storyequally. ]

[Footnote 401: The charges brought against Coningsby will be found inthe journals of the two Houses of the English Parliament. Those chargeswere, after the lapse of a quarter of a century, versified by Prior, whom Coningsby had treated with great insolence and harshness. I willquote a few stanzas. 

It will be seen that the poet condescended to imitate the style of thestreet ballads. 

 "Of Nero tyrant, petty king, Who heretofore did reign In famed Hibernia, I will sing, And in a ditty plain. 

 "The articles recorded stand Against this peerless peer; Search but the archives of the land, You'll find them written there. "

The story of Gaffney is then related. Coningsby's speculations aredescribed thus:

 "Vast quantities of stores did he Embezzle and purloin Of the King's stores he kept a key, Converting them to coin. 

 "The forfeited estates also, Both real and personal, Did with the stores together go. Fierce Cerberas swallow'd all. "

The last charge is the favour shown the Roman Catholics:

 "Nero, without the least disguise, The Papists at all times Still favour'd, and their robberies Look'd on as trivial crimes. 

 "The Protestants whom they did rob During his government, Were forced with patience, like good Job, To rest themselves content. 

 "For he did basely them refuse All legal remedy; The Romans still he well did use, Still screen'd their roguery. "]

[Footnote 402: An Account of the Sessions of Parliament in Ireland, 1692, London, 1693. ]

[Footnote 403: The Poynings Act is 10 H. 7. C. 4. It was explained byanother Act, 3&4P. And M. C. [4]. ]

[Footnote 404: The history of this session I have taken from thejournals of the Irish Lords and Commons, from the narratives laidin writing before the English Lords and Commons by members of theParliament of Ireland and from a pamphlet entitled a Short Account ofthe Sessions of Parliament in Ireland, 1692, London, 1693. Burnet seemsto me to have taken a correct view of the dispute, ii. 118. "The Englishin Ireland thought the government favoured the Irish too much; some saidthis was the effect of bribery, whereas others thought it was necessaryto keep them safe from the prosecutions of the English, who hatedthem, and were much sharpened against them. .. . There were also greatcomplaints of an ill administration, chiefly in the revenue, in the payof the army, and in the embezzling of stores. "]

[Footnote 405: As to Swift's extraction and early life, see theAnecdotes written by himself. ]

[Footnote 406: Journal to Stella, Letter liii. ]

[Footnote 407: See Swift's Letter to Temple of Oct. 6. 1694. ]

[Footnote 408: Journal to Stella, Letter xix. ;]

[Footnote 409: Swift's Anecdotes. ]

[Footnote 410: London Gazette, March 27. 1693. ]

[Footnote 411: Burnet, ii. 108, and Speaker Onslow's Note; Sprat's TrueAccount of the Horrid Conspiracy; Letter to Trenchard, 1694. ]

[Footnote 412: Burnett, ii. 107. ]

[Footnote 413: These rumours are more than once mentioned in NarcissusLuttrell's Diary. ]

[Footnote 414: London Gazette, March 27. 1693; Narcissus Luttrell'sDiary:]

[Footnote 415: Burnett, ii, 123. ; Carstairs Papers. ]

[Footnote 416: Register of the Actings or Proceedings of the GeneralAssembly of the Church of Scotland held at Edinburgh, Jan. 15. 1692, collected and extracted from the Records by the Clerk thereof. Thisinteresting record was printed for the first time in 1852. ]

[Footnote 417: Act. Parl. Scot. , June 12. 1693. ]

[Footnote 418: Ibid. June 15. 1693. ]

[Footnote 419: The editor of the Carstairs Papers was evidently verydesirous, from whatever motive, to disguise this most certain andobvious truth. He has therefore prefixed to some of Johnstone's lettersdescriptions which may possibly impose on careless readers. For exampleJohnstone wrote to Carstairs on the 18th of April, before it was knownthat the session would be a quiet one, "All arts have been used and willbe used to embroil matters. " The editor's account of the contents ofthis letter is as follows:

"Arts used to embroil matters with reference to the affair of Glencoe. "Again, Johnstone, in a letter written some weeks later, complainedthat the liberality and obsequiousness of the Estates had not beenduly appreciated. "Nothing, " he says, "is to be done to gratify theParliament, I mean that they would have reckoned a gratification. "The editor's account of the contents of this letter is as follows:"Complains that the Parliament is not to be gratified by an inquiry intothe massacre of Glencoe. "]

[Footnote 420: Life of James, ii. 479. ]

[Footnote 421: Hamilton's Zeneyde. ]

[Footnote 422: A View of the Court of St. Germains from the Year 1690to 1695, 1696; Ratio Ultima, 1697. In the Nairne Papers is a letter inwhich the nonjuring bishops are ordered to send a Protestant divineto Saint Germains. This letter was speedily followed by anotherletter revoking the order. Both letters will be found in Macpherson'scollection. They both bear date Oct. 16. 1693. I suppose that the firstletter was dated according to the New Style and the letter of revocationaccording to the Old Style. ]

[Footnote 423: Ratio Ultima, 1697; History of the late Parliament, 1699. ]

[Footnote 424: View of the Court of Saint Germains from 1690 to 1695. That Dunfermline was grossly ill used is plain even from the Memoirs ofDundee, 1714. ]

[Footnote 425: So early as the year 1690, that conclave of theleading Jacobites which gave Preston his instructions made a strongrepresentation to James on this subject. "He must overrule the bigotryof Saint Germains; and dispose their minds to think of those methodsthat are more likely to gain the nation. For there is one silly thing oranother daily done there, that comes to our notice here which prolongswhat they so passionately desire. " See also A Short and True Relationof Intrigues transacted both at Home and Abroad to restore the late KingJames, 1694. ]

[Footnote 426: View of the Court of Saint Germains. The account given inthis View is confirmed by a remarkable paper, which is among theNairne MSS. Some of the heads of the Jacobite party in England made arepresentation to James, one article of which is as follows: "They begthat Your Majesty would be pleased to admit of the Chancellor of Englandinto your Council; your enemies take advantage of his not being in it. "James's answer is evasive. "The King will be, on all occasions, ready toexpress the just value and esteem he has for his Lord Chancellor. "]

[Footnote 427: A short and true Relation of Intrigues, 1694. ]

[Footnote 428: See the paper headed "For my Son the Prince of Wales, 1692. " It is printed at the end of the Life of James. ]

[Footnote 429: Burnet, i. 683. ]

[Footnote 430: As to this change of ministry at Saint Germains seethe very curious but very confused narrative in the Life of James, ii. 498-575. ; Burnet, ii. 219. ; Memoires de Saint Simon; A French Conquestneither desirable nor practicable, 1693; and the Letters from the NairneMSS. Printed by Macpherson. ]

[Footnote 431: Life of James, ii. 509. Bossuet's opinion will be foundin the Appendix to M. Mazure's history. The Bishop sums up his argumentsthus "Je dirai done volontiers aux Catholiques, s'il y en a quin'approuvent point la declaration dont il s'agit; Noli esse justusmultum; neque plus sapias quam necesse est, ne obstupescas. " In the Lifeof James it is asserted that the French Doctors changed their opinion, and that Bossuet, though he held out longer than the rest, saw at lastthat he had been in error, but did not choose formally to retract. Ithink much too highly of Bossuet's understanding to believe this. ]

[Footnote 432: Life of James, ii. 505. ]

[Footnote 433: "En fin celle cy--j'entends la declaration--n'est quepour rentrer: et l'on peut beaucoup mieux disputer des affaires desCatholiques a Whythall qu'a Saint Germain. "--Mazure, Appendix. ]

[Footnote 434: Baden to the States General, June 2/12 1693. Fourthousand copies, wet from the press, were found in this house. ]

[Footnote 435: Baden's Letters to the States General of May and June1693; An Answer to the Late King James's Declaration published at SaintGermains, 1693. ]

[Footnote 436: James, ii. 514. I am unwilling to believe that Ken wasamong those who blamed the Declaration of 1693 as too merciful. ]

[Footnote 437: Among the Nairne Papers is a letter sent on this occasionby Middleton to Macarthy, who was then serving in Germany. Middletontries to soothe Macarthy and to induce Macarthy to soothe others. Nothing more disingenuous was ever written by a Minister of State. "TheKing, " says the Secretary, "promises in the foresaid Declaration torestore the Settlement, but at the same time, declares that he willrecompense all those who may suffer by it by giving them equivalents. "Now James did not declare that he would recompense any body, but merelythat he would advise with his Parliament on the subject. He did notdeclare that he would even advise with his Parliament about recompensingall who might suffer, but merely about recompensing such as had followedhim to the last. Finally he said nothing about equivalents. Indeed thenotion of giving an equivalent to every body who suffered by the Act ofSettlement, in other words, of giving an equivalent for the fee simpleof half the soil of Ireland, was obviously absurd. Middleton's letterwill be found in Macpherson's collection. I will give a sample of thelanguage held by the Whigs on this occasion. "The Roman Catholics ofIreland, " says one writer, "although in point of interest and professiondifferent from us yet, to do them right, have deserved well from thelate King, though ill from us; and for the late King to leave themand exclude them in such an instance of uncommon ingratitude thatProtestants have no reason to stand by a Prince that deserts his ownparty, and a people that have been faithful to him and his interest tothe very last. "--A short and true Relation of the Intrigues, &c. , 1694. ]

[Footnote 438: The edict of creation was registered by the Parliament ofParis on the 10th of April 1693. ]

[Footnote 439: The letter is dated the 19th of April 1693. It is amongthe Nairne MSS. , and was printed by Macpherson. ]

[Footnote 440: "Il ne me plait nullement que M. Middleton est alle enFrance. Ce n'est pas un homme qui voudroit faire un tel pas sans quelquechose d'importance, et de bien concerte, sur quoy j'ay fait beaucoupde reflections que je reserve a vous dire avostre heureusearrivee. "--William to Portland from Loo. April 18/28 1693. ]

[Footnote 441: The best account of William's labours and anxieties atthis time is contained in his letters to Heinsius--particularly theletters of May 1. 9. And 30. 1693. ]

[Footnote 442: He speaks very despondingly in his letter to Heinsiusof the 30th of May, Saint Simon says: "On a su depuis que le Princed'Orange ecrivit plusieurs fois au prince de Vaudmont son ami intime, qu'il etait perdu et qu'il n'y avait que par un miracle qu'il pûtechapper. "]

[Footnote 443: Saint Simon; Monthly Mercury, June 1693; Burnet, ii. 111. ]

[Footnote 444: Memoires de Saint Simon; Burnet, i. 404. ]

[Footnote 445: William to Heinsius, July. 1693. ]

[Footnote 446: Saint Simon's words are remarkable. "Leur cavalerie, " hesays, "y fit d'abord plier des troupes d'elite jusqu'alors invincibles. "He adds, "Les gardes du Prince d'Orange, ceux de M. De Vaudemont, etdeux regimens Anglais en eurent l'honneur. "]

[Footnote 447: Berwick; Saint Simon; Burnet, i. 112, 113. ; Feuquieres;London Gazette, July 27. 31. Aug. 3. 1693; French Official Relation;Relation sent by the King of Great Britain to their High Mightinesses, Aug. 2. 1693; Extract of a Letter from the Adjutant of the King ofEngland's Dragoon Guards, Aug. 1. ; Dykvelt's Letter to the StatesGeneral dated July 30. At noon. The last four papers will be found inthe Monthly Mercuries of July and August 1693. See also the Historyof the Last Campaign in the Spanish Netherlands by Edward D'Auvergne, dedicated to the Duke of Ormond, 1693. The French did justice toWilliam. "Le Prince d'Orange, " Racine wrote to Boileau, "pensa etrepris, apres avoir fait des merveilles. " See also the glowing descriptionof Sterne, who, no doubt, had many times heard the battle fought overby old soldiers. It was on this occasion that Corporal Trim was leftwounded on the field, and was nursed by the Beguine. ]

[Footnote 448: Letter from Lord Perth to his sister, June 17. 1694. ]

[Footnote 449: Saint Simon mentions the reflections thrown on theMarshal. Feuquieres, a very good judge, tells us that Luxemburg wasunjustly blamed, and that the French army was really too much crippledby its losses to improve the victory. ]

[Footnote 450: This account of what would have taken place, if Luxemburghad been able and willing to improve his victory, I have taken from whatseems to have been a very manly and sensible speech made by Talmashin the House of Commons on the 11th of December following. See Grey'sDebates. ]

[Footnote 451: William to Heinsius, July 20/30. 1693. ]

[Footnote 452: William to Portland, July 21/31. 1693. ]

[Footnote 453: London Gazette, April 24. , May 15. 1693. ]

[Footnote 454: Burchett's Memoirs of Transactions at Sea; Burnet, ii. 114, 115, 116. ; the London Gazette, July 17. 1693; Monthly Mercury ofJuly; Letter from Cadiz, dated July 4. ]

[Footnote 455: Narcissus Luttrell's Diary; Baden to the States General, Jul 14/24, July 25/Aug 4. Among the Tanner MSS. In the Bodleian Libraryare letters describing the agitation in the City. "I wish, " says one ofSancroft's Jacobite correspondents, "it may open our eyes and change ourminds. But by the accounts I have seen, the Turkey Company went from theQueen and Council full of satisfaction and good humour. "]

[Footnote 456: London Gazette, August 21 1693; L'Hermitage to the StatesGeneral, July 28/Aug 7 As I shall, in this and the following chapters, make large use of the despatches of L'Hermitage, it may be proper to saysomething about him. He was a French refugee, and resided in Londonas agent for the Waldenses. One of his employments had been tosend newsletters to Heinsius. Some interesting extracts from thosenewsletters will be found in the work of the Baron Sirtema deGrovestins. It was probably in consequence of the Pensionary'srecommendation that the States General, by a resolution dated July24/Aug 3 1693, desired L'Hermitage to collect and transmit to themintelligence of what was passing in England. His letters abound withcurious and valuable information which is nowhere else to be found. Hisaccounts of parliamentary proceedings are of peculiar value, and seem tohave been so considered by his employers. 

Copies of the despatches of L'Hermitage, and, indeed of the despatchesof all the ministers and agents employed by the States General inEngland from the time of Elizabeth downward, now are or will soon bein the library of the British Museum. For this valuable addition to thegreat national storehouse of knowledge, the country is chieflyindebted to Lord Palmerston. But it would be unjust not to add that hisinstructions were most zealously carried into effect by the late SirEdward Disbrowe, with the cordial cooperation of the enlightened men whohave charge of the noble collection of Archives at the Hague. ]

[Footnote 457: It is strange that the indictment should not have beenprinted in Howell's State Trials. The copy which is before me was madefor Sir James Mackintosh. ]

[Footnote 458: Most of the information which has come down to us aboutAnderton's case will be found in Howell's State Trials. ]

[Footnote 459: The Remarks are extant, and deserve to be read. ]

[Footnote 460: Narcissus Luttrell's Diary. ]

[Footnote 461: Narcissus Luttrell's Diary. ]

[Footnote 462: There are still extant a handbill addressed to AllGentlemen Seamen that are weary of their Lives; and a ballad accusingthe King and Queen of cruelty to the sailors. 

 "To robbers, thieves, and felons, they Freely grant pardons every day. Only poor seamen, who alone Do keep them in their father's throne, Must have at all no mercy shown. "]

Narcissus Luttrell gives an account of the scene at Whitehall. ]

[Footnote 463: L'Hermitage, Sept. 5/15. 1693; Narcissus Luttrell'sDiary. ]

[Footnote 464: Narcissus Luttrell's Diary. ]

[Footnote 465: Narcissus Luttrell's Diary. In a pamphlet publishedat this time, and entitled A Dialogue between Whig and Tory, the Whigalludes to "the public insolences at the Bath upon the late defeat inFlanders. " The Tory answers, "I know not what some hotheaded drunkenmen may have said and done at the Bath or elsewhere. " In the folioCollection of State Tracts, this Dialogue is erroneously said to havebeen printed about November 1692. ]

[Footnote 466: The Paper to which I refer is among the Nairne MSS. , and will be found in Macpherson's collection. That excellent writer Mr. Hallam has, on this subject, fallen into an error of a kind very rarewith him. He says that the name of Caermarthen is perpetually mentionedamong those whom James reckoned as his friends. I believe that theevidence against Caermarthen will be found to begin and to end with theletter of Melfort which I have mentioned. There is indeed, among theNairne MSS, which Macpherson printed, an undated and anonymous letterin which Caermarthen is reckoned among the friends of James. But thisletter is altogether undeserving of consideration. The writer wasevidently a silly hotheaded Jacobite, who knew nothing about thesituation or character of any of the public men whom he mentioned. Heblunders grossly about Marlborough, Godolphin, Russell, Shrewsburyand the Beaufort family. Indeed the whole composition is a tissue ofabsurdities. ]

It ought to be remarked that, in the Life of James compiled from his ownPapers, the assurances of support which he received from Marlborough, Russell, Godolphin Shrewsbury, and other men of note are mentioned withvery copious details. But there is not a word indicating that any suchassurances were ever received from Caermarthen. ]

[Footnote 467: A Journal of several Remarkable Passages relating to theEast India Trade, 1693. ]

[Footnote 468: See the Monthly Mercuries and London Gazettes ofSeptember, October, November and December 1693; Dangeau, Sept. 5. 27. , Oct. 21. , Nov. 21. ; the Price of the Abdication, 1693. ]

[Footnote 469: Correspondence of William and Heinsius; Danish Note, dated Dec 11/21 1693. The note delivered by Avaux to the Swedishgovernment at this time will be found in Lamberty's Collection and inthe Memoires et Negotiations de la Paix de Ryswick. ]

[Footnote 470: "Sir John Lowther says, nobody can know one day what aHouse of Commons would do the next; in which all agreed with him. " Theseremarkable words were written by Caermarthen on the margin of a paperdrawn up by Rochester in August 1692. Dalrymple, Appendix to part ii. Chap. 7. ]

[Footnote 471: See Sunderland's celebrated Narrative which has oftenbeen printed, and his wife's letters, which are among the Sidney papers, published by the late Serjeant Blencowe. ]

[Footnote 472: Van Citters, May 6/16. 1690. ]

[Footnote 473: Evelyn, April 24. 1691. ]

[Footnote 474: Lords' Journals, April 28. 1693. ]

[Footnote 475: L'Hermitage, Sept. 19/29, Oct 2/12 1693. ]

[Footnote 476: It is amusing to see how Johnson's Toryism breaks outwhere we should hardly expect to find it. Hastings says, in the ThirdPart of Henry the Sixth, "Let us be back'd with God and with the seas Which He hath given forfence impregnable, And with their helps alone defend ourselves. "

"This, " says Johnson in a note, "has been the advice of every man who, in any age, understood and favoured the interest of England. "]

[Footnote 477: Swift, in his Inquiry into the Behaviour of the Queen'slast Ministry, mentions Somers as a person of great abilities, who usedto talk in so frank a manner that he seemed to discover the bottomof his heart. In the Memoirs relating to the Change in the Queen'sMinistry, Swift says that Somers had one and only one unconversablefault, formality. It is not very easy to understand how the same mancan be the most unreserved of companions and yet err on the side offormality. Yet there may be truth in both the descriptions. It is wellknown that Swift loved to take rude liberties with men of high rank andfancied that, by doing so, he asserted his own independence. He has beenjustly blamed for this fault by his two illustrious biographers, bothof them men of spirit at least as independent as his, Samuel Johnsonand Walter Scott. I suspect that he showed a disposition to behave withoffensive familiarity to Somers, and that Somers, not choosing to submitto impertinence, and not wishing to be forced to resent it, resorted, in selfdefence, to a ceremonious politeness which he never would havepractised towards Locke or Addison. ]

[Footnote 478: The eulogies on Somers and the invectives against him areinnumerable. Perhaps the best way to come to a just judgment would be tocollect all that has been said about him by Swift and by Addison. Theywere the two keenest observers of their time; and they both knew himwell. But it ought to be remarked that, till Swift turned Tory, healways extolled Somers not only as the most accomplished, but as themost virtuous of men. In the dedication of the Tale of a Tub are thesewords, "There is no virtue, either of a public or private life, whichsome circumstances of your own have not often produced upon the stage ofthe world;" and again, "I should be very loth the bright example of yourLordship's virtues should be lost to other eyes, both for their sake andyour own. " In the Discourse of the Contests and Dissensions at Athensand Rome, Somers is the just Aristides. After Swift had ratted hedescribed Somers as a man who "possessed all excellent qualificationsexcept virtue. "]

[Footnote 479: See Whiston's Autobiography. ]

[Footnote 480: Swift's note on Mackay's Character of Wharton. ]

[Footnote 481: This account of Montague and Wharton I have collectedfrom innumerable sources. I ought, however, to mention particularly thevery curious Life of Wharton published immediately after his death. ]

[Footnote 482: Much of my information about the Harleys I have derivedfrom unpublished memoirs written by Edward Harley, younger brother ofRobert. A copy of these memoirs is among the Mackintosh MSS. ]

[Footnote 483: The only writer who has praised Harley's oratory, as faras I remember, is Mackay, who calls him eloquent. Swift scribbled in themargin, "A great lie. " And certainly Swift was inclined to do more thanjustice to Harley. "That lord, " said Pope, "talked of business in soconfused a manner that you did not know what he was about; and everything he went to tell you was in the epic way; for he always began inthe middle. "--Spence's Anecdotes. ]

[Footnote 484: "He used, " said Pope, "to send trifling verses from Courtto the Scriblerus Club almost every day, and would come and talk idlywith them almost every night even when his all was at stake. " Somespecimens of Harley's poetry are in print. The best, I think, is astanza which he made on his own fall in 1714; and bad is the best. 

 "To serve with love, And shed your blood, Approved is above; But here below The examples show 'Tis fatal to be good. "]

[Footnote 485: The character of Harley is to be collected frominnumerable panegyrics and lampoons; from the works and the privatecorrespondence of Swift, Pope, Arbuthnot, Prior and Bolingbroke, andfrom multitudes of such works as Ox and Bull, the High German Doctor, and The History of Robert Powell the Puppet Showman. ]

[Footnote 486: In a letter dated Sept. 12. 1709 a short time before hewas brought into power on the shoulders of the High Church mob, he says:"My soul has been among Lyons, even the sons of men, whose teeth arespears and arrows, and their tongues sharp swords. But I learn how goodit is to wait on the Lord, and to possess one's soul in peace. " Theletter was to Carstairs. I doubt whether Harley would have canted thusif he had been writing to Atterbury. ]

[Footnote 487: The anomalous position which Harley and Foley at thistime occupied is noticed in the Dialogue between a Whig and a Tory, 1693. "Your great P. Fo-y, " says the Tory, "turns cadet and carries armsunder the General of the West Saxons. The two Har-ys, father and son, are engineers under the late Lieutenant of the Ordnance, and bomb anybill which he hath once resolv'd to reduce to ashes. " Seymour is theGeneral of the West Saxons. Musgrave had been Lieutenant of the Ordnancein the reign of Charles the Second. ]

[Footnote 488: Lords' and Commons' Journals, Nov. 7. 1693. ]

[Footnote 489: Commons' Journals, Nov. 13. 1693; Grey's Debates. ]

[Footnote 490: Commons' Journals, Nov. 17. 1693. ]

[Footnote 491: Ibid. Nov. 22. 27. 1693; Grey's Debates. ]

[Footnote 492: Commons' Journals, Nov. 29. Dec. 6. 1693; L'Hermitage, Dec. 1/11 1693. ]

[Footnote 493: L'Hermitage, Sept. 1/11. Nov. 7/17 1693. ]

[Footnote 494: See the Journal to Stella, lii. Liii. Lix. Lxi. ; and LadyOrkney's Letters to Swift. ]

[Footnote 495: See the letters written at this time by ElizabethVilliers, Wharton, Russell and Shrewsbury, in the ShrewsburyCorrespondence. ]

[Footnote 496: Commons' Journals, Jan. 6. 8. 1693/4. ]

[Footnote 497: Ibid. Jan. 19. 1693/4]

[Footnote 498: Hamilton's New Account. ]

[Footnote 499: The bill I found in the Archives of the Lords. Itshistory I learned from the journals of the two Houses, from a passagein the Diary of Narcissus Luttrell, and from two letters to the StatesGeneral, both dated on Feb 27/March 9 1694 the day after the debate inthe Lords. One of these letters is from Van Citters; the other, whichcontains fuller information, is from L'Hermitage. ]

[Footnote 500: Commons' Journals, Nov. 28. 1693; Grey's Debates. L'Hermitage expected that the bill would pas;, and that the royal assentwould not be withheld. On November. He wrote to the States General, "Il paroist dans toute la chambre beaucoup de passion a faire passer cebil. " On Nov 28/Dec 8 he says that the division on the passing "n'a pascause une petite surprise. Il est difficile d'avoir un point fixe surles idees qu'on peut se former des emotions du parlement, car il paroistquelquefois de grander chaleurs qui semblent devoir tout enflammer, etqui, peu de tems apres, s'evaporent. " That Seymour was the chief managerof the opposition to the bill is asserted in the once celebrated HushMoney pamphlet of that year. ]

[Footnote 501: Commons' Journals; Grey's Debates. The engrossed copy ofthis Bill went down to the House of Commons and is lost. The originaldraught on paper is among the Archives of the Lords. That Monmouthbrought in the bill I learned from a letter of L'Hermitage to theStates General Dec. 13. 1693. As to the numbers on the division, I havefollowed the journals. But in Grey's Debates and in the letters of VanCitters and L'Hermitage, the minority is said to have been 172. ]

[Footnote 502: The bill is in the Archives of the Lords. Its history I havecollected from the journals, from Grey's Debates, and from the highlyinteresting letters of Van Citters and L'Hermitage. I think it clearfrom Grey's Debates that a speech which L'Hermitage attributes to anameless "quelq'un" was made by Sir Thomas Littleton. ]

[Footnote 503: Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, September 1691. ]

[Footnote 504: Commons' Journals, Jan. 4. 1693/4. ]

[Footnote 505: Of the Naturalisation Bill no copy, I believe exists. Thehistory of that bill will be found in the Journals. From Van Cittersand L'Hermitage we learn less than might have been expected on a subjectwhich must have been interesting to Dutch statesmen. Knight's speechwill be found among the Somers Papers. He is described by his brotherJacobite, Roger North, as "a gentleman of as eminent integrity andloyalty as ever the city of Bristol was honoured with. "]

[Footnote 506: Commons' Journals, Dec 5. 1694. ]

[Footnote 507: Commons' Journals, Dec. 20. And 22. 1693/4. The journalsdid not then contain any notice of the divisions which took place whenthe House was in committee. There was only one division on the armyestimates of this year, when the mace was on the table. That divisionwas on the question whether 60, 000L. Or 147, 000L. Should begranted for hospitals and contingencies. The Whigs carried the largersum by 184 votes to 120. Wharton was a teller for the majority, Foleyfor the minority. ]

[Footnote 508: Commons' Journals, Nov. 25. 1694. ]

[Footnote 509: Stat. 5 W. & M. C. I. ]

[Footnote 510: Stat. 5 & 6 W. & M. C. 14. ]

[Footnote 511: Stat. 5 & 6 W. & M. C. 21. ; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary. ]

[Footnote 512: Stat. 5 & 6 W. & M. C. 22. ; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary. ]

[Footnote 513: Stat. 5 W. & M. C. 7. ; Evelyn's Diary, Oct. 5, Nov. 22. 1694; A Poem on Squire Neale's Projects; Malcolm's History of London. Neale's functions are described in several editions of Chamberlayne'sState of England. His name frequently appears in the London Gazette, as, for example, on July 28. 1684. ]

[Footnote 514: See, for example, the Mystery of the NewfashionedGoldsmiths or Brokers, 1676; Is not the Hand of Joab in all this? 1676;and an answer published in the same year. See also England's Glory inthe great Improvement by Banking and Trade, 1694. ]

[Footnote 515: See the Life of Dudley North, by his brother Roger. ]

[Footnote 516: See a pamphlet entitled Corporation Credit; or a Bank ofCredit, made Current by Common Consent in London, more Useful and Safethan Money. ]

[Footnote 517: A proposal by Dr. Hugh Chamberlayne, in Essex Street, fora Bank, of Secure Current Credit to be founded upon Land, in order tothe General Good of Landed Men, to the great Increase in the Value ofLand, and the no less Benefit of Trade and Commerce, 1695; Proposals forthe supplying their Majesties with Money on Easy Terms, exempting theNobility, Gentry, &c. , from Taxes enlarging their Yearly Estates, andenriching all the Subjects of the Kingdom by a National Land Bank; byJohn Briscoe. "O fortunatos nimium bona si sua norint Anglicanos. "Third Edition, 1696. Briscoe seems to have been as much versed in Latinliterature as in political economy. ]

[Footnote 518: In confirmation of what is said in the text, I extracta single paragraph from Briscoe's proposals. "Admit a gentleman hathbarely 100L. Per annum estate to live on, and hath a wife and fourchildren to provide for; this person, supposing no taxes were uponhis estates must be a great husband to be able to keep his charge, butcannot think of laying up anything to place out his children in theworld; but according to this proposed method he may give his children500l. A piece and have 90l. Per annum left for himself and his wife tolive upon, the which he may also leave to such of his children as hepleases after his and his wife's decease. For first having settled hisestate of 100l. Per annum, as in proposals 1. 3. , he may have bills ofcredit for 2000L. For his own proper use, for 10s per cent. Per annum asin proposal 22. , which is but 10L. Per annum for the 2000L. , which beingdeducted out of his estate of 100L. Per annum, there remains 90L. Perannum clear to himself. " It ought to be observed that this nonsensereached a third edition. ]

[Footnote 519: See Chamberlayne's Proposal, his Positions supported bythe Reasons explaining the Office of Land Credit, and his Bank Dialogue. See also an excellent little tract on the other side entitled "A BankDialogue between Dr. H. C. And a Country Gentleman, 1696, " and "SomeRemarks upon a nameless and scurrilous Libel entitled a Bank Dialoguebetween Dr. H. C. And a Country Gentleman, in a Letter to a Person ofQuality. "]

[Footnote 520: Commons' Journals Dec. 7. 1693. I am afraid that I maybe suspected of exaggerating the absurdity of this scheme. I thereforetranscribe the most important part of the petition. "In considerationof the freeholders bringing their lands into this bank, for a fundof current credit, to be established by Act of Parliament, it is nowproposed that, for every 150L per annum, secured for 150 years, for butone hundred yearly payments of 100L per annum, free from all manner oftaxes and deductions whatsoever, every such freeholder shall receive4000L in the said current credit, and shall have 2000L more put intothe fishery stock for his proper benefit; and there may be further2000L reserved at the Parliament's disposal towards the carrying on thispresent war. .. .. The free holder is never to quit the possession of hissaid estate unless the yearly rent happens to be in arrear. "]

[Footnote 521: Commons' Journals, Feb. 5. 1693/4. ]

[Footnote 522: Account of the Intended Bank of England, 1694. ]

[Footnote 523: See the Lords' Journals of April 23, 24, 25. 1694, andthe letter of L'Hermitage to the States General dated April 24/May 4]

[Footnote 524: Narcissus Luttrell's. Diary, June 1694. ]

[Footnote 525: Heath's Account of the Worshipful Company of Grocers;Francis's History of the Bank of England. ]

[Footnote 526: Spectator, No. 3. ]

[Footnote 527: Proceedings of the Wednesday Club in Friday Street. ]

[Footnote 528: Lords' Journals, April 25. 1694; London Gazette, May 7. 1694. ]

[Footnote 529: Life of James ii. 520. ; Floyd's (Lloyd's) Account in theNairne Papers, under the date of May 1. 1694; London Gazette, April 26. 30. 1694. ]

[Footnote 530: London Gazette, May 3. 1694. ]

[Footnote 531: London Gazette, April 30. May 7. 1694; Shrewsbury toWilliam, May 11/21; William to Shrewsbury, May 22? June 1; L'Hermitage, April 27/Nay 7]

[Footnote 532: L'Hermitage, May 15/25. After mentioning the variousreports, he says, "De tous ces divers projets qu'on s'imagine aucunn'est venu a la cognoissance du public. " This is important; for it hasoften been said, in excuse for Marlborough, that he communicated to theCourt of Saint Germains only what was the talk of all the coffeehouses, and must have been known without his instrumentality. ]

[Footnote 533: London Gazette, June 14. 18. 1694; Paris Gazette June16/July 3; Burchett; Journal of Lord Caermarthen; Baden, June 15/25;L'Hermitage, June 15/25. 19/29]

[Footnote 534: Shrewsbury to William, June 15/25. 1694. William toShrewsbury, July 1; Shrewsbury to William, June 22/July 2]

[Footnote 535: This account of Russell's expedition to the MediterraneanI have taken chiefly from Burchett. ]

[Footnote 536: Letter to Trenchard, 1694. ]

[Footnote 537: Burnet, ii. 141, 142. ; and Onslow's note; Kingston's TrueHistory, 1697. ]

[Footnote 538: See the Life of James, ii. 524. , ]

[Footnote 539: Kingston; Burnet, ii. 142. ]

[Footnote 540: Kingston. For the fact that a bribe was given to Taaffe, Kingston cites the evidence taken on oath by the Lords. ]

[Footnote 541: Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, Oct. 6. 1694. ]

[Footnote 542: As to Dyer's newsletter, see Narcissus Luttrell's Diaryfor June and August 1693, and September 1694. ]

[Footnote 543: The Whig narrative is Kingston's; the Jacobite narrative, by an anonymous author, has lately been printed by the Chetham Society. See also a Letter out of Lancashire to a Friend in London, giving someAccount of the late Trials, 1694. ]

[Footnote 544: Birch's Life of Tillotson; the Funeral Sermon preached byBurnet; William to Heinsius, Nov 23/Dec 3 1694. ]

[Footnote 545: See the Journals of the two Houses. The only account thatwe have of the debates is in the letters of L'Hermitage. ]

[Footnote 546: Commons' Journals, Feb. 20. 1693/4 As this bill neverreached the Lords, it is not to be found among their archives. I havetherefore no means of discovering whether it differed in any respectfrom the bill of the preceding year. ]

[Footnote 547: The history of this bill may be read in the Journals ofthe Houses. The contest, not a very vehement one, lasted till the 20thof April. ]

[Footnote 548: "The Commons, " says Narcissus Luttrell, "gave a greathum. " "Le murmure qui est la marque d'applaudissement fut si grand qu'onpent dire qu'il estoit universel. "--L'Hermitage, Dec. 25/Jan. 4. ]

[Footnote 549: L'Hermitage says this in his despatch of Nov. 20/30. ]

[Footnote 550: Burnet, ii. 137. ; Van Citters, Dec 25/Jan 4. ]

[Footnote 551: Burnet, ii. 136. 138. ; Narcissus Luttrell's Dairy; VanCitters, Dec 28/Jan 7 1694/5; L'Hermitage, Dec 25/Jan 4, Dec 28/Jan7 Jan. 1/11; Vernon to Lord Lexington, Dec. 21. 25. 28. , Jan. 1. ;Tenison's Funeral Sermon. ]

[Footnote 552: Evelyn's Dairy; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary; Commons'Journals, Dec. 28. 1694; Shrewsbury to Lexington, of the same date; VanCitters of the same date; L'Hermitage, Jan. 1/11 1695. Among the sermonson Mary's death, that of Sherlock, preached in the Temple Church, andthose of Howe and Bates, preached to great Presbyterian congregations, deserve notice. ]

[Footnote 553: Narcissus Luttrell's Diary. ]

[Footnote 554: Remarks on some late Sermons, 1695; A Defence of theArchbishop's Sermon, 1695. ]

[Footnote 555: Narcissus Luttrell's Diary. ]

[Footnote 556: L'Hermitage, March 1/11, 6/16 1695; London Gazette, March7, ; Tenison's Funeral Sermon; Evelyn's Diary. ]

[Footnote 557: See Claude's Sermon on Mary's death. ]

[Footnote 558: Prior to Lord and Lady Lexington, Jan. 14/24 1695. Theletter is among the Lexington papers, a valuable collection, and welledited. ]

[Footnote 559: Monthly Mercury for January 1695. An orator whopronounced an eulogium on the Queen at Utrecht was so absurd as to saythat she spent her last breath in prayers for the prosperity of theUnited Provinces:--"Valeant et Batavi;"--these are her last words--"sintincolumes; sint florentes; sint beati; stet in sternum, stet immotapraeclarissima illorum civitas hospitium aliquando mihi gratissimum, optime de me meritum. " See also the orations of Peter Francius ofAmsterdam, and of John Ortwinius of Delft. ]

[Footnote 560: Journal de Dangeau; Memoires de Saint Simon. ]

[Footnote 561: Saint Simon; Dangeau; Monthly Mercury for January 1695. ]

[Footnote 562: L'Hermitage, Jan. 1/11. 1695; Vernon to Lord LexingtonJan. I. 4. ; Portland to Lord Lexington, Jan 15/25; William to Heinsius, Jan 22/Feb 1]

[Footnote 563: See the Commons' Journals of Feb. 11, April 12. AndApril 27. , and the Lords' Journals of April 8. And April is. 1695. Unfortunately there is a hiatus in the Commons' Journal of the 12thof April, so that it is now impossible to discover whether there was adivision on the question to agree with the amendment made by the Lords. ]

[Footnote 564: L'Hermitage, April 10/20. 1695; Burnet, ii. 149. ]

[Footnote 565: An Essay upon Taxes, calculated for the present Junctureof Affairs, 1693. ]

[Footnote 566: Commons' Journals, Jan. 12 Feb. 26. Mar. 6. ; A Collectionof the Debates and Proceedings in Parliament in 1694 and 1695 upon theInquiry into the late Briberies and Corrupt Practices, 1695; L'Hermitageto the States General, March 8/18; Van Citters, Mar. 15/25; L'Hermitagesays, "Si par cette recherche la chambre pouvoit remedier au desordre quiregne, elle rendroit un service tres utile et tres agreable au Roy. "]

[Footnote 567: Commons' Journals, Feb. 16, 1695; Collection of theDebates and Proceedings in Parliament in 1694 and 1695; Life of Wharton;Burnet, ii. 144. ]

[Footnote 568: Speaker Onslow's note on Burnet ii. 583. ; Commons'Journals, Mar 6, 7. 1695. The history of the terrible end of this manwill be found in the pamphlets of the South Sea year. ]

[Footnote 569: Commons' Journals, March 8. 1695; Exact Collection ofDebates and Proceedings in Parliament in 1694 and 1695; L'Hermitage, March 8/18]

[Footnote 570: Exact Collection of Debates. ]

[Footnote 571: L'Hermitage, March 8/18. 1695. L'Hermitage's narrative isconfirmed by the journals, March 7. 1694/5. It appears that just beforethe committee was appointed, the House resolved that letters should notbe delivered out to members during a sitting. ]

[Footnote 572: L'Hermitage, March 19/29 1695. ]

[Footnote 573: Birch's Life of Tillotson. ]

[Footnote 574: Commons' Journals, March 12 13, 14 15, 16, 1694/5; Vernonto Lexington, March 15. ; L'Hermitage, March 15/25. ]

[Footnote 575: On vit qu'il etoit impossible de le poursuivre enjustice, chacun toutefois demeurant convaincu que c'etoit un marchefait a la main pour lui faire present de la somme de 10, 000L. Et qu'ilavoit ete plus habile que les autres novices que n'avoient pas su fairesi finement leure affaires. --L'Hermitage, March 29/April 8; Commons'Journals, March 12. ; Vernon to Lexington, April 26. ; Burnet, ii. 145. ]

[Footnote 576: In a poem called the Prophecy (1703), is the line

 "when Seymour scorns saltpetre pence. "

In another satire is the line

 "Bribed Seymour bribes accuses. "]

[Footnote 577: Commons' Journals from March 26. To April 8. 1695. ]

[Footnote 578: L'Hermitage, April 10/20 1695. ]

[Footnote 579: Exact Collection of Debates and Proceedings. ]

[Footnote 580: L'Hermitage, April 30/May 10 1695; Portland to Lexington, April 23/May 3]

[Footnote 581: L'Hermitage (April 30/May 10 1695) justly remarks, thatthe way in which the money was sent back strengthened the case againstLeeds. ]

[Footnote 582: There can, I think, be no doubt, that the member who iscalled D in the Exact Collection was Wharton. ]

[Footnote 583: As to the proceedings of this eventful day, April 27. 1695, see the Journals of the two Houses, and the Exact Collection. ]

[Footnote 584: Exact Collection; Lords' Journals, May 3. 1695; Commons'Journals, May 2, 3. ; L'Hermitage, May 3/13. ; London Gazette, May 13. ]

[Footnote 585: L'Hermitage, May 10/20. 1695; Vernon to Shrewsbury, June22. 1697. ]

[Footnote 586: London Gazette, May 6. 1695. ]

[Footnote 587: Letter from Mrs. Burnet to the Duchess of Marlborough, 1704, quoted by Coxe; Shrewsbury to Russell, January 24. 1695; Burnett, ii. 149. ]

[Footnote 588: London Gazette April 8. 15. 29. 1695. ]

[Footnote 589: Shrewsbury to Russell, January 24. 1695; NarcissusLuttrell's Diary, ]

[Footnote 590: De Thou, liii. Xcvi. ]

[Footnote 591: Life of James ii. 545. , Orig. Mem. Of course James doesnot use the word assassination. He talks of the seizing and carryingaway of the Prince of Orange. ]

[Footnote 592: Every thing bad that was known or rumoured about Portercame out on the State Trials of 1696. ]

[Footnote 593: As to Goodman see the evidence on the trial of PeterCook; Cleverskirke, Feb 28/March 9 1696; L'Hermitage, April 10/20 1696;and a pasquinade entitled the Duchess of Cleveland's Memorial. ]

[Footnote 594: See the preamble to the Commission of 1695. ]

[Footnote 595: The Commission will be found in the Minutes of theParliament. ]

[Footnote 596: Act. Parl. Scot. , May 21. 1695; London Gazette, May 30. ]

[Footnote 597: Act. Parl. Scot. May 23. 1695. ]

[Footnote 598: Ibid. June 14. 18. 20. 1695; London Gazette, June 27. ]

[Footnote 599: Burnet, ii. 157. ; Act. Parl. , June 10 1695. ]

[Footnote 600: Act. Parl. , June 26. 1695; London Gazette, July 4. ]

[Footnote 601: There is an excellent portrait of Villeroy in St. Simon'sMemoirs. ]

[Footnote 602: Some curious traits of Trumball's character will be foundin Pepys's Tangier Diary. ]

[Footnote 603: Postboy, June 13. , July 9. 11. , 1695; IntelligenceDomestic and Foreign, June 14. ; Pacquet Boat from Holland and Flanders, July 9. ]

[Footnote 604: Vaudemont's Despatch and William's Answer are in theMonthly Mercury for July 1695. ]

[Footnote 605: See Saint Simon's Memoirs and his note upon Dangeau. ]

[Footnote 606: London Gazette July 22. 1695; Monthly Mercury of August, 1695. Swift ten years later, wrote a lampoon on Cutts, so dull and sonauseously scurrilous that Ward or Gildon would have been ashamed of it, entitled the Description of a Salamander. ]

[Footnote 607: London Gazette, July 29. 1695; Monthly Mercury for August1695; Stepney to Lord Lexington, Aug. 16/26; Robert Fleming's Characterof King William, 1702. It was in the attack of July 17/27 that CaptainShandy received the memorable wound in his groin. ]

[Footnote 608: London Gazette, Aug. R. 5. 1695; Monthly Mercury ofAugust 1695, containing the Letters of William and Dykvelt to the StatesGeneral. ]

[Footnote 609: Monthly Mercury for August 1695; Stepney to LordLexington, Aug. 16/26]

[Footnote 610: Monthly Mercury for August 1695; Letter from Paris, Aug26/Sept 5 1695, among the Lexington Papers. ]

[Footnote 611: L'Hermitage, Aug. 13/23 1695. ]

[Footnote 612: London Gazette, Aug. 26. 1695; Monthly Mercury, Stepneyto Lexington, Aug. 20/30. ]

[Footnote 613: Boyer's History of King William III, 1703; LondonGazette, Aug. 29. 1695; Stepney to Lexington, Aug. 20/30. ; Blathwayt toLexington, Sept. 2. ]

[Footnote 614: Postscript to the Monthly Mercury for August 1695; LondonGazette, Sept. 9. ; Saint Simon; Dangeau. ]

[Footnote 615: Boyer, History of King William III, 2703; Postscript tothe Monthly Mercury, Aug. 1695; London Gazette, Sept. 9. 12. ; Blathwaytto Lexington, Sept. 6. ; Saint Simon; Dangeau. ]

[Footnote 616: There is a noble, and I suppose, unique Collection of thenewspapers of William's reign in the British Museum. I have turned overevery page of that Collection. It is strange that neither Luttrell norEvelyn should have noticed the first appearance of the new journals. Theearliest mention of those journals which I have found, is in adespatch of L'Hermitage, dated July 12/22, 1695. I will transcribe hiswords:--"Depuis quelque tems on imprime ici plusieurs feuilles volantesen forme de gazette, qui sont remplies de toutes series de nouvelles. Cette licence est venue de ce que le parlement n'a pas acheve le billou projet d'acte qui avoit ete porte dans la Chambre des Communes pourregler l'imprimerie et empecher que ces sortes de choses n'arrivassent. Il n'y avoit ci-devant qu'un des commis des Secretaires d'Etat qui eutle pouvoir de faire des gazettes: mais aujourdhui il s'en fait plusieurssons d'autres noms. " L'Hermitage mentions the paragraph reflecting onthe Princess, and the submission of the libeller. ]

[Footnote 617: L'Hermitage, Oct. 15/25. , Nov. 15/25. 1695. ]

[Footnote 618: London Gazette, Oct. 24. 1695. See Evelyn's Account ofNewmarket in 1671, and Pepys, July 18. 1668. From Tallard's despatcheswritten after the Peace of Ryswick it appears that the autumn meetingswere not less numerous or splendid in the days of William than in thoseof his uncles. ]

[Footnote 619: I have taken this account of William's progress chieflyfrom the London Gazettes, from the despatches of L'Hermitage, fromNarcissus Luttrell's Diary, and from the letters of Vernon, Yard andCartwright among the Lexington Papers. ]

[Footnote 620: See the letter of Yard to Lexington, November 8. 1695, and the note by the editor of the Lexington Papers. ]

[Footnote 621: L'Hermitage, Nov. 15/25. 1695. ]

[Footnote 622: L'Hermitage Oct 25/Nov 4 Oct 29/Nov 8 1695. ]

[Footnote 623: Ibid. Nov. 5/15 1695. ]

[Footnote 624: L'Hermitage, Nov. 15/25 1695; Sir James Forbes to LadyRussell, Oct. 3. 1695; Lady Russell to Lord Edward Russell; The Postman, Nov. 1695. ]

[Footnote 625: There is a highly curious account of this contest in thedespatches of L'Hermitage. ]

[Footnote 626: Postman, Dec. 15. 17. 1696; Vernon to Shrewsbury, Dec. 13. 15. ; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary; Burnet, i. 647. ; Saint Evremond'sVerses to Hampden. ]

[Footnote 627: L'Hermitage, Nov. 13/23. 1695. ]

[Footnote 628: I have derived much valuable information on this subjectfrom a MS. In the British Museum, Lansdowne Collection, No. 801. Itis entitled Brief Memoires relating to the Silver and Gold Coins ofEngland, with an Account of the Corruption of the Hammered Money, and ofthe Reform by the late Grand Coinage at the Tower and the Country Mints, by Hopton Haynes, Assay Master of the Mint. ]

[Footnote 629: Stat. 5 Eliz. C. Ii. , and 18 Eliz. C. 1]

[Footnote 630: Pepys's Diary, November 23. 1663. ]

[Footnote 631: The first writer who noticed the fact that, where goodmoney and bad money are thown into circulation together, the bad moneydrives out the good money, was Aristophanes. He seems to have thoughtthat the preference which his fellow citizens gave to light coins was tobe attributed to a depraved taste such as led them to entrust men likeCleon and Hyperbolus with the conduct of great affairs. But, though hispolitical economy will not bear examination, his verses are excellent:--

 pollakis g' emin edoksen e polis peponthenai tauton es te ton politon tous kalous te kagathous es te tarkhaion nomisma Kai to kainon khrusion. Oute gar toutoisin ousin ou kekibdeleumenios alla kallistois apanton, us dokei, nomismaton, kai monois orthos kopeisi, kai kekodonismenois en te tois Ellisim kai tois barbarioisi pantahkou khrometh' ouden, alla toutois tois ponerois khalkiois, khthes te kai proen kopeisi to kakistu kommati. Ton politon th' ous men ismen eugeneis kai sophronas andras ontas, kai dikaious, kai kalous te kagathous, kai traphentas en palaistrais, kai khorois kai mousiki prouseloumen tois de khalkois, kai ksenois, kai purriais, kai ponerois kak poneron eis apanta khrometha. ]

[Footnote 632: Narcissus Luttrell's Diary is filled with accounts ofthese executions. "Le metier de rogneur de monnoye, " says L'Hermitage, "est si lucratif et paroit si facile que, quelque chose qu'on fasse pourles detruire, il s'en trouve toujours d'autres pour prendre leur place. Oct 1/11. 1695. "]

[Footnote 633: As to the sympathy of the public with the clippers, see the very curious sermon which Fleetwood afterwards Bishop of Ely, preached before the Lord Mayor in December 1694. Fleetwood says that "asoft pernicious tenderness slackened the care of magistrates, kept backthe under officers, corrupted the juries, and withheld the evidence. " Hementions the difficulty of convincing the criminals themselves thatthey had done wrong. See also a Sermon preached at York Castle by GeorgeHalley, a clergyman of the Cathedral, to some clippers who were to behanged the next day. He mentions the impenitent ends which clippersgenerally made, and does his best to awaken the consciences of hisbearers. He dwells on one aggravation of their crime which I should nothave thought of. "If, " says he, "the same question were to be put inthis age, as of old, 'Whose is this image and superscription?' we couldnot answer the whole. We may guess at the image; but we cannot tellwhose it is by the superscription; for that is all gone. " The testimonyof these two divines is confirmed by that of Tom Brown, who tells afacetious story, which I do not venture to quote, about a conversationbetween the ordinary of Newgate and a clipper. ]

[Footnote 634: Lowndes's Essay for the Amendment of the Silver Coins, 1695. ]

[Footnote 635: L'Hermitage, Nov 29/Dec 9 1695. ]

[Footnote 636: The Memoirs of this Lancashire Quaker were printed a fewyears ago in a most respectable newspaper, the Manchester Guardian. ]

[Footnote 637: Lowndes's Essay. ]

[Footnote 638: L'Hermitage, Dec 24/Jan 3 1695. ]

[Footnote 639: It ought always to be remembered, to Adam Smith's honour, that he was entirely converted by Bentham's Defence of Usury, andacknowledged, with candour worthy of a true philosopher, that thedoctrine laid down in the Wealth of Nations was erroneous. ]

[Footnote 640: Lowndes's Essay for the Amendment of the Silver Coins;Locke's Further Considerations concerning raising the Value of Money;Locke to Molyneux, Nov. 20. 1695; Molyneux to Locke, Dec. 24. 1695. ]

[Footnote 641: Burnet, ii. 147. ]

[Footnote 642: Commons' Journals, Nov. 22, 23. 26. 1695; L'Hermitage, Nov 26/Dec 6]

[Footnote 643: Commons' Journals, Nov. 26, 27, 28, 29. 1695;L'Hermitage, Nov 26. /Dec 6 Nov. 29/Dec 9 Dec 3/13]

[Footnote 644: Commons' Journals, Nov. 28, 29. 1695; L'Hermitage, Dec. 3/13]

[Footnote 645: L'Hermitage, Nov 22/Dec 2, Dec 6/16 1695; An Abstract ofthe Consultations and Debates between the French King and his Councilconcerning the new Coin that is intended to be made in England, privately sent by a Friend of the Confederates from the French Courtto his Brother at Brussels, Dec. 12. 1695; A Discourse of the GeneralNotions of Money, Trade and Exchanges, by Mr. Clement of Bristol; ALetter from an English Merchant at Amsterdam to his Friend in London; AFund for preserving and supplying our Coin; An Essay for regulatingthe Coin, by A. V. ; A Proposal for supplying His Majesty with1, 200, 000L, by mending the Coin, and yet preserving the ancient Standardof the Kingdom. These are a few of the tracts which were distributedamong members of Parliament at this conjuncture. ]

[Footnote 646: Commons' Journals, Dec. 10. 1695; L'Hermitage, Dec. 3/136/16 10/20]

[Footnote 647: Commons' Journals, Dec. 13. 1695. ]

[Footnote 648: Stat. 7 Gul. 3. C. [1]. ; Lords' and Commons' Journals;L'Hermitage, Dec 31/Jan 10 Jan 7/17 10/20 14/24 1696. L'Hermitagedescribes in strong language the extreme inconvenience caused by thedispute between the Houses:--"La longueur qu'il y a dans cette affaireest d'autant plus desagreable qu'il n'y a point (le sujet sur lequel lepeuple en general puisse souffrir plus d'incommodite, puisqu'il n'y apersonne qui, a tous moments, n'aye occasion de l'esprouver. )]

[Footnote 649: That Locke was not a party to the attempt to make goldcheaper by penal laws, I infer from a passage in which he noticesLowndes's complaints about the high price of guineas. "The only remedy, "says Locke, "for that mischief, as well as a great many others, is theputting an end to the passing of clipp'd money by tale. " Locke's FurtherConsiderations. That the penalty proved, as might have been expected, inefficacious, appears from several passages in the despatches ofL'Hermitage, and even from Haynes's Brief Memoires, though Haynes was adevoted adherent of Montague. ]

[Footnote 650: L'Hermitage, Jan 14/24 1696. ]

[Footnote 651: Commons' Journals, Jan. 14. 17. 23. 1696; L'Hermitage, Jan. 14/24; Gloria Cambriae, or Speech of a Bold Briton against a DutchPrince of Wales 1702; Life of the late Honourable Robert Price, &c. 1734. Price was the bold Briton whose speech--never, I believe, spoken--was printed in 1702. He would have better deserved to be calledbold, if he had published his impertinence while William was living. The Life of Price is a miserable performance, full of blunders andanachronisms. ]

[Footnote 652: L'Hermitage mentions the unfavourable change in thetemper of the Commons; and William alludes to it repeatedly in hisletters to Heinsius, Jan 21/31 1696, Jan 28/Feb 7. ]

[Footnote 653: The gaiety of the Jacobites is said by Van Cleverskirketo have been noticed during some time; Feb 25/March 6 1696. ]

[Footnote 654: Harris's deposition, March 28. 1696. ]

[Footnote 655: Hunt's deposition. ]

[Footnote 656: Fisher's and Harris's depositions. ]

[Footnote 657: Barclay's narrative, in the Life of James, ii. 548. ;Paper by Charnock among the MSS. In the Bodleian Library. ]

[Footnote 658: Harris's deposition. ]

[Footnote 659: Ibid. Bernardi's autobiography is not at all to betrusted. ]

[Footnote 660: See his trial. ]

[Footnote 661: Fisher's deposition; Knightley's deposition; Cranburne'strial; De la Rue's deposition. ]

[Footnote 662: See the trials and depositions. ]

[Footnote 663: L'Hermitage, March 3/13]

[Footnote 664: See Berwick's Memoirs. ]

[Footnote 665: Van Cleverskirke, Feb 25/March 6 1696. I am confidentthat no sensible and impartial person, after attentively readingBerwick's narrative of these transactions and comparing it with thenarrative in the Life of James (ii. 544. ) which is taken, word for word, from the Original Memoirs, can doubt that James was accessory to thedesign of assassination. ]

[Footnote 666: L'Hermitage, March Feb 25/March 6]

[Footnote 667: My account of these events is taken chiefly fromthe trials and depositions. See also Burnet, ii. 165, 166, 167, andBlackmore's True and Impartial History, compiled under the direction ofShrewsbury and Somers, and Boyer's History of King William III. , 1703. ]

[Footnote 668: Portland to Lexington, March 3/13. 1696; VanCleverskirke, Feb 25/Mar 6 L'Hermitage, same date. ]

[Footnote 669: Commons' Journals, Feb. 24 1695. ]

[Footnote 670: England's Enemies Exposed, 1701. ]

[Footnote 671: Commons' Journals, Feb. 24. 1695/6. ]

[Footnote 672: Ibid. Feb. 25. 1695/6; Van Cleverskirke, Feb 28/March 9;L'Hermitage, of the same date. ]

[Footnote 673: According to L'Hermitage, Feb 27/Mar 8, there were two ofthese fortunate hackney coachmen. A shrewd and vigilant hackney coachmanindeed was from the nature of his calling, very likely to be successfulin this sort of chase. The newspapers abound with proofs of the generalenthusiasm. ]

[Footnote 674: Postman March 5. 1695/6]

[Footnote 675: Ibid. Feb. 29. , March 2. , March 12. , March 14. 1695/6. ]

[Footnote 676: Postman, March 12. 1696; Vernon to Lexington, March 13;Van Cleverskirke, March 13/23 The proceedings are fully reported in theCollection of State Trials. ]

[Footnote 677: Burnet, ii. 171. ; The Present Disposition of Englandconsidered; The answer entitled England's Enemies Exposed, 1701;L'Hermitage, March 17/27. 1696. L'Hermitage says, "Charnock a fait desgrandes instances pour avoir sa grace, et a offert de tout declarer:mais elle lui a este refusee. "]

[Footnote 678: L'Hermitage, March 17/27]

[Footnote 679: This most curious paper is among the Nairne MSS. In theBodleian Library. A short, and not perfectly ingenuous abstract of itwill be found in the Life of James, ii. 555. Why Macpherson, who hasprinted many less interesting documents did not choose to print thisdocument, it is easy to guess. I will transcribe two or three importantsentences. "It may reasonably be presumed that what, in one juncture HisMajesty had rejected he might in another accept, when his own and thepublic good necessarily required it. For I could not understand it insuch a manner as if he had given a general prohibition that at no timethe Prince of Orange should be touched. .. Nobody that believes HisMajesty to be lawful King of England can doubt but that in virtue of hiscommission to levy war against the Prince of Orange and his adherents, the setting upon his person is justifiable, as well by the laws of theland duly interpreted and explained as by the law of God. "]

[Footnote 680: The trials of Friend and Parkyns will be found, excellently reported, among the State Trials. ]

[Footnote 681: L'Hermitage, April 3/13 1696. ]

[Footnote 682: Commons' Journals, April 1, 2. 1696; L'Hermitage, April3/13. 1696; Van Cleverskirke, of the same date. ]

[Footnote 683: L'Hermitage, April 7/17. 1696. The Declaration of theBishops, Collier's Defence, and Further Defence, and a long legalargument for Cook and Snatt will be found in the Collection of StateTrials. ]

[Footnote 684: See the Manhunter, 1690. ]

[Footnote 685: State Trials. ]

[Footnote 686: The best, indeed the only good, account of these debatesis given by L'Hermitage, Feb 28/March 9 1696. He says, very truly; "Ladifference n'est qu'une dispute de mots, le droit qu'on a a une choseselon les loix estant aussy bon qu'il puisse estre. "]

[Footnote 687: See the London Gazettes during several weeks;L'Hermitage, March 24/April 3 April 14/24. 1696; Postman, April 9 25 30]

[Footnote 688: Journals of the Commons and Lords; L'Hermitage, April7/17 10/20 1696. ]

[Footnote 689: See the Freeholder's Plea against Stockjobbing Electionsof Parliament Men, and the Considerations upon Corrupt Elections ofMembers to serve in Parliament. Both these pamphlets were published in1701. ]

[Footnote 690: The history of this bill will be found in the Journalsof the Commons, and in a very interesting despatch of L'Hermitage, April14/24 1696. ]

[Footnote 691: The Act is 7 & 8 Will. 3. C. 31. Its history maybe tracedin the Journals. ]

[Footnote 692: London Gazette, May 4. 1696]

[Footnote 693: Ibid. March 12. 16. 1696; Monthly Mercury for March, 1696. ]

[Footnote 694: The Act provided that the clipped money must be broughtin before the fourth of May. As the third was a Sunday, the second waspractically the last day. ]

[Footnote 695: L'Hermitage, May 5/15 1696; London Newsletter, May 4. , May 6. In the Newsletter the fourth of May is mentioned as "the day somuch taken notice of for the universal concern people had in it. "]

[Footnote 696: London Newsletter, May 21. 1696; Old Postmaster, June25. ; L'Hermitage, May 19/29. ]

[Footnote 697: Haynes's Brief Memoirs, Lansdowne MSS. 801. ]

[Footnote 698: See the petition from Birmingham in the Commons'Journals, Nov. 12. 1696; and the petition from Leicester, Nov. 21]

[Footnote 699: "Money exceeding scarce, so that none was paid orreceived; but all was on trust. "--Evelyn, May 13. And again, on June11. : "Want of current money to carry on the smallest concerns, even fordaily provisions in the markets. "]

[Footnote 700: L'Hermitage, May 22/June 1; See a Letter of Dryden toTonson, which Malone, with great probability, supposes to have beenwritten at this time. ]

[Footnote 701: L'Hermitage to the States General May 8/18. ; ParisGazette, June 2/12. ; Trial and Condemnation of the Land Bank at ExeterChange for murdering the Bank of England at Grocers' Hall, 1696. TheWill and the Epitaph will be found in the Trial. ]

[Footnote 702: L'Hermitage, June 12/22. 1696. ]

[Footnote 703: On this subject see the Short History of the LastParliament, 1699; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary; the newspapers of 1696passim, and the letters of L'Hermitage passim. See also the petitionof the Clothiers of Gloucester in the Commons' Journal, Nov. 27. 1696. Oldmixon, who had been himself a sufferer, writes on this subject witheven more than his usual acrimony. ]

[Footnote 704: See L'Hermitage, June 12/22, June 23/July, 3 June 30/July10, Aug 1/11 Aug 28/Sept 7 1696. The Postman of August 15. Mentions thegreat benefit derived from the Exchequer Bills. The Pegasus of Aug. 24. Says: "The Exchequer Bills do more and more obtain with the public; and'tis no wonder. " The Pegasus of Aug. 28. Says: "They pass as money fromhand to hand; 'tis observed that such as cry them down are ill affectedto the government. " "They are found by experience, " says the Postmanof the seventh of May following, "to be of extraordinary use to themerchants and traders of the City of London, and all other parts ofthe kingdom. " I will give one specimen of the unmetrical and almostunintelligible doggrel which the Jacobite poets published on thissubject:--

 "Pray, Sir, did you hear of the late proclamation, Of sending paper for payment quite thro' the nation? Yes, Sir, I have: they're your Montague's notes, Tinctured and coloured by your Parliament votes. But 'tis plain on the people to be but a toast, They come by the carrier and go by the post. "]

[Footnote 705: Commons' Journals, Nov. 25. 1696. ]

[Footnote 706: L'Hermitage, June 2/12. 1696; Commons' Journals, Nov. 25. ; Post-man, May 5. , June 4. , July 2. ]

[Footnote 707: L'Hermitage, July. [3]/13 10/20 1696; Commons' Journals, Nov. 25. ; Paris Gazette, June 30. , Aug. 25. ; Old Postmaster, July 9. ]

[Footnote 708: William to Heinsius, July 30. 1696; William toShrewsbury, July 23. 30. 31. ]

[Footnote 709: Shrewsbury to William, July 28. 31. , Aug. 4. 1696;L'Hermitage, Aug. 1/11]

[Footnote 710: Shrewsbury to William, Aug 7. 1696; L'Hermitage, Aug14/24. ; London Gazette, Aug. 13. ]

[Footnote 711: L'Hermitage, Aug. [18]/28. 1696. Among the records of theBank is a resolution of the Directors prescribing the very words whichSir John Houblon was to use. William's sense of the service done by theBank on this occasion is expressed in his letter to Shrewsbury, ofAug. 24/Sept 3. One of the Directors, in a letter concerning the Bank, printed in 1697, says: "The Directors could not have answered it totheir members, had it been for any less occasion than the preservationof the kingdom. "]

[Footnote 712: Haynes's Brief Memoires; Lansdowne MSS. 801. Montague'sfriendly letter to Newton, announcing the appointment, has beenrepeatedly printed. It bears date March 19. 1695/6. ]

[Footnote 713: I have very great pleasure in quoting the words ofHaynes, an able, experienced and practical man, who had been in thehabit of transacting business with Newton. They have never I believe, been printed. "Mr. Isaac Newton, public Professor of the Mathematicksin Cambridge, the greatest philosopher, and one of the best men of thisage, was, by a great and wise statesman, recommended to the favour ofthe late King for Warden of the King's Mint and Exchanges, for which hewas peculiarly qualified, because of his extraordinary skill in numbers, and his great integrity, by the first of which he could judge correctlyof the Mint accounts and transactions as soon as he entered upon hisoffice; and by the latter--I mean his integrity--he set a standard tothe conduct and behaviour of every officer and clerk in the Mint. Wellhad it been for the publick, had he acted a few years sooner in thatsituation. " It is interesting to compare this testimony, borne by a manwho thoroughly understood the business of the Mint, with the childishtalk of Pope. "Sir Isaac Newton, " said Pope, "though so deep in algebraand fluxions, could not readily make up a common account; and, whilst hewas Master of the Mint, used to get somebody to make up the accountsfor him. " Some of the statesmen with whom Pope lived might have told himthat it is not always from ignorance of arithmetic that persons at thehead of great departments leave to clerks the business of casting uppounds, shillings and pence. ]

[Footnote 714: "I do not love, " he wrote to Flamsteed, "to be printedon every occasion, much less to be dunned and teased by foreigners aboutmathematical things, or to be thought by our own people to be triflingaway my time about them, when I am about the King's business. "]

[Footnote 715: Hopton Haynes's Brief Memoires; Lansdowne MSS. 801. ; theOld Postmaster, July 4. 1696; the Postman May 30. , July 4, September12. 19. , October 8, ; L'Hermitage's despatches of this summer and autumn, passim. ]

[Footnote 716: Paris Gazette, Aug. 11. 1696. ]

[Footnote 717: On the 7th of August L'Hermitage remarked for the firsttime that money seemed to be more abundant. ]

[Footnote 718: Compare Edmund Bohn's Letter to Carey of the 31st of July1696 with the Paris Gazette of the same date. Bohn's description of thestate of Norfolk is coloured, no doubt, by his constitutionally gloomytemper, and by the feeling with which he, not unnaturally, regardedthe House of Commons. His statistics are not to be trusted; and hispredictions were signally falsified. But he may be believed as to plainfacts which happened in his immediate neighbourhood. ]

[Footnote 719: As to Grascombe's character, and the opinion entertainedof him by the most estimable Jacobites, see the Life of Kettlewell, partiii. , section 55. Lee the compiler of the Life of Kettlewell mentionswith just censure some of Grascombe's writings, but makes no allusionto the worst of them, the Account of the Proceedings in the House ofCommons in relation to the Recoining of the Clipped Money, and fallingthe price of Guineas. That Grascombe was the author, was proved before aCommittee of the House of Commons. See the Journals, Nov. 30. 1696. ]

[Footnote 720: L'Hermitage, June 12/22. , July 7/17. 1696. ]

[Footnote 721: See the Answer to Grascombe, entitled Reflections on aScandalous Libel. ]

[Footnote 722: Paris Gazette, Sept. 15. 1696, ]

[Footnote 723: L'Hermitage, Oct. 2/12 1696. ]

[Footnote 724: L'Hermitage, July 20/30. , Oct. 2/12 9/10 1696. ]

[Footnote 725: The Monthly Mercuries; Correspondence between Shrewsburyand Galway; William to Heinsius, July 23. 30. 1696; Memoir of theMarquess of Leganes. ]

[Footnote 726: William to Heinsius, Aug 27/Sept 6, Nov 15/25 Nov. 17/271696; Prior to Lexington, Nov. 17/27; Villiers to Shrewsbury, Nov. 13/23]

[Footnote 727: My account of the attempt to corrupt Porter is taken fromhis examination before the House of Commons on Nov. 16. 1696, and fromthe following sources: Burnet, ii. 183. ; L'Hermitage to the StatesGeneral, May 8/18. 12/22 1696; the Postboy, May 9. ; the Postman, May 9. ;Narcissus Luttrell's Diary; London Gazette, Oct. 19. 1696. ]

[Footnote 728: London Gazette; Narcissus Luttrell; L'Hermitage, June12/22; Postman, June 11. ]

[Footnote 729: Life of William III. 1703; Vernon's evidence given in hisplace in the House of Commons, Nov. 16. 1696. ]

[Footnote 730: William to Shrewsbury from Loo, Sept. 10. 1696. ]

[Footnote 731: Shrewsbury to William, Sept. 18. 1696. ]

[Footnote 732: William to Shrewsbury, Sept. 25. 1696. ]

[Footnote 733: London Gazette, Oct. 8. 1696; Vernon to Shrewsbury, October 8. Shrewsbury to Portland, Oct. 11. ]

[Footnote 734: Vernon to Shrewsbury, Oct. 13. 1696; Somers toShrewsbury, Oct. 15. ]

[Footnote 735: William to Shrewsbury, Oct. 9. 1696. ]

[Footnote 736: Shrewsbury to William, Oct. 11. 1696. ]

[Footnote 737: Somers to Shrewsbury, Oct. 19. 1696. ]

[Footnote 738: William to Shrewsbury, Oct. 20. 1696. ]

[Footnote 739: Vernon to Shrewsbury, Oct. 13. 15. ; Portland toShrewsbury, Oct, 20, 1696. ]

[Footnote 740: L'Hermitage, July 10/20 1696. ]

[Footnote 741: Lansdowne MS. 801. ]

[Footnote 742: I take my account of these proceedings from the Commons'Journals, from the despatches of Van Cleverskirke and L'Hermitage to theStates General, and from Vernon's letter to Shrewsbury of the 27th ofOctober 1696. "I don't know, " says Vernon "that the House of Commonsever acted with greater concert than they do at present. "]

[Footnote 743: Vernon to Shrewsbury, Oct. 29. 1696; L'Hermitage, Oct30/Nov 9 L'Hermitage calls Howe Jaques Haut. No doubt the Frenchman hadalways heard Howe spoken of as Jack. ]

[Footnote 744: Postman, October 24. 1696; L'Hermitage, Oct 23/Nov 2. L'Hermitage says: "On commence deja a ressentir des effets avantageuxdes promptes et favorables resolutions que la Chambre des Communes pritMardy. Le discomte des billets de banque, qui estoit le jour auparavanta 18, est revenu a douze, et les actions ont aussy augmente, aussy bienque les taillis. "]

[Footnote 745: William to Heinsius, Nov. 13/23 1696. ]

[Footnote 746: Actes et Memoires des Negociations de la Paix de Ryswick, 1707; Villiers to Shrewsbury Dec. 1. [11]. 4/14. 1696; Letter ofHeinsius quoted by M. Sirtema de Grovestins. Of this letter I have not acopy. ]

[Footnote 747: Vernon to Shrewsbury, Dec. 8. 1696. ]

[Footnote 748: Wharton to Shrewsbury, Oct. 27. 1696. ]

[Footnote 749: Somers to Shrewsbury, Oct. 27. 31. 1696; Vernon toShrewsbury, Oct. 31. ; Wharton to Shrewsbury, Nov. 10. "I am apt tothink, " says Wharton, "there never was more management than in bringingthat about. "]

[Footnote 750: See for example a poem on the last Treasury day atKensington, March 1696/7. ]

[Footnote 751: Somers to Shrewsbury, Oct 31. 1696; Wharton toShrewsbury, of the same date. ]

[Footnote 752: Somers to Shrewsbury, Nov. 3. 1696. The King'sunwillingness to see Fenwick is mentioned in Somers's letter of the 15thof October. ]

[Footnote 753: Vernon to Shrewsbury, Nov. 3. 1696. ]

[Footnote 754: The circumstances of Goodman's flight were ascertainedthree years later by the Earl of Manchester, when Ambassador at Paris, and by him communicated to Jersey in a letter dated Sept 25/Oct 5 1699. ]

[Footnote 755: London Gazette Nov. 9. 1696; Vernon to Shrewsbury, Nov. 3. ; Van Cleverskirke and L'Hermitage of the same date. ]

[Footnote 756: The account of the events of this day I have takenfrom the Commons' Journals; the valuable work entitled Proceedings inParliament against Sir John Fenwick, Bart. Upon a Bill of Attainder forHigh Treason, 1696; Vernon's Letter to Shrewsbury, November 6. 1696, andSomers's Letter to Shrewsbury, November 7. From both these letters itis plain that the Whig leaders had much difficulty in obtaining theabsolution of Godolphin. ]

[Footnote 757: Commons' Journals, Nov. 9. 1696--Vernon to Shrewsbury, Nov. 10. The editor of the State Trials is mistaken in supposing thatthe quotation from Caesar's speech was made in the debate of the 13th. ]

[Footnote 758: Commons' Journals, Nov. 13. 16, 17. ; Proceedings againstSir John Fenwick. ]

[Footnote 759: A Letter to a Friend in Vindication of the Proceedingsagainst Sir John Fenwick, 1697. ]

[Footnote 760: This incident is mentioned by L'Hermitage. ]

[Footnote 761: L'Hermitage tells us that such things took place in thesedebates. ]

[Footnote 762: See the Lords' Journals, Nov. 14. , Nov. 30. , Dec. 1. 1696. ]

[Footnote 763: Wharton to Shrewsbury, Dec. 1. 1696; L'Hermitage, of samedate. ]

[Footnote 764: L'Hermitage, Dec. 4/14. 1696; Wharton to Shrewsbury, Dec. 1. ]

[Footnote 765: Lords' Journals Dec. 8. 1696; L'Hermitage, of the samedate. ]

[Footnote 766: L'Hermitage, Dec. 15/25 18/28 1696. ]

[Footnote 767: Ibid. Dec. 18/28 1696. ]

[Footnote 768: Lords' Journals, Dec. 15. 1696; L'Hermitage, Dec. [18]/28; Vernon to Shrewsbury, Dec. 15. About the numbers there isa slight difference between Vernon and L'Hermitage. I have followedVernon. ]

[Footnote 769: Lords' Journals, Dec. 18. 1696; Vernon to Shrewsbury, Dec. 19. ; L'Hermitage, Dec 22/Jan 1. I take the numbers from Vernon. ]

[Footnote 770: Lords' Journals, Dec. 25 1696; L'Hermitage, Dec 26/Jan 4. In the Vernon Correspondence there is a letter from Vernon to Shrewsburygiving an account of the transactions of this day; but it is erroneouslydated Dec. 2. , and is placed according to that date. This is not theonly blunder of the kind. A letter from Vernon to Shrewsbury, evidentlywritten on the 7th of November 1696, is dated and placed as a letter ofthe 7th of January 1697. A letter of June 14. 1700 is dated and placedas a letter of June 15. 1698. The Vernon Correspondence is of greatvalue; but it is so ill edited that it cannot be safely used withoutmuch caution, and constant reference to other authorities. ]

[Footnote 771: Lords' Journals, Dec. 23. 1696; Vernon to Shrewsbury, Dec. 24; L'Hermitage, Dec 25/Jan 4. ]

[Footnote 772: Vernon to Shrewsbury, Dec, 24 1696. ]

[Footnote 773: Dohna, who knew Monmouth well, describes him thus: "Ilavoit de l'esprit infiniment, et meme du plus agreable; mais il y avoirun peu trop de haut et de bas dans son fait. Il ne savoit ce que c'etoitque de menager les gens; et il turlupinoit a l'outrance ceux qui ne luiplaisoient pas. "]

[Footnote 774: L'Hermitage, Jan. 12/22 1697. ]

[Footnote 775: Lords' Journals, Jan. 9. 1696/7; Vernon to Shrewsbury, ofthe same date; L'Hermitage, Jan. 12/22. ]

[Footnote 776: Lords' Journals, Jan. 15. 1691; Vernon to Shrewsbury, ofthe same date; L'Hermitage, of the same date. ]

[Footnote 777: Postman, Dec. 29. 31. 1696. ]

[Footnote 778: L'Hermitage, Jan. 12/22. 1697. ]

[Footnote 779: Van Cleverskirke, Jan. 12/22. 1697; L'Hermitage, Jan. 15/25. ]

[Footnote 780: L'Hermitage, Jan. 15/25. 1697. ]

[Footnote 781: Lords' Journals, Jan. 22. 26. 1696/7; Vernon toShrewsbury, Jan. 26. ]

[Footnote 782: Commons' Journals, Jan. 27. 169. The entry in thejournals, which might easily escape notice, is explained by a letter ofL'Hermitage, written Jan 29/Feb 8]

[Footnote 783: L'Hermitage, Jan 29/Feb 8; 1697; London Gazette, Feb. 1. ;Paris Gazette; Vernon to Shrewsbury; Jan. 28. ; Burnet, ii. 193. ]

[Footnote 784: Commons' Journals, December 19. 1696; Vernon toShrewsbury, Nov. 28. 1696. ]

[Footnote 785: Lords' Journals, Jan. 23. 1696/7; Vernon to Shrewsbury, Jan. 23. ; L'Hermitage, Jan 26/Feb 5. ]

[Footnote 786: Commons' Journals, Jan. 26. 1696/7; Vernon to Shrewsburyand Van Cleverskirke to the States General of the same date. It iscurious that the King and the Lords should have made so strenuous afight against the Commons in defence of one of the five points of thePeoples Charter. ]

[Footnote 787: Commons' Journals, April 1. 3. 1697; Narcissus Luttrell'sDiary; L'Hermitage, April 2/12 As L'Hermitage says, "La plupart desmembres, lorsqu'ils sont a la campagne, estant bien aises d'estreinformez par plus d'un endroit de ce qui se passe, et s'imaginant quela Gazette qui se fait sous la direction d'un des Secretaires d'Etat, necontiendroit pas autant de choses que fait celle-cy, ne sont pas fichezque d'autres les instruisent. " The numbers on the division I take fromL'Hermitage. They are not to be found in the Journals. But the Journalswere not then so accurately kept as at present. ]

[Footnote 788: Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, June 1691, May 1693. ]

[Footnote 789: Commons' Journals, Dec 30. 1696; Postman, July 4. 1696. ]

[Footnote 790: Postman April 22. 1696; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary. ]

[Footnote 791: London Gazette, April 26. 29. 1697, ]

[Footnote 792: London Gazette, April 29. 1697; L'Hermitage, April 23/May3]

[Footnote 793: London Gazette, April 26. 29 1697 L'Hermitage, April23/May 3]

[Footnote 794: What the opinion of the public was we learn from a letterwritten by L'Hermitage immediately after Godolphin's resignation, Nov3/13. 1696, "Le public tourne plus la veue sur le Sieur Montegu, quia la seconde charge de la Tresorerie que sur aucun autre. " The strangesilence of the London Gazette is explained by a letter of Vernon toShrewsbury, dated May 1. 1697. ]

[Footnote 795: London Gazette, April 22. 26: 1697. ]

[Footnote 796: Postman, Jan. 26; Mar. 7. 11. 1696/7; April 8. 1697. ]

[Footnote 797: Ibid. Oct. 29. 1696. ]

[Footnote 798: Howell's State Trials; Postman, Jan. 9/19 1696/7. ]

[Footnote 799: See the Protocol of February 10 1697, in the Actes etMemoires des Negociations de la Paix de Ryswick, 1707. ]

[Footnote 800: William to Heinsius, Dec. 11/21 1696. There are similarexpressions in other letters written by the King about the same time. ]

[Footnote 801: See the papers drawn up at Vienna, and dated Sept. 16. 1696, and March 14 1697. See also the protocol drawn up at the Hague, March 14. 1697. These documents will be found in the Actes et Memoiresdes Negociations de la Paix de Ryswick, 1707. ]

[Footnote 802: Characters of all the three French ministers are given bySaint Simon. ]

[Footnote 803: Actes et Memoires des Negociations de la Paix deRyswick. ]

[Footnote 804: An engraving and ground plan of the mansion will be foundin the Actes et Memoires. ]

[Footnote 805: Whoever wishes to be fully informed as to the idlecontroversies and mummeries in which the Congress wasted its time, mayconsult the Actes et Memoires. ]

[Footnote 806: Saint Simon was certainly as good a judge of men as anyof those English grumblers who called Portland a dunce and a boor; SaintSimon too had every opportunity of forming a correct judgment; for hesaw Portland in a situation full of difficulties; and Saint Simon says, in one place, "Benting, discret, secret, poli aux autres, fidele ason maitre, adroit en affaires, le servit tres utilement;" in another, "Portland parut avec un eclat personnel, une politesse, un air de mondeet de cour, une galanterie et des graces qui surprirent; avec cela, beaucoup de dignite, meme (le hauteur), mais avec discernement et unjugement prompt sans rien de hasarde. " Boufflers too extols Portland'sgood breeding and tact. Boufflers to Lewis, July 9. 1697. This letteris in the archives of the French Foreign Office. A translation will befound in the valuable collection published by M. Grimblot. ]

[Footnote 807: Boufflers to Lewis, June 21/July 1 1697; Lewis toBoufflers, June 22/July 2; Boufflers to Lewis, June 25/July 5]

[Footnote 808: Boufflers to Lewis June 28/July 8, June 29/July 9 1697]

[Footnote 809: My account of this negotiation I have taken chieflyfrom the despatches in the French Foreign Office. Translations of thosedespatches have been published by M. Grimblot. See also Burnet, ii. 200, 201. 

It has been frequently asserted that William promised to pay Mary ofModena fifty thousand pounds a year. Whoever takes the trouble toread the Protocol of Sept. 10/20 1697, among the Acts of the Peace ofRyswick, will see that my account is correct. Prior evidently understoodthe protocol as I understand it. For he says, in a letter to Lexingtonof Sept. 17. 1697, "No. 2. Is the thing to which the King consents as toQueen Marie's settlements. It is fairly giving her what the law allowsher. The mediator is to dictate this paper to the French, and enter itinto his protocol; and so I think we shall come off a bon marche uponthat article. "

It was rumoured at the time (see Boyer's History of King William III. 1703) that Portland and Boufflers had agreed on a secret article bywhich it was stipulated that, after the death of William, the Prince ofWales should succeed to the English throne. This fable has often beenrepeated, but was never believed by men of sense, and can hardly, sincethe publication of the letters which passed between Lewis and Boufflers, find credit even with the weakest. Dalrymple and other writers imaginedthat they had found in the Life of James (ii. 574, 575. ) proof that thestory of the secret article was true. The passage on which they reliedwas certainly not written by James, nor under his direction; and theauthority of those portions of the Life which were not written by him, or under his direction, is but small. Moreover, when we examine thispassage, we shall find that it not only does not bear out the story ofthe secret article, but directly contradicts that story. The compilerof the Life tells us that, after James had declared that he never wouldconsent to purchase the English throne for his posterity by surrenderinghis own rights, nothing more was said on the subject. Now it is quitecertain that James in his Memorial published in March 1697, a Memorialwhich will be found both in the Life (ii. 566, ) and in the Acts of thePeace of Ryswick, declared to all Europe that he never would stoop to solow and degenerate an action as to permit the Prince of Orange toreign on condition that the Prince of Wales should succeed. It follows, therefore, that nothing can have been said on this subject after March1697. Nothing therefore, can have been said on this subject in theconferences between Boufflers and Portland, which did not begin tilllate in June. 

Was there then absolutely no foundation for the story? I believe thatthere was a foundation; and I have already related the facts on whichthis superstructure of fiction has been reared. It is quite certainthat Lewis, in 1693, intimated to the allies through the governmentof Sweden, his hope that some expedient might be devised which wouldreconcile the Princes who laid claim to the English crown. The expedientat which he hinted was, no doubt, that the Prince of Wales shouldsucceed William and Mary. It is possible that, as the compiler of theLife of James says, William may have "show'd no great aversness" to thisarrangement. He had no reason, public or private, for preferring hissister in law to his brother in law, if his brother in law were bred aProtestant. But William could do nothing without the concurrence of theParliament; and it is in the highest degree improbable that either he orthe Parliament would ever have consented to make the settlement of theEnglish crown a matter of stipulation with France. What he would orwould not have done, however, we cannot with certainty pronounce. ForJames proved impracticable. Lewis consequently gave up all thoughtsof effecting a compromise and promised, as we have seen, to recogniseWilliam as King of England "without any difficulty, restriction, condition, or reserve. " It seems certain that, after this promise, whichwas made in December 1696, the Prince of Wales was not again mentionedin the negotiations. ]

[Footnote 810: Prior MS. ; Williamson to Lexington, July 20/30. 1697;Williamson to Shrewsbury, July 23/Aug 2]

[Footnote 811: The note of the French ministers, dated July 10/20 1697, will be found in the Actes et Memoires. ]

[Footnote 812: Monthly Mercuries for August and September, 1697. ]

[Footnote 813: Life of James, ii: 565. ]

[Footnote 814: Actes et Memoires des Negociations de la Paix de Ryswick;Life of James, ii. 566. ]

[Footnote 815: James's Protest will be found in his Life, ii. 572. ]

[Footnote 816: Actes et Memoires des Negociations de la Paix de Ryswick;Williamson to Lexington, Sept 14/24 1697; Prior MS. ]

[Footnote 817: Prior MS. ]

[Footnote 818: L'Hermitage, July 20/30; July 27/Aug 6, Aug 24/Sept 3, Aug 27/Sept 6 Aug 31/Sept 10 1697 Postman, Aug. 31. ]

[Footnote 819: Van Cleverskirke to the States General, Sept. 14/24 1697;L'Hermitage, Sept. 14/24; Postscript to the Postman, of the same date;Postman and Postboy of Sept. 19/29 Postman of Sept. 18/28. ]

[Footnote 820: L'Hermitage, Sept 17/27, Sept 25/Oct 4 1697 Oct 19/29;Postman, Nov. 20. ]

[Footnote 821: L'Hermitage, Sept 21/Oct 1 Nov 2/12 1697; Paris Gazette, Nov. 20/30; Postboy, Nov. 2. At this time appeared a pasquinadeentitled, A Satyr upon the French King, written after the Peace wasconcluded at Reswick, anno 1697, by a Non-Swearing Parson, and said tobe drop'd out of his Pocket at Sam's Coffee House. I quote a few of themost decent couplets. 

 "Lord! with what monstrous lies and senseless shams Have we been cullied all along at Sam's! Who could have e'er believed, unless in spite Lewis le Grand would turn rank Williamite? Thou that hast look'd so fierce and talk'd so big, In thine old age to dwindle to a Whig! Of Kings distress'd thou art a fine securer. Thou mak'st me swear, that am a known nonjuror. Were Job alive, and banter'd by such shufflers, He'd outrail Oates, and curse both thee and Boufflers For thee I've lost, if I can rightly scan 'em, Two livings, worth full eightscore pounds per annum, Bonae et legalis Angliae Monetae. But now I'm clearly routed by the treaty. "]

[Footnote 822: London Gazettes; Postboy of Nov. 18 1697; L'Hermitage, Nov. 5/15. ]

[Footnote 823: London Gazette, Nov. 18. 22 1697; Van Cleverskirke Nov. 16/26, 19/29. ; L'Hermitage, Nov. 16/26; Postboy and Postman, Nov. 18. William to Heinsius, Nov. 16/26]

[Footnote 824: Evelyn's Diary, Dec, 2. 1697. The sermon is extant; and Imust acknowledge that it deserves Evelyn's censure. ]

[Footnote 825: London Gazette, Dec. 6. 1697; Postman, Dec. 4. ; VanCleverskirke, Dec. 2/12; L'Hermitage, Nov. 19/29. ]