The History of England from the Accession of James the Second

Volume IV

(Chapters XVIII-XXII)

by Thomas Babington Macaulay




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
some days by adverse winds, went on board at Gravesend. Four
yachts had been fitted up for him and for his retinue. Among his
attendants were Norfolk, Ormond, Devonshire, Dorset, Portland,
Monmouth, Zulestein, and the Bishop of London. Two distinguished
admirals, Cloudesley Shovel and George Rooke, commanded the men
of war which formed the convoy. The passage was tedious and
disagreeable. During many hours the fleet was becalmed off the
Godwin Sands; and it was not till the fifth day that the
soundings proved the coast of Holland to be near. The sea fog was
so thick that no land could be seen; and it was not thought safe
for the ships to proceed further in the darkness. William, tired
out by the voyage, and impatient to be once more in his beloved
country, determined to land in an open boat. The noblemen who
were in his train tried to dissuade him from risking so valuable
a life; but, when they found that his mind was made up, they
insisted on sharing the danger. That danger proved more serious
than they had expected. It had been supposed that in an hour the
party would be on shore. But great masses of floating ice impeded
the progress of the skiff; the night came on; the fog grew
thicker; the waves broke over the King and the courtiers. Once
the keel struck on a sand bank, and was with great difficulty got
off. The hardiest mariners showed some signs of uneasiness. But
William, through the whole night, was as composed as if he had
been in the drawingroom at Kensington. "For shame," he said to
one of the dismayed sailors "are you afraid to die in my
company?" A bold Dutch seaman ventured to spring out, and, with
great difficulty, swam and scrambled through breakers, ice and
mud, to firm ground. Here he discharged a musket and lighted a
fire as a signal that he was safe. None of his fellow passengers,
however, thought it prudent to follow his example. They lay
tossing in sight of the flame which he had kindled, till the
first pale light of a January morning showed them that they were
close to the island of Goree. The King and his Lords, stiff with
cold and covered with icicles, gladly landed to warm and rest
themselves.1

After reposing some hours in the hut of a peasant, William
proceeded to the Hague. He was impatiently expected there for,
though the fleet which brought him was not visible from the
shore, the royal salutes had been heard through the mist, and had
apprised the whole coast of his arrival. Thousands had assembled
at Honslaerdyk to welcome him with applause which came from their
hearts and which went to his heart. That was one of the few white
days of a life, beneficent indeed and glorious, but far from
happy. After more than two years passed in a strange land, the
exile had again set foot on his native soil. He heard again the
language of his nursery. He saw again the scenery and the
architecture which were inseparably associated in his mind with
the recollections of childhood and the sacred feeling of home;
the dreary mounds of sand, shells and weeds, on which the waves
of the German Ocean broke; the interminable meadows intersected
by trenches; the straight canals; the villas bright with paint
and adorned with quaint images and inscriptions. He had lived
during many weary months among a people who did not love him, who
did not understand him, who could never forget that he was a
foreigner. Those Englishmen who served him most faithfully served
him without enthusiasm, without personal attachment, and merely
from a sense of public duty. In their hearts they were sorry that
they had no choice but between an English tyrant and a Dutch
deliverer. All was now changed. William was among a population by
which he was adored, as Elizabeth had been adored when she rode
through her army at Tilbury, as Charles the Second had been
adored when he landed at Dover. It is true that the old enemies
of the House of Orange had not been inactive during the absence
of the Stadtholder. There had been, not indeed clamours, but
mutterings against him. He had, it was said, neglected his native
land for his new kingdom. Whenever the dignity of the English
flag, whenever the prosperity of the English trade was concerned,
he forgot that he was a Hollander. But, as soon as his well
remembered face was again seen, all jealousy, all coldness, was
at an end. There was not a boor, not a fisherman, not an artisan,
in the crowds which lined the road from Honslaerdyk to the Hague,
whose heart did not swell with pride at the thought that the
first minister of Holland had become a great King, had freed the
English, and had conquered the Irish. It would have been madness
in William to travel from Hampton Court to Westminster without a
guard; but in his own land he needed no swords or carbines to
defend him. "Do not keep the people off;" he cried: "let them
come close to me; they are all my good friends." He soon learned
that sumptuous preparations were making for his entrance into the
Hague. At first he murmured and objected. He detested, he said,
noise and display. The necessary cost of the war was quite heavy
enough. He hoped that his kind fellow townsmen would consider him
as a neighbour, born and bred among them, and would not pay him
so bad a compliment as to treat him ceremoniously. But all his
expostulations were vain. The Hollanders, simple and parsimonious
as their ordinary habits were, had set their hearts on giving
their illustrious countryman a reception suited to his dignity
and to his merit; and he found it necessary to yield. On the day
of his triumph the concourse was immense. All the wheeled
carriages and horses of the province were too few for the
multitude of those who flocked to the show. Many thousands came
sliding or skating along the frozen canals from Amsterdam,
Rotterdam, Leyden, Haarlem, Delft. At ten in the morning of the
twenty-sixth of January, the great bell of the Town House gave
the signal. Sixteen hundred substantial burghers, well armed, and
clad in the finest dresses which were to be found in the 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
halberdiers and running footmen, and followed by a long train of
splendid equipages, passed under numerous arches rich with
carving and painting, amidst  incessant shouts of "Long live the
King our Stadtholder." The front of the Town House and the whole
circuit of the marketplace were in a blaze with brilliant
colours. Civic crowns, trophies, emblems of arts, of sciences, of
commerce and of agriculture, appeared every where. In one place
William saw portrayed the glorious actions of his ancestors.
There was the silent prince, the founder of the Batavian
commonwealth, passing the Meuse with his warriors. There was the
more impetuous Maurice leading the charge at Nieuport. A little
further on, the hero might retrace the eventful story of his own
life. He was a child at his widowed mother's knee. He was at the
altar with Diary's hand in his. He was landing at Torbay. He was
swimming through the Boyne. There, too, was a boat amidst the ice
and the breakers; and above it was most appropriately inscribed,
in the majestic language of Rome, the saying of the great Roman,
"What dost thou fear? Thou hast Caesar on board." The task of
furnishing the Latin mottoes had been intrusted to two men, who,
till Bentley appeared, held the highest place among the classical
scholars of that age. Spanheim, whose knowledge of the Roman
medals was unrivalled, imitated, not unsuccessfully, the noble
conciseness of those ancient legends which he had assiduously
studied; and he was assisted by Graevius, who then filled a chair
at Utrecht, and whose just reputation had drawn to that
University multitudes of students from every part of Protestant
Europe.2 When the night came, fireworks were exhibited on the
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 nothing had ever been seen, even on the terrace of
Versailles, more brilliant than the effect produced by the
innumerable cascades of flame which were reflected in the smooth
mirror of ice.3  The English Lords congratulated their master on
his immense popularity. "Yes," said he; "but I am not the
favourite. The shouting was nothing to what it would have been if
Mary had been with me."

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

But this time the streets of the Hague were overflowing with the
equipages and retinues of princes and ambassadors who came
flocking to the great Congress. First appeared the ambitious and
ostentatious Frederic, Elector of Brandenburg, who, a few years
later, took the title of King of Prussia. Then arrived the young
Elector of Bavaria, the Regent of Wirtemberg, the Landgraves of
Hesse Cassel and Hesse Darmstadt, and a long train of sovereign
princes, sprung from the illustrious houses of Brunswick, of
Saxony, of Holstein, and of Nassau. The Marquess of Gastanaga,
Governor of the Spanish Netherlands, repaired to the assembly
from the viceregal Court of Brussels. Extraordinary ministers had
been sent by the Emperor, by the Kings of Spain, Poland, Denmark,
and Sweden, and by the Duke of Savoy. There was scarcely room in
the town and the neighbourhood for the English Lords and
gentlemen and the German Counts and Barons whom curiosity or
official duty had brought to the place of meeting. The grave
capital of the most thrifty and industrious of nations was as gay
as Venice in the Carnival. The walks cut among those noble limes
and elms in which the villa of the Princes of Orange is embosomed
were gay with the plumes, the stars, the flowing wigs, the
embroidered coats and the gold hilted swords of gallants from
London, Berlin and Vienna. With the nobles were mingled sharpers
not less gorgeously attired than they. At night the hazard tables
were thronged; and the theatre was filled to the roof. Princely
banquets followed one another in rapid succession. The meats were
served in gold; and, according to that old Teutonic fashion with
which Shakspeare had made his countrymen familiar, as often as
any of the great princes proposed a health, the kettle drums and
trumpets sounded. Some English lords, particularly Devonshire,
gave entertainments which vied with those of Sovereigns. It was
remarked that the German potentates, though generally disposed to
be litigious and punctilious about etiquette, associated, on this
occasion, in an unceremonious manner, and seemed to have
forgotten their passion for genealogical and heraldic
controversy. The taste for wine, which was then characteristic of
their nation, they had not forgotten. At the table of the Elector
of Brandenburg much mirth was caused by the gravity of the
statesmen of Holland, who, sober themselves, confuted out of
Grotius and Puffendorf the nonsense stuttered by the tipsy nobles
of the Empire. One of those nobles swallowed so many bumpers that
he tumbled into the turf fire, and was not pulled out till his
fine velvet suit had been burned.5

In the midst of all this revelry, business was not neglected. A
formal meeting of the Congress was held at which William
presided. In a short and dignified speech, which was speedily
circulated throughout Europe, he set forth the necessity of firm
union and strenuous exertion. The profound respect with which he
was heard by that splendid assembly caused bitter mortification
to his enemies both in England and in France. The German
potentates were bitterly reviled for yielding precedence to an
upstart. Indeed the most illustrious among them paid to him such
marks of deference as they would scarcely have deigned to pay to
the Imperial Majesty, mingled with the crowd in his antechamber,
and at 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 in a chain, and was teaching them to dance. In
another caricature, he appeared 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 of Landgraves and
Sovereign dukes stood at humble distance; and Gastanaga, the
unworthy successor of Alva, awaited the orders of the heretic
tyrant on 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
against France.7 The contingent which each of the allied powers
was to furnish was made known. Matters about which it would have
been inexpedient to put forth any declaration were privately
discussed by the King of England with his allies. On this
occasion, as on every other important occasion during his reign,
he was his own minister for foreign affairs. It was necessary for
the sake of form that he should be attended by a Secretary of
State; and Nottingham had therefore followed him to Holland. But
Nottingham, though, in matters concerning the internal government
of England, he enjoyed a large share of his master's confidence,
knew little more about the business of the Congress than what he
saw in the Gazettes.

This mode of transacting business would now be thought most
unconstitutional; and many writers, applying the standard of
their own age to the transactions of a former age, have severely
blamed William for acting without the advice of his ministers,
and his ministers for submitting to be kept in ignorance of
transactions which deeply concerned the honour of the Crown and
the welfare of the nation. Yet surely the presumption is that
what the most honest and honourable men of both parties,
Nottingham, for example, among the Tories, and Somers among the
Whigs, not only did, but avowed, cannot have been altogether
inexcusable; and a very sufficient excuse will without difficulty
be found.

The doctrine that the Sovereign is not responsible is doubtless
as old as any part of our constitution. The doctrine that his
ministers are responsible is also of immemorial antiquity. That
where there is no responsibility there can be no trustworthy
security against maladministration, is a doctrine which, in our
age and country, few people will be inclined to dispute. From
these three propositions it plainly follows that the
administration is likely to be best conducted when the Sovereign
performs no public act without the concurrence and
instrumentality of a minister. This argument is perfectly sound.
But we must remember that arguments are constructed in one way,
and governments in another. In logic, none but an idiot admits
the premises and denies the legitimate conclusion. But in
practice, we see that great and enlightened communities often
persist, generation after generation, in asserting principles,
and refusing to act upon those principles. It may be doubted
whether any real polity that ever existed has exactly
corresponded to the pure idea of that polity. According to the
pure idea of constitutional royalty, the prince reigns and does
not govern; and constitutional royalty, as it now exists in
England, comes nearer than in any other country to the pure idea.
Yet it would be a great error to imagine that our princes merely
reign and never govern. In the seventeenth century, both Whigs
and Tories thought it, not only the right, but the duty, of the
first magistrate to govern. All parties agreed in blaming Charles
the Second for not being his own Prime Minister; all parties
agreed in praising James for being his own Lord High Admiral; and
all parties thought it natural and reasonable that William should
be his own Foreign Secretary.

It may be observed that the ablest and best informed of those who
have censured the manner in which the negotiations of that time
were conducted are scarcely consistent with themselves. For,
while they blame William for being his own Ambassador
Plenipotentiary at the Hague, they praise him for being his own
Commander in Chief in Ireland. Yet where is the distinction in
principle between the two cases? Surely every reason which can be
brought to prove that he violated the constitution, when, by his
own sole authority, he made compacts with the Emperor and the
Elector of Brandenburg, will equally prove that he violated the
constitution, when, by his own sole authority, he ordered one
column to plunge into the water at Oldbridge and another to cross
the bridge of Slane. If the constitution gave him the command of
the forces of the State, the constitution gave him also the
direction of the foreign relations of the State. On what
principle then can it be maintained that he was at liberty to
exercise the former power without consulting any body, but that
he was bound to exercise the latter power in conformity with the
advice of a minister? Will it be said that an error in diplomacy
is likely to be more injurious to the country than an error in
strategy? Surely not. It is hardly conceivable that any blunder
which William might have made at the Hague could have been more
injurious to the public interests than a defeat at the Boyne. Or
will it be said that there was greater reason for placing
confidence in his military than in his diplomatic skill? Surely
not. In war he showed some great moral and intellectual
qualities; but, as a tactician, he did not rank high; and of his
many campaigns only two were decidedly successful. In the talents
of a negotiator, on the other hand, he has never been surpassed.
Of the interests and the tempers of the continental courts he
knew more than all his Privy Council together. Some of his
ministers were doubtless men of great ability, excellent orators
in the House of Lords, and versed in our insular politics. But,
in the deliberations of the Congress,
Caermarthen and Nottingham would have been found as far inferior
to him as he would have been found inferior to them in a
parliamentary debate on a question purely English. The coalition
against France was his work. He alone had joined together the
parts of that great whole; and he alone could keep them together.
If he had trusted that vast and complicated machine in the hands
of any of his subjects, it would instantly have fallen to pieces.

Some things indeed were to be done which none of his subjects
would have ventured to do. Pope Alexander was really, though not
in name, one of the 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 English minister might well shrink from having any
dealings, direct or indirect, with the Vatican. The Secretaries
of State were glad to leave a matter so delicate and so full of
risk to their master, and to be able to protest with truth that
not a line to which the most intolerant Protestant could object
had ever gone out of their offices.

It must not be supposed however that William ever forgot that his
especial, his hereditary, mission was to protect the Reformed
Faith. His influence with Roman Catholic princes was constantly
and strenuously exerted for the benefit of their Protestant
subjects. In the spring of 1691, the Waldensian shepherds, long
and cruelly persecuted, and weary of their lives, were surprised
by glad tidings. Those who had been in prison for heresy returned
to their homes. Children, who had been taken from their parents
to be educated by priests, were sent back. Congregations, which
had hitherto met only by stealth and with extreme peril, now
worshipped God without molestation in the face of day. Those
simple mountaineers probably never knew that their fate had been
a subject of discussion at the Hague, and that they owed the
happiness of their firesides, and the security of their humble
temples to the ascendency which William exercised over the Duke
of Savoy.8

No coalition of which history has preserved the memory has had an
abler chief than William. But even William often contended in
vain against those vices which are inherent in the nature of all
coalitions. No undertaking which requires the hearty and long
continued cooperation of many independent states is likely to
prosper. Jealousies inevitably spring up. Disputes engender
disputes. Every confederate is tempted to throw on others some
part of the burden which he ought himself to bear. Scarcely one
honestly furnishes the promised contingent. Scarcely one exactly
observes the appointed day. But perhaps no coalition that ever
existed was in such constant danger of dissolution as the
coalition which William had with infinite difficulty formed. The
long list of potentates, who met in person or by their
representatives at the Hague, looked well in the Gazettes. The
crowd of princely equipages, attended by manycoloured guards and
lacqueys, looked well among the lime trees of the Voorhout. But
the very circumstances which made the Congress more splendid than
other congresses made the league weaker than other leagues. The
more numerous the allies, the more numerous were the dangers
which threatened the alliance. It was impossible that twenty
governments, divided by quarrels about precedence, quarrels about
territory, quarrels about trade, quarrels about religion, could
long act together in perfect harmony. That they acted together
during several years in imperfect harmony is to be ascribed to
the wisdom, patience and firmness of William.

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

This was soon signally proved. In March the princes and
ambassadors who had been assembled at the Hague separated and
scarcely had they separated when all their plans were
disconcerted by a bold and skilful move of the enemy.

Lewis was sensible that the meeting of the Congress was likely to
produce a great effect on the public mind of Europe. That effect
he determined to counteract by striking a sudden and terrible
blow. While his enemies were settling how many troops each of
them should furnish, he ordered numerous divisions of his army to
march from widely distant points towards Mons, one of the most
important, if not the most important, 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 surprise and extreme
vexation, that cavalry, infantry, artillery, bridges of boats,
were fast approaching the fated city by many converging routes. A
hundred thousand men had been brought together. All the
implements of war had been largely provided by Louvois, the first
of living administrators. The command was entrusted to Luxemburg,
the first of living generals. The scientific operations were
directed by Vauban, the first of living engineers. That nothing
might be wanting which could kindle emulation through all the
ranks of a gallant and loyal army, the magnificent King himself
had set out from Versailles for the camp. Yet William had still
some faint hope that it might be possible to raise the siege. He
flew to the Hague, put all the forces of the States General in
motion, and sent pressing messages to the German Princes. Within
three weeks after he had received the first hint of the danger,
he was in the neighbourhood of the besieged city, at the head of
near fifty thousand troops of different nations. To attack a
superior force commanded by such a captain as Luxemburg was a
bold, almost a desperate, enterprise. Yet William was so sensible
that the loss of Mons would be an almost irreparable disaster and
disgrace that he made up his mind to run the hazard. He was
convinced that the event of the siege would determine the policy
of the Courts of Stockholm and Copenhagen. Those Courts had
lately seemed inclined to join the coalition. If Mons fell, they
would certainly remain neutral; they might possibly become
hostile. "The risk," he wrote to Heinsius, "is great; yet I am
not without hope. I will do what can be done. The issue is in the
hands of God." On the very day on which this letter was written
Mons fell. The siege had been vigorously pressed. Lewis himself,
though suffering from the gout, had set the example of strenuous
exertion. His household troops, the finest body of soldiers in
Europe, had, under his eye, surpassed themselves. The young
nobles of his court had tried to attract his notice by exposing
themselves to the hottest fire with the same gay alacrity with
which they were wont to exhibit their graceful figures at his
balls. His wounded soldiers were charmed by the benignant
courtesy with which he walked among their pallets, assisted while
wounds were dressed by the hospital surgeons, and breakfasted on
a porringer of the hospital broth. While all was obedience and
enthusiasm among the besiegers, all was disunion and dismay among
the besieged. The duty of the French lines was so well performed
that no messenger sent by William was able to cross them. The
garrison did not know that relief was close at hand. The burghers
were appalled by the prospect of those horrible calamities which
befall cities taken by storm. Showers of shells and redhot
bullets were falling in the streets. The town was on fire in ten
places at once. The peaceful inhabitants derived an unwonted
courage from the excess of their fear, and rose on the soldiers.
Thenceforth resistance was impossible; and a capitulation was
concluded. The armies then retired into quarters. Military
operations were suspended during some weeks; Lewis returned in
triumph to Versailles; and William paid a short visit to England,
where his presence was much needed.9

He found the ministers still employed in tracing out the
ramifications of the plot which had been discovered just before
his departure. Early in January, Preston, Ashton and Elliot had
been arraigned at the Old Bailey. They claimed the right of
severing in their challenges. It was therefore necessary to try
them separately. The audience was numerous and splendid. Many
peers were present. The Lord President and the two Secretaries of
State attended in order to prove that the papers produced in
Court were the same which Billop had brought to Whitehall. A
considerable number of judges appeared on the bench; and Holt
presided. A full report of the proceedings has come down to us,
and well deserves to be attentively studied, and to be compared
with the reports of other trials which had not long before taken
place under the same roof. The whole spirit of the tribunal had
undergone in a few months a change so complete that it might seem
to have been the work of ages. Twelve years earlier, unhappy
Roman Catholics, accused of wickedness which had never entered
into their thoughts, had stood in that dock. The witnesses for
the Crown had repeated their hideous fictions amidst the
applauding hums of the audience. The judges had shared, or had
pretended to share, the stupid credulity and the savage passions
of the populace, had exchanged smiles and compliments with the
perjured informers, had roared down the arguments feebly
stammered forth by the prisoners, and had not been ashamed, in
passing the sentence of death, to make ribald jests on purgatory
and the mass. As soon as the butchery of Papists was over, the
butchery of Whigs had commenced; and the judges had applied
themselves to their new work with even more than their old
barbarity. To these scandals the Revolution had put an end.
Whoever, after perusing the trials of Ireland and Pickering, of
Grove and Berry, of Sidney, Cornish and Alice Lisle, turns to the
trials of Preston and Ashton, will be astonished by the contrast.
The Solicitor General, Somers, conducted the prosecutions with a
moderation and humanity of which his predecessors had left him no
example. "I did never think," he said, "that it was the part of
any who were of counsel for the King in cases of this nature to
aggravate the crime of the prisoners, or to put false colours on
the evidence."10 Holt's conduct was faultless. Pollexfen, an
older man than Holt or Somers, retained a little,--and a little
was too much,--of the tone of that bad school in which he had
been bred. But, though he once or twice forgot the austere
decorum of his place, he cannot be accused of any violation of
substantial justice. The prisoners themselves seem to have been
surprised by the fairness and gentleness with which they were
treated. "I would not mislead the jury, I'll assure you," said
Holt to Preston, "nor do Your Lordship any manner of injury in
the world." "No, my Lord;" said Preston; "I see it well enough
that Your Lordship would not." "Whatever my fate may be," said
Ashton, "I cannot but own that I have had a fair trial for my
life."

The culprits gained nothing by the moderation of the Solicitor
General or by the impartiality of the Court; for the evidence was
irresistible. The meaning of the papers seized by Billop was so
plain that the dullest juryman could not misunderstand it. Of
those papers part was fully proved to be in Preston's
handwriting. Part was in Ashton's handwriting but this the
counsel for the prosecution had not the means of proving. They
therefore rested the case against Ashton on the indisputable
facts that the treasonable packet had been found in his bosom,
and that he had used language which was quite unintelligible
except on the supposition that 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
making disclosures. But though he declared that, if he were
spared, he would always be a faithful subject of Their Majesties,
he was fully resolved not to give up the names of his
accomplices. In this resolution he was encouraged by the
nonjuring divines who attended him in his cell. It was probably
by their influence that he was induced to deliver to the Sheriffs
on the scaffold a declaration which he had transcribed and
signed, but had not, it is to be hoped, composed or attentively
considered. In this paper he was made to complain of the
unfairness of a trial which he had himself in public acknowledged
to have been eminently fair. He was also made to aver, on the
word of a dying man, that he knew nothing of the papers which had
been found upon him. Unfortunately his declaration, when
inspected, proved to be in the same handwriting with one 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
quite so clear as that on which his associates had been
convicted; and he was not worth the anger of the government. The
fate of Preston was long in suspense. The Jacobites affected to
be confident that the government would not dare to shed his
blood. He was, they said, a favourite at Versailles, and his
death would be followed by a terrible retaliation. They scattered
about the streets of London papers in which it was asserted that,
if any harm befell him, Mountjoy, and all the other Englishmen of
quality who were prisoners in France, would be broken on the
wheel.13 These absurd threats would not have deferred the
execution one day. But those who had Preston in their power were
not unwilling to spare him on certain conditions. He was privy to
all the counsels of the disaffected party, and could furnish
information of the highest value. He was informed that his fate
depended on himself. The struggle was long and severe. Pride,
conscience, party spirit, were on one side; the intense love of
life on the other. He went during a time irresolutely to and fro.
He listened to his brother Jacobites; and his courage rose. He
listened to the agents of the government; and his heart sank
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 by an act of baseness. But his temper was very different
when he woke the next morning, when the courage which he had
drawn from wine and company had 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 his mind. During some time
he regularly wrote a confession every forenoon when he was sober,
and burned it every night when he was merry.14 His nonjuring
friends formed a plan for bringing Sancroft to visit the Tower,
in the hope, doubtless, that the exhortations of so great a
prelate and so great a saint would confirm the wavering virtue of
the prisoner.15 Whether this plan would have been successful may
be doubted; it was not carried into effect; the fatal hour drew
near; and the fortitude of Preston gave way. He confessed his
guilt, and named Clarendon, Dartmouth, the Bishop of Ely and
William Penn, as his accomplices. He added a long list of persons
against whom he could not himself give evidence, but who, if he
could trust to Penn's assurances, were friendly to King James.
Among these persons were Devonshire and Dorset.16 There is not
the slightest reason to believe that either of these great
noblemen ever had any dealings, direct or indirect, with Saint
Germains. It is not, however, necessary to accuse Penn of
deliberate falsehood. He was credulous and garrulous. The Lord
Steward and the Lord Chamberlain had shared in the vexation with
which their party had observed the leaning of William towards the
Tories; and they had probably expressed that vexation
unguardedly. So weak a man as Penn, wishing to find Jacobites
every where, and prone to believe whatever he wished, might
easily put an erroneous construction on invectives such as the
haughty and irritable Devonshire was but too ready to utter, and
on sarcasms such as, in moments of spleen, dropped but too easily
from the lips of the keenwitted Dorset. Caermarthen, a Tory, and
a Tory who had been mercilessly persecuted by the Whigs, was
disposed to make the most of this idle hearsay. But he received
no encouragement from his master, who, of all the great
politicians mentioned in history, was the least prone to
suspicion. When William returned to England, Preston was brought
before him, and was commanded to repeat the confession which had
already been made to the ministers. The King stood behind the
Lord President's chair and listened gravely while Clarendon,
Dartmouth, Turner and Penn were named. But as soon as the
prisoner, passing from what he could himself testify, began to
repeat the stories which Penn had told him, William touched
Caermarthen on the shoulder and said, "My Lord, we have had too
much of this."17 This judicious magnanimity had its proper
reward. Devonshire and Dorset became from that day more zealous
than ever in the cause of the master who, in spite of calumny for
which their own indiscretion had perhaps furnished some ground,
had continued to repose confidence in their loyalty.18

Even those who were undoubtedly criminal were generally treated
with great lenity. Clarendon lay in the Tower about six months.
His guilt was fully established; and a party among the Whigs
called loudly and importunately for his head. But he was saved by
the pathetic entreaties of his brother Rochester, by the good
offices of the humane and generous Burnet, and by Mary's respect
for the memory of her mother. The prisoner's confinement was not
strict. He was allowed to entertain his friends at dinner. When
at length his health began to suffer from restraint, he was
permitted to go into the country under the care of a warder; 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 had offered to take the command of a French squadron
against his country. It was a serious aggravation of his guilt
that he had been one of the very first persons who took the oaths
to William and Mary. He was arrested and brought to the Council
Chamber. A narrative of what passed there, written by himself,
has been preserved. In that narrative he admits that he was
treated with great courtesy and delicacy. He vehemently asserted
his innocence. He declared that he had never corresponded with
Saint Germains, that he was no favourite there, and that Mary of
Modena in particular 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 of my blood rather than see
Portsmouth in the power of foreigners. I am not such a fool as to
think that King Lewis will conquer us merely for the benefit of
King James. I am certain that nothing can be truly imputed to me
beyond some foolish talk over a bottle." His protestations seem
to have produced some effect; for he was at first permitted to
remain in the gentle custody of the Black Rod. On further
inquiry, however, it was determined to send him to the Tower.
After a confinement of a few weeks he died of apoplexy; but he
lived long enough to complete his disgrace by offering his sword
to the new government, and by expressing in fervent language his
hope that he might, by the goodness of God and of Their
Majesties, have an opportunity of showing how much he hated the
French.20

Turner ran no serious risk; for the government was most unwilling
to send to the scaffold one of the Seven who had signed the
memorable petition. A warrant was however issued for his
apprehension; and his friends had little hope that he would
escape; for his nose was such as none who had seen it could
forget; and it was to little purpose that he put on a flowing wig
and that he suffered his beard to grow. The pursuit was 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 the
messengers. It chanced that, on the day on which they were sent
in search of him, he was attending a remarkable ceremony at some
distance from his home. An event had taken place which a
historian, whose object is 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 and to cast out devils.22 He was then a youth of pure
morals and grave deportment, with a perverse temper, with the
education of a labouring man, and with an intellect in the most
unhappy of all states, that is to say, too much disordered for
liberty, and not sufficiently disordered for Bedlam. The
circumstances in which he was placed were such as could scarcely
fail to bring out in the strongest form the constitutional
diseases of his mind. At the time when his faculties were
ripening, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Independents, Baptists,
were striving for mastery, and were, in every corner of the
realm, refuting and reviling each other. He wandered from
congregation to congregation; he heard priests harangue against
Puritans; he heard Puritans harangue against priests; and he in
vain applied for spiritual direction and consolation to doctors
of both parties. One jolly old clergyman of the Anglican
communion told him to smoke tobacco and sing psalms; another
advised him to go and lose some blood.23 The young inquirer
turned in disgust from these advisers to the Dissenters, and
found them also blind guides.24 After some time he came to the
conclusion that no human being was competent to instruct him in
divine things, and that the truth had been communicated to him by
direct inspiration from heaven. He argued that, as the division
of languages began at Babel, and as the persecutors of Christ put
on the cross an inscription in Latin, Greek and Hebrew, the
knowledge of languages, and more especially of Latin, Greek and
Hebrew, must be useless to a Christian minister.25 Indeed, he was
so far from knowing many languages, that he knew none; nor can
the most corrupt passage in Hebrew be more unintelligible to the
unlearned than his English often is to the most acute and
attentive reader.26 One of the precious truths which were
divinely revealed to this new apostle was, that it was falsehood
and adulation to use the second person plural instead of the
second person singular. Another was, that to talk of the month of
March was to worship the bloodthirsty god Mars, and that to talk
of Monday was to pay idolatrous homage to the moon. To say Good
morning or Good evening was highly reprehensible, for those
phrases evidently imported that God had made bad days and bad
nights.27 A Christian was bound to face death itself rather than
touch his hat to the greatest of mankind. When Fox was challenged
to produce any Scriptural authority for this dogma, he cited the
passage in which it is written that Shadrach, Meshech and
Abednego were thrown into the fiery furnace with their hats on;
and, if his own narrative may be trusted, the Chief Justice of
England was altogether unable to answer this argument except by
crying out, "Take him away, gaoler."28 Fox insisted much on the
not less weighty argument that the Turks never show their bare
heads to their superiors; and he asked, with great animation,
whether those who bore the noble name of Christians ought not to
surpass Turks in virtue.29 Bowing he strictly prohibited, and,
indeed, seemed to consider it as the effect of Satanical
influence; for, as he observed, the woman in the Gospel, while
she had a spirit of infirmity, was bowed together, and ceased to
bow as soon as Divine power had liberated her from the tyranny of
the Evil One.30 His expositions of the sacred writings were of a
very peculiar kind. Passages, which had been, in the apprehension
of all the readers of the Gospels during sixteen centuries,
figurative, he construed literally. Passages, which no human
being before him had ever understood in any other than a literal
sense, he construed figuratively. Thus, from those rhetorical
expressions in which the duty of patience under injuries is
enjoined he deduced the doctrine that selfdefence against pirates
and assassins is unlawful. On the other hand, the plain commands
to baptize with water, and to partake of bread and wine in
commemoration of the redemption of mankind, he pronounced to be
allegorical. He long wandered from place to place, teaching this
strange theology, shaking like an aspen leaf in his paroxysms of
fanatical excitement, forcing his way into churches, which he
nicknamed steeple houses interrupting prayers and sermons with
clamour and scurrility,31 and pestering rectors and justices with
epistles much resembling burlesques of those sublime odes in
which the Hebrew prophets foretold the calamities of Babylon and
Tyre.32 He soon acquired great notoriety by these feats. His
strange face, his strange chant, his immovable hat and his
leather breeches were known all over the country; and he boasts
that, as soon as the rumour was heard, "The Man in Leather
Breeches is coming," terror seized hypocritical professors, 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 sometimes
unjustly, for merely talking nonsense. He soon gathered round him
a body of disciples, some of whom went beyond himself in
absurdity. He has told us that one of his friends walked naked
through Skipton declaring the truth.34 and that another was
divinely moved to go naked during several years to marketplaces,
and to the houses of gentlemen and clergymen.35 Fox complains
bitterly that these pious acts, prompted by the Holy Spirit, were
requited by an untoward generation with hooting, pelting,
coachwhipping and horsewhipping. But, though he applauded the
zeal of the sufferers, he did not go quite to their lengths. 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
he ever thought it his duty to appear before the public without
that decent garment from which his popular appellation was
derived.

If we form our judgment of George Fox simply by looking at his
own actions and writings, we shall see no reason for placing him,
morally or intellectually, above Ludowick Muggleton or Joanna
Southcote. But it would be most unjust to rank the sect which
regards him as its founder with the Muggletonians or the
Southcotians. It chanced that among the thousands whom his
enthusiasm infected were a few persons whose abilities and
attainments were of a very different order from his own. Robert
Barclay was a man of considerable parts and learning. William
Penn, though inferior to Barclay in both natural and acquired
abilities, was a gentleman and a scholar. That such men should
have become the followers of George Fox ought not to astonish any
person who remembers what quick, vigorous and highly cultivated
intellects were in our own times duped by the unknown tongues.
The truth is that no powers of mind constitute a security against
errors of this description. Touching God and His ways with man,
the highest human faculties can discover little more than the
meanest. In theology the interval is small indeed between
Aristotle and a child, between Archimedes and a naked savage. It
is not strange, therefore, that wise men, weary of investigation,
tormented by uncertainty, longing to believe something, and yet
seeing objections to every thing, should submit themselves
absolutely to teachers who, with firm and undoubting faith, lay
claim to a supernatural commission. Thus we frequently see
inquisitive and restless spirits take refuge from their own
scepticism in the bosom of a church which pretends to
infallibility, and, after questioning the existence of a Deity,
bring themselves to worship a wafer. And thus it was that Fox
made some converts to whom he was immeasurably inferior in every
thing except the energy of his convictions. By these converts his
rude doctrines were polished into a form somewhat less shocking
to good sense and good taste. No proposition which he had laid
down was retracted. No indecent or ridiculous act which he had
done or approved was condemned; but what was most grossly absurd
in his theories and practices was softened down, or at least not
obtruded on the public; whatever could be made to appear specious
was set in the fairest light; his gibberish was translated into
English; meanings which he would have been quite unable to
comprehend were put on his phrases; and his system, so much
improved that he would not have known it again, was defended by
numerous citations from Pagan philosophers and Christian fathers
whose names he had never heard.37 Still, however, those who had
remodelled his theology continued to profess, and doubtless to
feel, profound reverence for him; and his crazy epistles were to
the last received and read with respect in Quaker meetings all
over the country. His death produced a sensation which was not
confined to his own disciples. On the morning of the funeral a
great multitude assembled round the meeting house in Gracechurch
Street. Thence the corpse was borne to the burial ground of the
sect near Bunhill Fields. Several orators addressed the crowd
which filled the cemetery. Penn was conspicuous among those
disciples who committed the venerable corpse to the earth. The
ceremony had scarcely been finished when he learned that warrants
were out against him. He instantly took flight, and remained many
months concealed from the public eye.38

A short time after his disappearance, Sidney received from him a
strange communication. Penn begged for an interview, but insisted
on a promise that he should be suffered to return unmolested to
his hiding place. Sidney obtained the royal permission to make an
appointment on these terms. Penn came to the rendezvous, and
spoke at length in his own defence. He declared that he was a
faithful subject of King William and Queen Mary, and that, if he
knew of any design against them, he would discover it. Departing
from his Yea and Nay, he protested, as in the presence of God,
that he knew of no plot, and that he did not believe that there
was any plot, unless the ambitious projects of the French
government might be called plots. Sidney, amazed probably by
hearing a person, who had such an abhorrence of lies that he
would not use the common forms of civility, and such an
abhorrence of oaths that he would not 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 were really no
plot, the letters and minutes which had been found on Ashton were
to be explained. This question Penn evaded. "If," he said, "I
could only see the King, I would confess every thing to him
freely. I would tell him much that it would be important for him
to know. It is only in that way that I can be of service to him.
A witness for the Crown I cannot be for my conscience will not
suffer me to be sworn." He assured Sidney that the most
formidable enemies of the government were the discontented Whigs.
"The Jacobites are not dangerous. There is not a man among them
who has common understanding. Some persons who came over from
Holland with the King are much more to be dreaded." It does not
appear that Penn mentioned any names. He was suffered to depart
in safety. No active 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 to France. After about three years of
wandering and lurking he, by the mediation of some eminent men,
who overlooked his faults for the sake of his good qualities,
made his peace with the government, and again ventured to resume
his ministrations. The return which he made for the lenity with
which he had been treated does not much raise his character.
Scarcely had he again begun to harangue in public about the
unlawfulness of war, when he sent a message earnestly exhorting
James to make an immediate descent on England with thirty
thousand men.39

Some months passed before the fate of Preston was decided. After
several respites, the government, convinced that, though he had
told much, he could tell more, fixed a day for his execution, and
ordered the sheriffs to have the machinery of death in
readiness.40 But he was again respited, and, after a delay of
some weeks, obtained a pardon, which, however, extended only to
his life, and left his property subject to all the consequences
of his attainder. As soon as he was set at liberty he 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
manor house in the North Riding of Yorkshire. There, at least, he
had not to endure the scornful looks of old associates who had
once thought him a man of dauntless courage and spotless honour,
but who now pronounced that he was at best a meanspirited coward,
and hinted their suspicions that he had been from the beginning a
spy and a trepan.42 He employed the short and sad remains of his
life in turning the Consolation of Boethius into English. The
translation was published after the translator's death. It is
remarkable chiefly on account of some very unsuccessful attempts
to enrich our versification with new metres, and on account of
the allusions with which the preface is filled. Under a thin veil
of figurative language, Preston exhibited to the public
compassion or contempt his own blighted fame and broken heart. He
complained that the tribunal which had sentenced him to death had
dealt with him more leniently than his former friends, and that
many, who had never been tried by temptations like his, had very
cheaply earned a reputation for courage by sneering at his
poltroonery, and by bidding defiance at a distance to horrors
which, when brought near, subdue even a constant spirit.

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

A few days after this event the rage of the malecontents began to
flame more fiercely than ever. The detection of the conspiracy of
which Preston was the chief had brought on a crisis in
ecclesiastical affairs. The nonjuring bishops had, during the
year which followed their deprivation, continued to reside in the
official mansions which had once been their own. Burnet had, at
Mary's request, laboured to effect a compromise. His direct
interference would probably have done more harm than good. He
therefore judiciously employed the agency of Rochester, who stood
higher in the estimation of the nonjurors than any statesman who
was not a nonjuror, and of Trevor, who, worthless as he was, had
considerable influence with the High Church party. Sancroft and
his brethren were informed that, if they would consent to perform
their spiritual duty, to ordain, to institute, to confirm, and to
watch over the faith and the morality of the priesthood, a bill
should be brought into Parliament to excuse them from taking the
oaths.44 This offer was imprudently liberal; but those to whom it
was made could not consistently accept it. For in the ordination
service, and indeed in almost every service of the Church,
William and Mary were designated as King and Queen. The only
promise that could be obtained from the deprived prelates was
that they would live quietly; and even this promise they had not
all kept. One of them at least had been guilty of treason
aggravated by impiety. He had, under the strong fear of being
butchered by the populace, declared that he abhorred the thought
of calling in the aid of France, and had invoked God to attest
the sincerity of this declaration. Yet, a short time after, he
bad been detected in plotting to bring a French army into
England; and he had written to assure the Court of Saint Germains
that he was acting in concert with his brethren, and especially
with Sancroft. The Whigs called loudly for severity. Even the
Tory counsellors of William owned that indulgence had been
carried to the extreme point. They made, however, a last attempt
to mediate. "Will you and your brethren," said Trevor to Lloyd,
the nonjuring Bishop of Norwich, "disown all connection with
Doctor Turner, and declare that what he has in his letters
imputed to you is false?" Lloyd evaded the question. It was now
evident that William's forbearance had only emboldened the
adversaries whom he had hoped to conciliate. Even Caermarthen,
even Nottingham, declared that it was high time to fill the
vacant sees.45

Tillotson was nominated to the Archbishopric, and was consecrated
on Whitsunday, in the church of St. Mary Le Bow. Compton, cruelly
mortified, refused to bear any part in the ceremony. His place
was supplied by Mew, Bishop of Winchester, who was assisted by
Burnet, Stillingfleet and Hough. The congregation was the most
splendid that had been seen in any place of worship since the
coronation. The Queen's drawingroom was, on that day, deserted.
Most of the peers who were in town met in the morning at Bedford
House, and went thence in procession to Cheapside. Norfolk,
Caermarthen and Dorset were conspicuous in the throng.
Devonshire, who was impatient to see his woods at Chatsworth in
their summer beauty, had deferred his departure in order to mark
his respect for Tillotson. The crowd which lined the streets
greeted the new Primate warmly. For he had, during many years,
preached in the City; and his eloquence, his probity and the
singular gentleness of his temper and manners, had made him the
favourite of the Londoners.46 But the congratulations and
applauses of his friends could not drown the roar of execration
which the Jacobites set up. According to them, he was a thief who
had not entered by the door, but had climbed over the fences. He
was a hireling whose own the sheep were not, who had usurped the
crook of the good shepherd, and who might well be expected to
leave the flock at the mercy of every wolf. He was an Arian, a
Socinian, a Deist, an Atheist. He had cozened the world by fine
phrases, and by a show of moral goodness: but he was in truth a
far more dangerous enemy of the Church than he could have been if
he had openly proclaimed himself a disciple of Hobbes, and had
lived as loosely as Wilmot. He had taught the fine gentlemen and
ladies who admired his style, and who were constantly seen round
his pulpit, that they might be very good Christians, and yet
might believe the account of the Fall in the book of Genesis to
be allegorical. Indeed they might easily be as good Christians as
he; for he had never been christened; his parents were
Anabaptists; he had lost their religion when he was a boy; and he
had never found another. In ribald lampoons he was nicknamed
Undipped John. The parish register of his baptism was produced in
vain. His enemies still continued to complain that they had lived
to see fathers of the Church who never were her children. They
made up a story that the Queen had felt bitter remorse for the
great crime by which she had obtained a throne, that in her agony
she had applied to Tillotson, and that he had comforted her by
assuring her that the punishment of the wicked in a future state
would not be eternal.47 The Archbishop's mind was naturally of
almost feminine delicacy, and had been rather softened than
braced by the habits of along life, during which contending sects
and factions had agreed in speaking of his abilities with
admiration and of his character with esteem. The storm of obloquy
which he had to face for the first time at more than sixty years
of age was too much for him. His spirits declined; his health
gave way; yet he neither flinched from his duty nor attempted to
revenge himself on his persecutors. A few days after his
consecration, some persons were seized while dispersing libels in
which he was reviled. The law officers of the Crown proposed to
institute prosecutions; but he insisted that nobody should be
punished on his account.48 Once, when he had company with him, a
sealed packet was put into his hands; he opened it; and out fell
a mask. His friends were shocked and incensed by this cowardly
insult; but the Archbishop, trying to conceal his anguish by a
smile, pointed to the pamphlets which covered his table, and said
that the reproach which the emblem of the mask was intended to
convey might be called gentle when compared with other reproaches
which he daily had to endure. After his death a bundle of the
savage lampoons which the nonjurors had circulated against him
was found among his papers with this indorsement: "I pray God
forgive them; I do."49

The temper of the deposed primate was very different. He seems to
have been under a complete delusion as to his own importance. The
immense popularity which he had enjoyed three years before, the
prayers and tears of the multitudes who had plunged into the
Thames to implore his blessing, the enthusiasm with which the
sentinels of the Tower had drunk his health under the windows of
his prison, the mighty roar of joy which had risen from Palace
Yard on the morning of his acquittal, the triumphant night when
every window from Hyde Park to Mile End had exhibited seven
candles, the midmost and tallest emblematical of him, were still
fresh in his recollection; nor had he the wisdom to perceive that
all this homage had been paid, not to his person, but to that
religion and to those liberties of which he was, for a moment,
the representative. The extreme tenderness with which the new
government had long persisted in treating him seems to have
confirmed him in his error. That a succession of conciliatory
messages was sent to him from Kensington, that he was offered
terms so liberal as to be scarcely consistent with the dignity of
the Crown and the welfare of the State, that his cold and
uncourteous answers could not tire out the royal indulgence,
that, in spite of the loud clamours of the Whigs, and of the
provocations daily given by the Jacobites, he was residing,
fifteen months after deprivation, in the metropolitan palace, these things
seemed to
him to indicate not the lenity but the timidity of the ruling
powers. He appears to have flattered himself that they would not
dare to eject him. The news, therefore, that his see had been
filled threw him into a passion which lasted as long as his life,
and which hurried him into many foolish and unseemly actions.
Tillotson, as soon as he was appointed, went to Lambeth in the
hope that he might be able, by courtesy and kindness, to soothe
the irritation of which he was the innocent cause. He stayed long
in the antechamber, and sent in his name by several servants; but
Sancroft would not even return an answer.50 Three weeks passed;
and still the deprived Archbishop showed no disposition to move.
At length he received an order intimating to him the royal
pleasure that he should quit the dwelling which had long ceased
to be his own, and in which he was only a guest. He resented this
order bitterly, and declared that he would not obey it. He would
stay till he was pulled out by the Sheriff's officers. He would
defend himself at law as long as he could do so without putting
in any plea acknowledging the authority of the usurpers.51 The
case was so clear that he could not, by any artifice of
chicanery, obtain more than a short delay. When judgment had been
given against him, he left the palace, but directed his steward
to retain possession. The consequence was that the steward was
taken into custody and heavily fined. Tillotson sent a kind
message to assure his predecessor that the fine should not be
exacted. But Sancroft was determined to have a grievance, and
would pay the money.52

From that time the great object of the narrowminded and peevish
old man was to tear in pieces the Church of which he had been the
chief minister. It was in vain that some of those nonjurors,
whose virtue, ability and learning were the glory of their party,
remonstrated against his 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 or resign, the true Bishops of our
sees. Those who assume our titles and functions will incur the
guilt of schism. But with us, if we act as becomes us, the schism
will die; and in the next generation the unity of the Church will
be restored. On the other hand, if we consecrate Bishops to
succeed us, the breach may last through ages, and we shall be
justly held accountable, not indeed for its origin, but for its
continuance." These considerations ought, on Sancroft's own
principles, to have had decisive weight with him; but his angry
passions prevailed. Ken quietly retired from the venerable palace
of Wells. He had done, he said, with strife, and should
henceforth vent his feelings not in disputes but in hymns. His
charities to the unhappy of all persuasions, especially to the
followers of Monmouth and to the persecuted Huguenots, had been
so large 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 offering to the most virtuous of the nonjurors
a tranquil and dignified asylum in the princely mansion of
Longleat. There Ken passed a happy and honoured old age, during
which he never regretted the sacrifice which he had made to what
he thought his duty, and yet constantly became more and more
indulgent to those whose views of duty differed from his.53

Sancroft was of a very different temper. He had, indeed, as
little to complain of as any man whom a revolution has ever
hurled down from an exalted station. He had at Fressingfield, in
Suffolk, a patrimonial estate, which, together with what he had
saved during a primacy of twelve years, enabled him to live, not
indeed as he had lived when he was the first peer of Parliament,
but in the style of an opulent country gentleman. He retired to
his hereditary abode; and there he passed the rest of his life in
brooding over his wrongs. Aversion to the Established Church
became as strong a feeling in him as it had been in Martin
Marprelate. He considered all who remained in communion with her
as heathens and publicans. He nicknamed Tillotson the Mufti. In
the room which was used as a chapel at Fressingfield no person
who had taken the oaths, or who attended the ministry of any
divine who had taken the oaths, was suffered to partake of the
sacred bread and wine. A distinction, however, was made between
two classes of offenders. A layman who remained in communion with
the Church was permitted to be present while prayers were read,
and was excluded only from the highest of Christian mysteries.
But with clergymen who had sworn allegiance to the Sovereigns in
possession Sancroft would not even pray. He took care that the
rule which he had laid down should be widely known, and, both by
precept and by example, taught his followers to look on the most
orthodox, the most devout, the most virtuous of those who
acknowledged William's authority with a feeling similar to that
with which the Jew regarded the Samaritan.54 Such intolerance
would have been reprehensible, even in a man contending for a
great principle. But Sancroft was contending merely for a name.
He was the author of the scheme of Regency. He was perfectly
willing to transfer the whole kingly power from James to William.
The question which, to this smallest and sourest of minds, seemed
important enough to justify the excommunicating of ten thousand
priests and of five millions of laymen was, whether the
magistrate to whom the whole kingly power was transferred should
assume the kingly title. Nor could Sancroft bear to think that
the animosity which he had excited would die with himself. Having
done all that he could to make the feud bitter, he determined to
make it eternal. A list of the divines who had been ejected from
their benefices was sent by him to Saint Germains with a request
that James would nominate two who might keep up the episcopal
succession. James, well pleased, doubtless, to see another sect
added to that multitude of sects which he had been taught to
consider as the reproach of Protestantism, named two fierce and
uncompromising nonjurors, Hickes and Wagstaffe, the former
recommended by Sancroft, the latter recommended by Lloyd, the
ejected Bishop of Norwich.55 Such was the origin of a
schismatical hierarchy, which, having, during a short time,
excited alarm, soon sank into obscurity and contempt, but which,
in obscurity and contempt, continued to drag on a languid
existence during several generations. The little Church, without
temples, revenues or dignities, was even more distracted by
internal disputes than the great Church, which retained
possession of cathedrals, tithes and peerages. Some nonjurors
leaned towards the ceremonial of Rome; others would not tolerate
the slightest departure from the Book of Common Prayer. Altar was
set up against altar. One phantom prelate pronounced the
consecration of another phantom prelate uncanonical. At length
the pastors were left absolutely without flocks. One of these
Lords spiritual very wisely turned surgeon; another left what he
had called his see, and settled in Ireland; and at length, in
1805, the last Bishop of that society which had proudly claimed
to be the only true Church of England dropped unnoticed into the
grave.56

The places of the bishops who had been ejected with Sancroft were
filled in a manner creditable to the government. Patrick
succeeded the traitor Turner. Fowler went to Gloucester. Richard
Cumberland, an aged divine, who had no interest at Court, and
whose only recommendations were his piety and erudition, was
astonished by learning from a newsletter which he found on the
table of a coffeehouse that he had been nominated to the See of
Peterborough.57 Beveridge was selected to succeed Ken; he
consented; and the appointment was actually announced in the
London Gazette. But Beveridge, though an honest, was not a
strongminded man. Some Jacobites expostulated with him; some
reviled him; his heart failed him; and he retracted. While the
nonjurors were rejoicing in this victory, he changed his mind
again; but too late. He had by his irresolution forfeited the
favour of William, and never obtained a mitre till Anne was on
the throne.58 The bishopric of Bath and Wells was bestowed on
Richard Kidder, a man of considerable attainments and blameless
character, but suspected of a leaning towards Presbyterianism.
About the same time Sharp, the highest churchman that had been
zealous for the Comprehension, and the lowest churchman that felt
a scruple about 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 of the new Dean was known, a clamour broke forth such as
perhaps no ecclesiastical appointment has ever produced, a
clamour made up of yells of hatred, of hisses of contempt, and of
shouts of triumphant and half insulting welcome; for the new Dean
was William Sherlock.

The story of his conversion deserves to be fully told; for it
throws great light on the character of the parties which then
divided the Church and the State. Sherlock was, in influence and
reputation, though not in rank, the foremost man among the
nonjurors. His authority and example had induced some of his
brethren, who had at first wavered, to resign their benefices.
The day of suspension came; the day of deprivation came; and
still he was firm. He seemed to have found, in the consciousness
of rectitude, and in meditation on the invisible world, ample
compensation for all his losses. While excluded from the pulpit
where his eloquence had once delighted the learned and polite
inmates of the Temple, he wrote that celebrated Treatise on Death
which, during many years, stood next to the Whole Duty of Man in
the bookcases of serious Arminians. Soon, however, it began to be
suspected that his resolution was giving way. He declared that he
would be no party to a schism; he advised those who sought his
counsel not to leave their parish churches; nay, finding that the
law which had ejected him from his cure did not interdict him
from performing divine service, he officiated at Saint Dunstan's,
and there prayed for King William and Queen Mary. The apostolical
injunction, he said, was that prayers should be made for all in
authority, and William and Mary were visibly in authority. His
Jacobite friends loudly blamed his inconsistency. How, they
asked, if you admit that the Apostle speaks in this passage of
actual authority, can you maintain that, in other passages of a
similar kind, he speaks only of legitimate authority? Or how can
you, without sin, designate as King, in a solemn address to God,
one whom you cannot, without sin, promise to obey as King? These
reasonings were unanswerable; and Sherlock soon began to think
them so; but the conclusion to which they led him was
diametrically opposed to the conclusion 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 was little reason to
expect any thing but tenfold darkness. In the reign of James the
First, Doctor John Overall, Bishop of Exeter, had written an
elaborate treatise on the rights of civil and ecclesiastical
governors. This treatise had been solemnly approved by the
Convocations of Canterbury and York, and might therefore be
considered as an authoritative exposition of the doctrine of the
Church of England. A copy of the manuscript was in Sancroft's
possession; and he, soon after the Revolution, sent it to the
press. He hoped, doubtless, that the publication would injure the
new government; but he was lamentably disappointed. The book
indeed condemned all resistance in terms as strong as he could
himself have used; but one passage which had escaped his notice
was decisive against himself and his fellow schismatics. Overall,
and the two Convocations which had given their sanction to
Overall's teaching, pronounced that a government, which had
originated in rebellion, ought, when thoroughly settled, to be
considered as ordained 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 which had sprung from the Revolution
might, at least since the battle of the Boyne and the flight of
James from Ireland, be fairly called a settled government, and
ought therefore to be passively obeyed till it should be
subverted by another revolution and succeeded by another settled
government.

Sherlock took the oaths, and speedily published, in justification
of his conduct, a pamphlet entitled The Case of Allegiance to
Sovereign Powers stated. The sensation produced by this work was
immense. Dryden's Hind and Panther had not raised so great an
uproar. Halifax's Letter to a Dissenter had not called forth so
many answers. The replies to the Doctor, the vindications of the
Doctor, the pasquinades on the Doctor, would fill a library. The
clamour redoubled when it was known that the convert had not only
been reappointed Master of the Temple, but had accepted the
Deanery of Saint Paul's, which had become vacant in consequence
of the deprivation of Sancroft and the promotion of Tillotson.
The rage of the nonjurors amounted almost to frenzy. Was it not
enough, they asked, to desert the true and pure Church, in this
her hour of sorrow and peril, without also slandering her? It was
easy to understand why a greedy, cowardly hypocrite should refuse
to take the oaths to the usurper as long as it seemed probable
that the rightful King would be restored, and should make haste
to swear after the battle of the Boyne. Such tergiversation in
times of civil discord was nothing new. What was new was that the
turncoat should try to throw his own guilt and shame on the
Church of England, and should proclaim that she had taught him to
turn against the weak who were in the right, and to cringe to the
powerful who were in the wrong. Had such indeed been her doctrine
or her practice in evil days? Had she abandoned her Royal Martyr
in the prison or on the scaffold? Had she enjoined her children
to pay obedience to the Rump or to the Protector? Yet was the
government of the Rump or of the Protector less entitled to be
called a settled government than the government of William and
Mary? Had not the battle of Worcester been as great a blow to the
hopes of the House of Stuart as the battle of the Boyne? Had not
the chances of a Restoration seemed as small in 1657 as they
could seem to any judicious man in 1691? In spite of invectives
and sarcasms, however, there was Overall's treatise; there were
the approving votes of the two Convocations; and it was much
easier to rail at Sherlock than to explain away either the
treatise or the votes. One writer maintained that by a thoroughly
settled government must have been meant a government of which the
title was uncontested. Thus, he said, the government of the
United Provinces became a settled government when it was
recognised by Spain, and, but for that recognition, would never
have been a settled government to the end of time. Another
casuist, somewhat less austere, pronounced that a government,
wrongful in its origin, might become a settled government after
the lapse of a century. On the thirteenth of February 1789,
therefore, and not a day earlier, Englishmen would be at liberty
to swear allegiance to a government sprung from the Revolution.
The history of the chosen people was ransacked for precedents.
Was Eglon's a settled government when Ehud stabbed him? Was
Joram's a settled government when Jehe shot him? But the leading
case was that of Athaliah. It was indeed a case which furnished
the malecontents with many happy and pungent allusions; a kingdom
treacherously seized by an usurper near in blood to the throne;
the rightful prince long dispossessed; a part of the sacerdotal
order true, through many disastrous years, to the Royal House; a
counterrevolution at length effected by the High Priest at the
head of the Levites. Who, it was asked, would dare to blame the
heroic pontiff who had restored the heir of David? Yet was not
the government of Athaliah as firmly settled as that of the
Prince of Orange?

Hundreds of pages written at this time about the rights of Joash
and the bold enterprise of Jehoiada are mouldering in the ancient
bookcases of Oxford and Cambridge. While Sherlock was thus
fiercely attacked by his old friends, he was not left unmolested
by his old enemies. Some vehement Whigs, among whom Julian
Johnson was conspicuous, declared that Jacobitism itself was
respectable when compared with the vile doctrine which had been
discovered in the Convocation Book. That passive obedience was
due to Kings was doubtless an absurd and pernicious notion. Yet
it was impossible not to respect the consistency and fortitude of
men who thought themselves bound to bear true allegiance, at all
hazards, to an unfortunate, a deposed, an exiled oppressor. But
the theory which Sherlock had learned from Overall was unmixed
baseness and wickedness. A cause was to be abandoned, not because
it was unjust, but because it was unprosperous. Whether James had
been a tyrant or had been the father of his people was quite
immaterial. If he had won the battle of the Boyne we should have
been bound as Christians to be his slaves. He had lost it; and
we were bound as Christians to be his foes. Other Whigs
congratulated the proselyte on having come, by whatever road, to
a right practical conclusion, but could not refrain from sneering
at the history which he gave of his conversion. He was, they
said, a man of eminent learning and abilities. He had studied the
question of allegiance long and deeply. He had written much about
it. Several months had been allowed him for reading, prayer and
reflection before he incurred suspension, several months more
before he incurred deprivation. He had formed an opinion for
which he had declared himself ready to suffer martyrdom; he had
taught that opinion to others; and he had then changed that
opinion solely because he had discovered that it had been, not
refuted, but dogmatically pronounced erroneous by the two
Convocations more than eighty years before. Surely, this was to
renounce all liberty of private judgment, and to ascribe to the
Synods of Canterbury and York an infallibility which the Church
of England had declared that even Oecumenical Councils could not
justly claim. If, it was sarcastically said, all our notions of
right and wrong, in matters of vital importance to the well being
of society, are to be suddenly altered by a few lines of
manuscript found in a corner of the library at Lambeth, it is
surely much to be wished, for the peace of mind of humble
Christians, that all the documents to which this sort of
authority belongs should be rummaged out and sent to the press as
soon as possible; for, unless this be done, we may all, like the
Doctor when he refused the oaths last year, be committing sins in
the full persuasion that we are discharging duties. In truth, it
is not easy to believe that the Convocation Book furnished
Sherlock with any thing more than a pretext for doing what he had
made up his mind to do. The united force of reason and interest
had doubtless convinced him that his passions and prejudices had
led him into a great error. That error he determined to recant;
and it cost him less to say that his opinion had been changed by
newly discovered evidence, than that he had formed a wrong
judgment with all the materials for the forming of a right
judgment before him. The popular 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 her house and her carriage,
the plenty of her table and the prospects of her children, than
about the patriarchal origin of government or the meaning of the
word Abdication. She had, it was asserted, given her husband no
peace by day or by night till he had got over his scruples. In
letters, fables, songs, dialogues without number, her powers of
seduction and intimidation were malignantly extolled. She was
Xanthippe pouring water on the head of Socrates. She was Dalilah
shearing Samson. She was Eve forcing 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 makers celebrated the victory
of Mrs. Sherlock, another class of assailants fell on the
theological reputation of her spouse. Till he took the oaths, he
had always been considered as the most orthodox of divines. But
the captious and malignant criticism to which his writings were
now subjected would have found heresy in the Sermon on the Mount;
and he, unfortunately, was rash enough to publish, at the very
moment when the outcry against his political tergiversation was
loudest, his thoughts on the mystery of the Trinity. It is
probable that, at another time, his work would have been hailed
by good Churchmen as a triumphant answer to the Socinians and
Sabellians. But, unhappily, in his zeal against Socinians and
Sabellians, he used expressions which might be construed into
Tritheism. Candid judges would have remembered that the true path
was closely pressed on the right and on the left by error, and
that it was scarcely possible to keep far enough from danger on
one side without going very close to danger on the other. But
candid judges Sherlock was not likely to find among the
Jacobites. His old allies affirmed that he had incurred all the
fearful penalties denounced in the Athanasian Creed against those
who divide the substance. Bulky quartos were written to prove
that he held the existence of three distinct Deities; and some
facetious malecontents, who troubled themselves very little about
the Catholic verity, amused the town by lampoons in English and
Latin on his heterodoxy. "We," said one of these jesters, "plight
our faith to one King, and call one God to attest our promise. We
cannot think it strange that there should be more than one King
to whom the Doctor has sworn allegiance, when we consider that
the Doctor has more Gods than one to swear by."61

Sherlock would, perhaps, have doubted whether the government to
which he had submitted was entitled to be called a settled
government, if he had known all the dangers by which it was
threatened. Scarcely had Preston's plot been detected; when a new
plot of a very different kind was formed in the camp, in the
navy, in the treasury, in the very bedchamber of the King. This
mystery of iniquity has, through five generations, been gradually
unveiling, but is not yet entirely unveiled. Some parts which are
still obscure may possibly, by the discovery of letters or
diaries now reposing under the dust of a century and a half, be
made clear to our posterity. The materials, however, which are at
present accessible, are sufficient for the construction of a
narrative not to be read without shame and loathing.62

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

Early in 1691, some of these men began to hold secret
communication with Saint Germains. Wicked and base as their
conduct was, there was in it nothing surprising. They did after
their kind. The times were troubled. A thick cloud was upon the
future. The most sagacious and experienced politician could not
see with any clearness three months before him. To a man of
virtue and honour, indeed, this mattered little. His uncertainty
as to what the morrow might bring forth might make him anxious,
but could not make him perfidious. Though left in utter darkness
as to what concerned his interests, he had the sure guidance of
his principles. But, unhappily, men of virtue and honour were not
numerous among the courtiers of that age. Whitehall had been,
during thirty years, a seminary of every public and private vice,
and swarmed with lowminded, doubledealing, selfseeking
politicians. These politicians now acted as it was natural that
men profoundly immoral should act at a crisis of which none could
predict the issue. Some of them might have a slight predilection
for William; others a slight predilection for James; but it was
not by any such predilection that the conduct of any of the breed
was guided. If it had seemed certain that William would stand,
they would all have been for William. If it had seemed certain
that James would be restored, they would all have been for James.
But what was to be done when the chances appeared to be almost
exactly balanced? There were honest men of one party who would
have answered, To stand by the true King and the true Church,
and, if necessary, to die for them like Laud. There were honest
men of the other party who would have answered, To stand by the
liberties of England and the Protestant religion, and, if
necessary, to die for them like Sidney. But such consistency was
unintelligible to many of the noble and the powerful. Their
object was to be safe in every event. They therefore openly took
the oath of allegiance to one King, and secretly plighted their
word to the other. They were indefatigable in obtaining
commissions, patents of peerage, pensions, grants of crown land,
under the great seal of William; and they had in their secret
drawers promises of pardon in the handwriting of James.

Among those who were guilty of this wickedness three men stand
preeminent, Russell, Godolphin and Marlborough. No three men
could be, in head and heart, more unlike to one another; and the
peculiar qualities of each gave a peculiar character to his
villany. The treason of Russell is to be attributed partly to
fractiousness; the treason of Godolphin is to be attributed
altogether to timidity; the treason of Marlborough was the
treason of a man of great genius and boundless ambition.

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 England and Holland with the rank of Admiral of the
Fleet. He was Treasurer of the Navy. He had a pension of three
thousand pounds a year. Crown property 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, with considerable
talents both for war and for administration, and with a certain
public spirit, which showed itself by glimpses even in the very
worst parts of his life, he was emphatically a bad man, insolent,
malignant, greedy, faithless. He conceived that the great
services which he had performed at the time of the Revolution had
not been adequately rewarded. Every thing that was given to
others seemed to him to be pillaged from himself. A letter is
still extant which he wrote to William about this time. It is
made up of boasts, reproaches and sneers. The Admiral, with
ironical professions of humility and loyalty, begins by asking
permission to put his wrongs on paper, because his bashfulness
would not suffer him to explain himself by word of mouth. His
grievances were intolerable. Other people got grants of royal
domains; but he could get scarcely any thing. Other people could
provide for their dependants; but his recommendations were
uniformly disregarded. The income which he derived from the
royal favour might seem large; but he had poor relations; and the
government, instead of doing its duty by them, had most
unhandsomely left them to his care. He had a sister who ought to
have a pension; for, without one, she could not give portions to
her daughters. He had a brother who, for want of a place, had
been reduced to 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 the greatest efforts to avert it. And
there is reason to believe that this complaint came from his
heart. For, next to his own interests, those of his party were
dear to him; and, even when he was most inclined to become a
Jacobite, he never had the smallest disposition to become a Tory.
In the temper which this letter indicates, he readily listened to
the suggestions of David Lloyd, one of the ablest and most active
emissaries who at this time were constantly plying between France
and England. Lloyd conveyed to James assurances that Russell
would, when a favourable opportunity should present itself, try
to effect by means of the fleet what Monk had effected in the
preceding generation by means of the army.63 To what extent these
assurances were sincere was a question about which men who knew
Russell well, and who were minutely informed as to his conduct,
were in doubt. It seems probable that, during many months, he did
not know his own mind. His interest was to stand well, as long as
possible, with both Kings. His irritable and imperious nature was
constantly impelling him to quarrel with both. His spleen was
excited one week by a dry answer from William, and the next week
by an absurd proclamation from James. Fortunately the most
important day of his life, the day from which all his subsequent
years took their colour, found him out of temper with the
banished King.

Godolphin had not, and did not pretend to have, any cause of
complaint against the government which he served. He was First
Commissioner of the Treasury. He had been protected, trusted,
caressed. Indeed the favour shown to him had excited many
murmurs. Was it fitting, the Whigs had indignantly asked, that a
man who had been high in office through the whole 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 the Board of
Treasury with two Papists, who had attended an idolatress to her
altar, should be among the chief ministers of a Prince whose
title to the throne was derived from the Declaration of Rights?
But on William this clamour had produced no effect; and none of
his English servants seems to have had at this time a larger
share of his confidence than Godolphin.

Nevertheless, the Jacobites did not despair. One of the most
zealous among them, a gentleman named Bulkeley, who had formerly
been on terms of intimacy with Godolphin, undertook to see what
could be done. He called at the Treasury, and tried to draw the
First Lord into political talk. This was no easy matter; for
Godolphin was not a man to put himself lightly into the power of
others. His reserve was proverbial; and he was especially
renowned for the dexterity with which he, through life, turned
conversation away from matters of state to a main of cocks or the
pedigree of a racehorse. The visit ended without his uttering a
word indicating that he remembered the existence of King James.

Bulkeley, however, was not to be so repulsed. He came again, and
introduced the subject which was nearest his heart. Godolphin
then asked after his old master and mistress in the mournful tone
of a man who despaired of ever being reconciled to them. Bulkeley
assured him that King James was ready to forgive all the past.
"May I tell His Majesty that you will try to deserve his favour?"
At this Godolphin rose, said something about the trammels of
office and his wish to be released from them, and put an end to
the interview.

Bulkeley soon made a third attempt. By this time Godolphin had
learned some things which shook his confidence in the stability
of the government which he served. He began to think, as he would
himself have expressed it, that he had betted too deep on the
Revolution, and that it was time to hedge. Evasions would no
longer serve his turn. It was necessary to speak out. He spoke
out, and declared himself a devoted servant of King James. "I
shall take an early opportunity of resigning my 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, he produced
a most friendly and confidential letter which he had lately
received from William. "You see how entirely the Prince of Orange
trusts me. He tells me that he cannot do without me, and that
there is no Englishman for whom he has so great a kindness; but
all this weighs nothing with me in comparison of my duty to my
lawful King."

If the First Lord of the Treasury really had scruples about
betraying his trust, those scruples were soon so effectually
removed that he very complacently continued, during six years, to
eat the bread of one master, while secretly sending professions
of attachment and promises of service to another.

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

Marlborough was in a very different situation from that of
William's other servants. Lloyd might make overtures to Russell,
and Bulkeley to Godolphin. But all the agents of the banished
Court stood aloof from the traitor of Salisbury. That shameful
night seemed to have for ever separated the perjured deserter
from the Prince whom he had ruined. James had, even in the last
extremity, when his army was in full retreat, when his whole
kingdom had risen against him, declared that he would never
pardon Churchill, never, never. By all the Jacobites the name of
Churchill was held in peculiar abhorrence; and, in the prose and
verse which came forth daily from their secret presses, a
precedence in infamy, among all the many traitors of the age, was
assigned to him. In the order of things which had sprung from the
Revolution, he was one of the great men of England, high in the
state, high in the army. He had been created an Earl. He had a
large share in the military administration. The emoluments,
direct and indirect, of the places and commands which he held
under the Crown were believed at the Dutch Embassy to amount to
twelve thousand pounds a year. In the event of a
counterrevolution it seemed that he had nothing in prospect but a
garret in Holland, or a scaffold on Tower Hill. It might
therefore have been expected that he would serve his new master
with fidelity, not indeed with the fidelity of Nottingham, which
was the fidelity of conscientiousness, not with the fidelity of
Portland, which was the fidelity of affection, but with the not
less stubborn fidelity of despair.

Those who thought thus knew but little of Marlborough. Confident
in his own powers of deception, he resolved, since the Jacobite
agents would not seek him, to seek them. He therefore sent to beg
an interview with Colonel Edward Sackville.

Sackville was astonished and not much pleased by the message. He
was a sturdy Cavalier of the old school. He had been persecuted
in the days of the Popish plot for manfully saying what he
thought, and what every body now thinks, about Oates and
Bedloe.64 Since the Revolution he had put his neck in peril for
King James, had been chased by officers with warrants, and had
been designated as a traitor in a proclamation to which
Marlborough himself had been a party.65 It was not without
reluctance that the stanch royalist crossed the hated threshold
of the deserter. He was repaid for his effort by the edifying
spectacle of such an agony of repentance as he had never before
seen. "Will you," said Marlborough, "be my intercessor with the
King? Will you tell him what I suffer? My crimes now appear to me
in their true light; and I shrink with horror from the
contemplation. The thought of them is with me day and night. I
sit down to table; but I cannot eat. I throw myself on my bed;
but I cannot sleep. I am ready to sacrifice every thing, to brave
every thing, to bring utter ruin on my fortunes, if only I may be
free from 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 but acknowledge that, if the arch traitor, who had
hitherto opposed to conscience and to public opinion the same
cool and placid hardihood which distinguished him on fields of
battle, had really begun to feel remorse, it would be absurd to
reject, on account of his unworthiness, the inestimable services
which it was in his power to render to the good cause. He sate in
the interior council; he held high command in the army; he had
been recently entrusted, and would doubtless again be entrusted,
with the direction of important military operations. It was true
that no man had incurred equal guilt; but it was true also that
no man 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 he sincere? Had he not been just as loud in
professions of loyalty on the very eve of his crime? It was
necessary to put him to the test. Several tests were applied by
Sackville and Lloyd. Marlborough was required to furnish full
information touching the strength and the distribution of all the
divisions of the English army; and he complied. He was required
to 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 his fidelity that he gave valuable intelligence
about what was doing in the office of the Secretary of State. A
deposition had been sworn against one zealous royalist. A warrant
was preparing against another. These intimations saved several of
the malecontents from imprisonment, if not from the gallows; and
it was impossible for them not to feel some relenting towards the
awakened sinner to whom they owed so much.

He however, in his secret conversations with his new allies, laid
no claim 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 be permitted to make, at the cost of his life,
some poor atonement to the gracious master, whom he had indeed
basely injured, but whom he had never ceased to love. It was not
improbable that, in the summer, he might command the English
forces in Flanders. Was it wished that he should bring them over
in a body to the French camp? If such were the royal pleasure, he
would undertake that the thing should be done. But on the whole
he thought that it would be better to wait till the next session
of Parliament. And then he hinted at a plan which he afterwards
more fully matured, for expelling the usurper by means of the
English legislature and the English army. In the meantime he
hoped that James would command Godolphin not to quit the
Treasury. A private man could do little for the good cause. One
who was the director of the national finances, and the depository
of the gravest secrets of state, might render inestimable
services.

Marlborough's pretended repentance imposed so completely on those
who managed the affairs of James in London that they sent Lloyd
to France, with the cheering intelligence that the most depraved
of all rebels had been wonderfully transformed into a loyal
subject. The tidings filled James with delight and hope. Had he
been wise, they would have excited in him only aversion and
distrust. It was absurd to imagine that a man really heartbroken
by remorse and shame for one act of perfidy would determine to
lighten his conscience by committing a second act of perfidy as
odious and as disgraceful as the first. The promised atonement
was so wicked and base that it never could be made by any man
sincerely desirous to atone for past wickedness and baseness. The
truth was that, when Marlborough told the Jacobites that his
sense of guilt prevented him from swallowing his food by day and
taking his rest at night, he was laughing at them. The loss of
half a guinea would have done more to spoil his appetite and to
disturb his slumbers than all the terrors of an evil conscience.
What his offers really proved was that his former crime had
sprung, not from an ill regulated zeal for the interests of his
country and his religion, but from a deep and incurable moral
disease which had infected the whole man. James, however, partly
from dulness and partly from selfishness, could never see any
immorality in any action by which he was benefited. To conspire
against him, to betray him, to break an oath of allegiance sworn
to him, were crimes for which no punishment here or hereafter
could be too severe. But to murder his enemies, to break faith
with his enemies was not only innocent but laudable. The
desertion at Salisbury had been the worst of crimes; for it had
ruined him. A similar desertion in Flanders would be an
honourable 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 restore his 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, for his own sake that he asked
this. But he was confident that, with such a document in his
hands, he could bring back to the right path some persons of
great note who adhered to the usurper, only because they imagined
that they had no mercy to expect from the legitimate King. They
would return to their duty as soon as they saw that even the
worst of all criminals had, on his repentance, been generously
forgiven. The promise was written, sent, and carefully treasured
up. Marlborough had now attained one object, an object which was
common to him with Russell and Godolphin. But he had other
objects which neither Russell nor Godolphin had ever
contemplated. There is, as we shall hereafter see, strong reason
to believe that this wise, brave, wicked man, was meditating a
plan worthy of his fertile intellect and daring spirit, and not
less worthy of his deeply corrupted heart, a plan which, if it
had not been frustrated by strange means, would have ruined
William without benefiting James, and would have made the
successful traitor master of England and arbiter of Europe.

Thus things stood, when, in May 1691, William, after a short and
busy sojourn in England, set out again for the Continent, where
the regular campaign was about to open. He took with him
Marlborough, whose abilities he justly appreciated, and of whose
recent negotiations with Saint Germains he had not the faintest
suspicion. At the Hague several important military and political
consultations were held; and, on every occasion, the superiority
of the accomplished Englishman was felt by the most distinguished
soldiers and statesmen of the United Provinces. Heinsius, long
after, used to relate a conversation which took place at this
time between William and the Prince of Vaudemont, one of the
ablest commanders in the Dutch service. Vaudemont spoke well of
several English officers, and among them of Talmash and Mackay,
but pronounced Marlborough superior beyond comparison to the
rest. "He has every quality of a general. His very look shows it.
He cannot fail to achieve something great." "I really believe,
cousin," answered the King, "that my Lord will make good every
thing that you have said of him."

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

And now Marlborough had an opportunity of proving the sincerity
of those professions by which he had obtained from a heart, well
described by himself as harder than a marble chimneypiece, the
pardon of an offence such as might have moved even a gentle
nature to deadly resentment. He received from Saint Germains a
message claiming the instant performance of his promise to desert
at the head of his troops. He was told that this was the greatest
service which he could render to the Crown. His word was pledged;
and the gracious master who had forgiven all past errors
confidently expected that it would be redeemed. The hypocrite
evaded the demand with characteristic dexterity. In the most
respectful and affectionate language he excused himself for not
immediately obeying the royal commands. The promise which he was
required to fulfil had not been quite correctly understood. There
had been some misapprehension on the part of the messengers. To
carry over a regiment or two would do more harm than good. To
carry over a whole army was a business which would require much
time and management.66 While James was murmuring over these
apologies, and wishing that he had not been quite so placable,
William arrived at the head quarters of the allied forces, and
took the chief command.

The military operations in Flanders recommenced early in June and
terminated at the close of September. No important action took
place. The two armies marched and countermarched, drew near and
receded. During some time they confronted each other with less
than a league between them. But neither William nor Luxemburg
would fight except at an advantage; and neither gave the other
any advantage. Languid as the campaign was, it is on one account
remarkable. During more than a century our country had sent no
great force to make war by land out of the British isles. Our
aristocracy had therefore long ceased to be a military class. The
nobles of France, of Germany, of Holland, were generally
soldiers. It would probably have been difficult to find in the
brilliant circle which surrounded Lewis at Versailles a single
Marquess or Viscount of forty who had not been at some battle or
siege. But the immense majority of our peers, baronets and
opulent esquires had never served except in the trainbands, and
had never borne a part in any military exploit more serious than
that of putting down a riot or of keeping a street clear for a
procession. The generation which had fought at Edgehill and
Lansdowne had nearly passed away. The wars of Charles the Second
had been almost entirely maritime. During his reign therefore the
sea service had been decidedly more the mode than the land
service; and, repeatedly, when our fleet sailed to encounter the
Dutch, such multitudes of men of fashion had gone on board that
the parks and the theatres had been left desolate. In 1691 at
length, for the first time since Henry the Eighth laid siege to
Boulogne, an English army appeared on the Continent under the
command of an English king. A camp, which was also a court, was
irresistibly attractive to many young patricians full of natural
intrepidity, and ambitious of the favour which men of
distinguished bravery have always found in the eyes of women. To
volunteer for Flanders became the rage among the fine gentlemen
who combed their flowing wigs and exchanged their richly perfumed
snuffs at the Saint James's Coffeehouse. William's headquarters
were enlivened by a crowd of splendid equipages and by a rapid
succession of sumptuous banquets. For among the high born and
high spirited youths who repaired to his standard were some who,
though quite willing to face a battery, were not at all disposed
to deny themselves the luxuries with which they had been
surrounded in Soho Square. In a few months Shadwell brought these
valiant fops and epicures on the stage. The town was made merry
with the character of a courageous but prodigal and effeminate
coxcomb, who is impatient to cross swords with the best men in
the French household troops, but who is much dejected by learning
that he may find it difficult to have his champagne iced daily
during the summer. He carries with him cooks, confectioners and
laundresses, a waggonload of plate, a wardrobe of laced and
embroidered suits, and much rich tent furniture, of which the
patterns have been chosen by a committee of fine ladies.67

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

From October 1690 till May 1691, no military operation on a large
scale was attempted in that kingdom. The area of the island was,
during the winter and spring, not unequally divided between the
contending races. The whole of Ulster, the greater part of
Leinster and about one third of Munster had submitted to the
English. The whole of Connaught, the greater part of Munster, and
two or three counties of Leinster were held by the Irish. The
tortuous boundary formed by  William's garrisons ran in a north
eastern direction from the bay of Castlehaven to Mallow, and
then, inclining still further eastward, proceeded to Cashel. From
Cashel the line went to Mullingar, from Mullingar to Longford,
and from Longford to Cavan, skirted Lough Erne on the west, and
met the ocean again 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 and Justices of the Peace had been appointed; and
assizes were, after a long interval, held in several county
towns. The colonists had meanwhile been formed into a strong
militia, under the command of officers who had commissions from
the Crown. The trainbands of the capital consisted of two
thousand five hundred foot, two troops of horse and two troops of
dragoons, all Protestants and all well armed and clad.69 On the
fourth of November, the anniversary of William's birth, and on
the fifth, the anniversary of his landing at Torbay, the whole of
this force appeared in all the pomp of war. The vanquished and
disarmed natives assisted, with suppressed grief and anger, at
the triumph of the caste which they had, five months before,
oppressed and plundered with impunity. The Lords Justices went in
state to Saint Patrick's Cathedral; bells were rung; bonfires
were lighted; hogsheads of ale and claret were set abroach in the
streets; fireworks were exhibited on College Green; a great
company of nobles and public functionaries feasted at the Castle;
and, as the second course came up, the trumpets sounded, and
Ulster King at Arms proclaimed, in Latin, French and English,
William and Mary, by the grace of God, King and Queen of Great
Britain, France, and Ireland.70

Within the territory where the Saxon race was dominant, trade and
industry had already begun to revive. The brazen counters which
bore the image and superscription of James gave place to silver.
The fugitives who had taken refuge in England came back in
multitudes; and, by their intelligence, diligence and thrift, the
devastation caused by two years of confusion and robbery was soon
in part repaired. Merchantmen heavily laden were constantly
passing and repassing Saint George's Channel. The receipts of the
custom houses on the eastern coast, from Cork to Londonderry,
amounted in six months to sixty-seven thousand five hundred
pounds, a sum such as would have been thought extraordinary even
in the most prosperous times.71

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

In spite of all precautions and severities, however, the Celt
found many opportunities of taking a sly revenge. Houses and
barns were frequently burned; soldiers were frequently murdered;
and it was scarcely possible to obtain evidence against the
malefactors, who had with them the sympathies of the whole
population. On such occasions the government sometimes ventured
on acts which seemed better suited to a Turkish than to an
English administration. One of these acts became a favourite
theme of Jacobite pamphleteers, and was the subject of a serious
parliamentary inquiry at Westminster. Six musketeers were found
butchered only a few miles from Dublin. The inhabitants of the
village where the crime had been committed, men, women, and
children, were driven like sheep into the Castle, where the Privy
Council was sitting. The heart of one of the assassins, named
Gafney, failed him. He consented to be a witness, was examined by
the Board, acknowledged his guilt, and named some of his
accomplices. He was then removed in custody; but a priest
obtained access to him during a few minutes. What passed during
those few minutes appeared when he was a second time brought
before the Council. He had the 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 are a rogue; You
are a villain; You shall be hanged; Where is the Provost Marshal?"
The Provost Marshal came. "Take that man," said Coningsby,
pointing to Gafney; "take that man, and hang him." There was no
gallows ready; but the carriage of a gun served the purpose; and
the prisoner was instantly tied up without a trial, without even
a written order for the execution; and this though the courts of
law were sitting at the distance of only a few hundred yards. The
English House of Commons, some years later, after a long
discussion, resolved, without a division, that the order for the
execution of Gafney was arbitrary and illegal, but that
Coningsby's fault was so much extenuated by the circumstances in
which 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
Saxon of the pale was at this time harassed. His allies caused
him almost as much annoyance as his helots. The help of troops
from abroad was indeed necessary to him; but it was dearly
bought. Even William, in whom the whole civil and military
authority was concentrated, had found it difficult to maintain
discipline in an army collected from many lands, and composed in
great part of mercenaries accustomed to live at free quarters.
The powers which had been united in him were now divided and
subdivided. The two Lords justices considered the civil
administration as their province, and left the army to the
management of Ginkell, who was General in Chief. Ginkell kept
excellent order among the auxiliaries from Holland, who were
under his more immediate command. But his authority over the
English and the Danes was less entire; and unfortunately their
pay was, during part of the winter, in arrear. They indemnified
themselves by excesses and exactions for the want of that which
was their due; and it was hardly possible to punish men with
severity for not choosing to starve with arms in their hands. At
length in the spring large supplies of money and stores arrived;
arrears were paid up; rations were plentiful; and a more rigid
discipline was enforced. But too many traces of the bad habits
which the soldiers had contracted were discernible till the close
of the war.74

In that part of Ireland, meanwhile, which still acknowledged
James as King, there could hardly be said to be any law, any
property, or any government. The Roman Catholics of Ulster and
Leinster had fled westward by tens of thousands, driving before
them a large part of the cattle which had escaped the havoc of
two terrible years. The influx of food into the Celtic region,
however, was far from keeping pace with the influx of consumers.
The necessaries of life were scarce. Conveniences to which every
plain farmer and burgess in England was accustomed could hardly
be procured by nobles and generals. No coin was to be seen except
lumps of base metal which were called crowns and shillings.
Nominal prices were enormously high. A quart of ale cost two and
sixpence, a quart of brandy three pounds. The only towns of any
note on the western coast were Limerick and Galway; and the
oppression which the shopkeepers of those towns underwent was
such that many of them stole away with the remains of their
stocks to the English territory, where a Papist, though he had to
endure much restraint and much humiliation, was allowed to put
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 by ruffians who pretended that they were commissioned to
procure stores for the public service; and the owner received, in
return for bales of cloth and 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 the
Shannon, she was boarded by these robbers. The cargo was carried
away; and the proprietor was forced to content himself with such
a quantity of cowhides, of wool and of tallow as the gang which
had plundered him chose to give him. The consequence was that,
while foreign commodities were pouring fast into the harbours of
Londonderry, Carrickfergus, Dublin, Waterford and Cork, every
mariner avoided Limerick and Galway as nests of pirates.75

The distinction between the Irish foot soldier and the Irish
Rapparee had never been very strongly marked. It now disappeared.
Great part of the army was turned loose to live by marauding. An
incessant predatory war raged along the line which separated the
domain of William from that of James. Every day companies of
freebooters, sometimes wrapped in twisted straw which served the
purpose of armour, stole into the English territory, burned,
sacked, pillaged, and hastened back to their own ground. To guard
against these incursions was not easy; for the peasantry of the
plundered country had a strong fellow feeling with the
plunderers. To empty the granary, to set fire to the dwelling, to
drive away the cows, of a heretic was regarded by every squalid
inhabitant of a mud cabin as a good work. A troop engaged in such
a work might confidently expect to fall in, notwithstanding all
the proclamations of the Lords justices, with some friend who
would indicate the richest booty, the shortest road, and the
safest hiding place. The English complained that it was no easy
matter to catch a Rapparee. Sometimes, when he saw danger
approaching, he lay down in the long grass of the bog; 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,
with only his mouth and nostrils above the water. Nay, a whole
gang of banditti would, in the twinkling of an eye, transform
itself into a crowd of harmless labourers. Every man took his gun
to pieces, hid the lock in his clothes, stuck a cork in the
muzzle, stopped the touch hole with a quill, and threw the weapon
into the next pond. Nothing was to be seen but a train of poor
rustics who had not so much as a cudgel among them, and whose
humble look and crouching walk seemed to show that their spirit
was thoroughly broken to slavery. When the peril was over, when
the signal was given, every man flew to the place where he had
hid his arms; and soon the robbers were in full march towards
some Protestant mansion. One band penetrated to Clonmel, another
to the vicinity of Maryborough; a third made its den in a woody
islet of firm ground, surrounded by the vast bog of Allen,
harried the county of Wicklow, and alarmed even the suburbs of
Dublin. Such expeditions indeed were not always successful.
Sometimes the plunderers fell in with parties of militia or with
detachments from the English garrisons, in situations in which
disguise, flight and resistance were alike impossible. When this
happened every kerne who was taken was hanged, without any
ceremony, on the nearest tree.76

At the head quarters of the Irish army there was, during the
winter, no authority capable of exacting obedience even within a
circle of a mile. Tyrconnel was absent at the Court of France. He
had left the supreme government in the hands of a Council of
Regency composed of twelve persons. The nominal command of the
army he had confided to Berwick; but Berwick, though, as was
afterwards proved, a man of no common courage and capacity, was
young and inexperienced. His powers were unsuspected by the world
and by himself;77 and he submitted without reluctance to the
tutelage of a Council of War nominated by the Lord Lieutenant.
Neither the Council of Regency nor the Council of War was popular
at Limerick. The Irish complained that men who were not Irish had
been entrusted with a large share in the administration. The cry
was loudest against an officer named Thomas Maxwell. For it was
certain that he was a Scotchman; it was doubtful whether he was a
Roman Catholic; and he had not concealed the dislike which he
felt for that Celtic Parliament which had repealed the Act of
Settlement and passed the Act of Attainder.78 The discontent,
fomented by the arts of intriguers, among whom the cunning and
unprincipled Henry Luttrell seems to have been the most active,
soon broke forth into open rebellion. A great meeting was held.
Many officers of the army, some peers, some lawyers of high note
and some prelates of the Roman Catholic Church were present. It
was resolved that the government set up by the Lord Lieutenant
was unknown to the constitution. Ireland, it was said, could be
legally governed, in the absence of the King, only by a Lord
Lieutenant, by a Lord Deputy or by Lords Justices. The King was
absent. The Lord Lieutenant was absent. There was no Lord Deputy.
There were no Lords Justices. The Act by which Tyrconnel had
delegated his authority to a junto composed of his creatures was
a mere nullity. The nation was therefore left without any
legitimate chief, and might, without violating the allegiance due
to the Crown, make temporary provision for its own safety. A
deputation was sent to inform Berwick that he had assumed a power
to which he had no right, but that nevertheless the army and
people of Ireland would willingly acknowledge him as their head
if he would consent to govern by the advice of a council truly
Irish. Berwick indignantly expressed his wonder that military men
should presume to meet and deliberate without the permission of
their general. They answered that there was no general, and that,
if His Grace did not choose to undertake the administration on
the terms proposed, another leader would easily be found. Berwick
very reluctantly yielded, and continued to be a puppet in a new
set of hands.79

Those who had effected this revolution thought it prudent to send
a deputation to France for the purpose of vindicating their
proceedings. Of the deputation the Roman Catholic Bishop of Cork
and the two Luttrells were members. In the ship which conveyed
them from Limerick to Brest they found a fellow passenger whose
presence was by no means agreeable to them, their enemy, Maxwell.
They suspected, and not without reason, that he was going, like
them, to Saint Germains, but on a very different errand. The
truth was that Berwick had sent Maxwell to watch their motions
and to traverse their designs. Henry Luttrell, the least
scrupulous of men, proposed to settle the matter at once by
tossing the Scotchman 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 banishment afforded. There was among the Irish chiefs no
man of sufficient weight and ability to control the rest.
Sarsfield for a time took the lead. But Sarsfield, though
eminently brave and active in the field, was little skilled in
the administration of war, and still less skilled in civil
business. Those who were most desirous to support his authority
were forced to own that his nature was too unsuspicious and
indulgent for a post in which it was hardly possible to be too
distrustful or too severe. He believed whatever was told him. He
signed whatever was set before him. The commissaries, encouraged
by his lenity, robbed and embezzled more shamelessly than ever.
They sallied forth daily, guarded by pikes and firelocks, to
seize, nominally for the public service, but really for
themselves, wool, linen, leather, tallow, domestic utensils,
instruments of husbandry, searched every pantry, every wardrobe,
every cellar, and even laid sacrilegious hands on the property of
priests and prelates.81

Early in the spring the government, if it is to be so called, of
which Berwick was the ostensible head, was dissolved by the
return of Tyrconnel. The Luttrells had, in the name of their
countrymen, implored James not to subject so loyal a people to so
odious and incapable a viceroy. Tyrconnel, they said, was old; he
was infirm; he needed much steep; he knew nothing of war; he was
dilatory; he was partial; he was rapacious; he was distrusted and
hated by the whole nation. The Irish, deserted by him, had made a
gallant stand, and had compelled the victorious army of the
Prince of Orange to retreat. They hoped soon to take the field
again, thirty thousand strong; and they adjured their King to
send them some captain worthy to command such a force. Tyrconnel
and Maxwell, on the other hand, represented the delegates as
mutineers, demagogues, traitors, and pressed James to send Henry
Luttrell to keep Mountjoy company in the Bastille. James,
bewildered by these criminations and recriminations, hesitated
long, and at last, with characteristic wisdom, relieved himself
from trouble by giving all the quarrellers fair words and by
sending them all back to have their fight out in Ireland. Berwick
was at the same time recalled to France.82

Tyrconnel was received at Limerick, even by his enemies, with
decent respect. Much as they hated him, they could not question
the validity of his commission; and, though they still maintained
that they had been perfectly justified in annulling, during his
absence, the unconstitutional arrangements which he had made,
they acknowledged that, when he was present, he was their lawful
governor. He was not altogether unprovided with the means of
conciliating them. He brought many gracious messages and
promises, a patent of peerage for Sarsfield, some money which was
not of brass, and some clothing, which was even more acceptable
than money. The new garments were not indeed very fine. But even
the generals had long been out at elbows; and there were few of
the common men whose habiliments would have been thought
sufficient to dress a scarecrow in a more prosperous country.
Now, at length, for the first time in many months, every private
soldier could boast of a pair of breeches and a pair of brogues.
The Lord Lieutenant had also been authorised to announce that he
should soon be followed by several ships, laden with provisions
and military stores. This announcement was most welcome to the
troops, who had long been without bread, and who had nothing
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 in public, the soldiers ran after him clamouring for
food. Even the beef and mutton, which, half raw, half burned,
without vegetables, without salt, had hitherto supported the
army, had become scarce; and the common men were on rations of
horseflesh when the promised sails were seen in the mouth of the
Shannon.84

A distinguished French general, named Saint Ruth, was on board
with his staff. He brought a commission which appointed him
commander in chief of the Irish army. The commission did not
expressly declare that he was to be independent of the viceregal
authority; but he had been assured by James that Tyrconnel should
have secret instructions not to intermeddle in the conduct of the
war. Saint Ruth was assisted by another general officer named
D'Usson. The French ships brought some arms, some ammunition, and
a plentiful supply of corn and flour. The spirits of the Irish
rose; and the Te Deum was chaunted with fervent devotion in the
cathedral of Limerick.85

Tyrconnel had made no preparations for the approaching campaign.
But Saint Ruth, as soon as he had landed, exerted himself strenuously to redeem
the time which had been lost. He
was a man of courage, activity and resolution, but of a harsh and
imperious nature. In his own country he was celebrated as the
most merciless persecutor that had ever dragooned the Huguenots
to mass. It was asserted by English Whigs that he was known in
France by the nickname of the Hangman; that, at Rome, the very
cardinals had shown their abhorrence of his cruelty; and that
even Queen Christina, who had little right to be squeamish about
bloodshed, had turned away from him with loathing. He had
recently held a command in Savoy. The Irish regiments in the
French service had formed part of his army, and had behaved
extremely well. It was therefore supposed that he had a peculiar
talent for managing Irish troops. But there was a wide difference
between the well clad, well armed and well drilled Irish, with
whom he was familiar, and the ragged marauders whom be found
swarming in the alleys of Limerick. Accustomed to the splendour
and the discipline of French camps and garrisons, he was
disgusted by finding that, in the country to which he had been
sent, a regiment of infantry meant a mob of people as naked, as
dirty and as disorderly as the beggars, whom he had been
accustomed to see on the Continent besieging the door of a
monastery or pursuing a diligence up him. With ill concealed
contempt, however, he addressed himself vigorously to the task of
disciplining these strange soldiers, and was day and night in the
saddle, galloping from post to post, from Limerick to Athlone,
from Athlone to the northern extremity of Lough Rea, and from
Lough Rea back to Limerick.86

It was indeed necessary that he should bestir himself; for, a few
days after his arrival, he learned that, on the other side of the
Pale, all was ready for action. The greater part of the English
force was collected, 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 and Mackay. 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 Justice
Coningsby, though not by profession a soldier, came down from
Dublin, to animate the zeal of the troops. The appearance of the
camp showed that the money voted by the English Parliament had
not been spared. The uniforms were new; the ranks were one blaze
of scarlet; and the train of artillery was such as had never
before been seen in Ireland.87

On the sixth of June Ginkell moved his head quarters from
Mullingar. On the seventh he reached Ballymore. At Ballymore, on
a peninsula almost surrounded by something between a swamp and a
lake, stood an ancient fortress, which had recently been
fortified under Sarsfield's direction, and which was defended by
above a thousand men. The English guns were instantly planted. In
a few hours the besiegers had the satisfaction of seeing the
besieged running like rabbits from one shelter to another. The
governor, who had at first held high language, begged piteously
for quarter, 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 Danish auxiliaries under the command of the Duke of
Wirtemberg. The whole army then moved westward, and, on the
nineteenth of June, appeared before the walls of Athlone.89

Athlone was perhaps, in a military point of view, the most
important place in the island. Rosen, who understood war well,
had always maintained that it was there that the Irishry would,
with most advantage, make a stand against the Englishry.90 The
town, which was surrounded by ramparts of earth, lay partly in
Leinster and partly in Connaught. The English quarter, which was
in Leinster, had once consisted of new and handsome houses, but
had been burned by the Irish some 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 in a deep and rapid stream,
and turned two large mills which rose on the arches of a stone
bridge. Above the bridge, on the Connaught side, a castle, built,
it was said, by King John, towered to the height of seventy feet,
and extended two hundred feet along the river. Fifty or sixty
yards below the bridge was a narrow ford.92

During the night of the nineteenth the English placed their
cannon. On the morning of the twentieth the firing began. At five
in the afternoon an assault was made. A brave French refugee with
a grenade in his hand was the first to climb the breach, and
fell, cheering his countrymen to the onset with his latest
breath. Such were the gallant spirits which the bigotry of Lewis
had sent to recruit, in the time of his utmost need, the armies
of his deadliest enemies. The example was not lost. The grenades
fell thick. The assailants mounted by hundreds. The Irish gave
way and ran towards the bridge. There the press was so great that
some of the fugitives were crushed to death in the narrow
passage, and others were forced over the parapets into the waters
which roared among the mill wheels below. In a few hours Ginkell
had made himself master of the English quarter of Athlone; and
this success had cost him only twenty men killed and forty
wounded.93

But his work was only begun. Between him and the Irish town the
Shannon ran fiercely. The bridge was so narrow that a few
resolute men might keep it against an army. The mills which stood
on it were strongly guarded; and it was commanded by the guns of
the castle. That part of the Connaught shore where the river was
fordable was defended by works, which the Lord Lieutenant had, in
spite of the murmurs of a powerful party, forced Saint Ruth to
entrust to the care of Maxwell. Maxwell had come back from France
a more unpopular man than he had been when he went thither. It
was rumoured that he had, at Versailles, spoken opprobriously of
the Irish nation; and he had, on this account, been, only a few
days before, publicly affronted by Sarsfield.94 On the twenty-
first of June the English were busied in flinging up batteries
along the Leinster bank. On the twenty-second, soon after dawn,
the cannonade began. The firing continued all that day and all
the following night. When morning broke again, one whole side of
the castle had been beaten down; the thatched lanes of the
Celtic town lay in ashes; and one of the mills had been burned
with sixty soldiers who defended it.95

Still however the Irish defended the bridge resolutely. During
several days there was sharp fighting hand to hand in the strait
passage. The assailants gained ground, but gained it inch by
inch. The courage of the garrison was sustained by the hope of
speedy succour. Saint Ruth had at length completed his
preparations; and the tidings that Athlone was in danger had
induced him to take the field in haste at the head of an army,
superior in number, though inferior in more important elements of
military strength, to the army of Ginkell. The French general
seems to have thought that the bridge and the ford might easily
be defended, till the autumnal rains and the pestilence which
ordinarily accompanied them should compel the enemy to retire. He
therefore contented himself with sending successive detachments
to reinforce the garrison. The immediate conduct 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. He expressed his
astonishment that so experienced a commander as Ginkell should
persist in a hopeless enterprise. "His master ought to hang him
for 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 great mortification, that he had not the full authority which
the promises made to him at Saint Germains had entitled him to
expect. The Lord Lieutenant was in the camp. His bodily and
mental infirmities had perceptibly increased within the last few
weeks. The slow and uncertain step 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 the sluggish and
wavering movement of that mind which had once pursued its objects
with a vehemence restrained neither by fear nor by pity, neither
by conscience nor by shame. Yet, with impaired strength, both
physical and intellectual, the broken old man clung
pertinaciously to power. If he had received private orders not to
meddle with the conduct of the war, he disregarded them. He
assumed all the authority of a sovereign, showed himself
ostentatiously to the troops as their supreme chief, and affected
to treat Saint Ruth as a lieutenant. Soon the interference of the
Viceroy excited the vehement indignation of that powerful party
in the army which had long hated him. Many officers signed an
instrument by which they declared that they did not consider him
as entitled to their obedience 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 was not wanted, the ropes of his
pavilion should be cut. He, on the other hand, sent his
emissaries to all the camp fires, and tried to make a party among
the common soldiers against the French general.97

The only thing in which Tyrconnel and Saint Ruth agreed was in
dreading and disliking Sarsfield. Not only was he popular with
the great body of his countrymen; he was also surrounded by a
knot of retainers whose devotion to him resembled the devotion of
the Ismailite murderers to the Old Man of the Mountain. It was
known that one of these fanatics, a colonel, had used language
which, in the mouth of an officer so high in rank, might well
cause uneasiness. "The King," this man had said, "is nothing to
me. I obey Sarsfield. Let Sarsfield tell me to kill any man in
the whole army; and I will do it." Sarsfield was, indeed, too
honourable a gentleman to abuse his immense power over the minds
of his worshippers. But the Viceroy and the Commander in Chief
might not unnaturally be disturbed by the thought that
Sarsfield's honour was their only guarantee against mutiny and
assassination. The consequence was that, at the crisis of the
fate of Ireland, the services of the first of Irish soldiers were
not used, or were used with jealous caution, and that, if he
ventured to offer a suggestion, it was received with a sneer or a
frown.98

A great and unexpected disaster put an end to these disputes. On
the thirtieth of June Ginkell called a council of war. Forage
began to be scarce; and it was absolutely necessary that the
besiegers should either force their way across the river or
retreat. The difficulty of effecting a passage over the shattered
remains of the bridge seemed almost insuperable. It was proposed
to try the ford. The Duke of Wirtemberg, Talmash, and Ruvigny
gave their voices in favour of this plan; and Ginkell, 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 guard carelessly. Part of the garrison was idling,
part dosing. D'Usson was at table. Saint Ruth was in his tent,
writing a letter to his master filled with charges against
Tyrconnel. Meanwhile, fifteen hundred grenadiers; each wearing in
his hat a green bough, were mustered on the Leinster bank of the
Shannon. Many of them doubtless remembered that on that day year
they had, at the command of King William, put green boughs in
their hats on the banks of the Boyne. Guineas had been liberally
scattered among these picked men; but their alacrity was such as
gold cannot purchase. Six battalions were in readiness to support
the attack. Mackay commanded. He did not approve of the plan; but
he executed it as zealously and energetically as if he had
himself been the author of it. The Duke of Wirtemberg, Talmash,
and several other gallant officers, to whom no part in the
enterprise had been assigned, insisted on serving that day as
private volunteers; and their appearance in the ranks excited the
fiercest enthusiasm among the soldiers.

It was six o'clock. A peal from the steeple of the church gave
the signal. Prince George of Hesse Darmstadt, and Gustavus
Hamilton, the brave 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 in water. The stream ran deep
and strong; but in a few minutes the head of the column reached
dry land. Talmash was the fifth man that set foot on the
Connaught shore. The Irish, taken unprepared, fired one confused
volley and fled, leaving their commander, Maxwell, a prisoner.
The conquerors clambered up the bank over the remains of walls
shattered by a cannonade of ten days. Mackay heard his men
cursing and swearing as they stumbled among the rubbish. "My
lads," cried the stout old Puritan in 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 shown us this day than to
take His name in vain." The victory was complete. Planks were
placed on the broken arches of the bridge and pontoons laid on
the river, without any opposition on the part of the terrified
garrison. With the loss of twelve men killed and about thirty
wounded the English had, in a few minutes, forced their way into
Connaught.100

At the first alarm D'Usson hastened towards the river; but he was
met, swept away, trampled down, and almost killed by the torrent
of fugitives. He was carried to the camp in such a state that it
was necessary to bleed him. "Taken!" cried Saint Ruth, in dismay.
"It cannot be. A town taken, and I close by with an army to
relieve it!" Cruelly mortified, he struck his tents under cover
of the night, and retreated in the direction of Galway. At dawn
the English saw far off, from the top of King John's ruined
castle, the Irish army moving through the dreary region which
separates the Shannon from the Suck. Before noon the rearguard
had disappeared.101

Even before the loss of Athlone the Celtic camp had been
distracted by factions. It may easily be supposed, therefore,
that, after so great a disaster, nothing was to be heard but
crimination and recrimination. The enemies of the Lord Lieutenant
were more clamorous than ever. He and his creatures had brought
the kingdom to the verge of perdition. He would meddle with what
he did not understand. He would overrule the plans of men who
were real soldiers. He would entrust the most important of all
posts 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 whether they wanted to shoot larks.
Just before the attack he had told them to go to their supper and
to take their rest, for that nothing more would be done that day.
When he had delivered himself up a prisoner, he had uttered some
words which seemed to indicate a previous understanding with the
conquerors. The Lord Lieutenant's few friends told a very
different story. According to them, Tyrconnel and Maxwell had
suggested precautions which would have made a surprise
impossible. The French General, impatient of all interference,
had omitted to take those precautions. Maxwell had been rudely
told that, if he was afraid, he had better resign his command. He
had done his duty bravely. He had stood while his men fled. He
had consequently fallen into the hands of the enemy; and he was
now, in his absence, slandered by those to whom his captivity was
justly imputable.102 On which side the truth lay it is not easy,
at this distance of time, to pronounce. The cry against Tyrconnel
was, at the moment, so loud, that he gave way and sullenly
retired to Limerick. D'Usson, who had not yet recovered from the
hurts inflicted 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 Ginkell was far superior to theirs. The
wise course, therefore, evidently was to carry on the war in such
a manner that the difference between the disciplined and the
undisciplined soldier might be as small as possible. It was well
known that raw recruits often played their part well in a foray,
in a street fight or in the defence of a rampart; but that, on a
pitched field, they had little chance against veterans. "Let most
of our foot 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 his supplies. If he advances into Connaught,
let us overrun Leinster. If he sits down before Galway, which may
well be defended, let us make a push for Dublin, which is
altogether defenceless."104 Saint Ruth might, perhaps, have
thought this advice good, if his judgment had not been biassed by
his passions. But he was smarting from the pain of a humiliating
defeat. In sight of his tent, the English had passed a rapid
river, and had stormed a strong town. He could not but feel that,
though others might have been to blame, he was not himself
blameless. He had, to say the least, taken things too easily.
Lewis, accustomed to be served during many years by commanders
who were not in the habit of leaving to chance any thing which
could he made secure by wisdom, would hardly think it a
sufficient excuse that his general had not expected the enemy to
make so bold and sudden an attack. The Lord Lieutenant would, of
course, represent what had passed in the most unfavourable
manner; and whatever the Lord Lieutenant said James would echo. A
sharp reprimand, a letter of recall, might be expected. To return
to Versailles a culprit; to approach the great King in an agony
of distress; to see him shrug his shoulders, knit his brow and
turn his back; to be sent, far from courts and camps, to languish
at some dull country seat; this was too much to be borne; and yet
this might well be apprehended. There was one escape; to fight,
and to conquer or to perish.

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

His whole deportment was changed. He had hitherto treated the
Irish soldiers with contemptuous severity. But now that he had
resolved to stake life and fame on the valour of the despised
race, he became another man. During the few days which remained
to him he exerted himself to win by indulgence and caresses the
hearts of all who were under his command.105 He, at the same
time, administered to his troops moral stimulants of the most
potent kind. He was a zealous Roman Catholic; and it is probable
that the severity with which he had treated the Protestants of
his own country ought to be partly ascribed to the hatred which
he felt for their doctrines. He now tried to give to the war the
character of a crusade. The clergy were the agents whom he
employed to sustain the courage of his soldiers. The whole camp
was in a ferment with religious excitement. In every regiment
priests were praying, preaching, shriving, holding up the host
and the cup. While the soldiers swore on the sacramental bread
not to abandon their colours, the General addressed to the
officers an appeal which might have moved the most languid and
effeminate natures to heroic exertion. They were fighting, he
said, for their religion, their liberty and their honour. Unhappy
events, too widely celebrated, had brought a reproach on the
national character. Irish soldiership was every where mentioned
with a sneer. If they wished to retrieve the fame of their
country, this was the time and this the place.106

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

On the eleventh of July, Ginkell, having repaired the
fortifications of Athlone and left a garrison there, fixed his
headquarters at Ballinasloe, about four miles from Aghrim, and
rode forward to take a view of the Irish position. On his return
he gave orders that ammunition should be served out, that every
musket and bayonet should be got ready for action, and that early
on the morrow every man should be under arms without beat of
drum. Two regiments were to remain in charge of the camp; the
rest, unincumbered by baggage, were to march against the enemy.

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 noon over the moist valley of the Suck; a further delay was
caused by the necessity of dislodging the Irish from some
outposts; and the afternoon was far advanced when the two armies
at length confronted each other with nothing but the bog and the
breastwork between them. The English and their allies were under
twenty thousand; the Irish above twenty-five thousand.

Ginkell held a short consultation with his principal officers.
Should he attack instantly, or wait till the next morning? Mackay
was for attacking instantly; and his opinion prevailed. At five
the battle began. The English foot, in such order as they could
keep on treacherous and uneven ground, made their way, sinking
deep in mud at every step, to the Irish works. But those works
were defended with a resolution such as extorted some words of
ungracious eulogy even from men who entertained the strongest
prejudices against the Celtic race.107 Again and again the
assailants were driven back. Again and again they returned to the
struggle. Once they were broken, and chased across the morass;
but Talmash rallied them, and forced the pursuers to retire. The
fight had lasted two hours; the evening was closing in; and still
the advantage was on the side of the Irish. Ginkell began to
meditate a retreat. The hopes 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 of Dublin." But fortune was
already on the turn. Mackay and Ruvigny, with the English and
Huguenot cavalry, had succeeded in passing the bog at a place
where two horsemen could scarcely ride abreast. Saint Ruth at
first laughed when he saw the Blues, in single file, struggling
through the morass under a fire which every moment laid some
gallant hat and feather on the earth. "What do they mean?" he
asked; and then he swore that it was pity to see such fine
fellows rushing to certain destruction. "Let them cross,
however;" he said. "The more they are, the more we shall kill."
But soon he saw them laying hurdles on the quagmire. A broader
and safer path was formed; squadron after squadron reached firm
ground: the flank of the Irish army was speedily turned. The
French general was hastening to the rescue when a cannon ball
carried off his head. Those who were about him thought that it
would be 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 ground among the ruins of the ancient monastery of
Loughrea. Till the fight was over neither army was aware that he
was no more. To conceal his death from the private soldiers might
perhaps have been prudent. To conceal it from his lieutenants was
madness. The crisis of the battle had arrived; and there was none
to give direction. Sarsfield was in command of the reserve. But
he had been strictly enjoined by Saint Ruth not to stir without
orders; and no orders came. Mackay and Ruvigny with their horse
charged the Irish in flank. Talmash and his foot returned to the
attack in front with dogged determination. The breastwork was
carried. The Irish, still fighting, retreated from inclosure to
inclosure. But, as inclosure after inclosure was forced, their
efforts became fainter and fainter. At length they broke and
fled. Then followed a horrible carnage. The conquerors were in a
savage mood. For a report had been spread among them that, during
the early part of the battle, some English captives who had been
admitted to quarter had been put to the sword. Only four hundred
prisoners were taken. The number of the slain was, in proportion
to the number engaged, greater than in any other battle of that
age. But for the coming on of a moonless night, made darker by a
misty rain, scarcely a man would have escaped. The obscurity
enabled Sarsfield, with a few squadrons which still remained
unbroken, to cover the retreat. Of the conquerors six hundred
were killed, and about a thousand wounded.

The English slept that night on the field of battle. On the
following day they buried their companions in arms, and then
marched westward. The vanquished were left unburied, a strange
and ghastly spectacle. Four thousand Irish corpses were counted
on the field of battle. A hundred and 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 who was there tells
us that, from the top of the hill on which the Celtic camp had
been pitched, he saw the country, to the distance of near four
miles, white with the naked bodies of the slain. The plain
looked, he said, like an immense pasture covered by flocks of
sheep. As usual, different estimates were formed even by
eyewitnesses. But it seems probable that the number of the Irish
who fell was not less than seven thousand. Soon a multitude of
dogs came to feast on the carnage. These beasts became so fierce,
and acquired such a taste for human flesh, that it was long
dangerous for men to travel this road otherwise than in
companies.108

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

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

When it was known that no succour was to be expected from the
hero whose advent had been foretold by so many seers, the Irish
who were shut up in Galway lost all heart. D'Usson had returned a
stout answer to the first summons of the besiegers; but he soon
saw that resistance was impossible, and made haste to capitulate.
The garrison was suffered to retire to Limerick with the honours
of war. A full amnesty for past offences was granted to the
citizens; and it was stipulated that, within the walls, the
Roman Catholic priests should be allowed to perform in private
the rites of their religion. On these terms the gates were thrown
open. Ginkell was received with profound respect by the Mayor and
Aldermen, and was complimented in a set speech by the Recorder.
D'Usson, with about two thousand three hundred men, marched
unmolested to Limerick.111

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

He made some preparations for defending Limerick, repaired the
fortifications, and sent out parties to bring in provisions. The
country, many miles round, was swept bare by these detachments,
and a considerable quantity of cattle and fodder was collected
within the walls. 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, were encamped on the Clare side of
the Shannon. The communication between their camp and the city
was maintained by means of a bridge called the Thomond Bridge,
which was protected by a fort. These means of defence were not
contemptible. But the fall of Athlone and the slaughter of
Aghrim had broken the spirit of the army. A small party, at the
head of which were Sarsfield and a brave Scotch officer named
Wauchop, cherished a hope that the triumphant progress of Ginkell
might be stopped by those walls from which William had, in the
preceding year, been forced to retreat. But many of the Irish
chiefs loudly declared that it was time to think of capitulating.
Henry Luttrell, always fond of dark and crooked politics, opened
a secret negotiation with the English. One of his letters was
intercepted; and he was put under arrest; but many who blamed his
perfidy agreed with him in thinking that it was idle to prolong
the contest. Tyrconnel himself was convinced that all was lost.
His only hope was that he might be able to prolong the struggle
till he could receive from Saint Germains permission to treat. He
wrote to request that permission, and prevailed, with some
difficulty, on his desponding countrymen to bind themselves by an
oath not to capitulate till 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. The Lord Lieutenant seemed to have thrown off the load
which had bowed down his body and mind; he drank; he jested; he
was again the Dick Talbot who had diced and revelled with
Grammont. Soon after he had risen from table, an apoplectic
stroke deprived him of speech and sensation. On the fourteenth he
breathed his last. The wasted remains of that form which had once
been a model for statuaries were laid under the pavement of the
Cathedral; but no inscription, no tradition, preserves the memory
of the spot.114

As soon as the Lord Lieutenant was no more, Plowden, who had
superintended the Irish finances while there were any Irish
finances to superintend, produced a commission under the great
seal of James. This commission appointed Plowden himself, Fitton
and Nagle, Lords justices in the event of Tyrconnel's death.
There was much murmuring when the names were made known. For both
Plowden and Fitton were Saxons. The commission, however, proved
to be a mere nullity. For it was accompanied by instructions
which forbade the Lords justices to interfere in the conduct of
the war; and, within the narrow space to which the dominions of
James were now reduced, war was the only business. The government
was, therefore, really in the hands of D'Usson and Sarsfield.115

On the day on which Tyrconnel died, the advanced guard of the
English army came within sight of Limerick. Ginkell encamped on
the same ground which William had occupied twelve months before.
The batteries, on which were planted guns and bombs, very
different from those which William had been forced to use, played
day and night; and soon roofs were blazing and walls crashing in
every corner of the city. Whole streets were reduced to ashes.
Meanwhile several English ships of war came up the Shannon 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 impossible that the defence might be prolonged till the
equinoctial rains should a second time compel the English to
retire. Ginkell determined on striking a bold stroke. No point in
the whole circle of the fortifications was more important, and no
point seemed to be more secure, than the Thomond Bridge, which
joined the city to the camp of the Irish horse on the Clare bank
of the Shannon. The Dutch General's plan was to separate the
infantry within the ramparts from the cavalry without; and this
plan he executed with great skill, vigour and success. He laid a
bridge of tin boats on the river, crossed it with a strong body
of troops, drove before him in confusion fifteen hundred dragoons
who made a faint show of resistance, and marched towards the
quarters of the Irish horse. The Irish horse sustained but ill on
this day the reputation which they had gained at the Boyne.
Indeed, that reputation had been purchased by the almost entire
destruction of the best regiments. Recruits had been without much
difficulty found. But the loss of fifteen hundred excellent
soldiers was not to be repaired. The camp was abandoned without a
blow. Some of the cavalry fled into the city. The rest, driving
before them as many cattle as could be collected in that moment
of panic, retired to the hills. Much beef, brandy and harness was
found in the magazines; and the marshy plain of the Shannon was
covered with firelocks and grenades which the fugitives had
thrown away.117

The conquerors returned in triumph to their camp. But Ginkell was
not content with the advantage which he had gained. He was bent
on cutting off all communication between Limerick and the county
of Clare. In a few days, therefore, he again crossed the river at
the head of several regiments, and attacked the fort which
protected the Thomond Bridge. In a short time the fort was
stormed. The soldiers who had garrisoned it fled in confusion to
the city. The Town Major, a French officer, who commanded at the
Thomond Gate, afraid that the pursuers would enter with the
fugitives, ordered that part of the bridge which was nearest to
the city to be drawn up. Many of the Irish went headlong into the
stream and perished there. Others cried for quarter, and held up
handkerchiefs in token of submission. But the conquerors were mad
with rage; their cruelty could not be immediately restrained; and
no prisoners were made till the heaps of corpses rose above the
parapets. The garrison of the fort had consisted of about eight
hundred men. Of these only a hundred and twenty escaped into
Limerick.118

This disaster seemed likely to produce a general mutiny in the
besieged city. The Irish clamoured for the blood of the Town
Major who had ordered the bridge to be drawn up in the face of
their flying countrymen. His superiors were forced to promise
that he should be brought before a court martial. Happily for
him, he had received a mortal wound, in the act of closing the
Thomond Gate, and was saved by a soldier's death from the fury of
the multitude.119 The cry for capitulation became so loud and
importunate that the generals could not resist it. D'Usson
informed his government that the fight at the bridge had so
effectually cowed the spirit of the garrison that it was
impossible to continue the struggle.120 Some exception may
perhaps be taken to the evidence of D'Usson; for undoubtedly he,
like every Frenchman who had held any command in the Irish army,
was weary of his banishment, and impatient to see Paris again.
But it is certain that even Sarsfield had lost heart. Up to this
time his voice had been for stubborn resistance. He was now not
only willing, but impatient to treat.121 It seemed to him that
the city was doomed. There was no hope of succour, domestic or
foreign. In every part of Ireland the Saxons had set their feet
on the necks of the natives. Sligo had fallen. Even those wild
islands which intercept the huge waves of the Atlantic from the
bay of Galway had acknowledged the authority of William. The men
of Kerry, reputed the fiercest and most ungovernable part of the
aboriginal population, had held out long, but had at length been
routed, and chased to their woods and mountains.122 A French
fleet, if a French fleet were now to arrive on the coast of
Munster, would find the mouth of the Shannon guarded by English
men of war. The stock of provisions within Limerick was already
running low. If the siege were prolonged, the town would, in all
human probability, be reduced either by force or by blockade.
And, if Ginkell should enter through the breach, or should be
implored by a multitude perishing with hunger to dictate his own
terms, what could be expected but a tyranny more inexorably
severe than that of Cromwell? Would it not then be wise to try
what conditions could be obtained while the victors had still
something to fear from the rage and despair of the vanquished;
while the last Irish army could still make some show of
resistance behind the walls of the last Irish fortress?

On the evening of the day which followed the fight at the Thomond
Gate, the drums of Limerick beat a parley; and Wauchop, from one
of the towers, hailed the besiegers, and requested Ruvigny to
grant Sarsfield an interview. The brave Frenchman who was an
exile on account of his attachment to one religion, and the brave
Irishman who was about to become an exile on account of his
attachment to another, met and conferred, doubtless with mutual
sympathy and respect.123 Ginkell, to whom Ruvigny reported what
had passed, willingly consented to an armistice. For, constant as
his success had been, it had not made him secure. The chances
were greatly on his side. Yet it was possible that an attempt to
storm the city might fail, as a similar attempt had failed twelve
months before. If the siege should be turned into a blockade, it
was probable that the pestilence which had been fatal to the army
of Schomberg, which had compelled William to retreat, and which
had all but prevailed even against the genius and energy of
Marlborough, might soon avenge the carnage of Aghrim. The rains
had lately been heavy. The whole plain might shortly be an
immense pool of stagnant water. It might be necessary to move the
troops to a healthier situation than the bank of the Shannon, and
to provide for them a warmer shelter than that of tents. The
enemy would be safe till the spring. In the spring a French army
might land in Ireland; the natives might again rise in arms from
Donegal to Kerry; and the war, which was now all but
extinguished, might blaze forth fiercer than ever.

A negotiation was therefore opened with a sincere desire on both
sides to put an end to the contest. The chiefs of the Irish army
held several consultations at which some Roman Catholic prelates
and some eminent lawyers were invited to assist. A preliminary
question, which perplexed tender consciences, was submitted by
the Bishops. The late Lord Lieutenant had persuaded the officers
of the garrison to swear that they would not surrender Limerick
till they should receive an answer to the letter in which their
situation had been explained to James. The Bishops thought that
the oath was no longer binding. It had been taken at a time when
the communications with France were open, and in the full belief
that the answer of James would arrive within three weeks. More
than twice that time had elapsed. Every avenue leading to the
city was strictly guarded by the enemy. His Majesty's faithful
subjects, by holding out till it had become impossible for him to
signify his pleasure to them, had acted up to the spirit of their
promise.124

The next question was what terms should be demanded. A paper,
containing propositions which statesmen of our age will think
reasonable, but which to the most humane and liberal English
Protestants of the seventeenth century 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 native population, that every
parish should have its priest, and that Irish Roman Catholics
should be capable of holding all offices, civil and military, and
of enjoying all municipal privileges.125

Ginkell knew little of the laws and feelings of the English; but
he had about him persons who were competent to direct him. They
had a week before prevented him from breaking a Rapparee on the
wheel; and they now suggested an answer to the propositions of
the enemy. "I am a stranger here," said Ginkell; "I am ignorant
of the constitution of these kingdoms; but I am assured that what
you ask is inconsistent with that constitution; and therefore I
cannot with honour consent." He immediately ordered a new battery
to be thrown up, and guns and mortars to be planted on it. But
his preparations were speedily interrupted by another message
from the city. The Irish begged that, since he could not grant
what they had demanded, he would tell them what he was willing to
grant. He called his advisers round him, and, after some
consultation, sent back a paper containing the heads of a treaty,
such as he had reason to believe that the government which he
served would approve. What he offered was indeed much less than
what the Irish desired, but was quite as much as, when they
considered their situation and the temper of the English nation,
they could expect. They speedily notified their 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 fleet of
French transports should be suffered to come up the Shannon in
peace and to depart in peace. The signing of the treaty was
deferred till the Lords justices, who represented William at
Dublin, should arrive at Ginkell's quarters. But there was during
some days a relaxation of military vigilance on both sides.
Prisoners were set at liberty. The outposts of the two armies
chatted and messed together. The English officers rambled into
the town. The Irish officers dined in the camp. Anecdotes of what
passed at the friendly meetings of these men, who had so lately
been mortal enemies, were widely circulated. One story, in
particular, was repeated in every part of Europe. "Has not this
last campaign," said Sarsfield to some English officers, "raised
your opinion of Irish soldiers?" "To tell you the truth,"
answered an Englishman, we think of them much as we always did."
"However meanly you may think of us," replied Sarsfield, "change
Kings with us, and we will willingly try our luck with you
again." He was doubtless thinking of the day on which he had seen
the two Sovereigns at the head of two great armies, William
foremost in the charge, and James foremost in the flight.126

On the first of October, Coningsby and Porter arrived at the
English headquarters. On the second the articles of capitulation
were discussed at 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 Lords justices set their
names to the latter.127

By the military treaty it was agreed that such Irish officers and
soldiers as should declare that they wished to go to France
should be conveyed thither, and should, in the meantime, remain
under the command of their own generals. Ginkell undertook to
furnish a considerable number of transports. French vessels were
also to be permitted to pass and repass freely between Britanny
and Munster. Part of Limerick was to be immediately delivered up
to the English. But the island on which the Cathedral and the
Castle stand was to remain, for the present, in the keeping of
the Irish.

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

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

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

In a few hours a dispute arose which seemed likely to produce a
renewal of hostilities. Sarsfield had resolved to seek his
fortune in the service of France, and was naturally desirous to
carry with him to the Continent such a body of troops as would be
an important addition to the army of Lewis. Ginkell was as
naturally unwilling to send thousands of men to swell the forces
of the enemy. Both generals appealed to the treaty. Each
construed it as suited his purpose, and each complained that the
other had violated it. Sarsfield was accused of putting one of
his officers under arrest for refusing to go to the Continent.
Ginkell, greatly excited, declared that he would teach the Irish
to play tricks with him, and began to make preparations for a
cannonade. Sarsfield came to the English camp, and tried to
justify what he had done. The altercation was sharp. "I submit,"
said Sarsfield, at last: "I am in your power." "Not at all in my
power," said Ginkell, "go back and do your worst." The imprisoned
officer was liberated; a sanguinary contest was averted; and the
two commanders contented themselves with a war of words.130
Ginkell put forth proclamations assuring the Irish that, if they
would live quietly in their own land, they should be protected
and favoured, and that if they preferred a military life, they
should be admitted into the service of King William. It was added
that no man, who chose to reject this gracious invitation and to
become a soldier of Lewis, must expect ever again to set foot on
the island. Sarsfield and Wauchop exerted their eloquence on the
other side. The present aspect of affairs, they said, was
doubtless gloomy; but there was bright sky beyond the cloud. The
banishment would be short. The return would be triumphant. Within
a year the French would invade England. In such an invasion the
Irish troops, if only they remained unbroken, would assuredly
bear a chief part. In the meantime it was far better for them to
live in a neighbouring and friendly country, under the parental
care of their own rightful King, than to trust the Prince of
Orange, who would probably send them to the other end of the
world to fight for his ally the Emperor against the Janissaries.

The help of the Roman Catholic clergy was called in. On the day
on which those who had made up their minds to go to France were
required to announce their determination, the priests were
indefatigable in exhorting. At the head of every regiment a
sermon was preached on the duty of adhering to the cause of the
Church, and on the sin and danger of consorting with
unbelievers.131 Whoever, it was said, should enter the service of
the usurpers would do so at the peril of his soul. The heretics
affirmed that, after the peroration, a plentiful allowance of
brandy was served out to the audience, and that, when the brandy
had been swallowed, a Bishop pronounced a benediction. Thus duly
prepared by physical and moral stimulants, the garrison,
consisting of about fourteen thousand infantry, was drawn up in
the vast meadow which lay on the Clare bank of the Shannon. Here
copies of Ginkell's proclamation were profusely scattered about;
and English officers went through the ranks imploring the men not
to ruin themselves, and explaining to them the advantages which
the soldiers of King William enjoyed.  At length the decisive
moment came. The troops were ordered to pass in review. Those who
wished to remain in Ireland were directed to file off at a
particular spot. All who passed that spot were to be considered
as having made their choice for France. Sarsfield and Wauchop on
one side, Porter, Coningsby and Ginkell on the other, looked on
with painful anxiety. D'Usson and his countrymen, though not
uninterested in the spectacle, found it hard to preserve their
gravity. The confusion, the clamour, the grotesque appearance of
an army in which there could scarcely be seen a shirt or a pair
of pantaloons, a shoe or a stocking, presented so ludicrous a
contrast to the orderly and brilliant appearance of their
master's troops, that they amused themselves by wondering what
the Parisians would say to see such a force mustered on the plain
of Grenelle.132

First marched what was called the Royal regiment, fourteen
hundred strong. All but seven went beyond the fatal point.
Ginkell's countenance showed that he was deeply mortified. He was
consoled, however, by seeing the next regiment, which consisted
of natives of Ulster, turn off to a man. There had arisen,
notwithstanding the community of blood, language and religion, an
antipathy between the Celts of Ulster and those of the other
three provinces; nor is it improbable that the example and
influence of Baldearg O'Donnel may have had some effect on the
people of the land which his forefathers had ruled.133 In most of
the regiments there was a division of opinion; but a great
majority declared for France. Henry Luttrell was one of those who
turned off. He was rewarded for his desertion, and perhaps for
other services, with a grant of the large estate of his elder
brother Simon, who firmly adhered to the cause of James, with a
pension of five hundred pounds a year from the Crown, and with
the abhorrence of the Roman Catholic population. After living in
wealth, luxury and infamy, during a quarter of a century, Henry
Luttrell was murdered while going through Dublin in his sedan
chair; and the Irish House of Commons declared that there was
reason to suspect that he had fallen by the revenge of the
Papists.134 Eighty years after his death his grave near
Luttrellstown was violated by the descendants of those whom he
had betrayed, and his skull was broken to pieces with a
pickaxe.135 The deadly hatred of which he was the object
descended to his son and to his grandson; and, unhappily, nothing
in the character either of his son or of his grandson tended to
mitigate the feeling which the name of Luttrell excited.136

When the long procession had closed, it was found that about a
thousand men had agreed to enter into William's service. About
two thousand accepted passes from Ginkell, and went quietly home.
About eleven thousand returned with Sarsfield to the city. A few
hours after the garrison had passed in review, the horse, who
were encamped some miles from the town, were required to make
their choice; and most of them volunteered for France.137

Sarsfield considered the troops who remained with him as under an
irrevocable obligation to go abroad; and, lest they should be
tempted to retract their consent, he confined them within the
ramparts, and ordered the gates to be shut and strongly guarded.
Ginkell, though in his vexation he muttered some threats, seems
to have felt that he could not justifiably interfere. But the
precautions of the Irish general were far from being completely
successful. It was by no means strange that a superstitious and
excitable kerne, with a sermon and a dram in his head, should be
ready to promise whatever his priests required; neither was it
strange that, when he had slept off his liquor, and when
anathemas were no longer ringing in his ears, he should feel
painful misgivings. He had bound himself to go into exile,
perhaps for life, beyond that dreary expanse of waters which
impressed his rude mind with mysterious terror. His thoughts ran
on all that he was to leave, on the well known peat stack 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
round the 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 greyheaded parents and his blooming sweetheart. Here were
some who, unable to bear the misery of such a separation, and,
finding it impossible to pass the sentinels who watched the
gates, sprang into the river and gained the opposite bank. The
number of these daring swimmers, however, was not great; and the
army would probably have been transported almost entire if it had
remained at Limerick till the day of embarkation. But many of the
vessels in which the voyage was to be performed lay at Cork; and
it was necessary that Sarsfield should proceed thither with some
of his best regiments. It was a march of not less than four days
through a wild country. To prevent agile youths, familiar with
all the shifts of a vagrant and predatory life, from stealing off
to the bogs, and woods under cover of the night, was impossible.

Indeed, many soldiers had the audacity to run away by broad
daylight before they were out of sight of Limerick Cathedral. The
Royal regiment, which had, on the day of the review, set so
striking an example of fidelity to the cause of James, dwindled
from fourteen hundred men to five hundred. Before the last ships
departed, news came that those who had sailed by the first ships
had been ungraciously received at Brest. They had been scantily
fed; they had been able to obtain neither pay nor clothing;
though winter was setting in, they slept in the fields with no
covering but the hedges. Many had been heard to say that it would
have been far better to die in old Ireland than to live in the
inhospitable country to which they had been banished. The effect
of those reports was that hundreds, who had long persisted in
their intention of emigrating, refused at the last moment to go
on board, threw down their arms, and returned to their native
villages.138

Sarsfield perceived that one chief cause of the desertion which
was thinning his army was the natural unwillingness of the men
to leave their families in a state of destitution. Cork and its
neighbourhood were filled with the kindred of those who were
going abroad. Great numbers of women, many of them leading,
carrying, suckling their infants, covered all the roads which led
to the place of embarkation. The Irish general, apprehensive of
the effect which the entreaties and lamentations of these poor
creatures could not fail to produce, put forth a proclamation, in
which he assured his soldiers that they should be permitted to
carry their wives and families to France. It would be injurious
to the memory of so brave and loyal a gentleman to suppose that
when he made this promise he meant to break it. It is much more
probable that he had formed an erroneous estimate of the number
of those who would demand a passage, and that he found himself,
when it was too late to alter his arrangements, unable to keep
his word. After the soldiers had embarked, room was found for the
families of many. But still there remained on the water side a
great multitude clamouring piteously to be taken on board. As the
last boats put off there was a rush into the surf. Some women
caught hold of the ropes, were dragged out of their depth, clung
till their fingers were cut through, and perished in the waves.
The ships began to move. A wild and terrible wail rose from the
shore, and excited unwonted compassion in hearts steeled by
hatred of the Irish race and of the Romish faith. Even the stern
Cromwellian, 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 all the rage and all the sorrow of a
conquered nation.139

The sails disappeared. The emaciated and brokenhearted crowd of
those whom a stroke more cruel than that of death had made widows
and orphans dispersed, to beg their way home through a wasted
land, or to lie down and die by the roadside of grief and hunger.
The exiles departed, to learn in foreign camps that discipline
without which natural courage is of small avail, and to retrieve
on distant fields of battle the honour which had been lost by a
long series of defeats at home. In Ireland there was peace. The
domination of the colonists was absolute. The native population
was tranquil with the ghastly tranquillity of exhaustion and of
despair. There were indeed outrages, robberies, fireraisings,
assassinations. But more than a century passed away without one
general insurrection. During that century, two rebellions were
raised in Great Britain by the adherents of the House of Stuart.
But neither when the elder Pretender was crowned at Scone, nor
when the younger held his court at Holyrood, was the standard of
that House set up in Connaught or Munster. In 1745, indeed, when
the Highlanders were marching towards London, the Roman Catholics
of Ireland were so quiet that the Lord Lieutenant could, without
the smallest risk, send several regiments across Saint George's
Channel to recruit the army of the Duke of Cumberland. Nor was
this submission the effect of content, but of mere stupefaction
and brokenness of heart. The iron had entered into the soul. The
memory of past defeats, the habit of daily enduring insult and
oppression, had cowed the spirit of the unhappy nation. There
were indeed Irish Roman Catholics of great ability, energy and
ambition; but they were to be found every where except in
Ireland, at Versailles and at Saint Ildefonso, in the armies of
Frederic and in the armies of Maria Theresa. One exile became a
Marshal of France. Another became Prime Minister of Spain. If he
had staid in his native land he would have been regarded as an
inferior by all the ignorant and worthless squireens who drank
the glorious and immortal memory. In his palace at Madrid he had
the pleasure of being assiduously courted by the ambassador of
George the Second, and of bidding defiance in high terms to the
ambassador of George the Third.140 Scattered over all Europe were
to be found brave Irish generals, dexterous Irish diplomatists,
Irish Counts, Irish Barons, Irish Knights of Saint Lewis and of
Saint Leopold, of the White Eagle and of the Golden Fleece, who,
if they had remained in the house of bondage, could not have been
ensigns of marching regiments or freemen of 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 be
apprehended than a rising of the women and children against the
men.141

There were indeed, in those days, fierce disputes between the
mother country and the colony; but in those disputes the
aboriginal population had no more interest than the Red Indians
in the dispute between Old England and New England about the
Stamp Act. The ruling few, even when in mutiny against the
government, had no mercy for any thing that looked like mutiny on
the part of the subject many. None of those Roman patriots, who
poniarded Julius Caesar for aspiring to be a king, would have had
the smallest scruple about crucifying a whole school of
gladiators for attempting to escape from the most odious and
degrading of all kinds of servitude. None of those Virginian
patriots, who vindicated their separation from the British empire
by proclaiming it to be a selfevident truth that all men were
endowed by the Creator with an unalienable right to liberty,
would have had the smallest scruple about shooting any negro
slave who had laid claim to that unalienable right.

And, in the same manner, the Protestant masters of Ireland, while
ostentatiously professing the political doctrines of Locke and
Sidney, held that a people who spoke the Celtic tongue and heard
mass could have no concern in those doctrines. Molyneux
questioned the supremacy of the English legislature. Swift
assailed, with the keenest ridicule and invective, every part of
the system of government. Lucas disquieted the administration of
Lord Harrington. Boyle overthrew the administration of the Duke
of Dorset. But neither Molyneux nor Swift, neither Lucas nor
Boyle, ever thought of appealing to the native population. They
would as soon have thought of appealing to the swine.142 At a
later period Henry Flood excited the dominant class to demand a
Parliamentary reform, and to use even revolutionary means for the
purpose of obtaining that reform. 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 consent to admit the subject
class to the smallest share of political power. The virtuous and
accomplished Charlemont, a Whig of the Whigs, passed a long life
in contending for what he called the freedom of his country. But
he voted against the law which gave the elective franchise to
Roman Catholic freeholders; and he died fixed in the opinion that
the Parliament House ought to be kept pure from Roman Catholic
members. Indeed, during the century which followed the
Revolution, the inclination of an English Protestant to trample
on the Irishry was generally proportioned to the zeal which he
professed for political liberty in the abstract. If he uttered
any expression of compassion for the majority oppressed by the
minority, he might be safely set down as a bigoted Tory and High
Churchman.143

All this time hatred, kept down by fear, festered in the hearts
of the children of the soil. They were still the same people that
had sprung to arms in 1641 at the call of O'Neill, and in 1689 at
the call of Tyrconnel. To them every festival instituted by the
State was a day of mourning, and every public trophy set up by
the State was a memorial of shame. We have never known, and can
but faintly conceive, the feelings of a nation doomed to see
constantly in all its public places the monuments of its
subjugation. Such monuments every where met the eye of the Irish
Roman Catholics. In front of the Senate House of their country,
they saw the statue of their conqueror. If they entered, they saw
the walls tapestried with the defeats of their fathers. At
length, after a hundred years of servitude, endured without one
vigorous or combined struggle for emancipation, the French
revolution awakened a wild hope in the bosoms of the oppressed.
Men who had inherited all the pretensions and all the passions of
the Parliament which James had held at the Kings Inns could not
hear unmoved of the downfall of a wealthy established Church, of
the flight of a splendid aristocracy, of the confiscation of an
immense territory. Old antipathies, which had never slumbered,
were excited to new and terrible energy by the combination of
stimulants which, in any other society, would have counteracted
each other. The spirit of Popery and the spirit of Jacobinism,
irreconcilable antagonists every where else, were for once
mingled in an unnatural and portentous union. Their joint
influence produced the third and last rising up of the aboriginal
population against the colony. The greatgrandsons of the soldiers
of Galmoy and Sarsfield were opposed to the greatgrandsons of the
soldiers of Wolseley and Mitchelburn. The Celt again looked
impatiently for the sails which were to bring succour from Brest;
and the Saxon was again backed by the whole power of England.
Again the victory remained with the well educated and well
organized minority. But, happily, the vanquished people found
protection in a quarter from which they would once have had to
expect nothing but implacable severity. By this time the
philosophy of the eighteenth century had purifed English Whiggism
from that deep taint of intolerance which had been contracted
during a long and close alliance with the Puritanism of the
seventeenth century. Enlightened men had begun to feel that the
arguments by which Milton and Locke, Tillotson and Burnet, had
vindicated the rights of conscience might be urged with not less
force in favour of the Roman Catholic than in favour of the
Independent or the Baptist. The great party which traces its
descent through the Exclusionists up to the Roundheads continued
during thirty years, in spite of royal frowns and popular
clamours, to demand a share in all the benefits of our free
constitution for those Irish Papists whom the Roundheads and the
Exclusionists had considered merely as beasts of chase or as
beasts of burden. But it will be for some other historian to
relate the vicissitudes of that great conflict, and the late
triumph of reason and humanity. Unhappily such a historian will
have to relate that the triumph won by such exertions and by such
sacrifices was immediately followed by disappointment; that it
proved far less easy to eradicate evil passions than to repeal
evil laws; and that, long after every trace of national and
religious animosity had been obliterated from the Statute Book,
national and religious animosities continued to rankle in the
bosoms of millions. May he be able also to relate that wisdom,
justice and time gradually did in Ireland what they had done in
Scotland, and that all the races which inhabit the British isles
were at length 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
from the Netherlands.144 Three days later he opened the
Parliament. The aspect of affairs was, on the whole, cheering. By
land there had been gains and losses; but the balance was in
favour of England. Against the fall of Mons might well be set off
the taking of Athlone, the victory of Aghrim, the surrender of
Limerick and the pacification of Ireland. At sea there had been
no great victory; but there had been a great display of power and
of activity; and, though many were dissatisfied because more had
not been done, none could deny that there had been a change for
the better. The ruin caused by the foibles and vices of
Torrington had been repaired; the fleet had been well equipped;
the rations had been abundant and wholesome; and the health of
the crews had consequently been, for that age, wonderfully good.
Russell, who commanded the naval forces of the allies, had in
vain offered battle to the French. The white flag, which, in the
preceding year, had ranged the Channel unresisted from the Land's
End to the Straits of Dover, now, as soon as our topmasts were
descried twenty leagues off, abandoned the open sea, and retired
into the depths of the harbour of Brest. The appearance of an
English squadron in the estuary of the Shannon had decided the
fate of the last fortress which had held out for King James; and
a fleet of merchantmen from the Levant, valued at four millions
sterling, had, through dangers which had caused many sleepless
nights to the underwriters of Lombard Street, been convoyed safe
into the Thames.145 The Lords and Commons listened with signs of
satisfaction to a speech in which the King congratulated them on
the event of the war in Ireland, and expressed his confidence
that they would continue to support him in the war with France.
He told them that a great naval armament would be necessary, and
that, in his opinion, the conflict by land could not be
effectually maintained with less than sixty-five thousand men.146

He was thanked in affectionate terms; the force which he asked
was voted; and large supplies were granted with little
difficulty. But when the Ways and Means were taken into
consideration, symptoms of discontent began to appear. Eighteen
months before, when the Commons had been employed in settling the
Civil List, many members had shown a very natural disposition to
complain of the amount of the salaries and fees received by
official men. Keen speeches had been made, and, what was much
less usual, had been printed; there had been much excitement out
of doors; but nothing had been done. The subject was now revived.
A report made by the Commissioners who had been appointed in the
preceding year to examine the public accounts disclosed some
facts which excited indignation, and others which raised grave
suspicion. The House seemed fully determined to make an extensive
reform; and, in truth, nothing could have averted such a reform
except the folly and violence of the reformers. That they should
have been angry is indeed not strange. The enormous gains, direct
and indirect, of the servants of the public went on increasing,
while the gains of every body else were diminishing. Rents were
falling; trade was languishing; every man who lived either on
what his ancestors had left him or on the fruits of his own
industry was forced to retrench. The placeman alone throve amidst
the general distress. "Look," cried the incensed squires, "at the
Comptroller of the Customs. Ten years ago, he walked, and we
rode. Our incomes have been curtailed; his salary has been
doubled; we have sold our horses; he has bought them; and now we
go on foot, and are splashed by his coach and six." Lowther
vainly endeavoured to stand up against the storm. He was heard
with little favour by the country gentlemen who had not long
before looked up to him as one of their leaders. He had left them;
he had become a courtier; he had two good places, one in the
Treasury, the other in the household. He had recently received
from the King's own hand a gratuity of two thousand guineas.147
It seemed perfectly natural that he should defend abuses by which
he profited. The taunts and reproaches with which he was assailed
were insupportable to his sensitive nature. He lost his head,
almost fainted away on the floor of the House, and talked about
righting himself in another place.148 Unfortunately no member
rose at this conjuncture to propose that the civil establishment
of the kingdom should be carefully revised, that sinecures should
be abolished, that exorbitant official incomes should be 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 public department. But unfortunately those
who were loudest in clamouring against the prevailing abuses were
utterly destitute of the qualities necessary for the work of
reform. On the twelfth of December, some foolish man, whose name
has not come down to us, moved that no person employed in any
civil office, the Speaker, Judges and Ambassadors excepted,
should receive more than five hundred pounds a year; and this
motion was not only carried, but carried without one dissentient
voice.149

Those who were most interested in opposing it doubtless saw that
opposition would, at that moment, only irritate the majority, and
reserved themselves for a more favourable time. The more
favourable time 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 no distinction between sinecurists and
laborious public servants, between clerks employed in copying
letters and ministers on whose wisdom and integrity the fate of
the nation might depend. The salary of the Doorkeeper of the
Excise Office had been, by a scandalous job, raised to five
hundred a year. It ought to have been reduced to fifty. On the
other hand, the services of a Secretary of State who was well
qualified for his post would have been cheap at five thousand. If
the resolution of the Commons bad been carried into effect, both
the salary which ought not to have exceeded fifty pounds, and the
salary which might without impropriety have amounted to five
thousand, would have been fixed at five hundred. Such absurdity
must have shocked even the roughest and plainest foxhunter in the
House. A reaction took place; and when, after an interval of a
few weeks, it was proposed to insert in a bill of supply a clause
in conformity with the resolution of the twelfth of December, the
Noes were loud; the Speaker was of opinion that they had it; the
Ayes did not venture to dispute his opinion; the senseless plan
which had been approved without a division was rejected without a
division; and the subject was not again mentioned. Thus a
grievance so scandalous that none of those who profited by it
dared to defend it was perpetuated merely by the imbecility and
intemperance of those who attacked it.150

Early in the Session the Treaty of Limerick became the subject of
a grave and earnest discussion. The Commons, in the exercise of
that supreme power which the English legislature possessed over
all the dependencies of England, sent up to the Lords a bill
providing that no person should sit in the Irish Parliament,
should hold any Irish office, civil, military or ecclesiastical,
or should practise law or medicine in Ireland, till he had taken
the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy, and subscribed the
Declaration against Transubstantiation. The Lords were not more
inclined than the Commons to favour the Irish. No peer was
disposed to entrust Roman Catholics with political power. Nay, it
seems that no peer objected to the principle of the absurd and
cruel rule which excluded Roman Catholics from the liberal
professions. But it was thought 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 read at the
table, and proceeded to consider whether the law framed by the
Lower House was consistent with the engagements into which the
government had entered. One discrepancy was noticed. It was
stipulated by the second civil article, that every person
actually residing in any fortress occupied by an Irish garrison,
should be permitted, on taking the Oath of Allegiance, to resume
any calling which he had exercised before the Revolution. It
would, beyond all doubt, have been a violation of this covenant
to require that a lawyer or a physician, who had been within the
walls of Limerick during the siege, should take the Oath of
Supremacy and subscribe the Declaration against
Transubstantiation, before he could receive fees. Holt was
consulted, and was directed to prepare clauses in conformity with
the terms of the capitulation.

The bill, as amended by Holt, was sent back to the Commons. They
at first rejected the amendment, and demanded a conference. The
conference was granted. Rochester, in the Painted Chamber,
delivered to the managers of the Lower House a copy of the Treaty
of Limerick, and earnestly represented the importance of
preserving the public faith inviolate. This appeal was one which
no honest man, though inflamed by national and religious
animosity, could resist. The Commons reconsidered the subject,
and, after hearing the Treaty read, agreed, with some slight
modifications, to what the Lords had proposed.151

The bill became a law. It attracted, at the time, little notice,
but was, after the lapse of several generations, the subject of a
very acrimonious controversy. Many of us can well remember how
strongly the public mind was stirred, in the days of George the
Third and George the Fourth, by the question whether Roman
Catholics should be permitted to sit in Parliament. It may be
doubted whether any dispute has produced stranger perversions of
history. The whole past was falsified for the sake of the
present. All the great events of three centuries long appeared to
us distorted and discoloured by a mist sprung from our own
theories and our own passions. Some friends of religious liberty,
not content with the advantage which they possessed in the fair
conflict of reason with reason, weakened their case by
maintaining that the law which excluded Irish Roman Catholics
from Parliament was inconsistent with the civil Treaty of
Limerick. The First article of that Treaty, it was said,
guaranteed to the Irish Roman Catholic such privileges in the
exercise of his religion as he had enjoyed in the time of Charles
the Second. In the time of Charles the Second no test excluded
Roman Catholics from the Irish Parliament. Such a test could not
therefore, it was argued, be imposed without a breach of public
faith. In the year 1828, especially, this argument was put
forward in the House of Commons as if it had been the main
strength of a cause which stood in need of no such support. The
champions of Protestant ascendency were well pleased to see the
debate diverted from a political question about which they were
in the wrong, to a historical question about which they were in
the right. They had no difficulty in proving that the first
article, as understood by all the contracting parties, meant only
that the Roman Catholic worship should be tolerated as in time
past. That article was drawn up by Ginkell; and, just before he
drew it up, he had declared that he would rather try the chance
of arms than consent that Irish Papists should be capable of
holding civil and military offices, of exercising liberal
professions, and of becoming members of municipal corporations.
How is it possible to believe that he would, of his own accord,
have promised that the House of Lords and the House of Commons
should be open to men to whom he would not open a guild of
skinners or a guild of cordwainers? How, again, is it possible to
believe that the English Peers would, while professing the most
punctilious respect for public faith, while lecturing the Commons
on the duty of observing public faith, while taking counsel with
the most learned and upright jurist of the age as to the best
mode of maintaining public faith, have committed a flagrant
violation of public faith and that not a single lord should have
been so honest or so factious as to protest against an act of
monstrous perfidy aggravated by hypocrisy? Or, if we could
believe this, how can we believe that no voice would have been
raised in any part of the world against such wickedness; that the
Court of Saint Germains and the Court of Versailles would have
remained profoundly silent; that no Irish exile, no English
malecontent, would have uttered a murmur; that not a word of
invective or sarcasm on so inviting a subject would have been
found in the whole compass of the Jacobite literature; and that
it would have been reserved for politicians of the nineteenth
century to discover that a treaty made in the seventeenth century
had, a few weeks after it had been signed, been outrageously
violated in the sight of all Europe?152

On the same day on which the Commons read for the first time the
bill which subjected Ireland to the absolute dominion of the
Protestant minority, they took into consideration another matter
of high importance. Throughout the country, but especially in the
capital, in the seaports and in the manufacturing towns, the
minds of men were greatly excited on the subject of the trade
with the East Indies; a fierce paper war had during some time
been raging; and several grave questions, both constitutional and
commercial, had been raised, which the legislature only could
decide.

It has often been repeated, and ought never to be forgotten, that
our polity differs widely from those politics which have, during
the last eighty years, been methodically constructed, digested
into articles, and ratified by constituent assemblies. It grew up
in a rude age. It is not to be found entire in any formal
instrument. All along the line which separates the functions of
the prince from those of the legislator there was long a disputed
territory. Encroachments were perpetually committed, and, if not
very outrageous, were often tolerated. Trespass, merely as
trespass, was commonly suffered to pass unresented. It was only
when the trespass produced some positive damage that the
aggrieved party stood on his right, and demanded that the
frontier should be set out by metes and bounds, and that the
landmarks should thenceforward be punctiliously respected.

Many of those points which had occasioned the most violent
disputes between our Sovereigns and their Parliaments had been
finally decided by the Bill of Rights. But one question, scarcely
less important than any of the questions which had been set at
rest for ever, was still undetermined. Indeed, that question was
never, as far as can now be ascertained, even mentioned in the
Convention. The King had undoubtedly, by the ancient laws of the
realm, large powers for the regulation of trade; but the ablest
judge would have found it difficult to say what was the precise
extent of those powers. It was universally acknowledged that it
belonged to the King to prescribe weights and measures, and to
coin money; that no fair or market could be held without
authority from him; that no ship could unload in any bay or
estuary which he had not declared to be a port. In addition to
his undoubted right to grant special commercial privileges to
particular places, he long claimed a right to grant special
commercial privileges to particular societies and to particular
individuals; and our ancestors, as usual, did not think it worth
their while to dispute this claim, till it produced serious
inconvenience. At length, in the reign of Elizabeth, the power of
creating monopolies began to be grossly abused; and, as soon as
it began to be grossly abused, it began to be questioned. The
Queen wisely declined a conflict with a House of Commons backed
by the whole nation. She frankly acknowledged that there was
reason for complaint; she cancelled the patents which had excited
the public clamours; and her people, delighted by this
concession, and by the gracious manner in which it had been made,
did not require from her an express renunciation of the disputed
prerogative.

The discontents which her wisdom had appeased were revived by the
dishonest and pusillanimous policy which her successor called
Kingcraft. He readily granted oppressive patents of monopoly.
When he needed the help of his Parliament, he as readily annulled
them. As soon as the Parliament had ceased to sit, his Great Seal
was put to instruments more odious than those which he had
recently cancelled. At length that excellent House of Commons
which met in 1623 determined to apply a strong remedy to the
evil. The King was forced to give his assent to a law which
declared monopolies established by royal authority to be null and
void. Some exceptions, however, were made, and, unfortunately,
were not very clearly defined. It was especially provided that
every Society of Merchants which had been instituted for the
purpose of carrying on any trade should retain all its legal
privileges.153 The question whether a monopoly granted by the
Crown to such a company were or were not 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 which were
painfully felt every day at every fireside, was in no humour to
dispute the validity of the charters under which a few companies
to London traded with distant parts of the world.

Of these companies by far the most important was that which had
been, on the last day of the sixteenth century, incorporated by
Queen Elizabeth under the name of the Governor and Company of
Merchants of London trading to the East Indies. When this
celebrated body began to exist, the Mogul monarchy was at the
zenith of power and glory. Akbar, the ablest and best of the
princes of the House of Tamerlane, had just been borne, full of
years and honours, to a mausoleum surpassing in magnificence any
that Europe could show. He had bequeathed to his posterity an
empire containing more than twenty times the population and
yielding more than twenty times the revenue of the England
which, under our great Queen, held a foremost place among
European powers. It is curious and interesting to consider how
little the two countries, destined to be one day so closely
connected, were then known to each other. The most enlightened
Englishmen looked on India with ignorant admiration. The most
enlightened natives of India were scarcely aware that England
existed. Our ancestors had a dim notion of endless bazaars,
swarming with buyers and sellers, and blazing with cloth of gold,
with variegated silks and with precious stones; of treasuries
where diamonds were piled in heaps and sequins in mountains; of
palaces, compared with which Whitehall and Hampton Court were
hovels; of armies ten times as numerous as that which they had
seen assembled at Tilbury to repel the Armada. On the other hand,
it was probably not known to one of the statesmen in the Durbar
of Agra that there was near the setting sun a great city of
infidels, called London, where a woman reigned, and that she had
given to an association of Frank merchants the exclusive
privilege of freighting ships from her dominions to the Indian
seas. That this association would one day rule all India, from
the ocean to the everlasting snow, would reduce to profound
obedience great provinces which had never submitted to Akbar's
authority, would send Lieutenant Governors to preside in his
capital, and would dole out a monthly pension to his heir, would
have seemed to the wisest of European or of Oriental politicians
as impossible as that inhabitants of our globe should found an
empire in Venus or Jupiter.

Three generations passed away; and still nothing indicated that
the East India Company would ever become a great Asiatic
potentate. The Mogul empire, though undermined by internal causes
of decay, and tottering to its fall, still presented to distant
nations the appearance of undiminished prosperity and vigour.
Aurengzebe, who, in the same month in which Oliver Cromwell died,
assumed the magnificent title of Conqueror of the World,
continued to reign till Anne had been long on the English throne.
He was the sovereign of a larger territory than had obeyed any of
his predecessors. His name was great in the farthest regions of
the West. Here he had been made by Dryden the hero of a tragedy
which would alone suffice to show how little the English of that
age knew about the vast empire which their grandchildren were to
conquer and to govern. The poet's Mussulman princes make love in
the style of Amadis, preach about the death of Socrates, and
embellish their discourse with allusions to the mythological
stories of Ovid. The Brahminical metempyschosis is represented as
an article of the Mussulman creed; and the Mussulman Sultanas
burn themselves with their husbands after the Brahminical
fashion. This drama, once rapturously applauded by crowded
theatres, and known by heart to fine gentlemen and fine ladies,
is now forgotten. But one noble passage still lives, and is
repeated by thousands who know not whence it comes.155

Though nothing yet indicated the high political destiny of the
East India Company, that body had a great sway in the City of
London. The offices, which stood on a very small part of the
ground which the present offices cover, had escaped the ravages
of the fire. The India House of those days was a building of
timber and plaster, rich with the quaint carving and lattice-work
of the Elizabethan age. Above the windows was a painting which
represented a fleet of merchantmen tossing on the waves. The
whole edifice was surmounted by a colossal wooden seaman, who,
from between two dolphins, looked down on the crowds of
Leadenhall Street.156 In this abode, narrow and humble indeed
when compared with the vast labyrinth of passages and chambers
which now bears the same name, the Company enjoyed, during the
greater part of the reign of Charles the Second, a prosperity to
which the history of trade scarcely furnishes any parallel, and
which excited the wonder, the cupidity and the envious animosity
of the whole capital. Wealth and luxury were then rapidly
increasing. The taste for the spices, the tissues 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, had been handed
round to be stared at and just touched with the lips, as a great
rarity from China, was, eight years later, a regular article of
import, and was soon consumed in such quantities that financiers
began to consider it as a fit subject for taxation. The progress
which was making in the art of war had created an unprecedented
demand for the ingredients of which gunpowder is compounded. It
was calculated that all Europe would hardly produce in a year
saltpetre enough for the siege of one town fortified on the
principles of Vauban.157 But for the supplies from India, it was
said, the English government would be unable to equip a fleet
without digging up the cellars of London in order to collect the
nitrous particles from the walls.158 Before the Restoration
scarcely one ship from the Thames had ever visited the Delta of
the Ganges. But, during the twenty-three years which followed the
Restoration, the value of the annual imports from that rich and
populous district increased from eight thousand pounds to three
hundred thousand.

The gains of the body which had the exclusive possession of this
fast growing trade were almost incredible. The capital which had
been actually paid up did not exceed three hundred and seventy
thousand pounds; but the Company could, without difficulty,
borrow money at six per 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 that which he held. On the
capital, thus doubled, were paid, during five years, dividends
amounting on an average to twenty per cent. annually. There had
been a time when a hundred pounds of the stock could be purchased
for sixty. Even in 1664 the price in the market was only seventy.
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
and sixty; and it is said that some sales were effected at five
hundred.159

The enormous gains of the Indian trade might perhaps have excited
little murmuring if they had been distributed among numerous
proprietors. But while the value of the stock went on increasing,
the number of stockholders went on diminishing. At the tithe when
the prosperity of the Company reached the highest point, the
management was entirely in the hands of a few merchants of
enormous wealth. A proprietor then had a vote for every five
hundred pounds of stock that stood in his name. It is asserted in
the pamphlets of that age that five persons had a sixth part, and
fourteen persons a third part of the votes.160 More than one
fortunate speculator was said to derive an annual income of ten
thousand pounds from the monopoly; and one great man was pointed
out on the Royal Exchange as having, by judicious or lucky
purchases of stock, created in no long time an estate of twenty
thousand a year. This commercial grandee, who in wealth and in
the influence which attends wealth vied with the greatest nobles
of his time, was Sir Josiah Child. There were those who still
remembered him an apprentice, sweeping one of the counting houses
of the City. But from a humble position his abilities had raised
him rapidly to opulence, power and fame. At the time of the
Restoration he was highly considered in the mercantile world.
Soon after that event he published his thoughts on the philosophy
of trade. His speculations were not always sound; but they were
the speculations of an ingenious and reflecting man. Into
whatever errors he may occasionally have fallen as a theorist, it
is certain that, as a practical man of business, he had few
equals. Almost as soon as he became a member of the committee
which directed the affairs of the Company, 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 expended with
ostentatious profusion, continued to increase and multiply. He
obtained a baronetcy; he purchased a stately seat at Wanstead;
and there he laid out immense sums in excavating fishponds, and
in planting whole square miles of barren land with walnut trees.
He married his daughter to the eldest son of the Duke of
Beaufort, and paid down with her a portion of fifty thousand
pounds.161

But this wonderful prosperity was not uninterrupted. Towards the
close of the reign of Charles the Second the Company began to be
fiercely attacked from without, and to be at the same time
distracted by internal dissensions. The profits of the Indian
trade were so tempting, that private adventurers had often, in
defiance of the royal charter, fitted out ships for the Eastern
seas. But the competition of these interlopers did not become
really formidable till the year 1680. The nation was then
violently agitated by the dispute about the Exclusion Bill. Timid
men were anticipating another civil war. The two great parties,
newly named Whigs and Tories, were fiercely contending in every
county and town of England; and the feud soon spread to every
corner of the civilised world where Englishmen were to be found.

The Company was popularly considered as a Whig body. Among the
members of the directing committee were some of the most vehement
Exclusionists in the City. Indeed two of them, Sir Samuel
Barnardistone and Thomas Papillon, drew on themselves a severe
persecution by their zeal against Popery and arbitrary power.162
Child had been originally brought into the direction by these
men; he had long acted in concert with them; and he was supposed
to hold their political opinions. He had, during many years,
stood high in the esteem of the chiefs of the parliamentary
opposition, and had been especially obnoxious to the Duke of
York.163 The interlopers therefore determined to affect the
character of loyal men, who were determined to stand by the
throne against the insolent tribunes of the City. They spread, at
all the factories in the East, reports that England was in
confusion, that the sword had been drawn or would immediately be
drawn, and that the Company was forward in the rebellion against
the Crown. These rumours, which, in truth, were not improbable,
easily found credit among people separated from London by what
was then a voyage of twelve months. Some servants of the Company
who were in ill humour with their employers, and others who were
zealous royalists, joined the private traders. At Bombay, the
garrison and the great body of the English inhabitants declared
that they would no longer obey any body who did not obey the
King; they imprisoned the Deputy Governor; and they proclaimed
that they held the island for the Crown. At Saint Helena there
was a rising. The insurgents took the name of King's men, and
displayed the royal standard. They were, not without difficulty,
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
these commotions reached England, it is probable that the
government would have approved of the conduct of the mutineers,
and that the charter on which the monopoly depended would have
had the fate which about the same time befell so many other
charters. But while the interlopers were, at a distance of many
thousands of miles, making war on the Company in the name of the
King, the Company and the King had been reconciled. When the
Oxford Parliament had been dissolved, when many signs indicated
that a strong reaction in favour of prerogative was at hand, when
all the corporations which had incurred the royal displeasure
were beginning to tremble for their franchises, a rapid and
complete revolution took place at the India House. Child, who was
then Governor, or, in the modern phrase, Chairman, separated
himself from his old friends, excluded them from the direction,
and negotiated a treaty of peace and of close alliance with the
Court.165 It is not improbable that the near connection into
which he had just entered with the great Tory house of Beaufort
may have had something to do with this change in his politics.
Papillon, Barnardistone, and their adherents, sold their stock;
their places in the committee were supplied by persons devoted to
Child; and he was thenceforth the autocrat of the Company. The
treasures of the Company were absolutely at his disposal. The
most important papers of the Company were kept, not in the
muniment room of the office in Leadenhall Street, but in his desk
at Wanstead. The boundless power which he exercised at the India
House enabled him to become a favourite at Whitehall; and the
favour which he enjoyed at Whitehall confirmed his power at the
India House. A present of ten thousand guineas was graciously
received from him by Charles. Ten thousand more were accepted by
James, who readily consented to become a holder of stock. All who
could help or hurt at Court, ministers, mistresses, priests, were
kept in good humour by presents of shawls and silks, birds' nests
and atar of roses, bulses of diamonds and bags of guineas.166 Of
what the Dictator expended no account was asked by his
colleagues; and in truth he seems to have deserved the confidence
which they reposed in him. His bribes, distributed with judicious
prodigality, speedily produced a large return. Just when the
Court became all powerful in the State, he became all powerful at
the Court. Jeffreys pronounced a decision in favour of the
monopoly, and of the strongest acts which had been done in
defence of the monopoly. James ordered his seal to be put to a
new charter which confirmed and extended all the privileges
bestowed on the Company by his predecessors. All captains of
Indiamen received commissions from the Crown, and were permitted
to hoist the royal ensigns.167 John Child, brother of Sir Josiah,
and Governor of Bombay, 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 he was authorised to assume the title of
Excellency. The Company, on the other hand, distinguished itself
among many servile corporations by obsequious homage to the
throne, and set to all the merchants of the kingdom the example
of readily and even eagerly paying those customs which James, at
the commencement of his reign, exacted without the authority of
Parliament.168

It seemed that the private trade would now be utterly crushed,
and that the monopoly, protected by the whole strength of the
royal prerogative, would be more profitable than ever. But
unfortunately just at this moment a quarrel arose between the
agents of the Company in India and the Mogul Government. Where
the fault lay is a question which was vehemently disputed at the
time, and which it is now impossible to decide. The interlopers
threw all the blame on the Company. The Governor of Bombay, they
affirmed, had always been grasping and violent; but his baronetcy
and his military commission had completely turned his head. The
very natives who were employed about the factory had noticed the
change, and had muttered, in their broken English, that there
must be some strange curse attending the word Excellency; for
that, ever since the chief of the strangers was called
Excellency, every thing had gone to ruin. Meanwhile, it was said,
the brother in England had sanctioned all the unjust and
impolitic acts of the brother in India, till at length insolence
and rapine, disgraceful to the English nation and to the
Christian religion, had roused the just resentment of the native
authorities. The Company warmly recriminated. The story told at
the India House was that the quarrel was entirely the work of the
interlopers, who were now designated not only as interlopers but
as traitors. They had, it was alleged, by flattery, by presents,
and by false accusations, induced the viceroys of the Mogul to
oppress and persecute the body which in Asia represented the
English Crown. And indeed this charge seems not to have been
altogether without foundation. It is certain that one of the most
pertinacious enemies of the Childs went 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 the common God of Christians and Mussulmans.169 Whether
Aurengzebe paid much attention to the charges brought by infidel
Franks against each other may be doubted. But it is certain that
a complete rupture took place between his deputies and the
servants of the Company. On the sea the ships of his subjects
were seized by the English. On land the English settlements were
taken and plundered. The trade was suspended; and, though great
annual dividends were still paid in London, they were no longer
paid out of annual profits.

Just at this conjuncture, while every Indiaman that arrived in
the Thames was bringing unwelcome news from the East, all the
politics of Sir Josiah were utterly confounded by the Revolution.
He had flattered himself that he had secured the body of which he
was the chief against the machinations of interlopers, by uniting
it closely with the strongest government that had existed within
his memory. That government had fallen; and whatever had leaned
on the ruined fabric began to totter. The bribes had been thrown
away. The connections which had been the strength and boast of
the corporation were now its weakness and its shame. The King
who had been one of its members was an exile. The judge by whom
all its most exorbitant pretensions had been pronounced
legitimate was a prisoner. All the old enemies of the Company,
reinforced by those great Whig merchants whom Child had expelled
from the direction, demanded justice and vengeance from the Whig
House of Commons, which had just placed William and Mary on the
throne. No voice was louder in accusation than that of Papillon,
who had, some years before, been more zealous for the charter
than any man in London.170 The Commons censured in severe terms
the persons who had inflicted death by martial law at Saint
Helena, and even resolved that some of those offenders should be
excluded from the Act of Indemnity.171 The great question, how
the trade with the East should for the future be carried on, was
referred to a Committee. The report was to have been made on the
twenty-seventh of January 1690; but on that very day the
Parliament ceased to exist.

The first two sessions of the succeeding Parliament were so short
and so busy that little was said about India in either House.
But, out of Parliament, all the arts both of controversy and of
intrigue were employed on both sides. Almost as many pamphlets
were published about the India trade as about the oaths. The
despot of Leadenhall Street was libelled in prose and verse.
Wretched puns were made on his name. He was compared to Cromwell,
to the King of France, to Goliath of Gath, to the Devil. It was
vehemently declared to be necessary that, in any Act which might
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
agreed in hating Child and the body of which he was the head. The
manufacturers of Spitalfields, of Norwich, of Yorkshire, and of
the Western counties, considered the trade with the Eastern seas
as rather injurious than beneficial to the kingdom. The
importation of Indian spices, indeed, was admitted to be
harmless, and the importation of Indian saltpetre to be
necessary. But the importation of silks and of Bengals, as shawls
were then called, was pronounced to be a curse to the country.
The effect of the growing taste for such frippery was that our
gold and silver went abroad, and that much excellent English
drapery lay in our warehouses till it was devoured by the moths.
Those, it was said, were happy days for the inhabitants both of
our pasture lands and of our manufacturing towns, when every
gown, every hanging, every bed, was made of materials which our
own flocks had furnished to our own looms. Where were now the
brave old hangings of arras which had adorned the walls of lordly
mansions in the days of Elizabeth? And was it not a shame to see
a gentleman, whose ancestors had worn nothing but stuffs made by
English workmen out of English fleeces, flaunting in a calico
shirt and a pair of silk stockings? Clamours such as these had, a
few years before, extorted from Parliament the Act which required
that the dead should be wrapped in woollen; and some sanguine
clothiers hoped that the legislature 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 might be derived by England from the Indian trade.
What was the most effectual mode of extending that trade was a
question which excited general interest, and which was answered
in very different ways.

A small party, consisting chiefly of merchants resident at
Bristol and other provincial seaports, maintained that the best
way to extend trade was to leave it free. They urged the well
known arguments which prove that monopoly is injurious to
commerce; and, having fully established the general law, they
asked why the commerce between England and India was to be
considered as an exception to that law. Any trader ought, they
said, to be permitted to send from any port a cargo to Surat or
Canton as freely as he now sent a cargo to Hamburg or Lisbon.174
In our time these doctrines may probably be considered, not only
as sound, but as trite and obvious. In the seventeenth century,
however, they were thought paradoxical. It was then generally
held to be a certain, and indeed an almost selfevident truth,
that our trade with the countries lying beyond the Cape of Good
Hope could be advantageously carried on only by means of a great
Joint Stock Company. There was no analogy, it was said, between
our European trade and our Indian trade. Our government had
diplomatic relations with the European States. If necessary, a
maritime force could easily be sent from hence to the mouth of
the Elbe or of the Tagus. But the English Kings had no envoy at
the Court of Agra or Pekin. There was seldom a single English man
of war within 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 by their Sovereign, they must protect themselves,
and must, for that end, exercise some of the rights of
sovereignty. They must have forts, garrisons and armed ships.
They must have power to send and receive embassies, to make a
treaty of alliance with one Asiatic prince, to wage war on
another. It was evidently impossible that every merchant should
have this power independently of the rest. The merchants trading
to India must therefore be joined together in a corporation which
could act as one man. In support of these arguments the example
of the Dutch was cited, and was generally considered as decisive.
For in that age the immense prosperity of Holland was every where
regarded with admiration, not the less earnest because it was
largely mingled with envy and hatred. In all that related to
trade, her statesmen were considered as oracles, and her
institutions as models.

The great majority, therefore, of those who assailed the Company
assailed it, not because it traded on joint funds and possessed
exclusive privileges, but because it was ruled by one man, and
because his rule had been mischievous to the public, and
beneficial only to himself and his creatures. The obvious remedy,
it was said, for the evils which his maladministration had
produced was to transfer the monopoly to a new corporation so
constituted as to be in no danger of falling 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 entrusted
the care of their interests to a committee which contained some
of the chief traders of the City. This society, though it had, in
the eye of the law, no personality, was early designated, in
popular speech, as the New Company; and the hostilities between
the New Company and the Old Company soon caused almost as much
excitement and anxiety, at least in that busy hive of which the
Royal Exchange was the centre, as the hostilities between the
Allies and the French King. The headquarters of the younger
association were in Dowgate; the Skinners lent their stately
hall; and the meetings were held in a parlour renowned for the
fragrance which 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
degree satisfactory. Peace had been concluded between the great
Mogul and the English. That mighty potentate had not only
withdrawn his troops from the factories, but had bestowed on the
Company privileges such as it had never before enjoyed. Soon,
however, appeared a very different version of the story. The
enemies of Child had, before this time, accused him of
systematically publishing false intelligence. He had now, they
said, outlied himself. They had obtained a true copy of the
Firman which had put an end to the war; and they printed a
translation of it. It appeared that Aurengzebe had contemptuously
granted to the English, in consideration of their penitence and
of a large tribute, his forgiveness for their past delinquency,
had charged them to behave themselves better for the future, and
had, in the tone of a master, laid on them his commands to remove
the principal offender, Sir John Child, from power and trust. The
death of Sir John occurred so seasonably that these commands
could not be obeyed. But it was only too evident that the
pacification which the rulers of the India House had represented
as advantageous and honourable had really been effected on terms
disgraceful to the English name.176

During the summer of 1691, the controversy which raged on this
subject between the Leadenhall Street Company and the Dowgate
Company kept the City in constant agitation. In the autumn, the
Parliament had no sooner met than both the contending parties
presented petitions to the House of Commons.177 The petitions
were immediately taken into serious consideration, and
resolutions of grave importance were passed. The first resolution
was that the trade with the East Indies was beneficial to the
kingdom; the second was that the trade with the East Indies would
be best carried on by a joint stock company possessed of
exclusive privileges.178 It was plain, therefore, that neither
those manufacturers who wished to prohibit the trade, nor those
merchants at the outports who wished to throw it open, had the
smallest chance of attaining their objects. The only question
left was the question between the Old and the New Company.
Seventeen years elapsed before that question ceased to disturb
both political and commercial circles. It was fatal to the honour
and power of one great minister, and to the peace and prosperity
of many private families. The tracts which the rival bodies put
forth against each other were innumerable. If the drama of that
age may be trusted, the feud between the India House and
Skinners' Hall was sometimes as serious an impediment to the
course of true love in 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 not easy to say. The New Company
was supported by the Whigs, the Old Company by the Tories. The
New Company was popular; for it promised largely, and could not
be accused of having broken its promises; it made no dividends,
and therefore was not envied; it had no power to oppress, and had
therefore been guilty of no oppression. The Old Company, though
generally regarded with little favour by the public, had the
immense advantage of being in possession, and of having only to
stand on the defensive. The burden of framing a plan for the
regulation of the India trade, and of proving that plan to be
better than the plan hitherto followed, lay on the New Company.
The Old Company had merely to find objections to every change
that was proposed; and such objections there was little
difficulty in finding. The members of the New Company were ill
provided with the means of purchasing support at Court and in
Parliament. They had no corporate existence, no common treasury.
If any of them gave a bribe, he gave it out of his own pocket,
with little chance of being reimbursed. But the Old Company,
though surrounded by dangers, still held its exclusive
privileges, and still made its enormous profits. Its stock had
indeed gone down greatly in value since the golden days of
Charles the Second; but a hundred pounds still sold for a hundred
and twenty-two.180 After a large dividend had been paid to the
proprietors, a surplus remained amply sufficient, in those days,
to corrupt half a cabinet; and this surplus was absolutely at the
disposal of one able, determined and unscrupulous man, who
maintained the fight with wonderful art and pertinacity.

The majority of the Commons wished to effect a compromise, to
retain the Old Company, but to remodel it, to impose on it new
conditions, and to incorporate with it the members of the New
Company. With this view it was, after long and vehement debates
and close divisions, resolved that the capital should be
increased to a million and a half. In order to prevent a single
person or a small junto from domineering over the whole society,
it was determined that five thousand pounds of stock should be
the largest quantity that any single proprietor could hold, and
that those who held more should be required to sell the overplus
at any price not below par. In return for the exclusive privilege
of trading to the Eastern seas, the Company was to be required to
furnish annually five hundred tons of saltpetre to the Crown at a
low price, and to export annually English manufactures to the
value of two hundred thousand pounds.181

A bill founded on these resolutions was brought in, read twice,
and committed, but was suffered to drop in consequence of the
positive refusal of Child and his associates to accept the
offered terms. He objected to every part of the plan; and his
objections are highly curious and amusing. The great monopolist
took his stand on the principles of free trade. In a luminous and
powerfully written paper he exposed the absurdity of the
expedients which the House of Commons had devised. To limit the
amount of stock which might stand in a single name would, he
said, be most unreasonable. Surely a proprietor whose whole
fortune was staked on the success of the Indian trade was far
more likely to exert all his faculties vigorously for the
promotion of that trade than a proprietor who had risked only
what it would be no great disaster to lose. The demand that
saltpetre should be furnished to the Crown for a fixed sum Child
met by those arguments, familiar to our generation, which prove
that prices should be left to settle themselves. To the demand
that the Company should bind itself to export annually two
hundred thousand pounds' worth of English manufactures he very
properly replied that the Company would most gladly export two
millions' worth if the market required such a supply, and that,
if the market were overstocked, it would be mere folly to send
good cloth half round the world to be eaten by white ants. It was
never, he declared with much spirit, found politic to put trade
into straitlaced bodices, which, instead of making it grow
upright and thrive, must either kill it or force it awry.

The Commons, irritated by Child's obstinacy, presented an address
requesting the King to dissolve the Old Company, and to grant a
charter to a new Company on such terms as to His Majesty's wisdom
might seem fit.182 It is plainly implied in the terms of this
address that the Commons thought the King constitutionally
competent to grant an exclusive privilege of trading to the East
Indies.

The King replied that the subject was most important, that he
would consider it maturely, and that he would, at a future time,
give the House a more precise answer.183 In Parliament nothing
more was said on the subject during that session; but out of
Parliament the war was fiercer than ever; and the belligerents
were by no means scrupulous about the means which they employed.
The chief weapons of the New Company were libels; the chief
weapons of the Old Company were bribes.

In the same week in which the bill for the regulation of the
Indian trade was suffered to drop, another bill which had
produced great excitement and had called forth an almost
unprecedented display of parliamentary ability, underwent the
same fate.

During the eight years which preceded the Revolution, the Whigs
had complained bitterly, and not more bitterly than justly, of
the hard measure dealt out to persons accused of political
offences. Was it not monstrous, they asked, that a culprit should
be denied a sight of his indictment? Often an unhappy prisoner
had not known of what he was accused till he had held up his hand
at the bar. The crime imputed to him might be plotting to shoot
the King; it might be plotting to poison the King. The more
innocent the defendant was, the less likely he was to guess the
nature of the charge on which he was to be tried; and how could
he have evidence ready to rebut a charge the nature of which he
could not guess? The Crown had power to compel the attendance of
witnesses. The prisoner had no such power. If witnesses
voluntarily came forward to speak in his favour, they could not
be sworn. Their testimony therefore made less impression on a
jury than the testimony of the witnesses for the prosecution,
whose veracity was guaranteed by the most solemn sanctions of law
and of religion. The juries, carefully selected by Sheriffs whom
the Crown had named, were men animated by the fiercest party
spirit, men who had as little tenderness for an Exclusionist of a
Dissenter as for a mad dog. The government was served by a band
of able, experienced and unprincipled lawyers, who could, by
merely glancing over a brief, distinguish every weak and every
strong point of a case, whose presence of mind never failed them,
whose flow of speech was inexhaustible, and who had passed their
lives in dressing up the worse reason so as to make it appear the
better. Was it not horrible to see three or four of these shrewd,
learned and callous orators arrayed against one poor wretch who
had never in his life uttered a word in public, who was ignorant
of the legal definition of treason and of the first principles of
the law of evidence, and whose intellect, unequal at best to a
fencing match with professional gladiators, was confused by the
near prospect of a cruel and ignominious death? Such however was
the rule; and even for a man so much stupefied by sickness that
he could not hold up his hand or make his voice heard, even for a
poor old woman who understood nothing of what was passing except
that she was going to be roasted alive for doing an act of
charity, no advocate was suffered to utter a word. That a state
trial so conducted was little better than a judicial murder had
been, during the proscription of the Whig party, a fundamental
article of the Whig creed. The Tories, on the other hand, 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
frontier of treason, but had not actually passed that frontier,
might have suffered as traitors. But was that a sufficient reason
for enabling the chiefs of the Rye House Plot and of the Western
Insurrection to elude, by mere chicanery, the punishment of their
guilt? On what principle was the traitor to have chances of
escape which were not allowed to the felon? The culprit who was
accused of larceny was subject to all the same disadvantages
which, in the case of regicides and rebels, were thought so
unjust; ye nobody pitied him. Nobody thought it monstrous that he
should not have time to study a copy of his indictment, that his
witnesses should be examined without being sworn, that he should
be left to defend himself, without the help of counsel against
the best abilities which the Inns of Court could furnish. The
Whigs, it seemed, reserved all their compassion for those crimes
which subvert government and dissolve the whole frame of human
society. Guy Faux was to be treated with an indulgence which was
not to be extended to a shoplifter. Bradshaw was to have
privileges which were refused to a boy who had robbed a henroost.

The Revolution produced, as was natural, some change in the
sentiments of both the great parties. In the days when none but
Roundheads and Nonconformists were accused of treason, even the
most humane and upright Cavaliers were disposed to think that the
laws which were the safeguard of the throne could hardly be too
severe. But, as soon as loyal Tory gentlemen and venerable
fathers of the Church were in danger of being called in question
for corresponding with Saint Germains, a new light flashed on
many understandings which had been unable to discover the
smallest injustice in the proceedings against Algernon Sidney
and Alice Lisle. It was no longer thought utterly absurd to
maintain that some advantages which were withheld from a man
accused of felony might reasonably be allowed to a man accused of
treason. What probability was there that any sheriff would pack a
jury, that any barrister would employ all the arts of sophistry
and rhetoric, that any judge would strain law and misrepresent
evidence, in order to convict an innocent person of burglary or
sheep stealing? But on a trial for high treason a verdict of
acquittal must always be considered as a defeat of the
government; and there was but too much reason to fear that many
sheriffs, barristers and judges might be impelled by party
spirit, or by some baser motive, to do any thing which might save
the government from the inconvenience and shame of a defeat. The
cry of the whole body of Tories was that the lives of good
Englishmen who happened to be obnoxious to the ruling powers were
not sufficiently protected; and this cry was swelled by the
voices of some lawyers who had distinguished themselves by the
malignant zeal and dishonest ingenuity with which they had
conducted State prosecutions in the days of Charles and James.

The feeling of the Whigs, though it had not, like the feeling of
the Tories, undergone a complete change, was yet not quite what
it had been. Some, who had thought it most unjust that Russell
should have no counsel and that Cornish should have no copy of
his indictment, now began to mutter that the times had changed;
that the dangers of the State were extreme; that liberty,
property, religion, national independence, were all at stake;
that many Englishmen were engaged in schemes of which the object
was to make England the slave of France and of Rome; and that it
would be most unwise to relax, at such a moment, the laws against
political offences. It was true that the injustice with which, in
the late reigns, State trials had been conducted, had given great
scandal. But this injustice was to be ascribed to the bad kings
and bad judges with 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 those for which the banished tyrant had
rewarded Jeffreys with riches and titles. 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, in the season of
their prosperity, what, in the time of their adversity, they had
always designated as a crying grievance. A bill for regulating
trials in cases of high treason was brought into the House of
Commons, and was received with general applause. Treby had the
courage to make some objections; but no division took place. The
chief enactments were that no person should be convicted of high
treason committed more than three years before the indictment was
found; that every person indicted for high treason should be
allowed to avail himself of the assistance of counsel, and should
be furnished, ten days before the trial, with a copy of the
indictment, and with a list of the freeholders from among whom
the jury was to be taken; that his witnesses should be sworn, and
that they should be cited by the same process by which the
attendance of the witnesses against him was secured.

The Bill went to the Upper House, and came back with an important
amendment. The Lords had long complained of the anomalous and
iniquitous constitution of that tribunal which had jurisdiction
over them in cases of life and death. When a grand jury has found
a bill of indictment against a temporal peer for any offence
higher than a misdemeanour, the Crown appoints a Lord High
Steward; and in the Lord High Steward's Court the case is tried.
This Court was anciently composed in two very different ways. It
consisted, if Parliament happened to be sitting, of all the
members of the Upper House. When Parliament was not sitting, the
Lord High Steward summoned any twelve or more peers at his
discretion to form a jury. The consequence was that a peer
accused of high treason during a recess was tried by a jury which
his prosecutors had packed. The Lords now demanded that, during a
recess as well as during a session, every peer accused of high
treason should be tried by the whole body of the peerage.

The demand was resisted by the House of Commons with a vehemence
and obstinacy which men of the present generation may find it
difficult to understand. The truth is that some invidious
privileges of peerage which have since been abolished, and others
which have since fallen into entire desuetude, were then in full
force, and were daily used. No gentleman who had had a dispute
with a nobleman could think, without indignation, of the
advantages enjoyed by the favoured caste. If His Lordship were
sued at law, his privilege enabled him to impede the course of
justice. If a rude word were spoken of him, such a word as he
might himself utter with perfect impunity, he might vindicate his
insulted dignity both by civil and criminal proceedings. If a
barrister, in the discharge of his duty to a client, spoke with
severity of the conduct of a noble seducer, if an honest squire
on the racecourse applied the proper epithets to the tricks of a
noble swindler, the affronted patrician had only to complain to
the proud and powerful body of which he was a member. His
brethren made his cause their own. The offender was taken into
custody by Black Rod, brought to the bar, flung into prison, and
kept there till he was glad to obtain forgiveness by the most
degrading submissions. Nothing could therefore be more natural
than that an attempt of the Peers to obtain any new advantage for
their order should be regarded by the Commons with extreme
jealousy. There is strong reason to suspect that some able Whig
politicians, who thought it dangerous 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 that they might, by
fomenting the dispute about the Court of the Lord High Steward,
defer for at least a year the passing of a bill which they
disliked, and yet could not decently oppose. If this really was
their plan, it succeeded perfectly. The Lower House rejected the
amendment; the Upper House persisted; a free conference was held;
and the question was argued with great force and ingenuity on
both sides.

The reasons in favour of the amendment are obvious, and indeed at
first sight seem unanswerable. It was surely difficult to defend
a system under which the Sovereign nominated a conclave of his
own creatures to decide the fate of men whom he regarded as his
mortal enemies. And could any thing be more absurd than that a
nobleman accused of high treason should be entitled to be tried
by the whole body of his peers if his indictment happened to be
brought into the House of Lords the minute before a prorogation,
but that, if the indictment arrived a minute after the
prorogation, he should be at the mercy of a small junto named by
the very authority which prosecuted him? That any thing could
have been said on the other side seems strange; but those who
managed the conference for the Commons were not ordinary men, and
seem on this occasion to have put 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 pen
we owe an account of the discussion, which gives a very high
notion of his talents for debate. "We have framed"--such was in
substance his reasoning,--"we have framed a law which has in it
nothing exclusive, a law which will be a blessing to every class,
from the highest to the lowest. The new securities, which we
propose to give to innocence oppressed by power, are common
between the premier peer and the humblest day labourer. The
clause which establishes a time of limitation for prosecutions
protects us all alike. To every Englishman accused of the highest
crime against the state, whatever be his rank, we give the
privilege of seeing his indictment, the privilege of being
defended by counsel, the privilege of having his witnesses
summoned by writ of subpoena and sworn on the Holy Gospels. Such
is the bill which we sent up to your Lordships; and you return it
to us with a clause of which the effect is to give certain
advantages to your noble order at the expense of the ancient
prerogatives of the Crown. Surely before we consent to take away
from the King any power which his predecessors have possessed for
ages, and to give it to your Lordships, we ought to be satisfied
that 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 own ourselves unable to discover any reason
for believing that a prince is less to be trusted than an
aristocracy.

Is it reasonable, you ask, that you should be tried for your
lives before a few members of your House, selected by the Crown?
Is it reasonable, we ask in our turn, that you should have the
privilege of being tried by all the members of your House, that
is to say, by your brothers, your uncles, your first cousins,
your second cousins, your fathers in law, your brothers in law,
your most intimate friends? You marry so much into each other's
families, you live so much in each other's society, that there is
scarcely a nobleman who is not connected by consanguinity or
affinity with several others, and who is not on terms of
friendship with several more. There have been great men whose
death put a third or fourth part of the baronage of England into
mourning. Nor is there much danger that even those peers who may
be unconnected with an accused lord will be disposed to send him
to the block if they can with decency say 'Not Guilty, upon my
honour.' For the ignominious death of a single member of a small
aristocratical body necessarily leaves a stain on the reputation
of his fellows. If, indeed, your Lordships proposed that every
one of your body should be compelled to attend and vote, the
Crown might have some chance of obtaining justice against a
guilty peer, however strongly connected. But you propose that
attendance shall be voluntary. Is it possible to doubt what the
consequence will be? All the prisoner's relations and friends
will be in their places to vote for him. Good nature and the fear
of making powerful enemies will keep away many who, if they voted
at all, would be forced by conscience and honour to vote against
him. The new system which you propose would therefore evidently
be unfair to the Crown; and you do not show any reason for
believing that the old system has been found in practice unfair
to yourselves. We may confidently affirm that, even under a
government less just and merciful than that under which we have
the happiness to live, an innocent peer has little to fear from
any set of peers that can be brought together in Westminster Hall
to try him. How stands the fact? In what single case has a
guiltless head fallen by the verdict of this packed jury? It
would be easy to make out a 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 our grandfathers,
suffered death unjustly by sentence of the Court of the Lord High
Steward? Hundreds of the common people were sent to the gallows
by common juries for the Rye House Plot and the Western
Insurrection. One peer, and one alone, my Lord Delamere, was
brought at that time before the Court of the Lord High Steward;
and he was acquitted. But, it is said, the evidence against him
was legally insufficient. Be it so. So was the evidence against
Sidney, against Cornish, against Alice Lisle; yet it sufficed to
destroy them. But, it is said, the peers before whom my Lord
Delamere was brought were selected with shameless unfairness by
King James and by Jeffreys. Be it so. But this only proves that,
under the worst possible King, and under the worst possible High
Steward, a lord tried by lords has a better chance for life than
a commoner who puts himself on his country. We cannot, therefore,
under the mild government which we now possess, feel much
apprehension for the safety of any innocent peer. Would that we
felt as little apprehension for the safety of that government!
But it is notorious that the settlement with which our liberties
are inseparably bound up is attacked at once by foreign and by
domestic enemies. We cannot consent at such a crisis to relax the
restraints which have, it may well be feared, already proved too
feeble to prevent some men of high 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 power from their Majesties
to your Lordships. Our answer is that, at this time, in our
opinion, their Majesties have not too much power, and your
Lordships 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 peer should be entitled to be a Trier. The Commons
were with difficulty induced to consent that the number of Triers
should never be less than thirty-six, and positively refused to
make any further concession. The bill was therefore suffered to
drop.184

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

Marlborough had never ceased to assure the Court of Saint
Germains that the great crime which he had committed was
constantly present to his thoughts, and that he lived only for
the purpose of repentance and reparation. Not only had he been
himself converted; he had also converted the Princess Anne. In
1688, the Churchills had, with little difficulty, induced her to
fly from her father's palace. In 1691, they, with as little
difficulty, induced her to copy out and sign a letter expressing
her deep concern for his misfortunes and her earnest wish to
atone for her breach of duty.185 At the same time Marlborough
held out hopes that it might be in his power to effect the
restoration of his old master in the best possible way, without
the help of a single foreign soldier or sailor, by the votes of
the English Lords and Commons, and by the support of the English
army. We are not fully informed as to all the details of his
plan. But the outline is known to us from a most interesting
paper written by James, of which one copy is in the Bodleian
Library, and another among the archives of the French Foreign
Office.

The jealousy with which the English regarded the Dutch was at
this time intense. There had never been a hearty friendship
between the nations. They were indeed near of kin to each other.
They spoke two dialects of one widespread language. Both boasted
of their political freedom. Both were attached to the reformed
faith. Both were threatened by the same enemy, and would be safe
only while they were united. Yet there was no cordial feeling
between them. They would probably have loved each other more, if
they had, in some respects, resembled each other less. They were
the two great commercial nations, the two great maritime nations.
In every sea their flags were found together, in the Baltic and
in the Mediterranean, in the Gulf of Mexico and in the Straits of
Malacca. Every where the merchant of London and the merchant of
Amsterdam were trying to forestall each other and to undersell
each other. In Europe the contest was not sanguinary. But too
often, in barbarous countries, where there was no law but force,
the competitors had met, burning with cupidity, burning with
animosity, armed for battle, each suspecting the other of hostile
designs and each resolved to give the other no advantage. In such
circumstances it is not strange that many violent and cruel acts
should have been perpetrated. What had been done in those distant
regions could seldom be exactly known in Europe. Every thing was
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 inhumanity of the Dutch. Lamentable events which
had taken place in the Spice Islands were repeatedly brought on
our stage. The Englishmen were all saints and heroes; the
Dutchmen all fiends in human shape, lying, robbing, ravishing,
murdering, torturing. The angry passions which these pieces
indicated had more than once found vent in war. Thrice in the
lifetime of one generation the two nations had contended, with
equal courage and with various fortune, for the sovereignty of
the German Ocean. The tyranny of James, as it had reconciled
Tories to Whigs and Churchmen to Nonconformists, had also
reconciled the English to the Dutch. While our ancestors were
looking to the Hague for deliverance, the massacre of Amboyna and
the great humiliation of Chatham had seemed to 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
disposed to be just; but a violent reaction speedily followed.
Torrington, who deserved to be shot, became a popular favourite;
and the allies whom he had shamefully abandoned were accused of
persecuting him without a cause. The partiality shown by the King
to the companions of his youth was the favourite theme of the
sewers of sedition. The most lucrative posts in his household, it
was said, were held by Dutchmen; the House of Lords was fast
filling with Dutchmen; the finest manors of the Crown were given
to Dutchmen; the army was commanded by Dutchmen. That it would
have been wise in William to exhibit somewhat less obtrusively
his laudable fondness for his native country, and to remunerate
his early friends somewhat more sparingly, is perfectly true. But
it will not be easy to prove that, on any important occasion
during his whole reign, he sacrificed the interests of our island
to the interests of the United Provinces. The English, however,
were on this subject prone to fits of jealousy which made them
quite incapable of listening to reason. One of the sharpest of
those fits came on in the autumn of 1691. The antipathy to the
Dutch was at that time strong in all classes, and nowhere
stronger than in the Parliament and in the army.186

Of that antipathy Marlborough determined to avail himself for the
purpose, as he assured James and James's adherents, of effecting
a restoration. The temper of both Houses was such that they might
not improbably be induced by skilful management to present a
joint address requesting that all foreigners might be dismissed
from the service of their Majesties. Marlborough undertook to
move such an address in the Lords; and there would have been no
difficulty in finding some gentleman of 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, so humiliating a concession. If he did not
yield, there would be a rupture between him and the Parliament;
and the Parliament would be backed by the people. Even a King
reigning by a hereditary title might well shrink from such a
contest with the Estates of the Realm. But to a King whose title
rested on a resolution of the Estates of the Realm such a contest
must almost necessarily be fatal. The last hope of William would
be in the army. The army Marlborough undertook to manage; and it
is highly probable that what he undertook he could have
performed. His courage, his abilities, his noble and winning
manners, the splendid success which had attended him on every
occasion on which he had been in command, had made him, in spite
of his sordid vices, a favourite with his brethren in arms. They
were proud of having one countryman who had shown that he wanted
nothing but opportunity to vie with the ablest Marshal of
France. The Dutch were even more disliked by the English troops
than by the English nation generally. Had Marlborough therefore,
after securing the cooperation of some distinguished officers,
presented himself at the critical moment to those regiments which
he had led to victory in Flanders and in Ireland, had he called
on them to rally round him, to protect the Parliament, and to
drive out the aliens, there is strong reason to think that the
call would have been obeyed. He would then have had it in his
power to fulfil the promises which he had so solemnly made to his
old master.

Of all the schemes ever formed for the restoration of James or of
his descendants, this scheme promised the fairest. That national
pride, that hatred of arbitrary power, which had hitherto been on
William's side, would now be turned against him. Hundreds of
thousands who would have put their lives in jeopardy to prevent a
French army from imposing a government on the English, would have
felt no disposition to prevent an English army from driving out
the Dutch. Even the Whigs could scarcely, without renouncing
their old doctrines, support a prince who obstinately refused to
comply with the general wish of his people signified to him by
his Parliament. The plot looked well. An active canvass was made.
Many members of the House of Commons, who did not at all suspect
that there 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 into fury by talking against the
Dutch. But, before the preparations were complete, a strange
suspicion rose in the minds of some of the Jacobites. That the
author of this bold and artful scheme wished to pull down the
existing government there could be little doubt. But was it quite
certain what government he meant to set up? Might he not depose
William without restoring James? Was it not possible that a man
so wise, so aspiring, and so wicked, might be meditating a double
treason, such as would have been thought a masterpiece of
statecraft by the great Italian politicians of the fifteenth
century, such as Borgia would have envied, 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 of the Parliament, he should proclaim Queen Anne? Was
it not possible that the weary and harassed nation might gladly
acquiesce in such a settlement? James was unpopular because he
was a Papist, influenced by Popish priests. William was unpopular
because he was a foreigner, attached to foreign favourites. Anne
was at once a Protestant and an Englishwoman. Under her
government the country would be in no danger of being overrun
either by Jesuits or by Dutchmen. That Marlborough had the
strongest motives for placing her on the throne was evident. He
could never, in the court of her father, be more than a repentant
criminal, whose services were overpaid by a pardon. In her court
the husband of her adored friend would be what Pepin Heristal and
Charles Martel had been to the Chilperics and Childeberts. He
would be the chief director of the civil and military government.
He would wield the whole power of England. He would hold the
balance of Europe. Great kings and commonwealths would bid
against each other for his favour, and exhaust their treasuries
in the vain hope of satiating his avarice. The presumption was,
therefore, that, if he had the English crown in his hands, he
would put in on the head of the Princess. What evidence there was
to confirm this presumption is not known; but it is certain that
something took place which convinced some of the most devoted
friends of the exiled family that he was meditating a second
perfidy, surpassing even the feat which he had performed at
Salisbury. They were afraid that if, at that moment, they
succeeded in getting rid of William, the situation of James would
be more hopeless than ever. So fully were they persuaded of the
duplicity of their accomplice, that they not only refused to
proceed further in the execution of the plan which he had formed,
but disclosed his whole scheme to Portland.

William seems to have been alarmed and provoked by this
intelligence to a degree very unusual with him. In general he was
indulgent, nay, wilfully blind to the baseness of the English
statesmen whom he employed. He suspected, indeed he knew, that
some of his servants were in 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 that breed of public
men which the Restoration had formed and had bequeathed to the
Revolution. He knew them too well to complain because he did not
find in them veracity, fidelity, consistency, disinterestedness.
The very utmost that he expected from them was that they would
serve him as far as they could serve him without serious danger
to themselves. If he learned that, while sitting in his council
and enriched by his bounty, they were trying to make for
themselves at Saint Germains an interest which might be of use to
them in the event of a counterrevolution he was more inclined to
bestow on them the contemptuous commendation which was bestowed
of old on the worldly wisdom of the unjust steward than to call
them to a severe account. But the crime of Marlborough was of a
very different kind. His treason was not that of a fainthearted
man desirous to keep a retreat open for himself in every event,
but that of a man of dauntless courage, profound policy and
measureless ambition. William was not prone to fear; but, if
there was anything on earth that he feared, it was Marlborough. To treat the
criminal as he
deserved was indeed impossible; for those by whom his designs had
been made known to the government would never have consented to
appear against him in the witness box. But to permit him to
retain high command in that army which he was then engaged in
seducing would have been madness.

Late in the evening of the ninth of January the Queen had a
painful explanation with the Princess Anne. Early the next
morning Marlborough was informed that their Majesties had no
further occasion for his services, 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,
who had in general excellent sources of information, believed
that the corruption and extortion of which Marlborough was
notoriously guilty had roused the royal indignation. The Dutch
ministers could only tell the States General that six different
stories were spread abroad by Marlborough's enemies. Some said
that he had indiscreetly suffered an important military secret to
escape him; some that he had spoken disrespectfully of their
Majesties; some that he had done ill offices between the Queen
and the Princess; some that he had been forming cabals in the
army; some that he had carried on an unauthorised correspondence
with the Danish government about the general politics of Europe;
and some that he had been trafficking with the agents of the
Court of Saint Germains.187 His friends contradicted every one of
these stories, and affirmed that his only crime was his dislike
of the foreigners who were lording it over his countrymen, and
that he had fallen a victim to the machinations of Portland, whom
he was known to dislike, and whom he had not very politely
described as a wooden fellow. The mystery, which from the 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 the reports about the cause of his disgrace
originated.188

Though William assigned to the public no reason for exercising
his undoubted prerogative by dismissing his servant, Anne had
been informed of the truth; and it had been left to her to judge
whether an officer who had been guilty of a foul treason was a
fit inmate of the palace. Three weeks passed. Lady Marlborough
still retained her post and her apartments at Whitehall. Her
husband still resided with her; and still the King and Queen gave
no sign of displeasure. At length the haughty and vindictive
Countess, emboldened by their patience, determined to brave them
face to face, and accompanied her mistress one evening to the
drawingroom at Kensington. This was too much even for the gentle
Mary. She would indeed have expressed her indignation before the
crowd which surrounded the card tables, had she not remembered
that her sister was in a state which entitles women to peculiar
indulgence. Nothing was said that night; but on the following day
a letter from the Queen was delivered to the Princess. Mary
declared that she was unwilling to give pain to a sister whom she
loved, and in whom she could easily pass over any ordinary fault;
but this was a serious matter. Lady Marlborough must be
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 the palace of his injured master his home? Yet
so unwilling was His Majesty to deal severely with the worst
offenders, that even this had been borne, and might have been
borne longer, had not Anne brought the Countess to defy the King
and Queen in their own presence chamber. "It was unkind," Mary
wrote, "in a sister; it would have been uncivil in an equal; and
I need not say that I have more to claim." The Princess, in her
answer, did not attempt to exculpate or excuse Marlborough, but
expressed a firm conviction that his wife was innocent, and
implored the Queen not to insist on so heartrending a separation.
"There is no misery," Anne wrote, "that I cannot resolve to
suffer rather than the thoughts of parting from her."

The Princess sent for her uncle Rochester, and implored him to
carry her letter to Kensington, and to be her advocate there.
Rochester declined the office of messenger, and, though he tried
to restore harmony between his kinswomen, was by no means
disposed to plead the cause of the Churchills. He had indeed long
seen with extreme uneasiness the absolute dominion exercised over
his younger niece by that unprincipled pair. Anne's expostulation
was sent to the Queen by a servant. The only reply was a message
from the Lord Chamberlain, Dorset, commanding Lady Marlborough to
leave the palace. Mrs. Morley would not be separated from Mrs.
Freeman. As to Mr. Morley, all places where he could have his
three courses and his three bottles were alike to him. The
Princess and her whole family therefore retired to Sion House, a
villa belonging to the Duke of Somerset, and situated on the
margin of the Thames. In London she occupied Berkeley House,
which stood in Piccadilly, on the site now covered by Devonshire
House.189 Her income was secured by Act of Parliament; but no
punishment which it was in the power of the Crown to inflict on
her was spared. Her guard of honour was taken away. The foreign
ministers ceased to wait upon her. When she went to Bath the
Secretary of State wrote to request the Mayor of that city not to
receive her with the ceremonial with which royal visitors were
usually welcomed. When she attended divine service at Saint
James's Church she found that the rector had been forbidden to
show her the customary marks of respect, to bow to her from his
pulpit, and to send a copy of his text to be laid on her cushion.
Even the bellman of Piccadilly, it was said, perhaps falsely, was
ordered not to chaunt her praises in his doggrel verse under the
windows of Berkeley House.190

That Anne was in the wrong is clear; but it is not equally clear
that the King and Queen were in the right. They should have
either dissembled their displeasure, or openly declared the true
reasons for it. Unfortunately, they let every body see the
punishment, and they let scarcely any body know the provocation.
They should have remembered that, in the absence of information
about the cause of a quarrel, the public is naturally inclined to
side with the weaker party, and that this inclination is likely
to be peculiarly strong when a sister is, without any apparent
reason, harshly treated by a sister. They should have remembered,
too, that they were exposing to attack what was unfortunately the
one vulnerable part of Mary's character. A cruel fate had put
enmity between her and her father. Her detractors pronounced her
utterly destitute of natural affection; and even her eulogists,
when they spoke of the way in which she had discharged the duties
of the filial relation, were forced to speak in a subdued and
apologetic tone. Nothing therefore could be more unfortunate than
that she should a second time appear unmindful of the ties of
consanguinity. She was now at 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 by the extreme danger
which had threatened her country and her religion, were unable to
defend her conduct towards her sister. While Mary, who was really
guilty in this matter of nothing more than imprudence, was
regarded by the world as an oppressor, Anne, who was as culpable
as her small faculties enabled her to be, assumed the interesting
character of a meek, resigned sufferer. In those private letters,
indeed, to which the name of Morley was subscribed, the Princess
expressed the sentiments of a fury in the style of a fishwoman,
railed savagely at the whole Dutch nation, and called her brother
in law sometimes the abortion, sometimes the monster, sometimes
Caliban.191 But the nation heard nothing of her language and saw
nothing of her deportment but what was decorous and submissive.
The truth seems to have been that the rancorous and coarseminded
Countess gave the tone to Her Highness's confidential
correspondence, while the graceful, serene and politic Earl was
suffered to 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 her temper and manners was irresistible; and in
a few months she regained the popularity which she had lost.192

It was a most fortunate circumstance for Marlborough that, just
at the very time when all London was talking about his disgrace,
and trying to guess at the cause of the King's sudden anger
against one who had always seemed to be a favourite, an
accusation of treason was brought by William Fuller against many
persons of high consideration, was strictly investigated, and was
proved to be false and malicious. The consequence was that the
public, which rarely discriminates nicely, could not, at that
moment, be easily brought to believe in the reality of any
Jacobite conspiracy.

That Fuller's plot is less celebrated than the Popish plot is
rather the fault of the historians than of Fuller, who did all
that man could do to secure an eminent place among villains.
Every person well read in history must have observed that
depravity has its temporary modes, which come in and go out like
modes of dress and upholstery. It may be doubted whether, in our
country, any man ever before the year 1678 invented and related
on oath a circumstantial history, altogether fictitious, of a
treasonable plot, for the purpose of making himself important by
destroying men who had given him no provocation. But in the year
1678 this execrable crime became the fashion, and continued to be
so during the twenty years which followed. Preachers designated
it as our peculiar national sin, and prophesied that it would
draw on us some awful national judgment. Legislators proposed new
punishments of terrible severity for this new atrocity.193 It was
not however found necessary to resort to those punishments. The
fashion changed; and during the last century and a half there has
perhaps not been a single instance of this particular kind of
wickedness.

The explanation is simple. Oates was the founder of a school. His
success proved that no romance is too wild to be received with
faith by understandings which fear and hatred have disordered.
His slanders were monstrous; but they were well timed; he spoke
to a people made credulous by their passions; and thus, by
impudent and cruel lying, he raised himself in a week from
beggary and obscurity to luxury, renown and power. He had once
eked out the small tithes of a miserable vicarage by stealing the
pigs and fowls of his parishioners.194 He was now lodged in a
palace; he was followed by admiring crowds; he had at his mercy
the estates and lives of Howards and Herberts. A crowd of
imitators instantly appeared. It seemed that much more might be
got, and that much less was risked, by testifying to an imaginary
conspiracy than by robbing on the highway or clipping the coin.
Accordingly the Bedloes, Dangerfields, Dugdales, Turberviles,
made haste to transfer their industry to an employment at once
more profitable and less perilous than any to which they were
accustomed. Till the dissolution of the Oxford Parliament Popish
plots were the chief manufacture. Then, during seven years, Whig
plots were the only plots which paid. After the Revolution
Jacobite plots came in; but the public had become cautious; and
though the new false witnesses were in no respect less artful
than their predecessors, they found much less encouragement. The
history of the first great check given to the practices of this
abandoned race of men well deserves to be circumstantially
related.

In 1689, and in the beginning of 1690, William Fuller had
rendered to the government service such as the best governments
sometimes require, and such as none but the worst men ever
perform. His useful treachery had been rewarded by his employers,
as was meet, with money and with contempt. Their liberality
enabled him to live during some months like a fine gentleman. He
called himself a Colonel, hired servants, clothed them in
gorgeous liveries, bought fine horses, lodged in Pall Mall, and
showed his brazen forehead, overtopped by a wig worth fifty
guineas, in the 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 he thought that William could not live
without him, followed His Majesty first to Ireland, and then to
the Congress of Princes at the Hague. Fuller afterwards boasted
that, at the Hague, he appeared with a retinue fit 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
silver stuff at forty shillings a yard. Such profusion, of
course, brought him to poverty. Soon after his return to England
he took refuge from the bailiffs in Axe Yard, a place lying
within the verge of Whitehall. His fortunes were desperate; he
owed great sums; on the government he had no claim; his past
services had been overpaid; no future service was to be expected
from him having appeared in the witness box as evidence for the
Crown, he could no longer be of any use as a spy on the
Jacobites; and by all men of virtue and honour, to whatever party
they might belong, he was abhorred and shunned.

Just at this time, when he was in the frame of mind in which men
are open 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 nineteen twentieths of the members of that
profession of which he was the disgrace. But he was still
unsatisfied. He complained that he had now less than three
hundred a year. In the golden days of the Plot he had been
allowed three times as much, had been sumptuously lodged in the
palace, had dined on plate and had been clothed in silk. He
clamoured for an increase of his stipend. Nay, he was even
impudent enough to aspire to ecclesiastical preferment, and
thought it hard that, while so many mitres were distributed, he
could not get a deanery, a prebend, or even a living. He missed
no opportunity of urging his pretensions. He haunted the public
offices and the lobbies of the Houses of Parliament. He might be
seen and heard every day, hurrying, as fast as his uneven legs
would carry him, between Charing Cross and Westminster Hall,
puffing with haste and self importance, chattering about what he
had done for the good cause, and reviling, in the style of the
boatmen on the river, all the statesmen and divines whom he
suspected of doing him ill offices at Court, and keeping him back
from a bishopric. When he found that there was no hope for him in
the Established Church, he turned to the Baptists. They, at
first, received him very coldly; but he gave such touching
accounts of the wonderful work of grace which had been wrought in
his soul, and vowed so solemnly, before Jehovah and the holy
angels, to be thenceforth a burning and shining light, that it
was difficult for simple and well meaning people to think him
altogether insincere. He mourned, he said, like a turtle. On one
Lord's day he thought he should have died of grief at being shut
out from fellowship with the saints. He was at length admitted to
communion; but before he had been a year among his new friends
they discovered his true character, and solemnly cast him out as
a hypocrite. Thenceforth he became the mortal enemy of the
leading Baptists, and persecuted them with the same treachery,
the same mendacity, the same effrontery, the same black malice
which had many years before wrought the destruction of more
celebrated victims. Those who had lately been edified by his
account of his blessed experiences stood aghast to hear him
crying out that he would be revenged, that revenge was God's own
sweet morsel, that the wretches who had excommunicated him should
be ruined, that they should be forced to fly their country, that
they should be stripped to the last shilling. His designs were at
length frustrated by a righteous decree of the Court of Chancery,
a decree which would have left a deep stain on the character of
an ordinary man, but which makes no perceptible addition to the
infamy of Titus Oates.195 Through all changes, however, he was
surrounded by a small knot of hotheaded and foulmouthed
agitators, who, abhorred and despised by every respectable Whig,
yet called themselves Whigs, and thought themselves injured
because they were not rewarded for scurrility and slander with
the best places under the Crown.

In 1691, Titus, in order to be near the focal point of political
intrigue and faction, had taken a house within the precinct of
Whitehall. To this house Fuller, who lived hard by, found
admission. The evil work which had been begun in him, when he was
still a child, by the memoirs of Dangerfield, was now completed
by the conversation of Oates. The Salamanca Doctor was, as a
witness, no longer formidable; but he was impelled, partly by the
savage malignity which he felt towards all whom he considered as
his enemies, and partly by mere monkeylike restlessness and love
of mischief, to do, through the instrumentality of others, what
he could no longer do in person. In Fuller he had found the
corrupt heart, the ready tongue and the unabashed front which are
the first qualifications for the office of a false accuser. A
friendship, if that word may be so used, sprang up between the
pair. Oates opened his house and even his purse to Fuller. The
veteran sinner, both directly and through the agency of his
dependents, intimated to the novice that nothing made a man so
important as the discovering of a plot, and that these were times
when a young fellow who would stick at nothing and fear nobody
might do wonders. The Revolution,--such was the language
constantly held by Titus and his parasites,--had produced little
good. The brisk boys of Shaftesbury had not been recompensed
according to their merits. Even the Doctor, such was the
ingratitude of men, was looked on coldly at the new Court. Tory
rogues sate at the council board, and were admitted to the royal
closet. It would be a noble feat to bring their necks to the
block. Above all, it would be delightful to see Nottingham's long
solemn face on Tower Hill. For the hatred with which these bad
men regarded Nottingham had no bounds, and was probably excited
less by his political opinions, in which there was doubtless much
to condemn, than by his moral character, in which the closest
scrutiny will detect little that is not deserving of approbation.
Oates, with the authority which experience and success entitle a
preceptor to assume, 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 was there a finer foundation for a
plot. But you are a fool; you are a coxcomb; I could beat you; I
would not have done so. I used to go to Charles and tell him his
own. I called Lauderdale rogue to his face. I made King,
Ministers, Lords, Commons, afraid of me. But you young men have
no spirit." Fuller was greatly edified by these exhortations. It
was, however, hinted to him by some of his associates that, if he
meant to take up the trade of swearing away lives, he would do
well not to show himself so often at coffeehouses in the company
of Titus. "The Doctor," said one of the gang, "is an excellent
person, and has done great 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 seen with him the better."
Fuller accordingly ceased to frequent Oates's house, but still
continued to receive his great master's instructions in private.

To do Fuller justice, he seems not to have taken up the trade of
a false witness till he could no longer support himself by
begging or swindling. He lived for a time on the charity of the
Queen. He then levied contributions by pretending to be one of
the noble family of Sidney. He wheedled Tillotson out of some
money, and requited the good Archbishop's kindness by passing
himself off as His Grace's favourite nephew. But in the autumn of
1691 all these shifts were exhausted. After lying in several
spunging houses, Fuller was at length lodged in the King's Bench
prison, and he now thought it time to announce that he had
discovered a plot.196

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

Soon after the Houses met, Fuller petitioned the Commons to hear
what he had to say, and promised to make wonderful disclosures.
He was brought from his prison to the bar of the House; and he
there repeated a long romance. James, he said, had delegated the
regal authority to six commissioners, of whom Halifax was first.
More than fifty lords and gentlemen had signed an address to the
French King, imploring him to make a great effort for the
restoration of the House of Stuart. Fuller declared that he had
seen this address, and recounted many of the names appended to
it. Some members made severe remarks on the improbability of the
story and on the character of the witness. He was, they said, one
of the greatest rogues on the face of the earth; and he told such
things as could scarcely be credited if he were an angel from
heaven. Fuller audaciously pledged himself to bring proofs which
would satisfy the most incredulous. He was, he averred, in
communication with some agents of James. Those persons were ready
to make reparation to their country. Their testimony would be
decisive; for they were in possession of documentary evidence
which would confound the guilty. They held back only because they
saw some of the traitors high in office and near the royal
person, and were afraid of incurring the enmity of men so
powerful and so wicked. Fuller ended by asking for a sum of
money, and by assuring the Commons that he would lay it out to
good account.197 Had his impudent request been granted, he would
probably have paid his debts, obtained his liberty, and
absconded; but the House very wisely insisted on seeing his
witnesses first. He then began to shuffle. The gentlemen were on
the Continent, and could not come over without passports.
Passports were delivered to him; but he complained that they were
insufficient. At length the Commons, fully determined to get at
the truth, presented an address requesting the King to send
Fuller a blank safe conduct in the largest terms.198 The safe
conduct was sent. Six weeks passed, and nothing was heard of the
witnesses. The friends of the lords and gentlemen who had been
accused represented strongly that the House ought not to separate
for the summer without coming to some decision on charges so
grave. Fuller was ordered to attend. He pleaded sickness, and
asserted, not for the first time, that the Jacobites had poisoned
him. But all his plans were confounded by the laudable
promptitude and vigour with which the Commons acted. A Committee
was sent to his bedside, with orders to ascertain whether he
really had any witnesses, and where those witnesses resided. The
members who were deputed for this purpose went to the King's
Bench prison, and found him suffering under a disorder, produced,
in all probability, by some emetic which he had swallowed for the
purpose of deceiving them. In answer to their questions he said
that two of his witnesses, Delaval and Hayes, were in England,
and were lodged at the house of a Roman Catholic apothecary in
Holborn. The Commons, as soon as the Committee had reported, sent
some members to the house which he had indicated. That house and
all the neighbouring houses were searched. Delaval and Hayes were
not to be found, nor had any body in the vicinity ever seen such
men or heard of them. The House, therefore, on the last day of
the session, just before Black Rod knocked at the door,
unanimously resolved that William Fuller was a cheat and a false
accuser; that he had insulted the Government and the Parliament;
that he had calumniated honourable men, and that an address
should be carried up to the throne, requesting that he might be
prosecuted for his villany.199 He was consequently tried,
convicted, and sentenced to fine, imprisonment and the pillory.
The exposure, more terrible than death to a mind not lost to all
sense of shame, he underwent with a hardihood worthy of his two
favourite models, Dangerfield and Oates. He had the impudence to
persist, year after year, in affirming that he had fallen a
victim to the machinations of the late King, who had spent six
thousand pounds in order to ruin him. Delaval and Hayes--so this
fable ran--had been instructed by James in person. They had, in
obedience to his orders, induced Fuller to pledge his word for
their appearance, and had then absented themselves, and left him
exposed to the resentment of the House of Commons.200 The story
had the reception which it deserved, and Fuller sank into an
obscurity from which he twice or thrice, at long intervals, again
emerged for a moment into infamy.

On the twenty-fourth of February 1692, about an hour after the
Commons had voted Fuller an impostor, they were summoned to the
chamber of the Lords. The King thanked the Houses for their
loyalty and liberality, informed them that he must soon set out
for the Continent, and commanded them to adjourn themselves. He
gave his assent on that day to many bills, public and private;
but when the title of one bill, which had passed the Lower House
without a single division and the Upper House without a single
protest, had been read by the Clerk of the Crown, the Clerk of
the Parliaments declared, according to the ancient form, that the
King and the Queen would consider of the matter. Those words had
very rarely been pronounced before the accession of William. They
have been pronounced only once since his death. But by him the
power of putting a Veto on laws which had been passed by the
Estates of the Realm was used on several important occasions. His
detractors truly asserted that he rejected a greater number of
important bills than all the Kings of the House of Stuart put
together, and most absurdly inferred that the sense of the
Estates of the Realm was much less respected by him than by his
uncles and his grandfather. A judicious student of history will
have no difficulty in discovering why William repeatedly
exercised a prerogative to which his predecessors very seldom had
recourse, and which 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, and immediately violated every clause of that great
statute. Charles the Second gave his assent to an Act which
provided that a Parliament should be held at least once in three
years; but when he died the country had been near four years
without a Parliament. The laws which abolished the Court of High
Commission, the laws which instituted the Sacramental Test, were
passed without the smallest difficulty; but they did not prevent
James the Second from reestablishing the Court of High
Commission, and from filling the Privy Council, the public
offices, the courts of justice, and the municipal corporations
with persons who had never taken the Test. Nothing could be more
natural than that a King should not think it worth while to
withhold his assent from a statute with which he could dispense
whenever he thought fit.

The situation of William was very different. He could not, like
those who had ruled before him, pass an Act in the spring and
violate it in the summer. He had, by assenting to the Bill of
Rights, solemnly renounced the dispensing power; and he was
restrained, by prudence as well as by conscience and honour, from
breaking the compact under which he held his crown. A law might
be personally offensive to him; it might appear to him to be
pernicious to his people; but, as soon as he had passed it, it
was, in his eyes, a sacred thing. He had therefore a motive,
which preceding Kings had not, for pausing before he passed such
a law. They gave their word readily, because they had no scruple
about breaking it. He gave his word slowly, because he never
failed to keep it.

But his situation, though it differed widely from that of the
princes of the House of Stuart, was not precisely that of the
princes of the House of Brunswick. A prince of the House of
Brunswick is guided, as to the use of every royal prerogative, by
the advice of a responsible ministry; and this ministry must be
taken from the party which predominates in the two Houses, or, at
least, in the Lower House. It is hardly possible to conceive
circumstances in which a Sovereign so situated can refuse to
assent to a bill which has been approved by both branches of the
legislature. Such a refusal would necessarily imply one of two
things, that the Sovereign acted in opposition to the advice of
the ministry, or that the ministry was at issue, on a question of
vital importance, with a majority both of the Commons and of the
Lords. On either supposition the country would be in a most
critical state, in a state which, if long continued, must end in
a revolution. But in the earlier part of the reign of William
there was no ministry. The heads of the executive departments had
not been appointed exclusively from either party. Some were
zealous Whigs, others zealous Tories. The most enlightened
statesmen did not hold it to be unconstitutional that the King
should exercise his highest prerogatives on the most important
occasions without 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 machinery of government was in a state
of fearful disorder, but merely that there was a difference of
opinion between him and the two other branches of the legislature
as to the expediency of a particular law. Such a difference of
opinion might exist, and, as we shall hereafter see, actually did
exist, at a time when he was, not merely on friendly, but on most
affectionate terms with the Estates of the Realm.

The circumstances under which he used his Veto for the first time
have never yet been correctly stated. A well meant but unskilful
attempt had been made to complete a reform which the Bill of
Rights had left imperfect. That great law had deprived the Crown
of the power of arbitrarily removing the judges, but had not made
them entirely independent. They were remunerated partly by fees
and partly by salaries. Over the fees the King had no control;
but the salaries he had full power to reduce or to withhold. That
William had ever abused this power was not pretended; but it was
undoubtedly a power which no prince ought to possess; and this
was the sense of both Houses. A bill was therefore brought in by
which a salary of a thousand a year was strictly secured to each
of the twelve judges. Thus far all was well. But unfortunately
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 could defend the proprietary rights of
the Crown only by putting his negative on the bill. At the time
there was, as far as can now be ascertained, no outcry. Even the
Jacobite libellers were almost silent. It was not till the
provisions of the bill had been forgotten, and till nothing but
its title was remembered, that William was accused of having been
influenced by 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 in several departments of the government; changes,
however, which did not indicate a very decided preference for
either of the great political parties. Rochester was sworn of the
Council. It is probable that he had earned this mark of royal
favour by taking the Queen's side in the unhappy dispute between
her and her sister. Pembroke took charge of the Privy Seal, and
was succeeded at the Board of Admiralty by Charles Lord
Cornwallis, a moderate Tory; Lowther accepted a seat at the same
board, and was succeeded at the Treasury by Sir Edward Seymour.
Many Tory country gentlemen, who had looked on Seymour as their
leader in the war against placemen and Dutchmen, were moved to
indignation by learning that he had become a courtier. They
remembered that he had voted for a Regency, that he had taken the
oaths with no good grace, that he had spoken with little respect
of the Sovereign whom he was now ready to serve for the sake of
emoluments hardly worthy of the acceptance of a man of his wealth
and parliamentary interest. It was strange that the haughtiest of
human beings should be the meanest, that one who seethed to
reverence nothing on earth but himself should abase himself for
the sake of quarter day. About such reflections he troubled
himself very little. He found, however, that there was one
disagreeable circumstance connected with his new office. At the
Board of Treasury he must sit below the Chancellor of the
Exchequer. The First Lord, Godolphin, was a peer of the realm;
and his right to precedence, according to the rules of the
heralds, could not be questioned. But every body knew who was the
first of English commoners. What was Richard Hampden that he
should take the place of a Seymour, of the head of the Seymours?
With much difficulty, the dispute was compromised. Many
concessions were made to Sir Edward's punctilious pride. He was
sworn of the Council. He was appointed one of the Cabinet. The
King took him by the hand and presented him to the Queen. "I
bring you," said William, "a gentleman who will in my absence be
a valuable friend." In this way Sir Edward was so much soothed
and flattered that he ceased to insist on his right to thrust
himself between the First Lord and the Chancellor of the
Exchequer.

In the same Commission of Treasury in which the name of Seymour
appeared, appeared also the name of a much younger politician,
who had during the late session raised himself to high
distinction in the House of Commons, Charles Montague. This
appointment gave great satisfaction to the Whigs, in whose esteem
Montague now stood higher than their veteran chiefs Sacheverell
and Littleton, and was indeed second to Somers alone.

Sidney delivered up the seals which he had held during more than
a year, and was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Some months
clasped before the place which he had quitted was filled up; and
during this interval the whole business which had ordinarily been
divided between two Secretaries of State was transacted by
Nottingham.202

While these arrangements were in progress, events had taken place
in a distant part of the island which were not, till after the
lapse of many months, known in the best informed circles of
London, but which gradually obtained a fearful notoriety, and
which, after the lapse of more 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 was not satisfied with the way in which he had been
represented in the Parliament House. He thought that the rabbled
curates had been hardly treated. He had very reluctantly suffered
the law which abolished patronage to be touched with his sceptre.
But what especially displeased him was that the Acts which
established a new ecclesiastical polity had not been accompanied
by an Act granting liberty of conscience to those who were
attached to the old ecclesiastical polity. He had directed his
Commissioner Melville to obtain for the Episcopalians of Scotland
an indulgence similar to that which Dissenters enjoyed in
England.203 But the Presbyterian preachers were loud and vehement
against lenity to Amalekites. Melville, with useful talents, and
perhaps with fair intentions, had neither large views nor an
intrepid spirit. He shrank from uttering a word so hateful to the
theological demagogues of his country as Toleration. By
obsequiously humouring their prejudices he quelled the clamour
which was rising at Edinburgh; but the effect of his timid
caution was that a far more formidable clamour soon rose in the
south of the island against the bigotry of the schismatics who
domineered in the north, and against the pusillanimity of the
government which had not dared to withstand that bigotry. On this
subject the High Churchman and the Low Churchman were of one
mind, or rather the Low Churchman was the more angry of the two.
A man like South, who had during many years been predicting that,
if ever the Puritans ceased to be oppressed, they would become
oppressors, was at heart not ill pleased to see his prophecy
fulfilled. But in a man like Burnet, the great object of whose
life had been to mitigate the animosity which the ministers of
the Anglican Church felt towards the Presbyterians, the
intolerant conduct of the Presbyterians could awaken no feeling
but indignation, shame and grief. There was, therefore, at the
English Court nobody to speak a good word for Melville. It was
impossible that in such circumstances he should remain at the
head of the Scottish administration. He was, however, gently let
down from his high position. He continued during more than a year
to be Secretary of State; but another Secretary was appointed,
who was to reside near the King, and to have the chief direction
of affairs. The new Prime Minister for Scotland was the able,
eloquent and accomplished Sir John Dalrymple. His father, the
Lord President of the Court of Session, had lately been raised to
the peerage by the title of Viscount Stair; and Sir John
Dalrymple was consequently, according to the ancient usage of
Scotland, designated as the Master of Stair. In a few months
Melville resigned his secretaryship, and accepted an office of
some dignity and emolument, but of no political importance.204

The Lowlands of Scotland were, during the year which followed the
parliamentary session of 1690, as quiet as they had ever been
within the memory of man; but the state of the Highlands caused
much anxiety to the government. The civil war in that wild
region, after it had ceased to flame, had continued during some
time to smoulder. At length, early in the year 1691, the rebel
chiefs informed the Court of Saint Germains that, pressed as they
were on every side, they could hold out no longer without succour
from France. James had sent them a small quantity of meal, brandy
and tobacco, and had frankly told them that he could do nothing
more. Money was so scarce among them that six hundred pounds
sterling would have been a most acceptable addition to their
funds, but even such a sum he was unable to spare. He could scarcely,
in such circumstances, expect them to defend his cause against a
government which had a regular army and a large revenue. He
therefore informed them that he should not take it ill of them if
they made their peace with the new dynasty, provided always that
they were prepared to rise in insurrection as soon as he should
call on them to do so.205

Meanwhile it had been determined at Kensington, in spite of the
opposition of the Master of Stair, to try the plan which Tarbet
had recommended two years before, and which, if it had been tried
when he recommended it, would probably have prevented much
bloodshed and confusion. It was resolved that twelve or fifteen
thousand pounds should be laid out in quieting the Highlands.
This was a mass of treasure which to an inhabitant of Appin or
Lochaber seemed almost fabulous, and which indeed bore a greater
proportion to the income of Keppoch or Glengarry than fifteen
hundred thousand pounds bore to the income of Lord Bedford or
Lord Devonshire. The sum was ample; but the King was not
fortunate in the choice of an agent.206

John Earl of Breadalbane, the head of a younger branch of the
great House of Campbell, ranked high among the petty princes of
the mountains. He could bring seventeen hundred claymores into
the field; and, ten years before the Revolution, he had actually
marched into the Lowlands with this great force for the purpose
of supporting the prelatical tyranny.207 In those days he had
affected zeal for monarchy and episcopacy; but in truth he cared
for no government and no religion. He seems to have united two
different sets of vices, the growth of two different regions, and
of two different stages in the progress of society. In his castle
among the hills he had learned the barbarian pride and ferocity
of a Highland chief. In the Council Chamber at Edinburgh he had
contracted the deep taint of treachery and corruption. After the
Revolution he had, like too many of his fellow nobles, joined and
betrayed every party in turn, had sworn fealty to William and
Mary, and had plotted against them. To trace all the turns and
doublings of his course, during the year 1689 and the earlier
part of 1690, would be wearisome.208 That course became somewhat
less tortuous when the battle of the Boyne had cowed the spirit
of the Jacobites. It now seemed probable that the Earl would be a
loyal subject of their Majesties, till some great disaster should
befall them. Nobody who knew him could trust him; but few
Scottish statesmen could then be trusted; and yet Scottish
statesmen must be employed. His position and connections marked
him out as a man who might, if he would, do much towards the work
of quieting the Highlands; and his interest seemed to be a
guarantee for his zeal. He had, as he declared with every
appearance of truth, strong personal reasons for wishing to see
tranquillity restored. His domains were so situated that, while
the civil war lasted, his vassals could not tend their herds or
sow their oats in peace. His lands were daily ravaged; his cattle
were daily driven away; one of his houses had been burned down.
It was probable, therefore, that he would do his best to put an
end to hostilities.209

He was accordingly commissioned to treat with the Jacobite
chiefs, and was entrusted with the money which was to be
distributed among them. He invited 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 a larger share of the
English gold than was to be obtained. Breadalbane was suspected
of intending to cheat both the clans and the King. The dispute
between the rebels and the government was complicated with
another dispute still more embarrassing. The Camerons and
Macdonalds were really at war, not with William, but with Mac
Callum More; and no arrangement to which Mac Callum More was not
a party could really produce tranquillity. A grave question
therefore arose, whether the money entrusted to Breadalbane
should be paid directly to the discontented chiefs, or should be
employed to satisfy the claims which Argyle had upon them. The
shrewdness of Lochiel and the arrogant pretensions of Glengarry
contributed to protract the discussions. But no Celtic potentate
was so impracticable as Macdonald of Glencoe, known among the
mountains by the hereditary appellation of Mac Ian.210

Mac Ian dwelt in the mouth of a ravine situated not far from the
southern shore of Lochleven, an arm of the sea which deeply
indents the western 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 two hundred souls. In the
neighbourhood of the little cluster of villages was some
copsewood and some pasture land; but a little further up the
defile no sign of population or of fruitfulness was to be seen.
In the Gaelic tongue Glencoe signifies the Glen of Weeping; and
in truth that pass is the most dreary and melancholy of all the
Scottish passes, the very Valley of the Shadow of Death. Mists
and storms brood over it through the greater part of the finest
summer; and even on those rare days when the sun is bright, and
when there is no cloud in the sky, the impression made by the
landscape is sad and awful. The path lies along a stream which
issues from the most sullen and gloomy of mountain pools. Huge
precipices of naked stone frown on both sides. Even in July the
streaks 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 of the torrents. Mile after mile the traveller
looks in vain for the smoke of one but, for one human form
wrapped in plaid, and listens in vain for the bark of a
shepherd's dog or the bleat of a lamb. Mile after mile the only
sound that indicates life is the faint cry of a bird of prey from
some stormbeaten pinnacle of rock. The progress of civilisation,
which has turned so many wastes into fields yellow with Harvests
or gay with apple blossoms, has only made Glencoe more desolate.
All the science and industry of a peaceful age can extract
nothing valuable from that wilderness; but, in an age of violence
and rapine, the wilderness itself was valued on account of the
shelter which it afforded to the plunderer and his plunder.
Nothing could be more natural than that the clan to which this
rugged desert belonged should have been noted for predatory
habits. For, among the Highlanders generally, to rob was thought
at least as honourable an employment as to cultivate the soil;
and, of all the Highlanders, The Macdonalds of Glencoe had the
least productive soil, and the most convenient and secure den of
robbers. Successive governments had tried to punish this wild
race; but no large force had ever been employed for that purpose;
and a small force was easily resisted or eluded by men familiar
with every recess and every outlet of the natural fortress in
which they had been born and bred. The people of Glencoe would
probably have been less troublesome neighbours if they had lived
among their own kindred. But they were an outpost of the Clan
Donald, separated from every other branch of their own family,
and almost surrounded by the domains of the hostile race of
Diarmid.211 They were impelled by hereditary enmity, as well as
by want, to live at the expense of the tribe of Campbell.
Breadalbane's property had suffered greatly from their
depredations; and he was not of a temper to forgive such
injuries. When, therefore, the Chief of Glencoe made his
appearance at the congress in Glenorchy, he was ungraciously
received. The Earl, who ordinarily bore himself with the solemn
dignity of a Castilian grandee, forgot, in his resentment, his
wonted gravity, forgot his public character, forgot the laws of
hospitality, and, with angry reproaches and menaces, demanded
reparation for the herds which had been driven from his lands by
Mac Ian's followers. Mac Ian was seriously apprehensive of some
personal outrage, and was glad to get safe back to his own
glen.212 His pride had been wounded; and the promptings of
interest concurred with those of pride. As the head of a people
who lived by pillage, he had strong reasons for wishing that the
country might continue to be in a perturbed state. He had little
chance of receiving one guinea of the money which was to be
distributed among the malecontents. For his share of that money
would scarcely meet Breadalbane's demands for compensation; and
there could be little doubt that, whoever might be unpaid,
Breadalbane would take care to pay himself. Mac Ian therefore did
his best to dissuade his allies from accepting terms from which
he could himself expect no benefit; and his influence 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 close
connection with his more powerful kinsmen; nor did they like him
the less because he was a robber; for he never robbed them; and
that robbery, merely as robbery, was a wicked and disgraceful
act, had never entered into the mind of any Celtic chief. Mac Ian
was therefore held in high esteem by the confederates. His age
was venerable; his aspect was majestic; and he possessed in large
measure those intellectual qualities which, in rude societies,
give men an ascendency over their fellows. Breadalbane found
himself, at every step of the negotiation, thwarted by the arts
of his old enemy, and abhorred the name of Glencoe more and more
every day.213

But the government did not trust solely to Breadalbane's
diplomatic skill. The authorities at Edinburgh put forth a
proclamation exhorting the clans to submit to King William and
Queen Mary, and offering pardon to 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 be treated as
enemies and traitors.214 Warlike preparations were made, which
showed that the threat was meant in earnest. The Highlanders were
alarmed, and, though the pecuniary terms had not been
satisfactorily settled, thought it prudent to give the pledge
which was demanded of them. No chief, indeed, was willing to set
the example of submission. Glengarry blustered, and pretended to
fortify his house.215 "I will not," said Lochiel, "break the ice.
That is a point of honour with me. But my tacksmen and people may
use their freedom."216 His tacksmen and people understood him,
and repaired by hundreds to the Sheriff to take the oaths. The
Macdonalds of Sleat, Clanronald, Keppoch, and even Glengarry,
imitated the Camerons; and the chiefs, after trying to outstay
each other as long as they durst, imitated their vassals.

The thirty-first of December arrived; and still the Macdonalds of
Glencoe had not come in. The punctilious pride of Mac Ian was
doubtless gratified by the thought that he had continued to defy
the government after the boastful Glengarry, the ferocious
Keppoch, the magnanimous Lochiel 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. To his dismay he found that there was in the fort
no person competent to administer them. Colonel Hill, the
Governor, was not a magistrate; nor was there any magistrate
nearer than Inverary. Mac Ian, now fully sensible of the folly of
which he had been guilty in postponing to the very last moment an
act on which his life and his estate depended, set off for
Inverary in great distress. He carried with him a letter from
Hill to the Sheriff of Argyleshire, Sir Colin Campbell of
Ardkinglass, a respectable gentleman, who, in the late reign, had
suffered severely for his Whig principles. In this letter the
Colonel expressed a goodnatured hope 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, and did not stop even at
his own house, though it lay nigh to the road. But at that time a
journey through Argyleshire in the depth of winter was
necessarily slow. The old man's progress up steep mountains and
along boggy valleys was obstructed by snow storms; and it was not
till the sixth of January that he presented himself before the
Sheriff at Inverary. The Sheriff hesitated. His power, he said,
was limited by the terms of the proclamation, and he did not see
how he could swear a rebel who had not submitted within the
prescribed time. Mac Ian begged earnestly and with tears that he
might be sworn. His people, he said, would follow his example. If
any of them proved refractory, he would himself send the recusant
to prison, or ship him off for Islanders. His entreaties and
Hill's letter overcame Sir Colin's scruples. The oath was
administered; and a certificate was transmitted to the Council at
Edinburgh, setting forth the special circumstances which had
induced the Sheriff to do what he knew not to be strictly
regular.217

The news that Mac Ian had not submitted within the prescribed
time was received with cruel joy by three powerful Scotchmen who
were then at the English Court. Breadalbane had gone up to London
at Christmas in order to give an account of his stewardship.
There he met his kinsman Argyle. Argyle was, in personal
qualities, one of the most insignificant of the long line of
nobles who have borne that great name. He was the descendant of
eminent men, and the parent of eminent men. He was the grandson
of one of the ablest of Scottish politicians; the son of one of
the bravest and most truehearted of Scottish patriots; the father
of one Mac Callum More renowned as a warrior and as an orator, as
the model of every courtly grace, and as the judicious patron of
arts and letters, and of another Mac Callum More distinguished by
talents for business and command, and by skill in the exact
sciences. Both of such an ancestry and of such a progeny Argyle
was unworthy. He had even been guilty of the crime, common enough
among Scottish politicians, but in him singularly disgraceful, of
tampering with the agents of James while professing loyalty to
William. Still Argyle had the importance inseparable from high
rank, vast domains, extensive feudal rights, and almost boundless
patriarchal authority. To him, as to his cousin Breadalbane, the
intelligence that the tribe of Glencoe was out of the protection
of the law was most gratifying; and the Master of Stair more than
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
of destroying a neighbouring clan with which they were at deadly
feud. Breadalbane had received peculiar provocation. His estate
had been repeatedly devastated; and he had just been thwarted in
a negotiation of high moment. Unhappily there was scarcely any
excess of ferocity for which a precedent could not be found in
Celtic tradition. Among all warlike barbarians revenge is
esteemed the most sacred of duties and the most exquisite of
pleasures; and so it had long been esteemed among the
Highlanders. The history of the clans abounds with frightful
tales, some perhaps fabulous or exaggerated, some certainly true,
of vindictive massacres and assassinations. The Macdonalds of
Glengarry, for example, having been affronted by the people of
Culloden, surrounded Culloden church on a Sunday, shut the doors,
and burned the whole congregation alive. While the flames were
raging, the hereditary musician of the murderers mocked the
shrieks of the perishing crowd with the notes of his bagpipe.218
A band of Macgregors, having cut off the head of an enemy, laid
it, the mouth filled with bread and cheese, on his sister's
table, and had the satisfaction of seeing her go mad with horror
at the sight. They then carried the ghastly trophy in triumph to
their chief. The whole clan met under the roof of an ancient
church. Every one in turn laid his hand on the dead man's scalp,
and vowed to defend the slayers.219 The inhabitants of Eigg
seized some Macleods, bound them hand and foot, and turned them
adrift in a boat to be swallowed up by the waves or to perish of
hunger. The Macleods retaliated by driving the population of Eigg
into a cavern, lighting a fire at the entrance, and suffocating
the whole race, men, women and children.220 It is much less
strange that the two great Earls of the house of Campbell,
animated by the passions of Highland chieftains, should have
planned a Highland revenge, than that they should have found an
accomplice, and something more than an accomplice, in the Master
of Stair.

The Master of Stair was one of the first men of his time, a
jurist, a statesman, a fine scholar, an eloquent orator. His
polished manners and lively conversation were the delight of
aristocratical societies; and none who met him in such societies
would have thought it possible that he could bear the chief part
in any atrocious crime. His political principles were lax, yet
not more lax than those of most Scotch politicians of that age.
Cruelty had never been imputed to him. Those who most disliked
him did him the justice to own that, where his schemes of policy
were not concerned, he was a very goodnatured man.221 There is
not the slightest reason to believe that he gained a single pound
Scots by the act which has covered his name with infamy. He had
no personal reason to wish the Glencoe men ill. There had been no
feud between them and his family. His property lay in a district
where their tartan was never seen. Yet he hated them with a
hatred as fierce and implacable 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
question perplexed the Master's contemporaries; and any answer
which may now be offered ought to be offered with diffidence.222
The most probable conjecture is that he was actuated by an
inordinate, an unscrupulous, a remorseless zeal for what seemed
to him to be the interest of the state. This explanation may
startle those who have not considered how large a proportion of
the blackest crimes recorded in history is to be ascribed to ill
regulated public spirit. We daily see men do for their party, for
their sect, for their country, for their favourite schemes of
political and social reform, what they would not do to enrich or
to avenge themselves. At a temptation directly addressed to our
private cupidity or to our private animosity, whatever virtue we
have takes the alarm. But, virtue itself may contribute to the
fall of him who imagines that it is in his power, by violating
some general rule of morality, to confer an important benefit on
a church, on a commonwealth, on mankind. He silences the
remonstrances of conscience, and hardens his heart against the
most touching spectacles of misery, by repeating to himself that
his intentions are pure, that his objects are noble, that he is
doing a little evil for the sake of a great good. By degrees he
comes altogether to forget the turpitude of the means in the
excellence of the end, and at length perpetrates without one
internal twinge acts which would shock a buccaneer. There is no
reason to believe that Dominic would, for the best archbishopric
in christendom, have incited ferocious marauders to plunder and
slaughter a peaceful and industrious population, that Everard
Digby would for a dukedom have blown a large assembly of people
into the air, or that Robespierre would have murdered for hire
one of the thousands whom he murdered from philanthropy.

The Master of Stair seems to have proposed to himself a truly
great and good end, the pacification and civilisation of the
Highlands. He was, by the acknowledgment of those who most hated
him, a man of large views. He justly thought it monstrous that a
third part of Scotland should be in a state scarcely less savage
than New Guinea, that letters of fire and sword should, through a
third part of Scotland, be, century after century, a species of
legal process, and that no attempt should be made to apply a
radical remedy to such evils. The independence affected by a
crowd of petty sovereigns, the contumacious resistance which they
were in the habit of offering to the authority of the Crown and
of the Court of Session, their wars, their robberies, their
fireraisings, their practice of exacting black mail from people
more peaceable and more useful than themselves, naturally excited
the disgust and indignation of an enlightened and politic
gownsman, who was, both by the constitution of his mind and by
the habits of his profession, a lover of law and order. His
object was no less than a complete dissolution and reconstruction
of society in the Highlands, such a dissolution and
reconstruction as, two generations later, followed the battle of
Culloden. In his view the clans, as they existed, were the
plagues of the kingdom; and of all the clans, the worst was that
which inhabited Glencoe. He had, it is said, been particularly
struck by a frightful instance of the lawlessness and ferocity of
those marauders. One of them, who had been concerned in some act
of violence or rapine, had given information against his
companions. He had been bound to a tree and murdered. The old
chief had given the first stab; and scores of dirks had then been
plunged into the wretch's body.223 By the mountaineers such an
act was probably regarded as a legitimate exercise of patriarchal
jurisdiction. To the Master of Stair it seemed that people among
whom such things were done and were approved ought to be treated
like a pack of wolves, snared by any device, and slaughtered
without mercy. He was well read in history, and doubtless knew
how great rulers had, in his own and other countries, dealt with
such banditti. He doubtless knew with what energy and what
severity James the Fifth had put down the mosstroopers of the
border, how the chief of Henderland had been hung over the gate
of the castle in which he had prepared a banquet for the King;
how John Armstrong and his thirty-six horsemen, when they came
forth to welcome their sovereign, had scarcely been allowed time
to say a single prayer before they were all tied up and turned
off. Nor probably was the Secretary ignorant of the means by
which Sixtus the Fifth had cleared the ecclesiastical state of
outlaws. The eulogists of that great pontiff tell us that there
was one formidable gang which could not be dislodged from a
stronghold among the Apennines. Beasts of burden were therefore
loaded with poisoned food and wine, and sent by a road which ran
close to the fastness. The robbers sallied forth, seized the
prey, feasted and died; and the pious old Pope exulted greatly
when he heard that the corpses of thirty ruffians, who had been
the terror of many peaceful villages, had been found lying among
the mules and packages. The plans of the Master of Stair were
conceived in the spirit of James and of Sixtus; and the rebellion
of the mountaineers furnished what seemed to be an excellent
opportunity for carrying those plans into effect. Mere rebellion,
indeed, he could have easily pardoned. On Jacobites, as
Jacobites, he never showed any inclination to bear hard. He hated
the Highlanders, not as enemies of this or that dynasty, but as
enemies of law, of industry and of trade. In his private
correspondence he applied to them the short and terrible form of
words in which the implacable Roman pronounced the doom of
Carthage. His project was no less than this, that the whole hill
country from sea to sea, and the neighbouring islands, should be
wasted with fire and sword, that the Camerons, the Macleans, and
all the branches of the race of Macdonald, should be rooted out.
He therefore looked with no friendly eye on schemes of
reconciliation, and, while others were hoping that a little
money would set everything right, hinted very intelligibly his
opinion that whatever money was to be laid out on the clans would
be best laid out in the form of bullets and bayonets. To the last
moment he continued to flatter himself that the rebels would be
obstinate, and would thus furnish him with a plea for
accomplishing that great social revolution on which his heart was
set.224 The letter is still extant in which he directed the
commander of the forces in Scotland how to act if the Jacobite
chiefs should not come in before the end of December. There is
something strangely terrible in the calmness and conciseness with
which the instructions are given. "Your troops will destroy
entirely the country of Lochaber, Lochiel's lands, Keppoch's,
Glengarry's and Glencoe's. Your power shall be large enough. I
hope the soldiers will not trouble the government with
prisoners."225

This despatch had scarcely been sent off when news arrived in
London that the rebel chiefs, after holding out long, had at last
appeared before the Sheriffs and taken the oaths. Lochiel, the
most eminent man among them, had not only declared that he would
live and die a true subject to King William, but had announced
his intention of visiting England, in the hope of being permitted
to kiss His Majesty's hand. In London it was announced exultingly
that every clan, without exception, had submitted in time; and
the announcement was generally thought most satisfactory.226 But
the Master of Stair was bitterly disappointed. The Highlands were
then to continue to be what they had been, the shame and curse of
Scotland. A golden opportunity of subjecting them to the law had
been suffered to escape, and might never return. If only the
Macdonalds would have stood out, nay, if an example could but
have been made of the two worst Macdonalds, Keppoch and Glencoe,
it would have been something. But it seemed that even Keppoch and
Glencoe, marauders who in any well governed country would have
been hanged thirty years before, were safe.227 While the Master
was brooding over thoughts like these, Argyle brought him some
comfort. The report that Mac Ian had taken the oaths within the
prescribed time was erroneous. The Secretary was consoled. One
clan, then, was at the mercy of the government, and that clan the
most lawless of all. One great act of justice, nay of charity,
might be performed. One terrible and memorable example might be
given.228

Yet there was a difficulty. Mac Ian had taken the oaths. He had
taken them, indeed, too late to be entitled to plead the letter
of the royal promise; but the fact that he had taken them was one
which evidently ought 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, but which was, in all probability,
directed by the Master of Stair, the evidence of Mac Ian's tardy
submission was suppressed. The certificate which the Sheriff of
Argyleshire had transmitted to the Council at Edinburgh, was
never laid before the board, but was privately submitted to some
persons high in office, and particularly to Lord President Stair,
the father of the Secretary. These persons pronounced the
certificate irregular, and, indeed, absolutely null; and it was
cancelled.

Meanwhile the Master of Stair was forming, in concert with
Breadalbane and Argyle, a plan for the destruction of the people
of Glencoe. It was necessary to take the King's pleasure, not,
indeed, as to the details of what was to be done, but as to the
question whether Mac Ian and his people should or should not be
treated as rebels out of the pale of the ordinary law. The Master
of Stair found no difficulty in the royal closet. William had, in
all probability, never heard the Glencoe men mentioned except as
banditti. He knew that they had not come in by the prescribed
day. That they had come in after that day he did not know. If he
paid any attention to the matter, he must have thought that so
fair an opportunity of putting an end to the devastations and
depredations from which a quiet and industrious population had
suffered so much ought not to be lost.

An order was laid before him for signature. He signed it, but, if
Burnet may be trusted, did not read it. Whoever has seen anything
of public business knows that princes and ministers daily sign,
and indeed must sign, documents which they have not read; and of
all documents a document relating to a small tribe of
mountaineers, living in a wilderness not set down in any map, was
least likely to interest a Sovereign whose mind was full of
schemes on which the fate of Europe might depend.229 But, even on
the supposition that he read the order to which he affixed his
name, there seems to be no reason for blaming him. 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 be well
distinguished from the other Highlanders, it will be proper, for
the vindication of public justice, to extirpate that set of
thieves." These words naturally bear a sense perfectly innocent,
and would, but for the horrible event which followed, have been
universally understood in that sense. It is undoubtedly one of
the first duties of every government to extirpate gangs of
thieves. This does not mean that every thief ought to be
treacherously assassinated in his sleep, or even that every thief
ought to be publicly executed after a fair trial, but that every
gang, as a gang, ought to be completely broken up, and that
whatever severity is indispensably necessary for that end ought
to be used. If William had read and weighed the words which were
submitted to him by his Secretary, he would probably have
understood them to mean that Glencoe was to be occupied by
troops, that resistance, if resistance were attempted, was to be
put down with a strong hand, that severe punishment was to be
inflicted on those leading members of the clan who could be
proved to have been guilty of great crimes, that some active
young freebooters, who were more used to handle the broad sword
than the plough, and who did not seem likely to settle down into
quiet labourers, were to be sent to the army in the Low
Countries, that others were to be transported to the American
plantations, and that those Macdonalds who were suffered to
remain in their native valley were to be disarmed and required to
give hostages for good behaviour. A plan very nearly resembling
this had, we know, actually been the subject of much discussion
in the political circles of Edinburgh.230 There can be little
doubt that William would have deserved well of his people if he
had, in this manner, extirpated not only the tribe of Mac Ian,
but every Highland 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 damnable race. Such was the language in which his hatred
vented itself. He studied the geography of the wild country which
surrounded Glencoe, and made his arrangements with infernal
skill. If possible, the blow must be quick, and crushing, and
altogether unexpected. But if Mac Ian should apprehend danger and
should attempt to take refuge in the territories of his
neighbours, he must find every road barred. The pass of Rannoch
must be secured. The Laird of Weems, who was powerful in Strath
Tay, must be told that, if he harbours the outlaws, he does so at
his peril. Breadalbane promised to cut off the retreat of the
fugitives on one side, Mac Callum More on another. It was
fortunate, the Secretary wrote, that it was winter. This was the
time to maul the wretches. The nights were so long, the mountain
tops so cold and stormy, that even the hardiest men could not
long bear exposure to the open air without a roof or a spark of
fire. That the women and the children could find shelter in the
desert was quite impossible. While he wrote thus, no thought that
he was committing a great wickedness crossed his mind. He was
happy in the approbation of his own conscience. Duty, justice,
nay charity and mercy, were the names under which he disguised
his cruelty; nor is it by any means improbable that the disguise
imposed upon himself.231

Hill, who commanded the forces assembled at Fort William, was not
entrusted with the execution of the design. He seems to have been
a humane man; he was much distressed when he learned that the
government was determined on severity; and it was probably
thought that his heart might fail him in the most critical
moment. He was directed to put a strong detachment under the
orders of his second in command, Lieutenant Colonel Hamilton. To
Hamilton a significant hint was conveyed that he had now an
excellent opportunity of establishing his character in the
estimation of those who were at the head of affairs. Of the
troops entrusted to him a large proportion were Campbells, and
belonged to a regiment lately raised by Argyle, and called by
Argyle's name, It was probably thought that, on such an occasion,
humanity might prove too strong for the mere habit of military
obedience, and that little reliance could be placed on hearts
which had not been ulcerated by a feud such as had long raged
between the people of Mac Ian and the people of Mac Callum More.

Had Hamilton marched openly against the Glencoe men and put them
to the edge of the sword, the act would probably not have wanted
apologists, and most certainly would not have wanted precedents.
But the Master of Stair had strongly recommended a different mode
of proceeding. If the least alarm were given, the nest of robbers
would be found empty; and to hunt them down in so wild a region
would, even with all the help that Breadalbane 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 was obeyed; and it
was determined that the Glencoe men should perish, not by
military execution, but by the most dastardly and perfidious form
of assassination.

On the first of February a hundred and twenty soldiers of
Argyle's regiment, commanded by a captain named Campbell and a
lieutenant named Lindsay, marched to Glencoe. Captain Campbell
was commonly called in Scotland Glenlyon, from the pass in which
his property lay. He had every qualification for he service on
which he was employed, an unblushing forehead, a smooth lying
tongue, and a heart of adamant. He was also one of the few
Campbells who were likely to be trusted and welcomed by the
Macdonalds; for his niece was married to Alexander, the second
son of Mac Ian.

The sight of the red coats approaching caused some anxiety among
the population of the valley. John, the eldest son of the Chief,
came, accompanied by twenty clansmen, to meet the strangers, and
asked what this visit meant. Lieutenant Lindsay answered that the
soldiers came as friends, and wanted nothing but quarters. They
were kindly received, and were lodged under the thatched roofs
of the little community. Glenlyon and several of his men were
taken into the house of a tacksman who was named, from the
cluster of cabins over which he exercised authority, Inverriggen.
Lindsay was accommodated nearer to the abode of the old chief.
Auchintriater, one of the principal men of the clan, who governed
the small hamlet of Auchnaion, found room there for a party
commanded by a serjeant named Barbour. Provisions were liberally
supplied. There was no want of beef, which had probably fattened
in distant pastures; nor was any payment demanded; for in
hospitality, as in thievery, the Gaelic marauders rivalled the
Bedouins. During twelve days the soldiers lived familiarly with
the people of the glen. Old Mac Ian, who had before felt many
misgivings as to the relation in which he stood to the
government, seems to have been pleased with the visit. The
officers passed much of their time with him and his family. The
long evenings were cheerfully spent by the peat fire with the
help of some packs of cards which had found their way to that
remote corner of the world, and of some French brandy which was
probably part of James's farewell gift to his Highland
supporters. Glenlyon appeared to be warmly attached to his niece
and her husband Alexander. Every day he came to their house to
take his morning draught. Meanwhile he observed with minute
attention all the avenues by which, when the signal for the
slaughter should be given, the Macdonalds might attempt to escape
to the hills; and he reported the result of his observations to
Hamilton.

Hamilton fixed five o'clock in the morning of the thirteenth of
February for the deed. He hoped that, before that time, he should
reach Glencoe with four hundred men, and should have stopped all
the earths in which the old fox and his two cubs,-so Mac Ian and
his sons were nicknamed by the murderers,--could take refuge. But,
at five precisely, whether Hamilton had arrived or not, Glenlyon
was to fall on, and to slay every Macdonald under seventy.

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

Late in the evening a vague suspicion that some evil was intended
crossed the mind of the Chief's eldest son. The soldiers were
evidently in 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 of them muttered, "I should be glad to
fight the Macdonalds. But to kill men 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." John Macdonald was so
uneasy that, soon after midnight, he went to Glenlyon's quarters.
Glenlyon and his men were all up, and seemed to be getting their
arms ready for action. John, much alarmed, asked what these
preparations meant. Glenlyon was profuse of friendly assurances.
"Some of Glengarry's people have been harrying the country. We
are getting ready to march against them. You are quite safe. Do
you think that, if you were in any danger, I should not have
given a hint to your brother Sandy and his wife?" John's
suspicions were quieted. He returned to his house, and lay down
to rest.

It was five in the morning. Hamilton and his men were still some
miles off; and the avenues which they were to have secured were
open. But the orders which Glenlyon bad received were precise;
and he began to execute them at the little village where he was
himself quartered. His host Inverriggen and nine other Macdonalds
were dragged out of their beds, bound hand and foot, and
murdered. A boy twelve years old clung round the 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. Even Glenlyon,
it is said, showed signs of relenting; but a ruffian named
Drummond shot the child dead.

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

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

The statesman, to whom chiefly this great crime is to be
ascribed, had planned it with consummate ability: but the
execution was complete in nothing but in guilt and infamy. A
succession of blunders saved three fourths of the Glencoe men
from the fate of their chief. All the moral qualities which fit
men to bear a part in a massacre Hamilton and Glenlyon possessed
in perfection. But neither seems to have had much professional
skill; Hamilton had arranged his plan without making allowance
for bad weather, and this in a country and at a season when the
weather was very likely to be bad. The consequence was that the
fox earths, as he called them, were not stopped in time. Glenlyon
and his men committed the error of despatching their hosts with
firearms instead of using the cold steel. The peal and flash of
gun after gun gave notice, from three different parts of the
valley at once; that murder was doing. From fifty cottages the
half naked peasantry fled under cover of the night to the
recesses of their pathless glen. Even the sons of Mac Ian, who
had been especially marked out for destruction, contrived to
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 marched up to it. It was broad day long before Hamilton
arrived. He found the work not even half performed. About thirty
corpses lay wallowing in blood on the dunghills before the doors.
One or two women were seen among the number, and, a yet more
fearful and piteous sight, a little hand, which had been lopped
in the tumult of the butchery from some infant. One aged
Macdonald was found alive. He was probably too infirm to fly,
and, as he was above seventy, was not included in the orders
under which Glenlyon had acted. Hamilton murdered the old man in
cold blood. The deserted hamlets were then set on fire; and the
troops departed, driving away with them many sheep and goats,
nine hundred kine, and two hundred of the small shaggy ponies of
the Highlands.

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

The survivors might well apprehend that they had escaped the shot
and 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 be able to raise on its own ground the means of
supporting even the most miserable existence.234

It may be thought strange that these events should not have been
instantly followed by a burst of execration from every part of
the civilised world. The fact, however, is that years elapsed
before the public indignation was thoroughly awakened, and that
months elapsed before the blackest part of the story found credit
even among the enemies of the government. That the massacre
should not have been mentioned in the London Gazettes, in the
Monthly Mercuries which were scarcely less courtly than the
Gazettes, or in pamphlets licensed by official censors, is
perfectly intelligible. But that no allusion to it should be
found in private journals and letters, written by persons free
from all restraint, may seem extraordinary. There is not a word
on the subject in Evelyn's Diary. In Narcissus Luttrell's Diary
is a remarkable entry made five weeks after the butchery. The
letters from Scotland, he says, described that kingdom as
perfectly tranquil, except that there was still some grumbling
about ecclesiastical questions. The Dutch ministers regularly
reported all the Scotch news to their government. They thought it
worth while, about this time, to mention that a collier had been
taken by a privateer near Berwick, that the Edinburgh mail had
been robbed, that a whale, with a tongue seventeen feet long and
seven feet broad, had been stranded near Aberdeen. But it is not
hinted in any of their despatches that there was any rumour of
any extraordinary occurrence in the Highlands. Reports that some
of the Macdonalds had been slain did indeed, in about three
weeks, travel through Edinburgh up to London. But these reports
were vague and contradictory; and the very worst of them was far
from coming up to the horrible truth. The Whig version of the
story was that the old robber Mac Ian had laid an ambuscade 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 Jacobite
version, written at Edinburgh on the twenty-third of March,
appeared in the Paris Gazette of the seventh of April. Glenlyon,
it was said, had been sent with a detachment from Argyle's
regiment, under cover of darkness, to surprise the inhabitants of
Glencoe, and had killed thirty-six men and boys and four
women.235 In this there was nothing very strange or shocking. A
night attack on a gang of freebooters occupying a strong natural
fortress may be a perfectly legitimate military operation; and,
in the obscurity and confusion of such an attack, the most humane
man may be so unfortunate as to shoot a woman or a child. The
circumstances which give a peculiar character to the slaughter of
Glencoe, the breach of faith, the breach of hospitality, the
twelve days of feigned friendship and conviviality, of morning
calls, of social meals, of healthdrinking, of cardplaying, were
not mentioned by the Edinburgh correspondent of the Paris
Gazette; and we may therefore confidently infer that those
circumstances were as yet unknown even to inquisitive and busy
malecontents residing in the Scottish capital within a hundred
miles of the spot where the deed had been done. In the south of
the island the matter produced, as far as can now be judged,
scarcely any sensation. To the Londoner of those days Appin was
what Caffraria or Borneo is to us. He was not more moved by
hearing that some Highland thieves had been surprised and killed
than we are by hearing that a band of Amakosah cattle stealers
has been cut off, or that a bark full of Malay pirates has been
sunk. He took it for granted that nothing had been done in
Glencoe beyond what was doing in many other glens. There had been
a night brawl, one of a hundred night brawls, between the
Macdonalds and the Campbells; and the Campbells had knocked the
Macdonalds on the head.

By slow degrees the whole truth came out. From a letter written
at Edinburgh about two months after the crime had been committed,
it appears that the horrible story was already current among the
Jacobites of that city. In the summer Argyle's regiment was
quartered in the south of England, and some of the men made
strange confessions, over their ale, about what they had been
forced to do in the preceding winter. The nonjurors soon got hold
of the clue, and followed it resolutely; their secret presses
went to work; and at length, near a year after the crime had been
committed, it was published to the world.236 But the world was
long incredulous. The habitual mendacity of the Jacobite
libellers had brought on them an appropriate punishment. Now,
when, for the first time, they told the truth, they were supposed
to be romancing. They complained bitterly that the story, though
perfectly authentic, was regarded by the public as a factious
lie.237 So late as the year 1695, Hickes, in a tract in which he
endeavoured to defend his darling tale of the Theban legion
against the unanswerable argument drawn from the silence of
historians, remarked that it might well be doubted whether any
historian would make mention of the massacre of Glencoe. There
were in England, he said, many thousands of well educated men who
had 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 the dread of retribution. A few days after the
Macdonalds had returned to their old dwellingplace, his steward
visited the ruins of the house of Glencoe, and endeavoured to
persuade the sons of the murdered chief to sign a paper declaring
that they held the Earl guiltless of the blood which had been
shed. They were assured that, if they would do this, all His
Lordship's great influence should be employed to obtain for them
from the Crown a free pardon and a remission of all
forfeitures.239 Glenlyon did his best to assume an air of
unconcern. He made his appearance in the most fashionable
coffeehouse at Edinburgh, and talked loudly and self-complacently
about the important service in which he had been engaged among
the mountains. Some of his soldiers, however, who observed him
closely, whispered that all this bravery was put on. He was not
the man that he had been before that night. The form of his
countenance was changed. In all places, at all hours, whether he
waked or slept, Glencoe was for ever before him.240

But, whatever apprehensions might disturb Breadalbane, whatever
spectres might haunt Glenlyon, the Master of Stair had neither
fear nor remorse. He was indeed mortified; but he was mortified
only by the blunders of Hamilton 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 be a more sacred duty than to
rid the country of thieving? The only thing that 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 in England.242

He would perhaps have postponed his departure if he had been
aware that the French Government had, during some time, been
making great preparations for a descent on our island.243 An
event had taken place which had changed the policy of the Court
of Versailles. Louvois was no more. He had been at the head of
the military administration of his country during a quarter of a
century; he had borne a chief part in the direction of two wars
which had enlarged the French territory, and had filled the world
with the renown of the French arms; and he had lived to see the
beginning of a third war which tasked his great powers to the
utmost. Between him and the celebrated captains who carried his
plans into execution there was little harmony. His imperious
temper and his confidence in himself impelled him to interfere
too much with the conduct of troops in the field, even when those
troops were commanded by Conde, by Turenne or by Luxemburg. But
he was the greatest Adjutant General, the greatest Quartermaster
General, the greatest Commissary General, that Europe had seen.
He may indeed be said to have made a revolution in the art of
disciplining, distributing, equipping and provisioning armies. In
spite, however, of his abilities and of his services, he had
become odious to Lewis and to her who governed Lewis. On the last
occasion on which the King and the minister transacted business
together, the ill humour on both sides broke violently forth. The
servant, in his vexation, dashed his portfolio on the ground. The
master, forgetting, what he seldom forgot, that a King should be
a gentleman, lifted his cane. Fortunately his wife was present.
She, with her usual prudence, caught his arm. She then got
Louvois out of the room, and exhorted him to come back the next
day as if nothing had happened. The next day he came; but with
death in his face. The King, though full of resentment, was
touched with pity, and advised Louvois to go 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 gentleman to Versailles with some words of condolence. The
messenger found the gorgeous circle of courtiers assembled round
their master on the terrace above the orangery. "Sir," said
Lewis, in a tone so easy and cheerful that it filled all the
bystanders with amazement, "present my compliments and thanks to
the King and Queen of England, and tell them that neither my
affairs nor theirs will go on the worse by what has happened."
These words were doubtless meant to intimate that the influence
of Louvois had not been exerted in favour of the House of
Stuart.246 One compliment, however, a compliment which cost
France dear, Lewis thought it right to pay to the memory of his
ablest servant. The Marquess of Barbesieux, son of Louvois, was
placed, in his twenty-fifth year, at the head of the war
department. The young man was by 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. His manners gave
general disgust. Old officers complained that he kept them long
in his antechamber while he was amusing himself with his spaniels
and his flatterers. Those who were admitted to his presence went
away disgusted by his rudeness and arrogance. As was natural at
his age, he valued power chiefly as the means of procuring
pleasure. Millions of crowns were expended on the luxurious villa
where he loved to forget the cares of office in gay conversation,
delicate cookery and foaming champagne. He often pleaded an
attack of fever as an excuse for not making his appearance at the
proper hour in the royal closet, when in truth he had been
playing truant among his boon companions and mistresses. "The
French King," said William, "has an odd taste. He chooses an old
woman for his mistress, and a young man for his minister."247

There can be little doubt that Louvois, by pursuing that course
which had made him odious to the inmates of Saint Germains, had
deserved well of his country. He was not maddened by Jacobite
enthusiasm. He well knew that exiles are the worst of all
advisers. He had excellent information;
he had excellent judgment; he calculated the chances; and he saw
that a descent was likely to fail, and to fail disastrously and
disgracefully. James might well be impatient to try the
experiment, though the odds should 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, his drink, his lodging, his
clothes, he owed to charity. Nothing could be more natural than
that, for the very smallest chance of recovering the three
kingdoms which he had thrown away, he should be willing to stake
what was not his own, the honour of the French arms, the grandeur
and the safety of the French monarchy. To a French statesman such
a wager might well appear in a different light. But Louvois was
gone. His master yielded to the importunity of James, and
determined to send an expedition against England.248

The scheme was, in some respects, well concerted. It was resolved
that a camp should be formed on the coast of Normandy, and that
in this camp all the Irish regiments which were in the French
service should be assembled under their countryman Sarsfield.
With them were to be joined about ten thousand French troops. The
whole army was to be commanded by Marshal Bellefonds.

A noble fleet of about eighty ships of the line was to convoy
this force to the shores of England. In the dockyards both of
Brittany and of Provence immense preparations were made. Four and
forty men of war, some of which were among the finest that had
ever been built, were assembled in the harbour of Brest under
Tourville. The Count of Estrees, with thirty-five more, was to
sail from Toulon. Ushant was fixed for the place of rendezvous.
The very day was named. In order that there might be no want
either of seamen or of vessels for the intended expedition, all
maritime trade, all privateering was, for a time, interdicted by
a royal mandate.249 Three hundred transports were collected near
the spot where the troops were to embark. It was hoped that all
would be ready early in the spring, before the English ships were
half rigged or half manned, and before a single Dutch man of war
was in the Channel.250

James had indeed persuaded himself that, even if the English
fleet should fall in with him, it would not oppose him. He
imagined that he was personally a favourite with the mariners of
all ranks. His emissaries had been busy among the naval officers,
and had found some who remembered him with kindness, and others
who were out of humour with the men now in power. All the wild
talk of a class of people not distinguished by taciturnity or
discretion was reported to him with exaggeration, till he was
deluded into a belief that he had more friends than enemies on
board of the vessels which guarded our coasts. Yet he should have
known that a rough sailor, who thought himself ill used by the
Admiralty, might, after the third bottle, when drawn on by artful
companions, express his regret for the good old times, curse the
new government, and curse himself for being such a fool as to
fight for that government, and yet might be by no means prepared
to go over to the French on the day of battle. Of the malecontent
officers, who, as James believed, were impatient to desert, the
great majority had probably given no pledge of their attachment
to him except an idle word hiccoughed out when they were drunk,
and forgotten when they were sober. One those from whom he
expected support, Rear Admiral Carter, had indeed heard and
perfectly understood what the Jacobite agents had to say, had
given them fair words, and had reported the whole to the Queen
and her ministers.251

But the chief dependence of James was on Russell. That false,
arrogant and wayward politician was to command the Channel Fleet.
He had never ceased to assure the Jacobite emissaries that he was
bent on effecting a Restoration. Those emissaries fully reckoned,
if not on his entire cooperation, yet at least on his connivance;
and there could be no doubt that, with his connivance, a French
fleet might easily convoy an army to our shores. James flattered
himself that, as soon as he had landed, he should be master of
the island. But in truth, when the voyage had ended, the
difficulties of his enterprise would have been only beginning.
Two years before he had received a lesson by which he should have
profited. He had then deceived himself and others into the belief
that the English were regretting him, were pining for him, were
eager to rise in arms by tens of thousands to welcome him.
William was then, as now, at a distance. Then, as now, the
administration was entrusted to a woman. Then, as now, there were
few regular troops in England. Torrington had then done as much
to injure the government which he served as Russell could now do.
The French fleet had then, after riding, during several weeks,
victorious and dominant in the Channel, landed some troops on the
southern coast. The immediate effect had been that whole
counties, without distinction of Tory or Whig, Churchman or
Dissenter, had risen up, 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 crouched down in silent terror, and had
made itself so small that it had, during some time, been
invisible. What reason was there for believing that the multitude
who had, in 1690, at the first lighting of the beacons, snatched
up firelocks, pikes, scythes, to defend, their native soil
against the French, would now welcome the French as allies? And
of the army by which James was now to be accompanied the French
formed the least odious part. More than half of that army was to
consist of Irish Papists; and the feeling, compounded of hatred
and scorn, with which the Irish Papists had long been regarded by
the English Protestants, had by recent events been stimulated to
a vehemence before unknown. The hereditary slaves, it was said,
had been for a moment free; and that moment had sufficed to prove
that they knew neither how to use nor how to defend their
freedom. During their short ascendency they had done nothing but
slay, and burn, and pillage, and demolish, and attaint, and
confiscate. In three years they had committed such waste on their
native land as thirty years of English intelligence and industry
would scarcely repair. They would have maintained their
independence against the world, if they had been as ready to
fight as they were to steal. But they had retreated ignominiously
from the walls of Londonderry. They had fled like deer before the
yeomanry of Enniskillen. The Prince whom they now presumed to
think that they could place, by force of arms, on the English
throne, had himself, on the morning after the rout of the Boyne,
reproached them with their cowardice, and told them that he would
never again trust to their soldiership. On this subject
Englishmen were of one mind. Tories, Nonjurors, even Roman
Catholics, were as loud as Whigs in reviling the ill fated race.
It is, therefore, not difficult to guess what effect would have
been produced by the appearance on our soil of enemies whom, on
their own soil, we had vanquished and trampled down.

James, however, in spite of the recent and severe teaching of
experience, 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 would proceed from the place of landing to
Whitehall with as little opposition as when, in old times, he
returned from a progress. Ferguson distinguished himself by the
confidence with which he predicted a complete and bloodless
victory. He and his printer, he was absurd enough to write, would
be the two first men in the realm to take horse for His Majesty.
Many other agents were busy up and down the country, during the
winter and the early part of the spring. It does not appear that
they had much success in the counties south of Trent. But in the
north, particularly in Lancashire, where the Roman Catholics were
more numerous and more powerful than in any other part of the
kingdom, and where there seems to have been, even among the
Protestant gentry, more than the ordinary proportion of bigoted
Jacobites, some preparations for an insurrection were made. Arms
were privately bought; officers were appointed; yeomen, small
farmers, grooms, huntsmen, were induced to enlist. Those who gave
in their names were distributed into eight regiments of cavalry
and dragoons, and were directed to hold themselves in readiness
to mount at the first signal.252

One of the circumstances which filled James, at this time, with
vain hopes, was that his wife was pregnant and near her delivery.
He flattered himself that malice itself would be ashamed to
repeat any longer the story of the warming pan, and that
multitudes whom that story had deceived would instantly return to
their allegiance. He took, on this occasion, all those
precautions which, four years before, he had foolishly and
perversely forborne to take. He contrived to transmit to England
letters summoning many Protestant women of quality to assist at
the expected birth; and he promised, in the name of his dear
brother the Most 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 morning of the tenth of June 1688, the House
of Stuart might, perhaps, now be reigning in our island. But it
is easier to keep a crown than to regain one. It might be true
that a calumnious fable had done much to bring about the
Revolution. But it by no means followed that the most complete
refutation of that fable would bring about a Restoration. Not a
single lady crossed the sea in obedience to James's call. His
Queen was safely delivered of a daughter; but this event produced
no perceptible effect on the state of public feeling in
England.253

Meanwhile the preparations for his expedition were going on fast.
He was on the point of setting out for the place of embarkation
before the English government was at all aware of the danger
which was impending. It had been long known indeed that many
thousands of Irish were assembled in Normandy; but it was
supposed that they had been assembled merely that they might be
mustered and drilled before they were sent to Flanders, Piedmont,
and Catalonia.254 Now, however, intelligence, arriving from many
quarters, left no doubt that an invasion would be almost
immediately attempted. Vigorous preparations for defence were
made. The equipping and manning of the ships was urged forward
with vigour. The regular troops were drawn together between
London and the sea. A great camp was formed on the down which
overlooks Portsmouth. The militia all over the kingdom was called
out. Two Westminster regiments and six City regiments, making up
a force of thirteen thousand fighting men, 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,
a noted Jacobite, was searched. He had had time to burn his
papers and to hide 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 of treason, was thought
sufficient, at such a conjuncture, to justify the Privy Council
in sending him to the Tower.255 Meanwhile James had gone down to
his army, which was encamped round the basin of La Hogue, on the
northern coast of the peninsula known by the name of the
Cotentin. Before he quitted Saint Germains, he held a Chapter of
the Garter for the purpose of admitting his son into the order.
Two noblemen were honoured with the same distinction, Powis, who,
among his brother exiles, 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 it was of the greatest importance to
conciliate the members of the Church of England, none but members
of the Church of Rome were thought worthy of any mark of royal
favour. Powis indeed was an eminent member of the English
aristocracy; and his countrymen disliked him as little as they
disliked any conspicuous Papist. But Melfort was not even an
Englishman; he had never held office in England; he had never
sate in the English Parliament; and he had therefore no
pretensions to a dignity peculiarly English. He was moreover
hated by all the contending factions of all the three kingdoms.
Royal letters countersigned by him had been sent both to the
Convention at Westminster and to the Convention at Edinburgh;
and, both at Westminster and at Edinburgh, the sight of his
odious name and handwriting had made the most zealous friends of
hereditary right hang down their heads in shame. It seems strange
that even James should have chosen, at such a conjuncture, to
proclaim to the world that the men whom his people most abhorred
were the men whom he most delighted to honour.

Still more injurious to his interests was the Declaration in
which he announced his intentions to his subjects. Of all the
State papers which were put forth even by him it was the most
elaborately and ostentatiously injudicious. When it had disgusted
and exasperated all good Englishmen of all parties, the Papists
at Saint Germains pretended that it had been drawn up by a stanch
Protestant, Edward Herbert, who had been Chief Justice of the
Common Pleas before the Revolution, and who now bore the empty
title of Chancellor.257 But it is certain that Herbert was never
consulted about any matter of importance, and that the
Declaration was the work of Melfort and of Melfort alone.258 In
truth, those qualities of head and heart which had made Melfort
the favourite of his master shone forth in every sentence. Not a
word was to be found indicating that three years of banishment
had made the King wiser, that he had repented of a single error,
that he took to himself even the smallest part of the blame of
that revolution which had dethroned him, or that he purposed to
follow a course in any respect differing from that which had
already been fatal to him. All the charges which had been brought
against him he pronounced to be utterly unfounded. Wicked men had
put forth calumnies. Weak men had believed those calumnies. He
alone had been faultless. He held out no hope that he would
consent to any restriction of that vast dispensing power to which
he had formerly laid claim, that he would not again, in defiance
of the plainest statutes, fill the Privy Council, the bench of
justice, the public offices, the army, the navy, with Papists,
that he would not reestablish the High Commission, that he would
not appoint a new set of regulators to remodel all the
constituent bodies of the kingdom. He did indeed condescend to
say that he would maintain the legal rights of the Church of
England; but he had said this before; and all men knew what those
words meant in his mouth. Instead of assuring his people of his
forgiveness, he menaced them with a proscription more terrible
than any which our island had ever seen. He published a list of
persons who had no mercy to expect. Among these were Ormond,
Caermarthen, Nottingham, Tillotson and Burnet. After the roll of
those who were doomed to death by name, came a series of
categories. First stood all the crowd of rustics who had been
rude to His Majesty when he was stopped at Sheerness in his
flight. These poor ignorant wretches, some hundreds in number,
were reserved for another bloody circuit. Then came all persons
who had in any manner borne a part in the punishment of any
Jacobite conspirator; judges, counsel, witnesses, grand jurymen,
petty jurymen, sheriffs and undersheriffs, constables and
turnkeys, in short, all the ministers of justice from Holt down
to Ketch. Then vengeance was denounced against all spies and all
informers who had divulged to the usurpers the designs of the
Court of Saint Germains. All justices of the peace who should not
declare for their rightful Sovereign the moment that they heard
of his landing, all gaolers who should not instantly set
political prisoners at liberty, were to be left to the extreme
rigour of the law. No exception was made in favour of a justice
or of a gaoler who might be within a hundred yards of one of
William's regiments, and a hundred miles from the nearest place
where there was a single Jacobite in arms.

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

The agents of James speedily dispersed his Declaration over every
part of the kingdom, and by doing so rendered a great service to
William. The general cry was that the banished oppressor had at
least given Englishmen fair warning, and that, if, after such a
warning, they welcomed him home, they would have no pretence for
complaining, though every county town should be polluted by an
assize resembling that which Jeffreys had held at Taunton. That
some hundreds of people,--the Jacobites put the number so low as
five hundred,--were to be hanged without mercy was certain; and
nobody who had concurred in the Revolution, nobody who had fought
for the new government by sea or land, no soldier who had borne a
part in the conquest of Ireland, no Devonshire ploughman or
Cornish miner who had taken arms to defend his wife and children
against Tourville, could be certain that he should not be hanged.
How abject too, how spiteful, must be the nature of a man who,
engaged in the most momentous of all undertakings, and aspiring
to the noblest of all prizes, could not refrain from proclaiming
that he thirsted for the blood of a multitude of poor fishermen,
because, more than three years before, they had pulled him about
and called him Hatchetface. If, at the very moment when he had
the strongest motives for trying to conciliate his people by the
show of clemency, he could not bring himself to hold towards them
any language but that of an implacable enemy, what was to be
expected from him when he should be again their master? So savage
was his nature that, in a situation in which all other tyrants
have resorted to blandishments and fair promises, he could utter
nothing but reproaches and threats. The only words in his
Declaration which had any show of graciousness were those in
which he promised to send away the foreign troops as soon as his
authority was reestablished; and many said that those words, when
examined, would be found full of sinister meaning. He held out no
hope that he would send away Popish troops who were his own
subjects. His intentions were manifest. The French might go; but
the Irish would remain. The people of England were to be kept
down by these thrice subjugated barbarians. No doubt a Rapparee
who had run away at Newton Butler and the Boyne might find
courage enough to guard the scaffolds on which his conquerors
were to die, and to lay waste our country as he had laid waste
his own.

The Queen and her ministers, instead of attempting to suppress
James's manifesto, very wisely reprinted it, and sent it forth
licensed by the Secretary of State, and interspersed with remarks
by a shrewd and severe commentator. It was refuted in many keen
pamphlets; it was turned into doggrel rhymes; and it was left
undefended even by the boldest and most acrimonious libellers
among the nonjurors.259

Indeed, some of the nonjurors were so much alarmed by observing
the effect which this manifesto produced, that they affected to
treat it as spurious, and published as their master's genuine
Declaration a paper full of gracious professions and promises.
They made him offer a free pardon to all his people with the
exception of four great criminals. They made him hold out hopes
of great remissions of taxation. They made him pledge his word
that he would entrust the whole ecclesiastical administration to
the nonjuring bishops. But this forgery imposed on nobody, and
was important only as showing that even the Jacobites were
ashamed 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, and are respectable when compared with mere
selfish cupidity. Professional spirit and party spirit were
strong in him. He might be false to his country, but not to his
flag; and, even in becoming a Jacobite, he had not ceased to be a
Whig. In truth, he was a Jacobite only because he was the most
intolerant and acrimonious of Whigs. He thought himself and his
faction ungratefully neglected by William, and was for a time too
much blinded by resentment to perceive that it would be mere
madness in the old Roundheads, the old Exclusionists, to punish
William by recalling James. The near prospect of an invasion, and
the Declaration in which Englishmen were plainly told what they
had to expect if that invasion should be successful, produced, it
should seem, a sudden and entire change in Russell's feelings;
and that change he distinctly avowed. "I wish," 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. Let him forget all
the past; let him grant a general pardon; and then I will see
what I can do for him." Lloyd hinted something about the honours
and rewards designed for Russell himself. But the Admiral, with a
spirit worthy of a better man, cut him short. "I do not wish to
hear anything on that subject. My solicitude is for the public.
And do not think that I 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 should be on board."

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

The hopes which James felt, he and his favourite Melfort
succeeded in imparting to Lewis and to Lewis's ministers.261 But
for those hopes, indeed, it is probable that all thoughts of
invading England in the course of that year would have been laid
aside. For the extensive plan which had been formed in the winter
had, in the course of the spring, been disconcerted by a
succession of accidents such as are beyond the control of human
wisdom. The time fixed for the assembling of all the maritime
forces of France at Ushant had long elapsed; and not a single
sail had appeared at the place of rendezvous. The Atlantic
squadron was still detained by bad weather in the port of Brest.
The Mediterranean squadron, opposed by a strong west wind, was
vainly struggling to pass the pillars of Hercules. Two fine
vessels had gone to pieces on the rocks of Ceuta.262 Meanwhile
the admiralties of the allied powers had been active. Before the
end of April the English fleet was ready to sail. Three noble
ships, just launched from our dockyards, appeared for the first
time on the water.263 William had been hastening the maritime
preparations of the United Provinces; and his exertions had been
successful. On the twenty-ninth of April a fine squadron from the
Texel appeared in the Downs. Soon came the North Holland
squadron, the Maes squadron, the Zealand squadron.264 The whole
force of the confederate powers was assembled at Saint Helen's in
the second week of May, more than ninety sail of the line, manned
by between thirty and forty 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 Rear Admiral Rooke. Of the Dutch
officers Van Almonde was highest in rank.

No mightier armament had ever appeared in the British Channel.
There was little reason for apprehending that such a force could
be defeated in a fair conflict. Nevertheless there was great
uneasiness in London. It was known that there was a Jacobite
party in the navy. Alarming rumours had worked their way round
from France. It was said that the enemy reckoned on the
cooperation of some of those officers on whose fidelity, in this
crisis, the safety of the State might depend. Russell, as far as
can now be discovered, was still unsuspected. But others, who
were probably less criminal, had been more indiscreet. At all the
coffee houses admirals and captains were mentioned by name as
traitors who ought to be instantly cashiered, if not shot. It was
even confidently affirmed that some of the guilty had been put
under arrest, and others turned out of the service. The Queen and
her counsellors were in a great strait. It was not easy to say
whether the danger of trusting the suspected persons or the
danger of removing them were the greater. Mary, with many painful
misgivings, resolved, and the event proved that she resolved
wisely, to treat the evil reports as calumnious, to make a solemn
appeal to the honour of the accused gentlemen, and then to trust
the safety of her kingdom to their national and professional
spirit.

On the fifteenth of May a great assembly of officers was convoked
at Saint Helen's on board the Britannia, a fine three decker,
from which Russell's flag was flying. The Admiral told them that
he had received a despatch which he was charged to read to them.
It was from Nottingham. The Queen, the Secretary wrote, had been
informed that stories deeply affecting the character of the navy
were in circulation. It had even been affirmed that she had found
herself under the necessity of dismissing many officers. But Her
Majesty was determined to believe nothing against those brave
servants of the State. The gentlemen who had been so foully
slandered might be assured that she placed entire reliance on
them. This letter was admirably calculated to work on those to
whom it was addressed. Very few of them probably had been guilty
of any worse offence than rash and angry talk over their wine.
They were as yet only grumblers. If they had fancied that they
were marked men, they might in selfdefence have become traitors.
They became enthusiastically loyal as soon as they were assured
that the Queen reposed entire confidence in their loyalty. They
eagerly signed an address in which they entreated her to believe
that they would, with the utmost resolution and alacrity, venture
their lives in defence of her rights, of English freedom and of
the Protestant religion, against all foreign and Popish invaders.
"God," they added, "preserve your person, direct your counsels,
and prosper your arms; and let all your people say Amen."265

The sincerity of these professions was soon brought to the test.
A few hours after the meeting on board of the Britannia the masts
of Tourville's squadron were seen from the cliffs of Portland.
One messenger galloped with the news from Weymouth to London, and
roused Whitehall at three in the morning. Another took the coast
road, and carried the intelligence to Russell. All was ready; and
on the morning of the seventeenth of May the allied fleet stood
out to sea.266

Tourville had with him only his own squadron, consisting of
forty-four ships of the line. But he had received positive orders
to protect the descent on England, and not to decline a battle.
Though these orders had been given before it was known at
Versailles that the Dutch and English fleets had joined, he was
not disposed to take on himself the responsibility of
disobedience. He still remembered with bitterness the reprimand
which his extreme caution had drawn upon him after the fight of
Beachy Head. He would not again be told that he was a timid and
unenterprising commander, that he had no courage but the vulgar
courage of a common sailor. He was also persuaded that the odds
against him were rather apparent than real. He believed, on the
authority of James and Melfort, that the English seamen, from the
flag officers down to the cabin boys, were Jacobites. Those who
fought would fight with half a heart; and there would probably be
numerous desertions at the most critical moment. Animated by such
hopes he sailed from Brest, steered first towards the north east,
came in sight of the coast of Dorsetshire, and then struck across
the Channel towards La Hogue, where the army which he was to
convoy to England had already begun to embark on board of the
transports. He was within a few leagues of Barfleur when, before
daybreak, on the morning of the nineteenth of May, he saw the
great armament of the allies stretching along the eastern
horizon. He determined to bear down on them. By eight the two
lines of battle were formed; but it was eleven before the firing
began. It soon became plain that the English, from the Admiral
downward, were resolved to do their duty. Russell had visited all
his ships, and exhorted all his crews. "If your commanders play
false," he said, "overboard with them, and with myself the
first." There was no defection. There was no slackness. Carter
was the first who broke the French line. He was struck by a
splinter of one of his own yard arms, and fell dying on the deck.
He would not be carried below. He would not let go his sword.
"Fight the ship," 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 guns was distinctly heard more than twenty miles off
by the army which was encamped on the coast of Normandy. During
the earlier part of the day the wind was favourable to the
French; they were opposed to half of the allied fleet; and
against that half they maintained the conflict with their usual
courage and with more than their usual seamanship. After a hard
and doubtful fight of five hours, Tourville thought that enough
had been done to maintain the honour of the white flag, and began
to draw off. But by this time the wind had veered, and was with
the allies. They were now able to avail themselves of their great
superiority of force. They came on fast. The retreat of the
French became a flight. Tourville fought his own ship
desperately. She was named, in allusion to Lewis's favourite
emblem, the Royal Sun, and was widely renowned as the finest
vessel in the world. It was reported among the English sailors
that she was adorned with an image of the Great King, and that he
appeared there, as he appeared in the Place of Victories, with
vanquished nations in chains beneath his feet. The gallant ship,
surrounded by enemies, lay like a great fortress on the sea,
scattering death on every side from her hundred and four
portholes. She was so formidably manned that all attempts to
board her failed. Long after sunset, she got clear of her
assailants, and, with all her scuppers spouting blood, made for
the coast of Normandy. She had suffered so much that Tourville
hastily removed 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 of his smallest ships made their escape by a
road which was too perilous for any courage but the courage of
despair. In the double darkness of night 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 at Saint Maloes.
The pursuers did not venture to follow the fugitives into that
terrible strait, the place of innumerable shipwrecks.267

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

The three ships which had fled to Cherburg were closely chased by
an English squadron under the command of Delaval. He found them
hauled up into shoal water where no large man of war could get at
them. He therefore determined to attack them with his fireships
and boats. The service was gallantly and successfully performed.
In a short time the Royal Sun and her two consorts were burned to
ashes. Part of the crews escaped to the shore; and part fell into
the hands of the English.268

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

Russell meanwhile was preparing for an attack. On the afternoon
of the twenty-third of May all was ready. A flotilla consisting
of sloops, of fireships, and of two hundred boats, was entrusted
to the command of Rooke. The whole armament was in the highest
spirits. The rowers, flushed by success, and animated by the
thought that they were going to fight under the eyes of the
French and Irish troops who had been assembled for the purpose of
subjugating England, pulled manfully and with loud huzzas towards
the six huge wooden castles which lay close to Fort Lisset. The
French, though an eminently brave people, have always been more
liable to sudden panics than their phlegmatic neighbours the
English and Germans. On this day there was a panic both in the
fleet and in the army. Tourville ordered his sailors to man their
boats, and would have led them to encounter the enemy in the bay.
But his example and his exhortations were vain. His boats turned
round and fled in confusion. The ships were abandoned. The
cannonade from Fort Lisset was so feeble and ill directed that it
did no execution. The regiments on the beach, after wasting a few
musket shots, drew off. The English boarded the men of war, set
them on fire, and having performed this great service without the
loss of a single life, retreated at a late hour with the
retreating tide. The bay was in a blaze during the night; and now
and then a loud explosion announced that the flames had reached a
powder room or a tier of loaded guns. At eight the next morning
the tide came back strong; and with the tide came back Rooke and
his two hundred boats. The enemy made a faint attempt to defend
the vessels which were near Fort Saint Vaast. During a few
minutes the batteries did some execution among the crews of our
skiffs; but the struggle was soon over. The French poured fast
out of their ships on one side; the English poured in as fast on
the other, and, with loud shouts, turned the captured guns
against the shore. The batteries were speedily silenced. James
and Melfort, Bellefonds and Tourville, looked on in helpless
despondency while the second conflagration proceeded. The
conquerors, leaving the ships of war in flames, made their way
into an inner basin where many transports lay. Eight of these
vessels were set on fire. Several were taken in tow. The rest
would have been either destroyed or carried off, had not the sea
again begun to ebb. It was impossible to do more, and the
victorious flotilla slowly retired, insulting the hostile camp
with a thundering chant of "God save the King."

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

The news was received in London with boundless exultation. In the
fight on the open sea, indeed, the numerical superiority of the
allies had been so great that they had little reason to boast of
their success. But the 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 of French batteries, destroyed a fine
French fleet, amply justified the pride with which our fathers
pronounced the name of La Hogue. That we may fully enter into
their feelings, we must remember that this was the first great
check that had ever been given to the arms of Lewis the
Fourteenth, and the first great victory that the English had
gained over the French since the day of Agincourt. The stain left
on our fame by the shameful defeat of Beachy Head was effaced.
This time the glory was all our own. The Dutch had indeed done
their duty, as they have always done it in maritime war, whether
fighting on our side or against us, whether victorious or
vanquished. But the English had borne the brunt of the fight.
Russell who commanded in chief was an Englishman. Delaval who
directed the attack on Cherburg was an Englishman. Rooke who led
the flotilla into the Bay of La Hogue was an Englishman. The only
two officers of note who had fallen, Admiral Carter and Captain
Hastings of the Sandwich, were Englishmen. Yet the pleasure with
which the good news was received here must not be ascribed solely
or chiefly to national pride. The island was safe. The pleasant
pastures, cornfields and commons of Hampshire and Surrey would
not be the seat of war. The houses and gardens, the kitchens and
dairies, the cellars and plate chests, the wives and daughters of
our gentry and clergy would not be at the mercy of Irish
Rapparees, who had sacked the dwellings and skinned the cattle of
the Englishry of Leinster, or of French dragoons accustomed to
live at free quarters on the Protestants of Auvergne. Whigs and
Tories joined in thanking God for this great deliverance; and the
most respectable nonjurors could not but be glad at heart that
the rightful King was not to be brought back by an army of
foreigners.

The public joy was therefore all but universal. During several
days the bells of London pealed without ceasing. Flags were
flying on all the steeples. Rows of candles were in all the
windows. Bonfires were at all the corners of the streets.270 The
sense which the government entertained of the services of the
navy was promptly, judiciously and gracefully manifested. Sidney
and Portland were sent to meet the fleet at Portsmouth, and were
accompanied by Rochester, as the representative of the Tories.
The three Lords took down with them thirty-seven thousand pounds
in coin, which they were to distribute as a donative among the
sailors.271 Gold medals were given to the officers.272 The
remains of 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, with unusual solemnity, under the
pavement of Saint James's Church. The footguards with reversed
arms escorted the hearse. Four royal state carriages, each drawn
by six horses, were in the procession; a crowd of men of quality
in mourning cloaks filled the pews; and the Bishop of Lincoln
preached the funeral sermon.274 While such marks of respect were
paid to the slain, the wounded were not neglected. Fifty
surgeons, plentifully supplied with instruments, bandages, and
drugs, were sent down in all haste from London to Portsmouth.275
It is not easy for us to form a notion of the difficulty which
there then was in providing at short notice commodious shelter
and skilful attendance for hundreds of maimed and lacerated men.
At present every county, every large town, can boast of some
spacious palace in which the poorest labourer who has fractured a
limb may find an excellent bed, an able medical attendant, a
careful nurse, medicines of the best quality, and nourishment
such as an invalid requires. But there was not then, in the whole
realm, a single infirmary supported by voluntary contribution.
Even in the capital the only edifices open to the wounded were
the two ancient hospitals of Saint Thomas and Saint Bartholomew.
The Queen gave orders that in both these hospitals arrangements
should be made at the public charge for the reception of patients
from the fleet.276 At the same time it was announced that a noble
and lasting memorial of the gratitude which England felt for the
courage and patriotism of her sailors would soon rise on a site
eminently appropriate. Among the suburban residences of our
kings, that which stood at Greenwich had long held a
distinguished place. Charles the Second liked the situation, and
determined to rebuild the house and to improve the gardens. Soon
after his Restoration, he began to erect, on a spot almost washed
by the Thames at high tide, a mansion of vast extent and cost.
Behind the palace were planted long avenues of trees which, when
William reigned, were scarcely more than saplings, but which have
now covered with their massy shade the summer rambles of several
generations. On the slope which has long been the scene of the
holiday sports of the Londoners, were constructed flights of
terraces, of which the vestiges may still be discerned. The Queen
now publicly declared, in her husband's name, that the building
commenced by Charles should be completed, and should be a retreat
for seamen disabled in the service of their country.277

One of the happiest effects produced by the good news was the
calming of the public mind. During about a month the nation had
been hourly expecting an invasion and a rising, and had
consequently been in an irritable and suspicious mood. In many
parts of England a nonjuror could not show himself without great
risk of being insulted. A report that arms 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 and pulled
down.278 Yet such riots were by no means the worst symptoms of
the 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 vile tribe of which Oates was the patriarch.
During some weeks, indeed, the world was disposed to be
unreasonably incredulous about plots. But in April there was a
reaction. The French and Irish were coming. There was but too
much reason to believe that there were traitors in the island.
Whoever pretended that he could point out those traitors was sure
to be heard with attention; and there was not wanting a false
witness to avail himself of the golden opportunity.

This false witness was named Robert Young. His history was in his
own lifetime so fully investigated, and so much of his
correspondence has been preserved, that the whole man is before
us. His character is indeed a curious study. His birthplace was a
subject of dispute among three nations. The English pronounced
him Irish. The Irish, not being ambitious of the honour of having
him for a countryman, affirmed that he was born in Scotland.
Wherever he may have been born, it is impossible to doubt where
he was bred; for his phraseology is precisely that of the Teagues
who were, in his time, favourite characters on our stage. He
called himself a priest of the Established Church; but he was in
truth only a deacon; and his deacon's orders he had obtained by
producing forged certificates of his learning and moral
character. Long before the Revolution he held curacies in various
parts of Ireland; but he did not remain many days in any spot. He
was driven from one place by the scandal which was the effect of
his lawless amours. He rode away from another place on a borrowed
horse, which he never returned. He settled in a third parish, and
was taken up for bigamy. Some letters which he wrote on this
occasion from the gaol of Cavan have been preserved. He assured
each of his wives, with the most frightful imprecations, that she
alone was the object of his love; and he thus succeeded in
inducing one of them to support him in prison, and the other to
save his life by forswearing herself at the assizes. The only
specimens which remain to us of his method of imparting religious
instruction are to be found in these epistles. He compares
himself to David, the man after God's own heart, who had been
guilty both of adultery and murder. He declares that he repents;
he prays for the forgiveness of the Almighty, and then intreats
his dear honey, for Christ's sake, to perjure herself. Having
narrowly escaped the gallows, he wandered during several years
about Ireland and England, begging, stealing, cheating,
personating, forging, and lay in many prisons under many names. In
1684 he was convicted at Bury of having fraudulently
counterfeited Sancroft's signature, and was sentenced to the
pillory and to imprisonment. From his dungeon he wrote to implore
the Primate's mercy. The letter may still be read with all the
original bad grammar and bad spelling.279 The writer acknowledged
his guilt, wished that his eyes were a fountain of water,
declared that he should never know peace till he had received
episcopal absolution, and professed a mortal hatred of
Dissenters. As all this contrition and all this orthodoxy
produced no effect, the penitent, after swearing bitterly to be
revenged on Sancroft, betook himself to another device. The
Western Insurrection had just broken out. The magistrates all
over the country were but too ready to listen to any accusation
that might be brought against Whigs and Nonconformists. Young
declared on oath that, to his knowledge, a design had been formed
in Suffolk against the life of King James, and named a peer,
several gentlemen, and ten Presbyterian ministers, as parties to
the plot. Some of the accused were brought to trial; and Young
appeared in the witness box; but the story which he told was
proved by overwhelming evidence to be false. Soon after the
Revolution he was again convicted of forgery, pilloried for the
fourth or fifth time, and sent to Newgate. While he lay there, he
determined to try whether he should be more fortunate as an
accuser of Jacobites than he had been as an accuser of Puritans.
He first addressed himself to Tillotson. There was a horrible
plot against their Majesties, a plot as deep as hell; and some of
the first men in England were concerned in it. Tillotson, though
he placed little confidence in information coming from such a
source, thought that the oath which he had taken as a Privy
Councillor made it his duty to mention the subject to William.
William, after his fashion, treated the matter very lightly. "I
am confident," he said, "that this is a villany; and I will have
nobody disturbed on such grounds." After this rebuff, Young
remained some time quiet. But when William was on the Continent,
and when the nation was agitated by the apprehension of a French
invasion and of a Jacobite insurrection, a false accuser might
hope to obtain a favourable audience. The mere oath of a man who
was well known to the turnkeys of twenty gaols was not likely to
injure any body. But Young was master of a weapon which is, of
all weapons, the most formidable to innocence. He had lived
during some years by counterfeiting hands, and had at length
attained such consummate skill in that bad art that even
experienced clerks who were conversant with manuscript could
scarcely, after the most minute comparison, discover any
difference between his imitations and the originals. He had
succeeded in making a collection of papers written by men of note
who were suspected of disaffection. Some autographs he had
stolen; and some he had obtained by writing in feigned names to
ask after the characters of servants or curates. He now drew up a
paper purporting to be an Association for the Restoration of the
banished King. This document set forth that the subscribers bound
themselves in the presence of God to take arms for His Majesty,
and to seize on the Prince of Orange, dead or alive. To the
Association Young appended the names of Marlborough, of Cornbury,
of Salisbury, of Sancroft, and of Sprat, Bishop of Rochester and
Dean of Westminster.

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

This man, instructed by his accomplice, repaired to Sprat's
palace at Bromley, introduced himself there as the confidential
servant of an imaginary Doctor of Divinity, delivered to the
Bishop, on bended knee, a letter ingeniously manufactured by
Young, and received, with the semblance of profound reverence,
the episcopal benediction. The servants made the stranger
welcome. He was taken to the cellar, drank their master's health,
and entreated them to let him see the house. They could not
venture to show any of the private apartments. Blackhead,
therefore, after begging importunately, but in vain, to be
suffered to have one look at the study, was forced to content
himself with dropping the Association into a flowerpot which
stood in a parlour near the kitchen.

Every thing having been thus prepared, Young informed the
ministers that he could tell them something of the highest
importance to the welfare of the State, and earnestly begged to
be heard. His request reached them on perhaps the most anxious
day of an anxious month. Tourville had just stood out to sea. The
army of James was embarking. London was agitated by reports about
the disaffection of the naval officers. The Queen was
deliberating whether she should cashier those who were suspected,
or try the effect of an appeal to their honour and patriotism. At
such a moment the ministers could not refuse to listen to any
person who professed himself able to give them valuable
information. Young and his accomplice were brought before the
Privy Council. They there accused Marlborough, Cornbury,
Salisbury, Sancroft and Sprat of high treason. These great men,
Young said, had invited James to invade England, and had promised
to join him. The eloquent and ingenious Bishop of Rochester had
undertaken to draw up a Declaration which would inflame the
nation against the government of King William. The conspirators
were bound together by a written instrument. That instrument,
signed by their own hands, would be found at Bromley if careful
search was made. Young particularly requested that the messengers
might be ordered to examine the Bishop's flowerpots.

The ministers were seriously alarmed. The story was
circumstantial; and part of it was probable. Marlborough's
dealings with Saint Germains were well known to Caermarthen, to
Nottingham, and to Sidney. Cornbury was a tool of Marlborough,
and was the son of a nonjuror and of a notorious plotter.
Salisbury was a Papist. Sancroft had, not many months before,
been, with too much show of reason, suspected of inviting the
French to invade England. Of all the accused persons Sprat was
the most unlikely to be concerned in any hazardous design. He had
neither enthusiasm nor constancy. Both his ambition and his party
spirit had always been effectually kept in order by his love of
ease and his anxiety for his own safety. He had been guilty of
some criminal compliances in the hope of gaining the favour of
James, had sate in the High Commission, had concurred in several
iniquitous decrees pronounced by that court, and had, with
trembling hands and faltering voice, read the Declaration of
Indulgence in the choir of the Abbey. But there he had stopped.
As soon as it began to be whispered that the civil and religious
constitution of England would speedily be vindicated by
extraordinary means, he had resigned the powers which he had
during two years exercised in defiance of 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 oaths
without hesitation; he had borne a conspicuous part in the
coronation of the new Sovereigns; and by his skilful hand had
been added to the Form of Prayer used on the fifth of November
those sentences in which the Church expresses her gratitude for
the second great deliverance wrought on that day.280 Such a man,
possessed of a plentiful income, of a seat in the House of Lords,
of one agreeable house among the elms of Bromley, and of another
in the cloisters of Westminster, was very unlikely to run the
risk of martyrdom. He was not, indeed, on perfectly good terms
with the government. For the feeling which, next to solicitude
for his own comfort and repose, seems to have had the greatest
influence on his public conduct, was his dislike of the Puritans;
a dislike which sprang, not from bigotry, but from Epicureanism.
Their austerity was a reproach to his slothful and luxurious
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 be
very zealous for a prince whom the nonconformists regarded as
their protector. But Sprat's faults afforded ample security that
he would never, from spleen against William, engage in any plot
to bring back James. Why Young should have assigned the most
perilous part in an enterprise full of peril to a man singularly
pliant, cautious and selfindulgent, it is difficult to say.

The first step which the ministers took was to send Marlborough
to the Tower. He was by far the most formidable of all the
accused persons; and that he had held a traitorous correspondence
with Saint Germains was a fact which, whether Young were perjured
or not, the Queen and her chief advisers knew to be true. One of
the Clerks of the Council and several messengers were sent down
to Bromley with a warrant from Nottingham. Sprat was taken into
custody. All the apartments in which it could reasonably be
supposed that he would have hidden an important document were
searched, the library, the diningroom, the drawingroom, the
bedchamber, 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 to no purpose. It never occurred to them to
look into the room in which Blackhead had hidden the Association:
for that room was near the offices occupied by the servants, and
was little used by the Bishop and his family. The officers
returned to London with their prisoner, but without the document
which, if it had been found, might have been fatal to him.

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

On the following day he was brought before the Council. The
examination was conducted by Nottingham with great humanity and
courtesy. The Bishop, conscious of entire innocence, behaved with
temper and firmness. He made no complaints. "I submit," he said,
"to the necessities of State in such a time of jealousy and
danger as this." He was asked whether he had drawn up a
Declaration for King James, whether he had held any
correspondence with France, whether he had signed any treasonable
association, and whether he knew of any such association. To all
these questions he, with perfect truth, answered in the negative,
on the word of a Christian and a Bishop. He was taken back to his
deanery. He remained there in easy confinement during ten days,
and then, as nothing tending to criminate him had been
discovered, was suffered to return to Bromley.

Meanwhile the false accusers had been devising a new scheme.
Blackhead paid another visit to Bromley, and contrived to take
the forged Association out of the place in which he had hid it,
and to bring it back to Young. One of Young's two wives then
carried it to the Secretary's Office, and told a lie, invented by
her husband, to explain how a paper of such importance had come
into her hands. But it was not now 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. The summons was promptly obeyed, and the accused
prelate was brought face to face with Blackhead before the
Council. Then the truth came out fast. The Bishop remembered the
villanous look and voice of the man who had knelt to ask the
episcopal blessing. The Bishop's secretary confirmed his master's
assertions. The false witness soon lost his presence of mind. His
cheeks, always sallow, grew frightfully livid. His voice,
generally loud and coarse, sank into a whisper. The Privy
Councillors saw his confusion, and crossexamined him sharply. For
a time he answered their questions by repeatedly stammering out
his original lie in the original words. At last he found that he
had no way of extricating himself but by owning his guilt. He
acknowledged that he had given an untrue account of his visit to
Bromley; and, after much prevarication, he related how he had
hidden the Association, and how he had removed it from its hiding
place, and confessed that he had been set on by Young.

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

The false accusers were removed in custody. The Bishop, after
warmly thanking the ministers for their fair and honourable
conduct, took his leave of them. In the antechamber he found a
crowd of people staring at Young, while Young sate, enduring the
stare with the serene fortitude of a man who had looked down on
far greater multitudes from half the pillories in England.
"Young," said Sprat, "your conscience must tell you that you have
cruelly wronged me. For your own sake I am sorry that you persist
in denying what your associate has confessed." "Confessed!" cried
Young; "no, all is not confessed yet; and that you shall find to
your sorrow. There is such a thing as impeachment, my Lord. When
Parliament sits you shall hear more of me." "God give you
repentance," answered the Bishop. "For, depend upon it, you are
in much more danger of 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 an inestimable service. That he was concerned in a plot quite
as criminal as that which they had falsely imputed to him, and
that the government was to possession of moral proofs of his
guilt, is now certain. But his contemporaries had not, as we
have, the evidence of his perfidy before them. They knew that he
had been accused of an offence of which he was innocent, that
perjury and forgery had been employed to ruin him, and that, in
consequence of these machinations, he had passed some weeks in
the Tower. There was in the public mind a very natural confusion
between his disgrace and his imprisonment. He had been imprisoned
without sufficient cause. Might it not, in the absence of all
information, be reasonably presumed that he had been disgraced
without sufficient cause? It was certain that a vile calumny,
destitute of all foundation, had caused 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 in January?

Young's resources were not yet exhausted. As soon as he had been
carried back from Whitehall to Newgate, he set himself to
construct a new plot, and to find a new accomplice. He addressed
himself to a man named Holland, who was in the lowest state of
poverty. Never, said Young, was there such a golden opportunity.
A bold, shrewd, fellow might easily earn five hundred pounds. To
Holland five hundred pounds seemed fabulous wealth. 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 little disguised
and coloured. There really was a plot; and this would have been
proved if Blackhead had not been bought off. His desertion had
made it necessary to call in the help of fiction. "You must swear
that you and I were in a back room upstairs at the Lobster in
Southwark. Some men came to meet us there. They gave a password
before they were admitted. They were all in white camlet cloaks.
They signed the Association in our presence. Then they paid each
his shilling and went away. And you must be ready to identify my
Lord Marlborough and the Bishop of Rochester as two of these
men." "How can I identify them?" said Holland, "I never saw
them." "You must contrive to see them," answered the tempter, "as
soon as you can. The Bishop will be at the Abbey. Anybody about
the Court will point out my Lord Marlborough." Holland
immediately went to Whitehall, and repeated this conversation to
Nottingham. The unlucky imitator of Oates was prosecuted, by
order of the government, for perjury, subornation of perjury, and
forgery. He was convicted and imprisoned, was again set in the
pillory, and underwent, in addition to the exposure, about which
he cared little, such a pelting as had seldom been known.282
After his punishment, he was, during some years, lost in the
crowd of pilferers, ringdroppers and sharpers who infested the
capital. At length, in the year 1700, he emerged from his
obscurity, and excited a momentary interest. The newspapers
announced that Robert Young, Clerk, once so famous, had been
taken up for coining, then that he had been found guilty, then
that the dead warrant had come down, and finally that the
reverend gentleman had been hanged at Tyburn, and had greatly
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 then by joy at the deliverance wrought for her by the valour
of her seamen, important events were taking place on the
Continent. On the sixth of March the King had arrived at the
Hague, and had proceeded to make his arrangements for the
approaching campaign.284

The prospect which lay before him was gloomy. The coalition of
which he was the author and the chief had, during some months,
been in constant danger of dissolution. By what strenuous
exertions, by what ingenious expedients, by what blandishments,
by what bribes, he succeeded in preventing his allies from
throwing themselves, one by one, at the feet of France, can be
but imperfectly known. The fullest and most authentic record of
the labours and sacrifices by which he kept together, during
eight years, a crowd of fainthearted and treacherous potentates,
negligent of the common interest and jealous of each other, is to
be found in his correspondence with Heinsius. In that
correspondence William is all himself. He had, in the course of
his eventful life, to sustain some high parts for which he was
not eminently qualified; and, in those parts, his success was
imperfect. As Sovereign of England, he showed abilities and
virtues which entitle him to honourable mention in history; but
his deficiencies were great. He was to the last a stranger
amongst us, cold, reserved, never in good spirits, never at his
ease. His kingdom was a place of exile. His finest palaces were
prisons. He was always counting the days which must elapse before
he should again see the land of his birth, the clipped trees, the
wings of the innumerable windmills, the nests of the storks on
the tall gables, and the long lines of painted villas reflected
in the sleeping canals. He took no pains to hide the preference
which he felt for his native soil and for his early friends; and
therefore, though he rendered great services to our country, he
did not reign in our hearts. As a general in the field, again, he
showed rare courage and capacity; but, from whatever cause, he
was, as a tactician, inferior to some of his contemporaries, who,
in general powers of mind, were far inferior to him. The business
for which he was preeminently fitted was diplomacy, in the
highest sense of the word. It may be doubted whether he has ever
had a superior in the art of conducting those great negotiations
on which the welfare of the commonwealth of nations depends. His
skill in this department of politics was never more severely
tasked or more signally proved than during the latter part of
1691 and the earlier part of 1692.

One of his chief difficulties was caused by the sullen and
menacing demeanour of the Northern powers. Denmark and Sweden had
at one time seemed disposed to join the coalition; but they had
early become cold, and were fast becoming hostile. From France
they flattered themselves that they had little to fear. It was
not very probable that her armies would cross the Elbe, or that
her fleets would force a passage through the Sound. But the naval
strength of England and Holland united might well excite
apprehension at Stockholm and Copenhagen. Soon arose vexatious
questions of maritime right, questions such as, in almost every
extensive war of modern times, have arisen between belligerents
and neutrals. The Scandinavian princes complained that the
legitimate trade between the Baltic and France was tyrannically
interrupted. Though they had not in general been on very friendly
terms with each other, they began to draw close together,
intrigued at every petty German court, 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 three thousand men for
the defence of the Empire, sent, instead of them, his advice that
the allies would make peace on the best terms which they could
get.285 The King of Denmark seized a great number of Dutch
merchantships, and collected in Holstein an army which caused no
small uneasiness to his neighbours. "I fear," William wrote, in
an hour of deep dejection, to Heinsius, "I fear that the object
of this Third Party is a peace which will bring in its train the
slavery of Europe. The day will come when Sweden and her
confederates will know too late how great an error they have
committed. They are farther, no doubt, than we from the danger;
and therefore it is that they are thus bent on working our ruin
and their own. That France will now consent to reasonable terms
is not to be expected; and it were better to fall sword in hand
than to submit to whatever she may dictate."286

While the King was thus disquieted by the conduct of the Northern
powers, ominous signs began to appear in a very different
quarter. It had, 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 great peril. But
happily the example and the authority of the Vatican had overcome
their scruples. Innocent the Eleventh and Alexander the Eighth
had regarded William with ill concealed partiality. He was not
indeed their 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 nephew therefore they gave their effective
support, to the orthodox uncle only compliments and benedictions.
But Alexander the Eighth had occupied the papal throne little
more than fifteen months. His successor, Antonio Pignatelli, who
took the name of Innocent the Twelfth, was impatient to be
reconciled to Lewis. Lewis was now sensible that he had committed
a great error when he had roused against himself at once the
spirit of Protestantism and the spirit of Popery. He permitted
the French Bishops to submit themselves to the Holy See. The
dispute, which had, at one time, seemed likely to end in a great
Gallican schism, was accommodated; and there was reason to
believe that the influence of the head of the Church would be
exerted for the purpose of severing the ties which bound so many
Catholic princes to the Calvinist who had usurped the British
throne.

Meanwhile the coalition, which the Third Party on one side and
the Pope on the other were trying to dissolve, was in no small
danger of falling to pieces from mere rottenness. Two of the
allied powers, and two only, were hearty in the common cause;
England, drawing after her the other British kingdoms; and
Holland, drawing after her the other Batavian commonwealths.
England and Holland were indeed torn by internal factions, and
were separated from each other by mutual jealousies and
antipathies; but both were fully resolved not to submit to French
domination; and both were ready to bear their share, and more
than their share, of the charges of the contest. Most of the
members of the confederacy were not nations, but men, an Emperor,
a King, Electors, Dukes; and of these men there was scarcely one
whose whole soul was in the struggle, scarcely one who did not
hang back, who did not find some excuse for omitting to fulfil
his engagements, who did not expect to be hired 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 of Holland.
Had it not been so, the burdens which it made necessary would not
have been borne by either England or Holland during a single
year. When William said that he would rather die sword in hand
than humble himself before France, he expressed what was felt,
not by himself alone, but by two great communities of which he
was the first magistrate. With those 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 and Holland were
wealthy; and they were zealous. Their wealth excited the cupidity
of the whole alliance; and to that wealth their zeal was the key.
They were persecuted with sordid importunity by all their
confederates, from Caesar, who, in the pride of his solitary
dignity, would not honour King William with the title of Majesty,
down to the smallest Margrave who could see his whole
principality from the cracked windows of the mean and ruinous old
house which he called his palace. It was not enough that England
and Holland furnished much more than their contingents to the war
by land, and bore unassisted the whole charge of the war by sea.
They were beset by a crowd of illustrious mendicants, some rude,
some obsequious, but all indefatigable and insatiable. One prince
came mumping to them annually with a lamentable story about his
distresses. A more sturdy beggar threatened to join the Third
Party, and to make a separate peace with France, if his demands
were not granted. Every Sovereign too had his ministers and
favourites; and these ministers and favourites were perpetually
hinting that France was willing to pay them for detaching their
masters from the coalition, and that it would be prudent in
England and Holland to outbid France.

Yet the embarrassment caused by the rapacity of the allied courts
was scarcely greater than the embarrassment caused by their
ambition and their 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 his wishes were accomplished. That
prince chose to fancy that he had been slighted, and would not
stir till reparation had been made to him. The Duke of Brunswick
Lunenburg would not furnish a battalion for the defence of
Germany unless he was made an Elector.287 The Elector of
Brandenburg declared that he was as hostile as he had ever been
to France; but he had been ill used by the Spanish government;
and he therefore would not suffer his soldiers to be employed in
the defence of 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 distinct army; and he must be stationed between
the Rhine and the Meuse.288 The Elector of Saxony complained that
bad winter quarters had been assigned to his troops; he therefore
recalled them just when they should have been preparing to take
the field, but very coolly offered to send them back if England
and Holland would give him four hundred thousand rixdollars.289

It might have been expected that at least the two chiefs of the
House of Austria would have put forth, at this conjuncture, all
their strength against the rival House of Bourbon. Unfortunately
they could not be induced to exert themselves vigorously even for
their own preservation. They were deeply interested in keeping
the French out of Italy. Yet they could with difficulty be
prevailed upon to lend the smallest assistance to the Duke of
Savoy. They seemed to think it the business of England and
Holland to defend the passes of the Alps, and to prevent the
armies of Lewis from overflowing Lombardy. To the Emperor indeed
the war against France was a secondary object. His first object
was the war against Turkey. He was dull and bigoted. His mind
misgave him that the war against France was, in some sense, a war
against the Catholic religion; and the war against Turkey was a
crusade. His recent campaign on the Danube had been successful.
He might easily have concluded an honourable peace with the
Porte, and have turned his arms westward. But he had conceived
the hope that he might extend his hereditary dominions at the
expense of the Infidels. Visions of a triumphant entry into
Constantinople and of a Te Deum in Saint Sophia's had risen in
his brain. He not only employed in the East a force more than
sufficient to have defended Piedmont and reconquered Loraine; but
he seemed to think that England and Holland were bound to reward
him largely for neglecting their interests and pursuing his
own.290

Spain already was what she continued to be down to our own time.
Of the Spain which had domineered over the land and the ocean,
over the Old and the New World, of the Spain which had, in the
short space of twelve years, led captive a Pope and a King of
France, a Sovereign of Mexico and a Sovereign of Peru, of the
Spain which had sent an army to the walls of Paris and had
equipped a mighty fleet to invade England, nothing remained but
an arrogance which had once excited terror and hatred, but which
could now excite only derision. In extent, indeed, the dominions
of the Catholic King exceeded those of Rome when Rome was at the
zenith of power. But the huge mass lay torpid and helpless, and
could 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 and superstition, yet swollen with a
notion of his own dignity, and quick to imagine and to resent
affronts. So wretched had his education been that, when he was
told of the fall of Mons, the most important fortress in his vast
empire, he asked whether Mons was in England.291 Among the
ministers who were raised up and pulled down by his sickly
caprice, was none capable of applying a remedy to the distempers
of the State. In truth to brace anew the nerves of that paralysed
body would have been a hard task even for Ximenes. No servant of
the Spanish Crown occupied a more important post, and none was
more unfit for an important post, than the Marquess of Gastanaga.
He was Governor of the Netherlands; and in the Netherlands it
seemed probable that the fate of Christendom would be decided. He
had discharged his trust as every public trust was then
discharged in every part of that vast monarchy on which it was
boastfully said that the sun never set. Fertile and rich as was
the country which he ruled, he threw on England and Holland the
whole charge of defending it. He expected that arms, ammunition,
waggons, provisions, every thing, would be furnished by the
heretics. It had never occurred to him that it was his business,
and not theirs, to put Mons in a condition to stand a siege. The
public voice loudly accused him of having sold that celebrated
stronghold to France. But it is probable that he was guilty of
nothing worse than the haughty apathy and sluggishness
characteristic of his nation.

Such was the state of the coalition of which William was the
head. There were moments when he felt himself overwhelmed, when
his spirits sank, when his patience was wearied out, and when his
constitutional irritability broke forth. "I cannot," he wrote,
"offer a suggestion without being met by a demand for a
subsidy."292 "I have refused point blank," he wrote on another
occasion, when he had been importuned for money, "it is impossible
that the States General and England can bear the charge of the
army on the Rhine, of the army in Piedmont, and of the whole
defence of Flanders, to say nothing of the immense cost of the
naval war. If our allies can do nothing for themselves, the
sooner the alliance goes to pieces the better."293 But, after
every short fit of despondency and ill humour, he called up all
the force of his mind, 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 that he could accomplish what he had from
his youth up considered as his mission. If they abandoned him,
France would be dominant without a rival in Europe. Well as they
deserved to be punished, he would not, to punish them, acquiesce
in the subjugation of the whole civilised world. He set himself
therefore to surmount some difficulties and to evade others. The
Scandinavian powers he conciliated by waiving, reluctantly
indeed, and not without a hard internal struggle, some of his
maritime rights.294 At Rome his influence, though indirectly
exercised, balanced that of the Pope himself. Lewis and James
found that they had not a friend at the Vatican except Innocent;
and Innocent, whose nature was gentle and irresolute, shrank from
taking a course directly opposed to the sentiments of all who
surrounded him. In private conversations with Jacobite agents he
declared himself devoted to the interests of the House of Stuart;
but in his public acts he observed a strict neutrality. He sent
twenty thousand crowns to Saint Germains; but he excused himself
to the enemies of France by protesting that this was not a
subsidy for any political purpose, but merely an alms to be
distributed among poor British Catholics. He permitted prayers
for the good cause to be read in the English College at Rome; but
he insisted that those prayers should be 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 Bourbon adjured him to
take a more decided course. "God knows," he exclaimed on one
occasion, "that I would gladly shed my blood to restore the King
of England. But what can I do? If I stir, I am told that I am
favouring the French, and helping them to set up an universal
monarchy. I am not like the old Popes. Kings will not listen to
me as they listened to my predecessors. There is no religion now,
nothing but wicked, worldly policy. The Prince of Orange is
master. He governs us all. He has got such a hold on the Emperor
and on the King of Spain that neither of them dares to displease
him. God help us! He alone can help us." And, as the old man
spoke, he beat the table with his hand in an agony of impotent
grief and indignation.295

To keep the German princes steady was no easy task; but it was
accomplished. Money was distributed among them, much less indeed
than they asked, but much more than they had any decent pretence
for asking. With the Elector of Saxony a composition was made. He
had, together with a strong appetite for subsidies, a great
desire to be a member of the most select and illustrious orders
of knighthood. It seems that, instead of the four hundred
thousand rixdollars which he had demanded, he consented to accept
one hundred thousand and the Garter.296 His prime minister
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
of Elector of Hanover. By such means as these the breaches which
had divided the coalition were so skilfully repaired that it
appeared still to present a firm front to the enemy. William had
complained bitterly to the Spanish government of the incapacity
and inertness of Gastanaga. The Spanish government, helpless and
drowsy as it was, could not be altogether insensible to the
dangers which threatened Flanders and Brabant. Gastanaga was
recalled; and William was invited to take upon himself the
government of the Low Countries, with powers not less than regal.
Philip the Second would not easily have believed that, within a
century after his death, his greatgrandson would implore the
greatgrandson of William the Silent to exercise the authority of
a sovereign at Brussels.298

The offer was in one sense tempting; but William was too wise to
accept it. He knew that the population of the Spanish Netherlands
was firmly attached to the Church of Rome. Every act of a
Protestant ruler was certain to be regarded with suspicion by the
clergy and people of those countries. Already Gastanaga,
mortified by his disgrace, had written to inform the Court of
Rome that changes were in contemplation which would make Ghent
and Antwerp as heretical as Amsterdam and London.299 It had
doubtless also occurred to William that if, by governing mildly
and justly, and by showing a decent respect for the ceremonies
and the ministers of the Roman Catholic religion, he should
succeed in obtaining the confidence of the Belgians, he would
inevitably raise against himself a storm of obloquy in our
island. He knew by experience what it was to govern two nations
strongly attached to two different Churches. A large party among
the Episcopalians of England could not forgive him for having
consented to the establishment of the presbyterian polity in
Scotland. A large party among the Presbyterians of Scotland
blamed him for maintaining the episcopal polity in England. If he
now took under his protection masses, processions, graven images,
friaries, nunneries, and, worst of all, Jesuit pulpits, Jesuit
confessionals and Jesuit colleges, what could he expect but that
England and Scotland would join in one cry of reprobation? He
therefore refused to accept the government of the Low Countries,
and proposed that it should be entrusted to the Elector of
Bavaria. The Elector of Bavaria was, after the Emperor, the most
powerful of the Roman Catholic potentates of Germany. He was
young, brave, and ambitious of military distinction. The Spanish
Court was willing to appoint him, and he was desirous to be
appointed; but much delay was caused by an absurd difficulty. The
Elector thought it beneath him to ask for what he wished to have.
The formalists of the Cabinet of Madrid thought it beneath the
dignity of the Catholic King to give what had not been asked.
Mediation was necessary, and was at last successful. But much
time was lost; and the spring was far advanced before the new
Governor of the Netherlands entered on his functions.300

William had saved the coalition from the danger of perishing by
disunion. But by no remonstrance, by no entreaty, by no bribe,
could he prevail on his allies to be early in the field. They
ought to have profited by the severe lesson which had been given
them in the preceding year. But again every one of them lingered,
and wondered why the rest were lingering; and again he who singly
wielded the whole power of France was found, as his haughty motto
had long boasted, a match for a multitude of adversaries.301 His
enemies, while still unready, learned with dismay that he had
taken the field in person at the head of his nobility. On no
occasion had that gallant aristocracy appeared with more
splendour in his train. A single circumstance may suffice to give
a notion of the pomp and luxury of his camp. Among the musketeers
of his household rode, for the first time, a stripling of
seventeen, who soon afterwards succeeded to the title of Duke of
Saint Simon, and to whom we owe those inestimable memoirs which
have preserved, for the delight and instruction of many lands and
of many generations, the vivid picture of a France which has long
passed away. Though the boy's family was at that time very hard
pressed for money, he travelled with thirty-five horses and
sumpter mules. The princesses of the blood, each surrounded by a
group of highborn and graceful ladies, accompanied the King; and
the smiles of so many charming women inspired the throng of vain
and voluptuous but highspirited gentlemen with more than common
courage. In the brilliant crowd which surrounded the French
Augustus appeared the French Virgil, the graceful, the tender,
the melodious Racine. He had, in conformity with the prevailing
fashion, become devout, had given up writing for the theatre;
and, having determined to apply himself vigorously to the
discharge of the duties which belonged to him as historiographer
of France, he now came to see the great events which it was his
office to record.302 In the neighbourhood of Mons, Lewis
entertained the ladies with the most magnificent review that had
ever been seen in modern Europe. A hundred and twenty thousand of
the finest troops in the world were drawn up in a line eight
miles long. It may be doubted whether such an army had ever been
brought together under the Roman eagles. The show began early in
the morning, and was not over when the long summer day closed.
Racine left the ground, astonished, deafened, dazzled, and tired
to death. In a private letter he ventured to give utterance to an
amiable wish which he probably took good care not to whisper in
the courtly circle: "Would to heaven that all these poor fellows
were in their cottages again with their wives and their little
ones!"303

After this superb pageant Lewis announced his intention of
attacking Namur. In five days he was under the walls of that
city, at the head of more than thirty thousand men. Twenty
thousand peasants, pressed in those parts of the Netherlands
which the French occupied, were compelled to act as pioneers.
Luxemburg, with eighty thousand men, occupied a strong position
on the road between Namur and Brussels, and was prepared to give
battle to any force which might attempt to raise the siege.304
This partition of duties excited no surprise. It had long been
known that the great Monarch loved sieges, and that he did not
love battles. He professed to think that the real test of
military skill was a siege. The event of an encounter between two
armies on an open plain was, in his opinion, often determined by
chance; but only science could prevail against ravelins and
bastions which science had constructed. His detractors sneeringly
pronounced it fortunate that the department of the military art
which His Majesty considered as the noblest was one in which it
was seldom necessary for him to expose to serious risk a life
invaluable to his people.

Namur, situated at the confluence of the Sambre and the Meuse,
was one of the great fortresses of Europe. The town lay in the
plain, and had no strength except what was derived from art. But
art and nature had combined to fortify that renowned citadel
which, from the summit of a lofty rock, looks down on a boundless
expanse of cornfields, woods and meadows, watered by two fine
rivers. The people of the city and of the surrounding region were
proud of their impregnable castle. Their boast was that never, in
all the wars which had devastated the Netherlands, had skill or
valour been able to penetrate those walls. The neighbouring
fastnesses, famed throughout the world for their strength,
Antwerp and Ostend, Ypres, Lisle and Tournay, Mons and
Valenciennes, Cambray and Charleroi, Limburg and Luxemburg, had
opened their gates to conquerors; but never once had the flag
been pulled down from the battlements of Namur. That nothing
might be wanting to the interest of the siege, the two great
masters of the art of fortification were opposed to each other.
Vauban had during many years been regarded as the first of
engineers; but a formidable rival had lately arisen, Menno, Baron
of Cohorn, the ablest officer in the service of the States
General. The defences of Namur had been recently strengthened and
repaired under Cohorn's superintendence; and he was now within
the walls. Vauban was in the camp of Lewis. It might therefore be
expected that both the attack and 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 from the west, then from the north, then from the
east. But between him and the lines of circumvallation lay the
army of Luxemburg, turning as he turned, and always so strongly
posted that to attack it would have been the height of
imprudence. Meanwhile the besiegers, directed by the skill of
Vauban and animated by the presence of Lewis, made rapid
progress. There were indeed many difficulties to be surmounted
and many hardships to be endured. The weather was stormy; and, on
the eighth of June, the feast of Saint Medard, who holds in the
French Calendar the same inauspicious place which in our Calendar
belongs to Saint Swithin, the rain fell in torrents. The Sambre
rose and covered many square miles on which the harvest was
green. The Mehaigne whirled down its bridges to the Meuse. All
the roads became swamps. The trenches were so deep in water and
mire that it was the business of three days to move a gun from
one battery to another. The six thousand waggons which had
accompanied the French army were useless. It was necessary that
gunpowder, bullets, corn, hay, should be carried from place to
place on the backs of the war horses. 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 made sacred.
They cursed Saint Medard heartily, and broke or burned every
image of him that could be found. But for their King there was
nothing that they were not ready to do and to bear. In spite of
every obstacle they constantly gained ground. Cohorn was severely
wounded while defending with desperate resolution a fort which he
had himself constructed, and of which he was proud. His place
could not be supplied. The governor was a feeble man whom
Gastanaga had appointed, and whom William had recently advised
the Elector of Bavaria to remove. The spirit of the garrison gave
way. The town surrendered on the eighth day of the siege, the
citadel about three weeks later.306

The history of the fall of Namur in 1692 bears a close
resemblance to 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, was able to open the campaign, before
William, the captain of a coalition, had brought together his
dispersed forces. In both years the advantage of having the first
move decided the event of the game. At Namur, as at Mons, Lewis,
assisted by Vauban conducted the siege; Luxemburg covered it;
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 very
different. Mons was delivered up by its own inhabitants. Namur
might perhaps have been saved if the garrison had been as zealous
and determined as the population. Strange to say, in this place,
so long subject to a foreign rule, there was found a patriotism
resembling that of the little Greek commonwealths. There is no
reason to believe that the burghers cared about the balance of
power, or had any preference for James or for William, for the
Most Christian King or for the Most Catholic King. But every
citizen considered his own honour as bound up with the honour of
the maiden fortress. It is true that the French did not abuse
their victory. No outrage was committed; the privileges of the
municipality were respected, the magistrates were not changed. Yet
the people could not see a conqueror enter their hitherto
unconquered castle without tears of rage and shame. Even the
barefooted Carmelites, who had renounced all pleasures, all
property, all society, all domestic affection, whose days were
all fast days, who passed month after month without uttering a
word, were strangely moved. It was in vain that Lewis attempted
to soothe them by marks of respect and by munificent bounty.
Whenever they met a French uniform they turned their heads away
with a look which showed that a life of prayer, of abstinence and
of silence had left one earthly feeling still unsubdued.307

This was perhaps the moment at which the arrogance of Lewis
reached the highest point. He had achieved the last and the most
splendid military exploit of his life. His confederated foes,
English, Dutch and German, had, in their own despite, swelled his
triumph, and had been witnesses of the glory which made their
hearts sick. His exultation was boundless. The inscriptions on
the medals which he struck to commemorate his success, the
letters by which he enjoined the prelates of his kingdom to sing
the Te Deum, were boastful and sarcastic. His people, a people
among whose many fine qualities moderation in prosperity cannot
be reckoned, seemed for a time to be drunk with pride. Even
Boileau, hurried along by the prevailing enthusiasm, forgot the
good sense and good taste to which he owed his reputation. He
fancied himself a lyric poet, and gave vent to his feelings in a
hundred and sixty lines of frigid 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 power could
subdue a city stronger than that before which the Greeks lay ten
years; and he returned answer to himself that such a miracle
could be wrought only by Jupiter or by Lewis. The feather in the
hat of Lewis was the loadstar of victory. To Lewis all things
must yield, princes, nations, winds, waters. In conclusion the
poet addressed himself to the banded enemies of France, and
tauntingly bade them carry back to their homes the tidings that
Namur had been taken in their sight. Before many months had
elapsed both the boastful king and the boastful poet were taught
that it is prudent as well as graceful to be modest in the hour
of victory.

One mortification Lewis had suffered even in the midst of his
prosperity. While he lay before Namur, he heard the sounds of
rejoicing from the distant camp of the allies. Three peals of
thunder from a hundred and forty pieces of cannon were answered
by three volleys from sixty thousand muskets. It was soon known
that these salutes were fired on account of the battle of La
Hogue. The French King exerted himself to appear serene. "They
make a strange noise," he said, "about the burning of a few
ships." In truth he was much disturbed, and the more so because a
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 soon restored by the brilliant success of those
operations which were under his own immediate direction. When the
siege was over, he left Luxemburg in command of the army, and
returned to Versailles. At Versailles the unfortunate Tourville
soon presented himself, and was graciously received. As soon as
he appeared in the circle, the King welcomed him in a loud voice.
"I am perfectly satisfied with you and with my sailors. We have
been beaten, it is true; but your honour and that of the nation
are unsullied."308

Though Lewis had quitted the Netherlands, the eyes of all Europe
were still fixed on that region. The armies there had been
strengthened by reinforcements drawn from many quarters. Every
where else the military operations of the year were languid and
without interest. The Grand Vizier and Lewis of Baden did little
more than watch each other on the Danube. Marshal Noailles and
the Duke of Medina Sidonia did little more than watch each other
under the Pyrenees. On the Upper Rhine, and along the frontier
which separates France from Piedmont, an indecisive predatory war
was carried on, by which the soldiers suffered little and the
cultivators of the soil much. But all men looked, with anxious
expectation of some great event, to the frontier of Brabant,
where William 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 the generals of his time. He was of that noble house
of Montmorency which united many mythical and many historical
titles to glory, which boasted that it sprang from the first
Frank who was baptized into the name of Christ in the fifth
century, and which had, since the eleventh century, given to
France a long and splendid succession of Constables and Marshals.
In valour and abilities Luxemburg was not inferior to any of his
illustrious race. But, highly descended and highly gifted as he
was, he had with difficulty surmounted the obstacles which
impeded him in the road to fame. If he owed much to the bounty of
nature and fortune, he had suffered still more from their spite.
His features were frightfully harsh, his stature was diminutive; a
huge and pointed hump rose on his back. His constitution was
feeble and sickly. Cruel imputations had been thrown on his
morals. He had been accused of trafficking with sorcerers and
with vendors of poison, had languished long in a dungeon, and had
at length regained his liberty without entirely regaining his
honour.309 He had always been disliked both by Louvois and by
Lewis. Yet the war against the European coalition had lasted but
a very short time when both the minister and the King felt that
the general who was personally odious to them was necessary to
the state. Conde and Turenne were no more; and Luxemburg was
without dispute the first soldier that France still possessed. In
vigilance, diligence and perseverance he was deficient. He seemed
to reserve his great qualities for great emergencies. It was on a
pitched field of battle that he was all himself. His glance was
rapid and unerring. His judgment was clearest and surest when
responsibility pressed heaviest on him and when difficulties
gathered thickest around him. To his skill, energy and presence
of mind his country owed some glorious days. But, though
eminently successful in battles, he was not eminently successful
in campaigns. He gained immense renown at William's expense; and
yet there was, as respected the objects of the war, little to
choose between the two commanders. Luxemburg was repeatedly
victorious; but he had not the art of improving a victory.
William was repeatedly defeated; but of all generals he was the
best qualified to repair a defeat.

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

The country between Lambeque and Steinkirk was intersected by
innumerable hedges and ditches; and neither army could approach
the other without passing through several long and narrow
defiles. Luxemburg had therefore little reason to apprehend that
he should be attacked in his entrenchments; and he felt assured
that he should have ample notice before any attack was made; for
he had succeeded in corrupting an adventurer named Millevoix, who
was chief musician and private secretary of the Elector of
Bavaria. This man regularly sent to the French headquarters
authentic information touching the designs of the allies.

The Marshal, confident in the strength of his position and in the
accuracy of his intelligence, lived in his tent as he was
accustomed to live in his hotel at Paris. He was at once a
valetudinarian and a voluptuary; and, in both characters, he
loved his ease. He scarcely ever mounted his horse. Light
conversation and cards occupied most of his hours. His table was
luxurious; and, when he had sate down to supper, it was a service
of danger to disturb him. Some scoffers remarked that in his
military dispositions he was not guided exclusively by military
reasons, that he generally contrived to entrench himself in some
place where the veal and the poultry were remarkably good, and
that he was always solicitous to keep open such communications
with the sea as might ensure him, from September to April, a
regular supply of Sandwich oysters.

If there were any agreeable women in the neighbourhood of his
camp, they were generally to be found at his banquets. It may
easily be supposed that, under such a commander, the young
princes and nobles of France vied with one another in splendour
and gallantry.310

While he was amusing himself after his wonted fashion, the
confederate princes discovered that their counsels were betrayed.
A peasant picked up a letter which had been dropped, and carried
it to the Elector of Bavaria. It contained full proofs of the
guilt of Millevoix. William conceived a hope that he might be
able to take his enemies in the snare which they had laid for
him. The perfidious secretary was summoned to the royal presence
and taxed with his crime. A pen was put into his hand; a pistol
was held to his breast; and he was commanded to write on pain of
instant death. His letter, dictated by William, was conveyed to
the French camp. It apprised Luxemburg that the allies meant to
send out a strong foraging party on the next day. In order to
protect this party from 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 forward the preparations
for a general assault on the French lines.

The whole allied army was under arms while it was still dark. In
the grey of the morning Luxemburg was awakened by scouts, who
brought tidings that the enemy was advancing in great force. He at
first treated the news very lightly. His correspondent, it
seemed, had been, as usual, diligent and exact. The Prince of
Orange had sent out a detachment to protect his foragers, and
this detachment had been magnified by fear into a great host. But
one alarming report followed another fast. All the passes, it was
said, were choked with multitudes of foot, horse and artillery,
under the banners of England and of Spain, of the United
Provinces and of the Empire; and every column was moving towards
Steinkirk. At length the Marshal rose, got on horseback, and rode
out to see what was doing.

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

Thus far William's plans had been completely successful but now
fortune began to turn against him. He had been misinformed as to
the nature of the ground which lay between the station of the
brigade of Bourbonnais and the main encampment of the enemy. He
had expected that he should be able to push forward without a
moment's pause, that he should find the French army in a state of
wild disorder, and that his victory would be easy and complete.
But his progress was obstructed by several fences and ditches;
there was a short delay; and a short delay sufficed to frustrate
his design. Luxemburg was the very man for such a conjuncture. He
had committed great faults; he had kept careless guard; he had
trusted implicitly to information which had proved false; he had
neglected information which had proved true; one of his divisions
was flying 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 his sickly and distorted body, seemed to
derive health and vigour from disaster and dismay. In a short
time he had disposed every thing. The French army was in battle
order. Conspicuous in that great array were the household troops
of Lewis, the most renowned body of fighting men in Europe; and
at their head appeared, glittering in lace and embroidery hastily
thrown on and half fastened, a crowd of young princes and lords
who had just been roused by the trumpet from their couches or
their revels, and who had hastened to look death in the face with
the gay and festive intrepidity characteristic of French
gentlemen. Highest in rank among these highborn warriors was a
lad of sixteen, Philip Duke of Chartres, son of the Duke of
Orleans, and nephew of the King of France. It was with difficulty
and by importunate solicitation that the gallant boy had extorted
Luxemburg's permission to be where the fire was hottest. Two
other youths of royal blood, Lewis Duke of Bourbon, and Armand
Prince of Conti, showed a spirit worthy of their descent. With
them was a descendant of one of the bastards of Henry the Fourth,
Lewis Duke of Vendome, a man sunk in indolence and in the foulest
vice, yet capable of exhibiting on a great occasion the qualities
of a great soldier. Berwick, who was beginning to earn for
himself an honourable name in arms, was there; and at his side
rode Sarsfield, whose courage and 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, like a brave and
intelligent captain, was already hastening towards the point from
which the sound came.

Though the assailants had lost all the advantage which belongs to
a surprise, they came on manfully. In the front of the battle
were the British commanded by Count Solmes. The division which
was to lead the way was Mackay's. He was to have been supported,
according to William's plan, by a strong body of foot and horse.
Though most of Mackay's men had never before been under fire,
their behaviour gave promise of Blenheim and Ramilies. They first
encountered the Swiss, who held a distinguished place in the
French army. The fight was so close and desperate that the
muzzles of the muskets crossed. The Swiss were driven back with
fearful slaughter. More than eighteen hundred of them appear from
the French returns to have been killed or wounded. Luxemburg
afterwards said that he had never in his life seen so furious a
struggle. He collected in haste the opinion of the generals who
surrounded him. All thought that the emergency was one which
could be met by no common means. The King's household must charge
the English. The Marshal gave the word; and the household, headed
by the princes of the blood, came on, flinging their muskets back
on their shoulders. "Sword in hand," was the cry through all the
ranks of that terrible brigade: "sword in hand. No firing. Do it
with the cold steel." After a long and desperate resistance the
English were borne down. They never ceased to repeat that, if
Solmes had done his duty by them, they would have beaten even the
household. But Solmes gave them no effective support. He pushed
forward some cavalry which, from the nature of the ground, could
do little or nothing. His infantry he would not suffer to stir.
They could do no good, he said, and he would not send them to be
slaughtered. Ormond was eager to hasten to the assistance of his
countrymen, but was not permitted. Mackay sent a pressing message
to represent that he and his men were left to certain
destruction; but all was vain. "God's will be done," said the
brave veteran. He died as he had lived, like a good Christian and
a good soldier. With him fell Douglas and Lanier, two generals
distinguished among the conquerors of Ireland. Mountjoy too was
among the slain. After languishing three years in the Bastile, he
had just been exchanged for Richard Hamilton, and, having been
converted to Whiggism by wrongs more powerful than all the
arguments of Locke and Sidney, had instantly hastened to join
William's camp as a volunteer.311 Five fine regiments were
entirely cut to pieces. No part of this devoted band would have
escaped but for the courage and conduct of Auverquerque, who came
to the rescue in the moment of extremity with two fresh
battalions. The gallant manner in which he brought off the
remains of Mackay's division was long remembered with grateful
admiration by the British camp fires. The ground where the
conflict had raged was piled with corpses; and those who buried
the slain remarked that almost all the wounds had been given in
close fighting by the sword or the bayonet.

It was said that William so far forgot his wonted stoicism as to
utter a passionate exclamation at the way in which the English
regiments had been sacrificed. Soon, however, he recovered his
equanimity, and determined to fall back. It was high time; for
the French army was every moment becoming stronger, as the
regiments commanded by Boufflers came up in rapid succession. The
allied army returned to Lambeque unpursued and in unbroken
order.312

The French owned that they had about seven thousand men killed
and wounded. The loss of the allies had been little, if at all,
greater. The relative strength of the armies was what it had been
on the preceding day; and they continued to occupy their old
positions. But the moral effect of the battle was great. The
splendour of William's fame grew pale. Even his admirers were
forced to own that, in the field, he was not a match for
Luxemburg. In France the news was received with transports of joy
and pride. The Court, the Capital, even the peasantry of the
remotest provinces, gloried in the impetuous valour which had
been displayed by so many youths, the heirs of illustrious names.
It was exultingly and fondly repeated all over the kingdom that
the young Duke of Chartres could not by any remonstrances be kept
out of danger, that a ball had passed through his coat that he
had been wounded in the shoulder. The people lined the roads to
see the princes and nobles who returned from Steinkirk. The
jewellers devised Steinkirk buckles; the perfumers sold Steinkirk
powder. But the name of the field of battle was peculiarly given
to a new species of collar. Lace neckcloths were then worn by men
of fashion; and it had been usual to arrange them with great
care. But at the terrible moment when the brigade of Bourbonnais
was flying 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 the line of battle with their rich cravats in
disorder. It therefore became a fashion among the beauties of
Paris to wear round their necks kerchiefs of the finest lace
studiously disarranged; and these kerchiefs were called
Steinkirks.313

In the camp of the allies all was disunion and discontent.
National jealousies and animosities raged without restraint or
disguise. The resentment of the English was loudly expressed.
Solmes, though he was said by those who knew him well to have
some valuable qualities, was not a man likely to conciliate
soldiers who were prejudiced against him as a foreigner. His
demeanour was arrogant, his temper ungovernable. Even before the
unfortunate day of Steinkirk the English officers did not
willingly communicate with him, and the private men murmured at
his harshness. 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 great odds, 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 his superior skill and
experience that he had been put over the heads of so many English
officers? It was the fashion to say that those officers had never
seen war on a large scale. But surely the merest novice was
competent to do all that Solmes had done, to misunderstand
orders, to send cavalry on duty which none but infantry could
perform, and to look on at safe distance while brave men were cut
to pieces. It was too much to be at once insulted and sacrificed,
excluded from the honours of war, yet pushed on all its extreme
dangers, sneered at as raw recruits, and then left to cope
unsupported with the finest body of veterans in the world. Such
were the complains of the English army; and they were echoed by
the English nation.

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

A plot against the life of William had been, during some months,
maturing in the French War Office. It should seem that Louvois
had originally sketched the design, and had bequeathed it, still
rude, to his son and successor Barbesieux. By Barbesieux the plan
was perfected. The execution was entrusted to an officer named
Grandval. Grandval was undoubtedly brave, and full of zeal for
his country and his religion. He was indeed flighty and half
witted, but not on that account the less dangerous. Indeed a
flighty and half witted man is the very instrument generally
preferred by cunning politicians when very hazardous work is to
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 after William had arrived in the Low Countries, the
murderers were directed to repair to their post. Dumont was then
in Westphalia. Grandval and Leefdale were at Paris. Uden in North
Brabant was fixed as the place where the three were to meet and
whence they were to proceed together to the headquarters of the
allies. Before Grandval left Paris he paid a visit to Saint
Germains, and was presented to James and to Mary of Modena. "I
have been informed," said James, "of the business. If you and
your companions do me this service, you shall never want."

After this audience Grandval set out on his journey. He had not
the faintest suspicion that he had been betrayed both by the
accomplice who accompanied him and by the accomplice whom he was
going to meet. Dumont and Leefdale were not enthusiasts. They
cared nothing for the restoration of James, the grandeur of
Lewis, or the ascendency of the Church of Rome. It was plain to
every man of common sense that, whether the design succeeded or
failed, the reward of the assassins would probably be to be
disowned, with affected abhorrence, by the Courts of Versailles
and Saint Germains, and to be torn with redhot pincers, smeared
with melted lead, and dismembered by four horses. To vulgar
natures the prospect of such a martyrdom was not alluring. Both
these men, 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 every thing to the Duke of Zell, one of the
confederate princes. Leefdale had transmitted full intelligence
through his relations who resided in Holland. Meanwhile Morel, a
Swiss Protestant of great learning who was then in France, wrote
to inform Burnet that the weak and hotheaded Grandval had been
heard to talk boastfully of the event which would soon astonish
the world, and had confidently predicted that the Prince of
Orange would not live to the end of the next month.

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

The duty of the Court Martial was very simple; for the prisoner
attempted no defence. His conscience had, it should seem, been
suddenly awakened. He admitted, with expressions of remorse, the
truth of all the charges, made a minute, and apparently an
ingenuous, confession, and owned that he had deserved death. He
was sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered, and underwent
his punishment with great fortitude and with a show of piety. He
left behind him a few lines, in which he declared that he was
about to lose his life for having too faithfully obeyed the
injunctions of Barbesieux.

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

In our island the sensation produced by the news was great. The
Whigs loudly called both James and Lewis assassins. How, it was
asked, was it possible, without outraging common sense, to put an
innocent meaning on the words which Grandval declared that he had
heard from the lips of the banished King of England? And who that
knew the Court of Versailles would believe that Barbesieux, a
youth, a mere novice in politics, and rather a clerk than a
minister, would have dared to do what he had done without taking
his master's pleasure? Very charitable and very ignorant persons
might perhaps indulge a hope that Lewis had not been an accessory
before the fact. But that he was an accessory after the fact no
human being could doubt. He must have seen the proceedings of the
Court Martial, the evidence, the confession. If he really
abhorred assassination as honest men abhor it, would not
Barbesieux have been driven with ignominy from the royal
presence, and flung into the Bastile? Yet Barbesieux was still at
the War Office; and it was not pretended that he had been
punished even by a word or a frown. It was plain, then, that both
Kings were partakers in the guilt of Grandval. And if it were
asked how two princes who made a high profession of religion
could have fallen into such wickedness, the answer was that they
had learned their religion from the Jesuits. In reply to these
reproaches the English Jacobites said very little; and the French
government said nothing at all.315

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

But, notwithstanding these favourable symptoms, the nation was
disappointed and discontented. The war had been unsuccessful by
land. By sea a great advantage had been gained, but had not been
improved. The general expectation had been that the victory of
May would be followed by a descent on the coast of France, that
Saint Maloes would he bombarded, that the last remains of
Tourville's squadron would be destroyed, and that the arsenals of
Brest and Rochefort would be laid in ruins. This expectation was,
no doubt, unreasonable. It did not follow, because Rooke and his
seamen had silenced the batteries hastily thrown up by
Bellefonds, that it would be safe to expose ships to the fire of
regular fortresses. The government, however, was not less
sanguine than the nation. Great preparations were made. The
allied fleet, having been speedily refitted at Portsmouth, stood
out again to sea. Rooke was sent to examine the soundings and the
currents along the shore of Brittany.317 Transports were
collected at Saint Helens. Fourteen thousand troops were
assembled on Portsdown under the command of Meinhart Schomberg,
who had been rewarded for his father's services and his own with
the highest rank in the Irish peerage, and was now Duke of
Leinster. Under him were Ruvigny, who, for his good service at
Aghrim, had been created Earl of Galway, La Melloniere and Cambon
with their gallant bands of refugees, and Argyle with the
regiment which bore his name, and which, as it began to be
rumoured, had last winter done something 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. The
transports sailed, and in a few hours joined the naval armament
in the neighbourhood of Portland. On the twenty-eighth a general
council of war was held. All the naval commanders, with Russell
at their head, declared that it would be madness to carry their
ships within the range of the guns of Saint Maloes, and that the
town must be reduced to straits by land before the men of war in
the harbour could, with any chance of success, be attacked from
the sea. The military men declared with equal unanimity that the
land forces could effect nothing against the town without the
cooperation of the fleet. It was then considered whether it would
be advisable to make an attempt on Brest or Rochefort. Russell
and the other flag officers, among whom were Rooke, Shovel,
Almonde and Evertsen, pronounced that the summer was too far
spent for either enterprise.318 We must suppose that an opinion
in which so many distinguished admirals, both English and Dutch,
concurred, however strange it may seem to us, was in conformity
with what were then the established principles of the art of
maritime war. But why all these questions could not have been
fully discussed a week earlier, why fourteen thousand troops
should have been shipped and sent to sea, before it had been
considered what they were to do, or whether it would be possible
for them to do any thing, we may reasonably wonder. The armament
returned to Saint Helens, to the astonishment and disgust of the
whole nation.319 The ministers blamed the commanders; the
commanders blamed the ministers. The recriminations exchanged
between Nottingham and Russell were loud and angry. Nottingham,
honest, industrious, versed in civil business, and eloquent in
parliamentary debate, was deficient in the qualities of a war
minister, and was not at all aware of his deficiencies. Between
him and the whole body of professional sailors there was a feud
of long standing. He had, some time before the Revolution, been a
Lord of the Admiralty; and his own opinion was that he had then
acquired a profound knowledge of maritime affairs. This opinion
however he had very much to himself. Men who had passed half
their lives on the waves, and who had been in battles, storms and
shipwrecks, were impatient of his somewhat pompous lectures and
reprimands, and pronounced him a mere pedant, who, with all his
book learning, was ignorant of what every cabin boy knew. Russell
had always been froward, arrogant and mutinous; and now
prosperity and glory brought out his vices in full strength. With
the government which he had saved he took all the liberties of an
insolent servant who believes himself to be necessary, treated
the orders of his superiors with contemptuous levity, resented
reproof, however gentle, as an outrage, furnished no plan of his
own, and showed a sullen determination to execute no plan
furnished by any body else. To Nottingham he had a strong and a
very natural antipathy. They were indeed an ill matched pair.
Nottingham was a Tory; Russell was a Whig. Nottingham was a
speculative seaman, confident in his theories. Russell was a
practical seaman, proud of his achievements. The strength of
Nottingham lay in speech; the strength of Russell lay in action.
Nottingham's demeanour was decorous even to formality; Russell
was passionate and rude. Lastly Nottingham was an honest man; and
Russell was a villain. They now became mortal enemies. The
Admiral sneered at the Secretary's ignorance of naval affairs;
the Secretary accused the Admiral of sacrificing the public
interests to mere wayward humour; and both were in the right.320

While they were wrangling, the merchants of all the ports in the
kingdom raised a cry against the naval administration. The
victory of which the nation was so proud was, in the City,
pronounced to have been a positive disaster. During some months
before the battle all the maritime strength of the enemy had
been collected in two great masses, one in the Mediterranean and
one in the Atlantic. There had consequently been little
privateering; and the voyage to New England or Jamaica had been
almost as safe as in time of peace. Since the battle, the remains
of the force which had lately been collected under Tourville were
dispersed over the ocean. Even the passage from England to
Ireland was insecure. Every week it was announced that twenty,
thirty, fifty vessels belonging to London or Bristol had been
taken by the French. More than a hundred prices were carried
during that autumn into Saint Maloes alone. It would have been
far better, in the opinion of the shipowners and of the
underwriters, that the Royal Sun had still been afloat with her
thousand fighting men on board than that she should be lying a
heap of ashes on the beach at Cherburg, while her crew,
distributed among twenty brigantines, prowled for booty over the
sea between Cape Finisterre and Cape Clear.321

The privateers of Dunkirk had long been celebrated; and among
them, John Bart, humbly born, and scarcely able to sign his name,
but eminently brave and active, had attained an undisputed
preeminence. In the country of Anson and Hawke, of Howe and
Rodney, of Duncan, Saint Vincent and Nelson, the name of the most
daring and skilful corsair would have little chance of being
remembered. But France, among whose many unquestioned titles to
glory very few are derived from naval war, still ranks Bart among
her great men. In the autumn of 1692 this enterprising freebooter
was the terror of all the English and Dutch merchants who traded
with the Baltic. He took and destroyed vessels close to the
eastern coast of our island. He even ventured to land in
Northumberland, and burned many houses before the trainbands
could be collected to oppose him. The prizes which he carried
back into his native port were estimated at about a hundred
thousand pounds sterling.322 About the same time a younger
adventurer, destined to equal or surpass Bart, Du Guay Trouin,
was entrusted with the command of a small armed vessel. The
intrepid boy,--for he was not yet twenty years old,--entered the
estuary of the Shannon, sacked a mansion in the county of Clare,
and did not reimbark till a detachment from the garrison of
Limerick marched against him.323

While our trade was interrupted and our shores menaced by these
rovers, some calamities which no human prudence could have
averted increased the public ill humour. An earthquake of
terrible violence laid waste in less than three minutes the
flourishing colony of Jamaica. Whole plantations changed their
place. Whole villages were swallowed up. Port Royal, the fairest
and wealthiest city which the English had yet built in the New
World, renowned for its quays, for its warehouses, and for its
stately streets, which were said to rival Cheapside, was turned
into a mass of ruins. Fifteen hundred of the inhabitants were
buried under their own dwellings. The effect of this disaster was
severely felt by many of the great mercantile houses of London
and Bristol.324

A still heavier calamity was the failure of the harvest. The
summer had been wet all over Western Europe. Those heavy rains
which had impeded the exertions of the French pioneers in the
trenches of Namur had been fatal to the crops. Old men remembered
no such year since 1648. No fruit ripened. The price of the
quarter of wheat doubled. The evil was aggravated by the state of
the silver coin, which had been clipped to such an extent that
the words pound and shilling had ceased to have a fixed meaning.
Compared with France indeed England might well be esteemed
prosperous. Here the public burdens were heavy; there they were
crushing. Here the labouring man was forced to husband his coarse
barley loaf; but there it not seldom happened that the wretched
peasant was found dead on the earth with halfchewed grass in his
mouth. Our ancestors found some consolation in thinking that they
were gradually wearing out the strength of their formidable
enemy, and that his resources were likely to be drained sooner
than theirs. Still there was much suffering and much repining. In
some counties mobs attacked the granaries. The necessity of
retrenchment was felt by families of every rank. An idle man of
wit and pleasure, who little thought that his buffoonery would
ever be cited to illustrate the history of his times, complained
that, in this year, wine ceased to be put on many hospitable
tables where he had been accustomed to see it, and that its place
was supplied by punch.325

A symptom of public distress much more alarming than the
substitution of brandy and lemons for claret was the increase of
crime. During the autumn of 1692 and the following winter, the
capital was kept in constant terror by housebreakers. One gang,
thirteen strong, entered the mansion of the Duke of Ormond in
Saint James's Square, and all but succeeded in carrying off his
magnificent plate and jewels. Another gang made an attempt on
Lambeth Palace.326 When stately abodes, guarded by numerous
servants, were in such danger, it may easily be believed that no
shopkeeper's till or stock could be safe. From Bow to Hyde Park,
from Thames Street to Bloomsbury, there was no parish in which
some quiet dwelling had not been sacked by burglars.327 Meanwhile
the great roads were made almost impassable by freebooters who
formed themselves into troops larger than had before been known.
There was a sworn fraternity of twenty footpads which met at an
alehouse in Southwark.328 But the most formidable band of
plunderers consisted of two and twenty horsemen.329 It should
seem that, at this time, a journey of
fifty miles through the wealthiest and most populous shires of
England was as dangerous as a pilgrimage across the deserts of
Arabia. The Oxford stage coach was pillaged in broad day after a
bloody fight.330 A waggon laden with fifteen thousand pounds of
public money was stopped and ransacked. As this operation took
some time, all the travellers who came to the spot while the
thieves were busy were seized and guarded. When the booty had
been secured the prisoners were suffered to depart on foot; but
their horses, sixteen or eighteen in number, were shot or
hamstringed, to prevent pursuit.331 The Portsmouth mail was
robbed twice in one week by men well armed and mounted.332 Some
jovial Essex squires, while riding after a hare, were themselves
chased and run down by nine hunters of a different sort, and were
heartily glad to find themselves at home again, though with empty
pockets.333

The friends of the government asserted that the marauders were
all Jacobites; and indeed there were some appearances which gave
colour to the assertion. For example, fifteen butchers, going on
a market day to buy beasts at Thame, were stopped by a large
gang, and compelled first to deliver their moneybags, and then to
drink King James's health in brandy.334 The thieves, however, to
do them justice, showed, in the exercise of their calling, no
decided preference for any political party. Some of them fell in
with Marlborough near Saint Albans, and, notwithstanding his
known hostility to the Court and his recent imprisonment,
compelled him to deliver up five hundred guineas, which he
doubtless never ceased to regret to the last moment of his long
career of prosperity and glory.335

When William, on his return from the Continent, learned to what
an extent these outrages were carried, he expressed great
indignation, and announced his resolution to put down the
malefactors with a strong hand. A veteran robber was induced to
turn informer, and to lay before the King a list of the chief
highwaymen, and a full account of their habits and of their
favourite haunts. It was said that this list contained not less
than eighty names.336 Strong parties of cavalry were sent out to
protect the roads; and this precaution, which would, in ordinary
circumstances, have excited much murmuring, seems to have been
generally approved. A fine regiment, now called the Second
Dragoon Guards, which had distinguished itself in Ireland by
activity and success in the irregular war against the Rapparees,
was selected to guard several of the great avenues of the
capital. Blackheath, Barnet, Hounslow, became places 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, the King
resolutely refused to listen to any solicitations for mercy.338
Among those who suffered was James Whitney, the most celebrated
captain of banditti in the kingdom. He had been, during some
months, the terror of all who travelled from London either
northward or westward, and was at length with difficulty secured
after a desperate conflict in which one soldier was killed and
several wounded.339 The London Gazette announced that the famous
highwayman had been taken, and invited all persons who had been
robbed by him to repair to Newgate and to see whether 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 a
hundred pounds in procuring a sumptuous embroidered suit against
the day of trial. This ingenious device was frustrated by his
hardhearted keepers. He was put to the bar in his ordinary
clothes, convicted and sentenced to death.341 He had previously
tried to ransom himself by offering to raise a fine troop of
cavalry, all highwaymen, for service in Flanders; but his offer
had been rejected.342 He had one resource still left. He declared
that he was privy to a treasonable plot. Some Jacobite lords had
promised him immense rewards if he would, at the head of his
gang, fall upon the King at a stag hunt in Windsor Forest. There
was nothing intrinsically improbable in Whitney's story. Indeed a
design very similar to that which he imputed to the malecontents
was, only three years later, actually formed by some of them, and
was all but carried into execution. But it was far better that a
few bad men should go unpunished than that all honest men should
live in fear of being falsely accused by felons sentenced to the
gallows. Chief Justice Holt advised the King to let the law take
its course. William, never much inclined to give credit to stories
about conspiracies, assented. The Captain, as he was called, was
hanged in Smithfield, and made a most penitent end.343

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

It is much to be lamented that any account of this session which
can be framed out of the scanty and dispersed materials now
accessible must leave many things obscure. The relations of the
parliamentary factions were, during this year, in a singularly
complicated state. Each of the two Houses was divided and
subdivided by several lines. To omit minor distinctions, there
was the great line which separated the Whig party from the Tory
party; and there was the great line which separated the official
men and their friends and dependents, who were sometimes called
the Court party, from those who were sometimes nicknamed the
Grumbletonians and sometimes honoured with the appellation of the
Country party. And these two great lines were intersecting lines.
For of the servants of the Crown and of their adherents about one
half were Whigs and one half Tories. It is also to be remembered
that there was, quite distinct from the feud between Whigs and
Tories, quite distinct also from the feud between those who were
in and those who were out, a feud between the Lords as Lords and
the Commons as Commons. The spirit both of the hereditary and of
the elective chamber had been thoroughly roused in the preceding
session by the dispute about the Court of the Lord High Steward;
and they met in a pugnacious mood.

The speech which the King made at the opening of the session was
skilfully framed for the purpose of conciliating the Houses. He
came, he told them, to ask for their advice and assistance. He
congratulated them on the victory of La Hogue. He acknowledged
with much concern that the operations 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 his English subjects had been
preeminently conspicuous. The distress of his people, he said,
was his own; his interest was inseparable from theirs; it was
painful to him to call on them to make sacrifices; but from
sacrifices which were necessary to the safety of the English
nation and of the Protestant religion no good Englishman and no
good Protestant would 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,
Marlborough and Huntingdon, had, during the recess, when an
invasion and an insurrection were hourly expected, been sent to
the Tower, and were still under recognisances. Had a country
gentleman or a merchant been taken up and held to bail on even
slighter grounds at so alarming a crisis, the Lords would
assuredly not have interfered. But they were easily moved to
anger by any thing that looked like an indignity offered to their
own order. They not only crossexamined with great severity Aaron
Smith, the Solicitor of the Treasury, whose character, to say the
truth, entitled him to little indulgence, but passed; by thirty-
five votes to twenty-eight, a resolution implying a censure on
the judges of the King's Bench, men certainly not inferior in
probity, and very far superior in legal learning, to any peer of
the realm. The King thought it prudent to soothe the wounded
pride of the nobility by ordering the recognisances to be
cancelled; and with this concession the House was satisfied, to
the great vexation of the Jacobites, who had hoped that the
quarrel would be prosecuted to some fatal issue, and who, finding
themselves disappointed, vented their spleen by railing at the
tameness of the degenerate barons of England.346

Both Houses held long and earnest deliberations on the state of
the nation. The King, when he requested their advice, had,
perhaps, not foreseen that his words would be construed into an
invitation to scrutinise every part of the administration, and to
offer suggestions touching matters which parliaments have
generally thought it expedient to leave entirely to the Crown.
Some of the discontented peers proposed that a Committee, chosen
partly by the Lords and partly by the Commons, should be
authorised to inquire into the whole management of public
affairs. But it was generally apprehended that such a Committee
would become a second and more powerful Privy Council,
independent of the Crown, and unknown to the Constitution. The
motion was therefore rejected by forty-eight votes to thirty-six.
On this occasion the ministers, with scarcely an exception, voted
in the majority. A protest was signed by eighteen of the
minority, among whom were the bitterest Whigs and the bitterest
Tories in the whole peerage.347

The Houses inquired, each for itself, into the causes of the
public calamities. The Commons resolved themselves into a Grand
Committee to consider of the advice to be given to the King. From
the concise abstracts and fragments which have come down to us it
seems that, in this Committee, which continued to sit many days,
the debates wandered over a vast space. One member spoke of the
prevalence of highway robbery; another deplored the quarrel
between the Queen and the Princess, and proposed that two or
three gentlemen should be deputed to wait on Her Majesty and try
to make matters up. A third described the machinations of the
Jacobites in the preceding spring. It was notorious, he said,
that preparations had been made for a rising, and that arms and
horses had been collected; yet not a single traitor had been
brought to justice.348

The events of the war by land and sea furnished matter for
several earnest debates. Many members complained of the
preference given to aliens over Englishmen. The whole battle of
Steinkirk was fought over again; and severe reflections were
thrown on Solmes. "Let English soldiers be commanded by none but
English generals," was the almost universal cry. Seymour, who had
once been distinguished by his hatred of the foreigners, but who,
since he had been at the Board of Treasury, had reconsidered his
opinions, asked where English generals were to be found. "I have
no love for foreigners as foreigners; but we have no choice. Men
are not born generals; nay, a man may be a very valuable captain
or major, and not be equal to the conduct of an army. Nothing but
experience will form great commanders. Very few of our countrymen
have that experience; and therefore we must for the present
employ strangers." Lowther followed on the same side. "We have
had a long peace; and the consequence is that we have not a
sufficient supply of officers fit for high commands. The parks
and the camp at Hounslow were very poor military schools, when
compared with the fields of battle and the lines of
contravallation in which the great commanders of the continental
nations have learned their art." In reply to these arguments an
orator on the other side was so absurd as to declare that he
could point out ten Englishmen who, if they were in the French
service, would be made Marshals. Four or five colonels who had
been at Steinkirk took part in the debate. It was said of them
that they showed as much modesty in speech as they had shown
courage in action; and, from the very imperfect report which has
come down to us, the compliment seems to have been not
undeserved. They did not join in the vulgar cry against the
Dutch. They spoke well of the foreign officers generally, and did
full justice to the valour and conduct with which Auverquerque
had rescued the shattered remains of Mackay's division from what
seemed certain destruction. But in defence of Solmes not a word
was said. His severity, his haughty manners, and, above all, the
indifference with which he had looked on while the English, borne
down by overwhelming numbers, were fighting hand to hand with the
French household troops, had made him so odious that many members
were prepared to vote for an address requesting that he might be
removed, and that his place might be filled by Talmash, who,
since the disgrace of Marlborough, was universally allowed to be
the best officer in the army. But Talmash's friends judiciously
interfered. "I have," said one of them, "a true regard for that
gentleman; and I implore you not to do him an injury under the
notion of doing him a kindness. Consider that you are usurping
what is peculiarly the King's prerogative. You are turning
officers out and putting officers in." The debate ended without
any vote of censure on Solmes. But a hope was expressed, in
language not very parliamentary, that what had been said in the
Committee would be reported to the King, and that His Majesty
would not disregard the general wish of the representatives of
his people.349

The Commons next proceeded to inquire into the naval
administration, and very soon came to a quarrel with the Lords on
that subject. That there had been mismanagement somewhere was
but too evident. It was hardly possible to acquit both Russell
and Nottingham; and each House stood by its own member. The
Commons had, at the opening of the session, unanimously passed a
vote of thanks to Russell for his conduct at La Hogue. They now,
in the Grand Committee of Advice, took into consideration the
miscarriages which had followed the battle. A motion was made so
vaguely worded that it could hardly be said to mean any thing. It
was understood however to imply a censure on Nottingham, and was
therefore strongly opposed by his friends. On the division the
Ayes were 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 story with all the skill of a practised orator, and with all
the authority which belongs to unblemished integrity. He then
laid on the table a great mass of papers, which he requested the
House to read and consider. The Peers seem to have examined the
papers seriously and diligently. The result of the examination
was by no means favourable to Russell. Yet it was thought unjust
to condemn him unheard; and it was difficult to devise any way in
which their Lordships could hear him. At last it was resolved to
send the papers down to the Commons with a message which imported
that, in the opinion of the Upper House, there was a case against
the Admiral which he ought to be called upon to answer. With the
papers was sent an abstract of the contents.351

The message was not very respectfully received. Russell had, at
that moment, a popularity which he little deserved, but which
will not surprise us when we remember that the public knew
nothing of his treasons, and knew that he was the only living
Englishman who had won a great battle. The abstract of the papers
was read by the clerk. Russell then spoke with great applause;
and his friends pressed for an immediate decision. Sir
Christopher Musgrave very justly observed that it was impossible
to pronounce judgment on such a pile of despatches without
perusing them; but this objection was overruled. The Whigs
regarded the accused member as one of themselves; many of the
Tories were dazzled by the splendour of his recent victory; and
neither Whigs nor Tories were disposed to show any deference for
the authority of the Peers. The House, without reading the
papers, passed an unanimous resolution expressing warm
approbation of Russell's whole conduct. The temper of the
assembly was such that some ardent Whigs thought that they might
now venture to propose a vote of censure on Nottingham by name.
But the attempt failed. "I am ready," said Lowther,--and he
doubtless expressed what many felt,--"I am ready to support any
motion that may do honour to the Admiral; but I cannot join in an
attack on the Secretary of State. For, to my knowledge, their
Majesties have no more zealous, laborious or faithful servant
than my Lord Nottingham." Finch exerted all his mellifluous
eloquence in defence of his brother, and contrived, without
directly opposing himself to the prevailing sentiment, to
insinuate that Russell's conduct had not been faultless. The vote
of censure on Nottingham was not pressed. The vote which
pronounced Russell's conduct to have been deserving of all praise
was communicated to the Lords; and the papers which they had sent
down were very unceremoniously returned.352 The Lords, much
offended, demanded a free conference. It was granted; and the
managers of the two Houses met in the Painted Chamber. Rochester,
in the name of his brethren, expressed a wish to be informed of
the grounds on which the Admiral had been declared faultless. To
this appeal the gentlemen who stood on the other side of the
table answered only that they had not been authorised to give any
explanation, but that they 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 the conduct of the war. The members had got rid of much of
the ill humour which they had brought up with them from their
country seats by the simple process of talking it away. Burnet
hints that those arts of which Caermarthen and Trevor were the
great masters were employed for the purpose of averting votes
which would have seriously embarrassed the government. But,
though it is not improbable that a few noisy pretenders to
patriotism may have been quieted with bags of guineas, it would
be absurd to suppose that the House generally was influenced in
this manner. Whoever has seen anything of such assemblies knows
that the spirit with which they enter on long inquiries very soon
flags, and that their resentment, if not kept alive by
injudicious opposition, cools fast. In a short time every body
was sick of the Grand Committee of Advice. The debates had been
tedious and desultory. The resolutions which had been carried
were for the most part merely childish. The King was to be humbly
advised to employ men of ability and integrity. He was to 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 in the pompous promulgation of truisms like
these. At last the explosion came. One of the grumblers called
the attention of the Grand Committee to the alarming fact that
two Dutchmen were employed in the Ordnance department, and moved
that the King should be humbly advised to dismiss them. The
motion was received with disdainful mockery. It was remarked that
the military men especially were loud in the expression of
contempt. "Do we seriously think of going to the King and
telling him that, 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 the throne, we may as well go
to our dinners." The members generally were of the same mind. The
chairman was voted out of the chair, and was not directed 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 the Commons, after considering during several weeks
what advice they should give to the King, ended by giving him no
advice at all.354

The temper of the Lords was different. From many circumstances it
appears that there was no place where the Dutch were, at this
time, so much hated as in the Upper House. The dislike with which
an Englishman of the middle class regarded the King's foreign
friends was merely national. But the dislike with which an
English nobleman regarded them was personal. They stood between
him and Majesty. They intercepted from him the rays of royal
favour. The preference given to them wounded him both in his
interests and in his pride. His chance of the Garter was much
smaller since they had become his competitors. He might have been
Master of the Horse but for Auverquerque, Master of the Robes but
for Zulestein, Groom of the Stole but for Bentinck.355 The ill
humour of the aristocracy was inflamed by Marlborough, who, at
this time, affected the character of a patriot persecuted for
standing up against the Dutch in defence of the interests of his
native land, and who did not foresee that a day would come when
he would be accused of sacrificing the interests of his native
land to gratify the Dutch. The Peers determined to present an
address, requesting William not to place his English troops under
the command of a foreign general. They took up very seriously
that question which had moved the House of Commons to laughter,
and solemnly counselled their Sovereign not to employ foreigners
in his magazines. At Marlborough's suggestion they urged the King
to insist that the youngest English general should take
precedence of the oldest general in the service of the States
General. It was, they said, derogatory to the dignity of the
Crown, that an officer who held a commission from His Majesty
should ever be commanded by an officer who held a similar
commission from a republic. To this advice, evidently dictated by
an ignoble malevolence to Holland, William, who troubled himself
little about votes of the Upper House which were not backed by
the Lower, returned, as might have been expected, a very short
and dry answer.356

While the inquiry into the conduct of the war was pending, the
Commons resumed the consideration of an important subject which
had occupied much of their attention in the preceding year. The
Bill for the Regulation of Trials in cases of High Treason was
again brought in, but was strongly opposed by the official men,
both Whigs and Tories. Somers, now Attorney General, strongly
recommended delay. That the law, as it stood, was open to grave
objections, was not denied; but it was contended that the
proposed reform would, at that moment, produce more harm than
good. Nobody would assert that, under the existing government,
the lives of innocent subjects were in any danger. Nobody would
deny that the government itself was in great danger. Was it the
part of wise men to increase the perils of that which was already
in serious peril for the purpose of giving new security to that
which was already perfectly secure? Those who held this language
were twitted with their inconsistency, and asked why they had not
ventured to oppose the bill in the preceding session. They
answered very plausibly that the events which had taken place
during the recess had taught an important lesson to all who were
capable of learning. The country had been threatened at once with
invasion and insurrection. No rational man doubted that many
traitors had made preparations for joining the French, and had
collected arms, ammunition and horses for that purpose. Yet,
though there was abundant moral evidence against these enemies of
their country, it had not been possible to find legal evidence
against a single one of them. The law of treason might, in
theory, be harsh, and had undoubtedly, in times past, been
grossly abused. But a statesman who troubled himself less about
theory than about practice, and less about times past than about
the time present, would pronounce that law not too stringent but
too 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 and seventy-one votes to one hundred and
fifty-two. But in the committee it was moved and carried that the
new rules of procedure should not come into operation till after
the end of the war with France. When the report was brought up
the House divided on this amendment, and ratified it by a hundred
and forty-five votes to a hundred and twenty-five. The bill was
consequently suffered to drop.357 Had it gone up to the Peers it
would in all probability have been lost after causing another
quarrel between the Houses. For the Peers were fully determined
that no such bill should pass, unless it contained a clause
altering the constitution of the Lord High Steward's Court; and a
clause altering the constitution of the Lord High Steward's Court
would have been less likely than ever to find favour with the
Commons. For in the course of this session an event took place
which proved that the great were only too well protected by the
law as it stood, and which well deserves to be recorded as a
striking illustration of the state of manners and morals in that
age.

Of all the actors who were then on the English stage the most
graceful was William Mountford. He had every physical
qualification for his calling, a noble figure, a handsome face, a
melodious voice. It was not easy 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 Courtly Nice that ever trod
the boards. Queen Mary, whose knowledge was very superficial, but
who had naturally a quick perception of what was excellent in
art, admired him greatly. He was a dramatist as well as a player,
and has left us one comedy which is not contemptible.358

The most popular actress of the time was Anne Bracegirdle. There
were on the stage many women of more faultless beauty, but none
whose features and deportment had such power to fascinate the
senses and the hearts of men. The sight of her bright black eyes
and of her rich brown cheek sufficed to put the most turbulent
audience into good humour. It was said of her that in the crowded
theatre she had as many lovers as she had male spectators. Yet no
lover, however rich, however high in rank, had prevailed on her
to be his mistress. Those who are acquainted with the parts which
she was in the habit of playing, and with the epilogues which it
was her especial business to recite, will not easily give her
credit for any extraordinary measure of virtue or of delicacy.
She seems to have been a cold, vain and interested coquette, who
perfectly understood how much the influence of her charms was
increased by the fame of a severity which cost her nothing, and
who could venture to flirt with a succession of admirers in the
just confidence that no flame which she might kindle in them
would thaw her own ice.359 Among those who pursued her with an
insane desire was a profligate captain in the army named Hill.
With Hill was closely bound in a league of debauchery and
violence Charles Lord Mohun, a young nobleman whose life was one
long revel and brawl. Hill, finding that the beautiful brunette
was invincible, took it into his head that he was rejected for a
more favoured rival, and that this rival was the brilliant
Mountford. The jealous lover swore over his wine at a tavern that
he would stab the villain. "And I," said Mohun, "will stand by my
friend." From the tavern the pair went, with some soldiers whose
services Hill had secured, to Drury 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 to a coach. She screamed
for help; her mother clung round her; the whole neighbourhood
rose; and she was rescued. Hill and Mohun went away vowing
vengeance. They swaggered sword in hand during two hours about
the streets near Mountford's dwelling. The watch requested them
to put up their 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. So strong was privilege then; and so weak was
law. Messengers were sent to warn Mountford of his danger; but
unhappily they missed him. He came. A short altercation took
place between him and Mohun; and, while they were wrangling, Hill
ran the unfortunate actor through the body, and fled.

The grand jury of Middlesex, consisting of gentlemen of note,
found a bill 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 cruel act," said the King; "I shall leave it
to the law." The trial came on in the Court of the Lord High
Steward; and, as Parliament happened to be sitting, the culprit
had the advantage of being judged by the whole body of the
peerage. There was then no lawyer in the Upper House. It
therefore became necessary, for the first time since Buckhurst
had pronounced sentence on Essex and Southampton, that a peer who
had never made jurisprudence his special study should preside
over that grave tribunal. Caermarthen, who, as Lord President,
took precedence of all the nobility, was appointed Lord High
Steward. A full report of the proceedings has come down to us. No
person, who carefully examines that report, and attends to the
opinion unanimously given by the judges in answer to a question
which Nottingham drew up, and in which the facts brought out by
the evidence are stated with perfect fairness, can doubt that the
crime of murder was fully brought home to the prisoner. Such was
the opinion of the King who was present during the trial; and
such was the almost unanimous opinion of the public. Had the
issue been tried by Holt and twelve plain men at the Old Bailey,
there can be no doubt that a verdict of Guilty would have been
returned. The Peers, however, by sixty-nine votes to fourteen,
acquitted their accused brother. One great nobleman was so brutal
and stupid as to say, "After all the fellow was but a player; and
players are rogues." All the newsletters, all the coffeehouse
orators, complained that the blood of the poor was shed with
impunity by the great. Wits remarked that the only fair thing
about the trial was the show of ladies in the galleries. Letters
and journals are still extant in which men of all shades of
opinion, Whigs, Tories, Nonjurors, condemn the partiality of the
tribunal. It was not to be expected that, while the memory of
this scandal was fresh in the public mind, the Commons would be
induced to give any new advantage to accused peers.360

The Commons had, in the meantime, resumed the consideration of
another highly important matter, the state of the trade with
India. They had, towards the close of the preceding session,
requested the King to dissolve the old Company and to constitute
a new Company on such terms as he should think fit; and he had
promised to take their request into his serious consideration. He
now sent a message to inform them that it was out of his power to
do what they had asked. He had referred the charter of the old
Company to the Judges, and the judges had pronounced that, under
the provisions of that charter, the old Company could not be
dissolved without three years' notice, and must retain during
those three years the exclusive privilege of trading to the East
Indies. He added that, being sincerely desirous to gratify the
Commons, and finding himself unable to do so in the way which they
had pointed out, he had tried to prevail on the old Company to
agree to a compromise; but that body stood obstinately on its
extreme rights; and his endeavours had been frustrated.361

This message reopened the whole question. The two factions which
divided the City were instantly on the alert. The debates in the
House were long and warm. Petitions against the old Company were
laid on the table. Satirical handbills against the new Company
were distributed in the lobby. At length, after much discussion,
it was resolved to present an address requesting the King to give
the notice which the judges had pronounced necessary. He promised
to bear the subject in mind, and to do his best to promote the
welfare of the kingdom. With this answer the House was satisfied,
and the subject was not again mentioned till the next session.362

The debates of the Commons on the conduct of the war, on the law
of treason and on the trade with India, occupied much time, and
produced no important result. But meanwhile real business was
doing in the Committee of Supply and the Committee of Ways and
Means. In the Committee of Supply the estimates passed rapidly. A
few members declared it to be their opinion that England ought to
withdraw her troops from the Continent, to carry on the war with
vigour by sea, and to keep up only such an army as might be
sufficient to repel any invader who might elude the vigilance of
her fleets. But this doctrine, which speedily became and long
continued to be the badge of one of the great parties in the
state, was as yet professed only by a small minority which did
not venture to call for a division.363

In the Committee of Ways and Means, it was determined that a
great part of 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 early period to the middle of the seventeenth
century, our Parliaments had provided for the extraordinary
necessities of the government chiefly by granting subsidies. A
subsidy was raised by an impost on the people of the realm in
respect of their reputed estates. Landed property was the chief
subject of taxation, and was assessed nominally at four shillings
in the pound. But the assessment was made in such a way that it
not only did not rise in proportion to the rise in the value of
land or to the fall in the value of the precious metals, but went
on constantly sinking, till at length the rate was in truth less
than twopence in the pound. In the time of Charles the First a
real tax of four shillings in the 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 of taxing estates. The sum which was to be raised was fixed.
It was then distributed among the counties in proportion to their
supposed wealth, and was levied within each county by a rate. The
revenue derived from these assessments in the time of the
Commonwealth varied from thirty-five thousand pounds to a hundred
and twenty thousand pounds a month.

After the Restoration the legislature seemed for a time inclined
to revert, in finance as in other things, to the ancient
practice. Subsidies were once or twice granted to Charles the
Second. But it soon appeared that the old system was much less
convenient than the new system. The Cavaliers condescended to
take a lesson in the art of taxation from the Roundheads; and,
during the interval between the Restoration and the Revolution,
extraordinary calls were occasionally met by assessments
resembling the assessments of the Commonwealth. After the
Revolution, the war with France made it necessary to have
recourse annually to this abundant source of revenue. In 1689, in
1690 and in 1691, great sums had been raised on the land. At
length in 1692 it was determined to draw supplies from real
property more largely than ever. The Commons resolved that a new
and more accurate valuation of estates should be made over the
whole realm, and that on the rental thus ascertained a pound rate
should be paid to the government.

Such was the origin of the existing land tax. The valuation made
in 1692 has remained unaltered down to our own time. According to
that valuation, one shilling in the pound on the rental of the
kingdom amounted, in round numbers, to half a million. During a
hundred and six years, a land tax bill was annually presented to
Parliament, and was annually passed, though not always without
murmurs from the country gentlemen. The rate was, in time of war,
four shillings in the pound. In time of peace, before the reign
of George the Third, only two or three shillings were usually
granted; and, during a short part of the prudent and gentle
administration of Walpole, the government asked for only one
shilling. But, after the disastrous year in which England drew
the sword against her American colonies, the rate was never less
than four shillings. At length, in the year 1798, the Parliament
relieved itself from the trouble of passing a new Act every
spring. The land tax, at four shillings in the pound, was made
permanent; and those who were subject to it were permitted to
redeem it. A great part has been redeemed; and at present little
more than a fiftieth of the ordinary revenue required in time of
peace is raised by that impost which was once 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
the pound, and consequently brought about two millions into the
Treasury. That sum, small as it may seem to a generation which
has expended a hundred and twenty millions in twelve months, was
such as had never before been raised here in one year by direct
taxation. It seemed immense both to Englishmen and to foreigners.
Lewis, who found it almost impossible to wring by cruel exactions
from the beggared peasantry of France the means of supporting the
greatest army and the most gorgeous court that had existed in
Europe since the downfall of the Roman empire, broke out, it is
said, into an exclamation of angry surprise when he learned that
the Commons of England had, from dread and hatred of his power,
unanimously determined to lay on themselves, in a year of
scarcity and of commercial embarrassment, a burden such as
neither they nor 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 a consideration from which, if he had been well
informed touching the resources of England, he would not have
derived much comfort. Kensington was certainly a mere hovel when
compared to his superb Versailles. The display of jewels, plumes
and lace, led horses and gilded coaches, which daily surrounded
him, far outshone the splendour which, even on great public
occasions, our princes were in the habit of displaying. But the
condition of the majority of the people of England was, beyond
all doubt, such as the majority of the people of France might
well have envied. In truth what was called severe distress here
would have been called unexampled prosperity there.

The land tax was not imposed without a quarrel between the
Houses. The Commons appointed commissioners to make the
assessment. These commissioners were the principal gentlemen of
every county, and were named in the bill. The Lords thought this
arrangement inconsistent with the dignity of the peerage. They
therefore inserted a clause providing that their estates should
be valued by twenty of their own order. The Lower House
indignantly rejected this amendment, and demanded an instant
conference. After some delay, which increased the ill humour of
the Commons, the conference took place. The bill was returned to
the Peers with a very concise and haughty intimation that they
must not presume to alter laws relating to money. A strong party
among the Lords was obstinate. Mulgrave spoke at great length
against the pretensions of the plebeians. He told his brethren
that, if they gave way, they would abdicate that authority which
had belonged to the baronage of England ever since the foundation
of the monarchy, and that they would have nothing left of their
old greatness except their coronets and ermines. Burnet says that
this speech was the finest that he ever heard in Parliament; and
Burnet was undoubtedly a good judge of speaking, and was neither
partial to Mulgrave nor zealous for the privileges of the
aristocracy. The orator, however, though he charmed his hearers,
did not succeed in convincing them. Most of them shrank from a
conflict in which they would have had against them the Commons
united as one man, and the King, who, in case of necessity, would
undoubtedly have created fifty peers rather than have suffered
the land tax bill to be lost. Two strong protests, however,
signed, the first by twenty-seven, the second by twenty-one
dissentients, show how obstinately many nobles were prepared to
contend at all hazards for the dignity of their caste. Another
conference was held; and Rochester announced that the Lords, for
the sake of the public interest, waived what they must
nevertheless assert to be their clear right, and would not insist
on their amendment.366 The bill passed, and was followed by bills
for laying additional duties on imports, and for taxing the
dividends of joint stock companies.

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

There was indeed nothing strange or mysterious in the expedient
to which the government had recourse. It was an expedient
familiar, during two centuries, to the financiers of the
Continent, and could hardly fail to occur to any English
statesman who compared the void in the Exchequer with the
overflow in the money market.

During the interval between the Restoration and the Revolution
the riches of the nation had been rapidly increasing. Thousands
of busy men found every Christmas that, after the expenses of the
year's housekeeping had been defrayed out of the year's income, a
surplus remained; and how that surplus was to be employed was a
question of some difficulty. In our time, to invest such a
surplus, at something more than three per cent., on the best
security that has ever been known in the world, is the work of a
few minutes. But in the seventeenth century a lawyer, a
physician, a retired merchant, who had saved some thousands and
who wished to place them safely and profitably, was often greatly
embarrassed. Three generations earlier, a man who had accumulated
wealth in a profession generally purchased real property or lent
his savings on mortgage. 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 no means increased so fast as the
quantity of capital which was seeking for employment. Many too
wished to put their money where they could find it at an hour's
notice, and looked about for some species of property which could
be more readily transferred than a house or a field. A capitalist
might lend on bottomry or on personal security; but, if he did
so, he ran a great risk of losing interest and principal. There
were a few joint stock companies, among which the East India
Company held the foremost place; but the demand for the stock of
such companies was far greater than the supply. Indeed the cry
for a new East India Company was chiefly raised by persons who
had found difficulty in placing their savings at interest on good
security. So great was that difficulty that the practice of
hoarding was common. We are told that the father of Pope the
poet, who retired from business in the City about the time of the
Revolution, carried to a retreat in the country a strong box
containing near twenty thousand pounds, and took out from time to
time what was required for household expenses; and it is highly
probable that this was not a solitary case. At present the
quantity of coin which is hoarded by private persons is so small
that it would, if brought forth, make no perceptible addition to
the circulation. But, in the earlier part of the reign of William
the Third, all the greatest writers on currency were of opinion
that a very considerable mass of gold and silver was hidden in
secret drawers and behind wainscots.

The natural effect of this state of things was that a crowd of
projectors, ingenious and absurd, honest and knavish, employed
themselves in devising new schemes for the employment of
redundant capital. It was about the year 1688 that the word
stockjobber was first heard in London. In the short space of four
years a crowd of companies, every one of which confidently held
out to subscribers the hope of immense gains, sprang into
existence; the Insurance Company, the Paper Company, the
Lutestring Company, the Pearl Fishery Company, the Glass Bottle
Company, the Alum Company, the Blythe Coal Company, the
Swordblade Company. There was a Tapestry Company which would soon
furnish pretty hangings for all the parlours of the middle class
and for all the bedchambers of the higher. There was a Copper
Company which proposed to explore the mines of England, and held
out a hope that they would prove not less valuable than those of
Potosi. There was a Diving Company which undertook to bring up
precious effects from shipwrecked vessels, and which announced
that it had laid in a stock of wonderful machines resembling
complete suits of armour. In front of the helmet was a huge glass
eye like that of a cyclop; and out of the crest went a pipe
through which the air was to be admitted. The whole process was
exhibited on the Thames. Fine gentlemen and fine ladies were
invited to the show, were hospitably regaled, and were delighted
by seeing the divers in their panoply descend into the river and
return laden with old iron, and ship's tackle. There was a
Greenland Fishing Company which could not fail to drive the Dutch
whalers and herring busses out of the Northern Ocean. There was a
Tanning Company which promised to furnish leather superior to the
best that was brought from Turkey or Russia. There was a society
which undertook the office of giving gentlemen a liberal
education on low terms, and which assumed the sounding name of
the Royal Academies Company. In a pompous advertisement it was
announced that the directors of the Royal Academies Company had
engaged the best masters in every branch of knowledge, and were
about to issue twenty thousand tickets at twenty shillings each.
There was to be a lottery; two thousand prizes were to be drawn;
and the fortunate holders of the prizes 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 the theorbo. Some of these
companies took large mansions and printed their advertisements in
gilded letters. Others, less ostentatious, were content with ink,
and met at coffeehouses in the neighbourhood of the Royal
Exchange. Jonathan's and Garraway's were in a constant ferment
with brokers, buyers, sellers, meetings of directors, meetings of
proprietors. Time bargains soon came into fashion. Extensive
combinations were formed, and monstrous fables were circulated,
for the purpose of raising or depressing the price of shares. Our
country witnessed for the first time those phenomena with which a
long experience has made us familiar. A mania of which the
symptoms were essentially the same with those of the mania of
1720, of the mania of 1825, of the mania of 1845, seized the
public mind. An impatience to be rich, a contempt for those slow
but sure gains which are the proper reward of industry, patience
and thrift, spread through society. The spirit of the cogging
dicers of Whitefriars took possession of the grave Senators of
the City, Wardens of Trades, Deputies, Aldermen. It was much
easier and much more lucrative to put forth a lying prospectus
announcing a new stock, to persuade ignorant people that the
dividends could not fall short of twenty per cent., and to part
with five thousand pounds of this imaginary wealth for ten
thousand solid guineas, than to load a ship with a well chosen
cargo for Virginia or the Levant. Every day some new bubble was
puffed into existence, rose buoyant, shone bright, burst, and was
forgotten.368

The new form which covetousness had taken furnished the comic
poets and satirists with an excellent subject; nor was that
subject the less welcome to them because some of the most
unscrupulous and most successful of the new race of gamesters
were men in sad coloured clothes and lank hair, men who called
cards the Devil's books, men who thought it 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 of these
speculators was, for the first time, exposed to public ridicule.
He died in November 1692, just before his Stockjobbers came on
the stage; 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 of the Mousetrap Company and the
Fleakilling Company, examine the question whether the godly may
lawfully hold stock in a Company for bringing over Chinese
ropedancers. "Considerable men have shares," says one austere
person in cropped hair and bands; "but verily I question whether
it be lawful or not." These doubts are removed by a stout old
Roundhead colonel who had fought at Marston Moor, and who reminds
his weaker brother that the saints need not themselves see the
ropedancing, and that, in all probability, there will be no
ropedancing to see. "The thing," he says, "is like to take; the
shares will sell well; and then we shall not care whether the
dancers come over or no." It is important to observe that this
scene was exhibited and applauded before one farthing of the
national debt had been contracted. So ill informed were the
numerous writers who, at a later period, ascribed to the national
debt the existence of stockjobbing and of all the immoralities
connected with stockjobbing. The truth is that society had, in
the natural course of its growth, reached a point at which it was
inevitable that there should be stockjobbing whether there were a
national debt or not, and inevitable also that, if there were a
long and costly war, there should be 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, and another was impelled by equally strong motives to
lend? A moment had arrived at which the government found it
impossible, without exciting the most formidable discontents, to
raise by taxation the supplies necessary to defend the liberty
and independence of the nation; and, at that very moment,
numerous capitalists were looking round them in vain for some
good mode of investing their savings, and, for want of such a
mode, were keeping their wealth locked up, or were lavishing it
on absurd projects. Riches sufficient to equip a navy which would
sweep the German Ocean and the Atlantic of French privateers,
riches sufficient to maintain an army which might retake Namur
and avenge the disaster of Steinkirk, were lying idle, or were
passing away from the owners into the hands of sharpers. A
statesman might well think that some part of the wealth which was
daily buried or squandered might, with advantage to the
proprietor, to the taxpayer and to the State, be attracted into
the Treasury. Why meet the extraordinary charge of a year of war
by seizing the chairs, the tables, the beds of hardworking
families, by compelling one country gentleman to cut down his
trees before they were ready for the axe, another to let the
cottages on his land fall to ruin, a third to take away his
hopeful son from the University, when Change Alley was swarming
with people who did not know what to do with their money and who
were pressing every body to borrow it?

It was often asserted at a later period by Tories, who hated the
national debt most of all things, and who hated Burnet most of
all men, that Burnet was the person who first advised the
government to contract a national debt. But this assertion is
proved by no trustworthy evidence, and seems to be disproved by
the Bishop's silence. Of all men he was the least likely to
conceal the fact that an important fiscal revolution had been his
work. Nor was the Board of Treasury at that time one which much
needed, or was likely much to regard, the counsels of a divine.
At that Board sate Godolphin the most prudent and experienced,
and Montague the most daring and inventive of financiers. Neither
of these eminent men could be ignorant that it had long been the
practice of the neighbouring states to spread over many years of
peace the excessive taxation which was made necessary by one year
of war. In Italy this practice had existed through many
generations. France had, during the war which began in 1672 and
ended in 1679, borrowed not less than thirty millions of our
money. Sir William Temple, in his interesting work on the
Batavian federation, had told his countrymen that, when he was
ambassador at the Hague, the single province of Holland, then
ruled by the frugal and prudent De Witt, owed about five millions
sterling, for which interest at four per cent. was always ready
to the day, and that when any part of the principal was paid off
the public creditor received his money with tears, well knowing
that he could find no other investment equally secure. The wonder
is not that England should have at length imitated the example
both of her enemies and of her allies, but that the fourth year
of her arduous and exhausting struggle against Lewis should have
been drawing to a close before she resorted to an expedient so
obvious.

On the fifteenth of December 1692 the House of Commons resolved
itself into a Committee of Ways and Means. Somers took the chair.
Montague proposed to raise a million by way of loan; the
proposition was approved; and it was ordered that a bill should
be brought in. The details of the scheme were much discussed and
modified; but the principle appears to have been popular with all
parties. The moneyed men were glad to have a good opportunity of
investing what they had hoarded. The landed men, hard pressed by
the load of taxation, were ready to consent to any thing for the
sake of present ease. No member ventured to divide the House. On
the twentieth of January the bill was read a third time, carried
up to the Lords by Somers, and passed by them without any
amendment.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 other receipts, and were to form a fund on the credit of
which a million was to be raised by life annuities. As the
annuitants dropped off, their annuities were to be divided among
the survivors, till the number of survivors was reduced to seven.
After that time, whatever fell in was to go to the public. It was
therefore certain that the eighteenth century would be far
advanced before the debt would be finally extinguished. The rate
of interest was to be ten per cent. till the year 1700, and after
that year seven per cent. The advantages offered to the public
creditor by this scheme may seem great, but were not more than
sufficient to compensate him for the risk which he ran. It was
not impossible that there might be a counterrevolution; and it
was certain that, if there were a counterrevolution, those who
had lent money to William would lose both interest and principal.

Such was the origin of that debt which has since become the
greatest prodigy that ever perplexed the sagacity and confounded
the pride of statesmen and philosophers. At every stage in the
growth of that debt the nation has set up the same cry of anguish
and despair. At every stage in the growth of that debt it has
been seriously asserted by wise men that bankruptcy and ruin were
at hand. Yet still the debt went on growing; and still bankruptcy
and ruin were as remote as ever. When the great contest with
Lewis the Fourteenth was finally terminated by the Peace of
Utrecht, the nation owed about fifty millions; and that debt was
considered, not merely by the rude multitude, not merely by
foxhunting squires and coffeehouse orators, but by acute and
profound thinkers, as an incumbrance which would permanently
cripple the body politic; Nevertheless trade flourished; wealth
increased; the nation became richer and richer. Then came the war
of the Austrian Succession; and the debt rose to eighty millions.
Pamphleteers, historians and orators pronounced that now, at all
events, our case was desperate. Yet the signs of increasing
prosperity, signs which could neither be counterfeited nor
concealed, ought to have satisfied observant and reflecting men
that a debt of eighty millions was less to the England which was
governed by Pelham than a debt of fifty millions had been to the
England which was governed by Oxford. Soon war again broke forth;
and, under the energetic and prodigal administration of the first
William Pitt, the debt rapidly swelled to a hundred and forty
millions. As soon as the first intoxication of victory was over,
men of theory and men of business almost unanimously pronounced
that the fatal day had now really arrived. The only statesman,
indeed, active or speculative, who did 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 of arithmetical
demonstration. It was impossible to prove by figures that the
road to Paradise did not lie through the Holy Land; but it was
possible to prove by figures that the road to national ruin was
through the national debt. It was idle, however, now to talk
about the road; we had done with the road; we had reached the
goal; all was over; all the revenues of the island north of Trent
and west of Reading were mortgaged. Better for us to have been
conquered by Prussia or Austria than 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 open his eyes, and to
see improvement all around him, cities increasing, cultivation
extending, marts too small for the crowd of buyers and sellers,
harbours insufficient to contain the shipping, artificial rivers
joining the chief inland seats of industry to the chief seaports,
streets better lighted, houses better furnished, richer wares
exposed to sale in statelier shops, swifter carriages rolling
along smoother roads. He had, indeed, only to compare the
Edinburgh of his boyhood with the Edinburgh of his old age. His
prediction remains to posterity, a memorable instance of the
weakness from which the strongest minds are not exempt. Adam
Smith saw a little and but a little further. He admitted that,
immense as the burden was, the nation did actually sustain it and
thrive under it in a way which nobody could have foreseen. But he
warned his countrymen not to repeat so hazardous an experiment.
The limit had been reached. Even a small increase might be
fatal.371 Not less gloomy was the view which George Grenville, a
minister eminently diligent and practical, took of our financial
situation. The nation must, he conceived, sink under a debt of a
hundred and forty millions, unless a portion of the load were
borne by the American colonies. The attempt to lay a portion of
the load on the American colonies produced another war. That war
left us with an additional hundred millions of debt, and without
the colonies whose help had been represented as indispensable.
Again England was given over; and again the strange patient
persisted in becoming stronger and more blooming in spite of all
the diagnostics and prognostics of State physicians. As she had
been visibly more prosperous with a debt of a hundred and forty
millions than with a debt of fifty millions, so she, as visibly
more prosperous with a debt of two hundred and forty millions
than with a debt of a hundred and forty millions. Soon however
the wars which sprang from the French Revolution, and which far
exceeded in cost any that the world had ever seen, tasked the
powers of public credit to the utmost. When the world was again
at rest the funded debt of England amounted to eight hundred
millions. If the most enlightened man had been told, in 1792,
that, in 1815, the interest on eight hundred millions would be
duly paid to the day at the Bank, he would have been as hard of
belief as if he had been told that the government would be in
possession of the lamp of Aladdin or of the purse of Fortunatus.
It was in truth a gigantic, a fabulous debt; and we can hardly
wonder that the cry of despair should have been louder than ever.
But again that cry was found to have been as unreasonable as
ever. After a few years of exhaustion, England recovered herself.
Yet, like Addison's valetudinarian, who continued to whimper that
he was dying of consumption till he became so fat that he was
shamed into silence, she went on complaining that she was sunk in
poverty till her wealth showed itself by tokens which made her
complaints ridiculous. The beggared, the bankrupt society not
only proved able to meet all its obligations, but, while meeting
those obligations, grew richer and richer so fast that the growth
could almost be discerned by the eye. In every county, we saw
wastes recently turned into gardens; in every city, we saw new
streets, and squares, and markets, more brilliant lamps, more
abundant supplies of water; in the suburbs of every great seat of
industry, we saw villas multiplying fast, each embosomed in its
gay little paradise of lilacs and roses. While shallow
politicians were repeating that the energies of the people were
borne down by the weight of the public burdens, the first journey
was performed by steam on a railway. Soon the island was
intersected by railways. A sum exceeding the whole amount of the
national debt at the end of the American war was, in a few years,
voluntarily expended by this ruined people in viaducts, tunnels,
embankments, bridges, stations, engines. Meanwhile taxation was
almost constantly becoming lighter and lighter; yet still the
Exchequer was full. It may be now affirmed without fear of
contradiction that we find it as easy to pay the interest of
eight hundred millions as our ancestors found it, a century ago,
to pay the interest of eighty millions.

It can hardly be doubted that there must have been some great
fallacy in the notions of those who uttered and of those who
believed that long succession of confident predictions, so
signally falsified by along succession of indisputable facts. To
point out that fallacy is the office rather of the political
economist than of the historian. Here it is sufficient to say
that the prophets of evil were under a double delusion. They
erroneously imagined that there was an exact analogy between the
case of an individual who is in debt to another individual and
the case of a society which is in debt to a part of itself; and
this analogy led them into endless mistakes about the effect of
the system of funding. They were under an error not less serious
touching the resources of the country. They made no allowance for
the effect produced by the incessant progress of every
experimental science, and by the incessant efforts of every man
to get on in life. They saw that the debt grew; and they forgot
that other things grew as well as the debt.

A long experience justifies us in believing that England may, in
the twentieth century, be better able to bear a debt of sixteen
hundred millions than she is at the present time to bear her
present load. But be this as it may, those who so confidently
predicted that she must sink, first under a debt of fifty
millions, then under a debt of eighty millions then under a debt
of a hundred and forty millions, then under a debt of two hundred
and forty millions, and lastly under a debt of eight hundred
millions, were beyond all doubt under a twofold mistake. They
greatly overrated the pressure of the burden; they greatly
underrated the strength by which the burden was to be borne.

It may be desirable to add a few words touching the way in which
the system of funding has affected the interests of the great
commonwealth of nations. If it be true that whatever gives to
intelligence an advantage over brute force and to honesty an
advantage over dishonesty has a tendency to promote the happiness
and virtue of our race, it can scarcely be denied that, in the
largest view, the effect of this system has been salutary. For it
is manifest that all credit depends on two things, on the power
of a debtor to pay debts, and on his inclination to pay them. The
power of a society to pay debts is proportioned to the progress
which that society has made in industry, in commerce, and in all
the arts and sciences which flourish under the benignant
influence of freedom and of equal law. The inclination of a
society to pay debts is proportioned to the degree in which that
society respects the obligations of plighted faith. Of the
strength which consists in extent of territory and in number of
fighting men, a rude despot who knows no law but his own childish
fancies and headstrong passions, or a convention of socialists
which proclaims all property to be robbery, may have more than
falls to the lot of the best and wisest government. But the
strength which is derived from the confidence of capitalists such
a despot, such a convention, never can possess. That strength,--
and it is a strength which has decided the event of more than one
great conflict,--flies, by the law of its nature, from barbarism
and fraud, from tyranny and anarchy, to follow civilisation and
virtue, liberty and order.

While the bill which first created the funded debt of England was
passing, with general approbation, through the regular stages,
the two Houses discussed, for the first time, the great question
of Parliamentary Reform.

It is to be observed that the object of the reformers of that
generation was merely to make the representative body a more
faithful interpreter of the sense of the constituent body. It
seems scarcely to have occurred to any of them that the
constituent body might be an unfaithful interpreter of the sense
of the nation. It is true that those deformities 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 century than
they had become in the nineteenth. Most of the boroughs which
were disfranchised in 1832 were, if not positively, yet
relatively, much more important places in the reign of William
the Third than in the reign of William the Fourth. Of the
populous and wealthy manufacturing towns, seaports and watering
places, to which the franchise was given in the reign of William
the Fourth, some were, in the reign of William the Third, small
hamlets, where a few ploughmen or fishermen lived under thatched
roofs; some were fields covered with harvests, or moors abandoned
to grouse; With the exception of Leeds and Manchester, there was
not, at the time of the Revolution, a single town of five
thousand inhabitants which did not send two representatives to
the House of Commons. Even then, however, there was no want of
startling anomalies. Looe, East and West, which contained not
half the population or half the wealth of the smallest of the
hundred parishes of London, returned as many members as
London.372 Old Sarum, a deserted ruin which the traveller feared
to enter at night lest he should find robbers lurking there, 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 alter it. It was protected by the prejudices of one
faction and by the interests of the other. Nothing could be more
repugnant to the genius of Toryism than the thought of destroying
at a blow institutions which had stood through ages, for the
purpose of building something more symmetrical out of the ruins.
The Whigs, on the other hand, could not but know that they were
much more likely to lose than to gain by a change in this part of
our polity. It would indeed be a great mistake to imagine that a
law transferring political power from small to large constituent
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 town population. In 1692 the effect would have been to make
the power of the rural population irresistible. Of the one
hundred and forty-two members taken away in 1832 from small
boroughs more than half were given to large and flourishing
towns. But in 1692 there was hardly one large and flourishing
town which had not already as many members as it could, with any
show of reason, claim. Almost all therefore that was taken from
the small boroughs must have been given to the counties; and
there can be no doubt that whatever tended to raise the counties
and to depress the towns must on the whole have tended to raise
the Tories and to depress the Whigs. From the commencement of our
civil troubles the towns had been on the side of freedom and
progress, the country gentlemen and the country clergymen on the
side of authority and prescription. If therefore a reform bill,
disfranchising small constituent bodies and giving additional
members to large constituent bodies, had become law soon after
the Revolution, there can be little doubt that a decided majority
of the House of Commons would have consisted of rustic baronets
and squires, high Churchmen, high Tories, and half Jacobites.
With such a House of Commons it is almost certain that there
would have been a persecution of the Dissenters; it is not easy
to understand how there could have been an union with Scotland;
and it is not improbable that there would have been a restoration
of the Stuarts. Those parts of our constitution therefore which,
in recent times, politicians of the liberal school have generally
considered as blemishes, were, five generations ago, regarded
with complacency by the men who were most zealous for civil and
religious freedom.

But, while Whigs and Tories agreed in wishing to maintain the
existing rights of election, both Whigs and Tories were forced to
admit that the relation between the elector and the
representative was not what it ought to be. Before the civil wars
the House of Commons had enjoyed the fullest confidence of the
nation. A House of Commons, distrusted, despised, hated by the
Commons, was a thing unknown. The very words would, to Sir Peter
Wentworth or Sir Edward Coke, have sounded like a contradiction
in terms. But by degrees a change took place. The Parliament
elected in 1661, during that fit of joy and fondness which
followed the return of the royal family, represented, not the
deliberate sense, but the momentary caprice of the nation. Many
of the members were men who, a few months earlier or a few months
later, would have had no chance of obtaining seats, men of broken
fortunes and of dissolute habits, men whose only claim to public
confidence was the ferocious hatred which they bore to rebels and
Puritans. The people, as soon as they had become sober, saw with
dismay to what an assembly they had, during their intoxication,
confided the care of their property, their liberty and their
religion. And the choice, made in a moment of frantic enthusiasm,
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 fervid loyalty with which Charles had been welcomed back to
Dover succeeded discontent and disaffection. The general cry was
that the kingdom was misgoverned, degraded, given up as a prey to
worthless men and more worthless women, that our navy had been
found unequal to a contest with Holland, that our independence
had been bartered for the gold of France, that our consciences
were in danger of being again subjected to the yoke of Rome. The
people had become Roundheads; but the body which alone was
authorised to speak in the name of the people was still a body of
Cavaliers. It is true that the King occasionally found even that
House of Commons unmanageable. From the first it had contained
not a few true Englishmen; others had been introduced into it as
vacancies were made by death; and even the majority, courtly as
it was, could not but feel some sympathy with the nation. A
country party grew up and became formidable. But that party
constantly found its exertions frustrated by systematic
corruption. That some members of the legislature received direct
bribes was with good reason suspected, but could not be proved.
That the patronage of the Crown was employed on an extensive
scale for the purpose of influencing votes was matter of
notoriety. A large proportion of those who gave away the public
money in supplies received part of that money back in salaries;
and thus was formed a mercenary band on which the Court might, in
almost any extremity, confidently rely.

The servility of this Parliament had left a deep impression on
the public mind. It was the general opinion that England ought to
be protected against all risk of being ever again represented,
during a long course of years, by men who had forfeited her
confidence, and who were retained by a fee to vote against her
wishes and interests. The subject was mentioned in the
Convention; and some members wished to deal with it while the
throne was still vacant. The cry for reform had ever since been
becoming more and more importunate. The people, heavily pressed
by taxes, were naturally disposed to regard those who lived on
the taxes with little favour. The war, it was generally
acknowledged, was just and necessary; and war could not be
carried on without large expenditure. But the larger the
expenditure which was required for the defence of the nation, the
more important it was that nothing should be squandered. The
immense gains of official men moved envy and indignation. Here a
gentleman was paid to do nothing. There many gentlemen were paid
to do what would be better done by one. The coach, the liveries,
the lace cravat and diamond buckles of the placeman were
naturally seen with an evil eye by those who rose up early and
lay down late in order to furnish him with the means of indulging
in splendour and luxury. Such abuses it was the especial business
of a House of Commons to correct. What then had the existing
House of Commons done in the way of correction? Absolutely
nothing. In 1690, indeed, while the Civil List was settling, some
sharp speeches had been made. In 1691, when the Ways and Means
were under consideration, a resolution had been passed so
absurdly framed that it had proved utterly abortive. The nuisance
continued, and would continue while it was a source of profit to
those whose duty was to abate it. Who could expect faithful and
vigilant stewardship from stewards who had a direct interest in
encouraging the waste which they were employed to check? The
House swarmed with placemen of all kinds, Lords of the Treasury,
Lords of the 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, in the full confidence that
his feelings and interests are in perfect accordance with ours.
We look to him to relieve us from every burden except those
burdens without which the public service cannot be carried on,
and which therefore, galling as they are, we patiently and
resolutely bear. But before he has been a session in Parliament
we learn that he is a Clerk of the Green Cloth or a Yeoman of the
Removing Wardrobe, with a comfortable salary. Nay, we sometimes
learn that he has obtained one of those places in the Exchequer
of which the emoluments rise and fall with the taxes which we
pay. It would be strange indeed if our interests were safe in the
keeping of a man whose gains consist in a percentage on our
losses. The evil would be greatly diminished if we had frequent
opportunities of considering whether the powers of our agent
ought to be renewed or revoked. But, as the law stands, it is not
impossible that he may hold those powers twenty or thirty years.
While he lives, and while either the King or the Queen lives, it
is not likely that we shall ever again exercise our elective
franchise, unless there should be a dispute between the Court and
the Parliament. The more profuse and obsequious a Parliament is,
the less likely it is to give offence to the Court. The worse our
representatives, therefore, the longer 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 Standing Parliament, and was pronounced to be a
greater nuisance than even a standing army.

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

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

About the manner in which such a bill should have been framed
there will, in our time, be little difference of opinion among
enlightened Englishmen. They will agree in thinking that it would
be most pernicious to open the House of Commons to all placemen,
and not less pernicious to close that House against all placemen.
To draw with precision the line between those who ought to be
admitted and those who ought to be excluded would be a task
requiring much time, thought and knowledge of details. But the
general principles which ought to guide us are obvious. The
multitude of subordinate functionaries ought to be excluded. A
few functionaries who are at the head or near the head of the
great departments of the administration ought to be admitted.

The subordinate functionaries ought to be excluded, because their
admission would at once lower the character of Parliament and
destroy the efficiency of every public office. They are now
excluded, and the consequence is that the State possesses a
valuable body of servants who remain unchanged while cabinet
after cabinet is formed and dissolved, who instruct every
successive minister in his duties, and with whom it is the most
sacred point of honour to give true information, sincere advise,
and strenuous assistance to their superior for the time being. To
the experience, the ability and the fidelity of this class of men
is to be attributed the ease and safety with which the direction
of affairs has been many times, within our own memory,
transferred from Tories to Whigs and from Whigs to Tories. But no
such class would have existed if persons who received salaries
from the Crown had been suffered to sit without restriction in
the House of Commons. Those commissionerships, assistant
secretaryships, chief clerkships, which are now held for life by
persons who stand aloof from the strife of parties, would have
been bestowed on members of Parliament who were serviceable to
the government as voluble speakers or steady voters. As often as
the ministry was changed, all this crowd of retainers would have
been ejected from office, and would have been succeeded by
another set of members of Parliament who would probably have been
ejected in their turn before they had half learned their
business. Servility and corruption in the legislature, ignorance
and incapacity in all the departments of the executive
administration, would have been the inevitable effects of such a
system.

Still more noxious, if possible, would be the effects of a system
under which all the servants of the Crown, without exception,
should be excluded from the House of Commons. Aristotle has, in
that treatise on government which is perhaps the most judicious
and instructive of all his writings, left us a warning against a
class of laws artfully framed to delude the vulgar, democratic in
seeming, but oligarchic in effect.374 Had he had an opportunity
of studying the history of the English constitution, he might
easily have enlarged his list of such laws. That men who are in
the service and pay of the Crown ought not to sit in an assembly
specially charged with the duty of guarding the rights and
interests of the community against all aggression on the part of
the Crown is a plausible and a popular doctrine. Yet it is
certain that if those who, five generations ago, held that
doctrine, had been able to mould the constitution according to
their wishes, the effect
would have been the depression of that branch of the legislature
which springs from the people and is accountable to the people,
and the ascendency of the monarchical and aristocratical elements
of our polity. The government would have been entirely in
patrician hands. The House of Lords, constantly drawing to itself
the first abilities in the realm, would have become the most
august of senates, while the House of Commons would have sunk
almost to the rank of a vestry. From time to time undoubtedly men
of commanding genius and of aspiring temper would have made their
appearance among the representatives of the counties and
boroughs. But every such man would have considered the elective
chamber merely as a lobby through which he must pass to the
hereditary chamber. The first object of his ambition would have
been that coronet without which he could not be powerful in the
state. As soon as he had shown that he could be a formidable
enemy and a valuable friend to the government, he would have made
haste to quit what would then have been in every sense the Lower
House for what would then have been in every sense the Upper. The
conflict between Walpole and Pulteney, the conflict between Pitt
and Fox, would have been transferred from the popular to the
aristocratic part of the legislature. On every great question,
foreign, domestic or colonial, the debates of the nobles would
have been impatiently expected and eagerly devoured. The report
of the proceedings of an assembly containing no person empowered
to speak in the name of the government, no person who had ever
been in high political trust, would have been thrown aside with
contempt. Even the control of the purse of the nation must have
passed, not perhaps in form, but in substance, to that body in
which would have been found every man who was qualified to bring
forward a budget or explain an estimate. The country would have
been governed by Peers; and the chief business of the Commons
would have been to wrangle about bills for the inclosing of moors
and the lighting of towns.

These considerations were altogether overlooked in 1692. Nobody
thought of drawing a line between the few functionaries who ought
to be allowed to sit in the House of Commons and the crowd of
functionaries who ought to be shut out. The only line which the
legislators of that day took pains to draw was between themselves
and their successors. Their own interest they guarded with a care
of which it seems strange that they should not have been ashamed.
Every one of them was allowed to keep the places which he had got, and to get as
many more places as he could before the next dissolution
of Parliament, an event which might not happen for many years.
But a member who should be chosen after the first of 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
rapidly and without a single division. But in the Lords the
contest was sharp and obstinate. Several amendments were proposed
in committee; but all were rejected. The motion that the bill
should pass was supported by Mulgrave in a lively and poignant
speech, which has been preserved, and which proves that his
reputation for eloquence was not unmerited. The Lords who took
the other side did not, it should seem, venture to deny that
there was an evil which required a remedy; but they maintained
that the proposed remedy would only aggravate the evil. The
patriotic representatives of the people had devised a reform
which might perhaps benefit the next generation; but they had
carefully reserved to themselves the privilege of plundering the
present generation. If this bill passed, it was clear that, while
the existing Parliament lasted, the number of placemen in the
House of Commons would be little, if at all, diminished; and, if
this bill passed, it was highly probable that the existing
Parliament would last till both King William and Queen Mary were
dead. For as, under this bill, Their Majesties would be able to
exercise a much greater influence over the existing Parliament
than over any future Parliament, they would naturally wish to put
off a dissolution as long as possible. The complaint of the
electors of England was that now, in 1692, they were unfairly
represented. It was not redress, but mockery, to tell them that
their children should be fairly represented in 1710 or 1720. The
relief ought to be immediate; and the way to give immediate
relief was to limit the duration of Parliaments, and to begin
with that Parliament which, in the opinion of the country, had
already held power too long.

The forces were so evenly balanced that a very slight accident
might have 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, and forty against it. Proxies were then
called. There were only two proxies for the bill; there were
seven against it; but of the seven three were questioned, and
were with difficulty admitted. The result was that the bill was
lost by three votes.

The majority appears to have been composed of moderate Whigs and
moderate Tories. Twenty of the minority protested, and among them
were the most violent and intolerant members of both parties,
such as Warrington, who had narrowly escaped the block for
conspiring against James, and Aylesbury, who afterwards narrowly
escaped the block for conspiring against William. Marlborough,
who, since his imprisonment, had gone all lengths in opposition
to the government, not only put his own name to the protest, but
made the Prince of Denmark sign what it was altogether beyond the
faculties of His Royal Highness to comprehend.376

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

A few days later Shrewsbury laid on the table of the Lord a bill
for limiting the duration of Parliaments. By this bill it was
provided that the Parliament then sitting should cease to exist
on the first of January 1694, and that no future Parliament
should last longer than three years.

Among the Lords there seems to have been almost perfect unanimity
on this subject. William in vain endeavoured to induce those
peers in whom he placed the greatest confidence to support his
prerogative. Some of them thought the proposed change salutary;
others hoped to quiet the public mind by a liberal concession;
and others had held such language when they were opposing the
Place Bill that they could not, without gross inconsistency,
oppose the Triennial Bill. The whole House too bore a grudge to
the other House, and had a pleasure in putting the other House in
a most disagreeable dilemma. Burnet, Pembroke, nay, even
Caermarthen, who was very little in the habit of siding with the
people against the throne, supported Shrewsbury. "My Lord," said
the King to Caermarthen, with bitter displeasure, "you will live
to repent the part which you are taking in this matter."377 The
warning was disregarded; and the bill, having passed the Lords
smoothly and rapidly, was carried with great solemnity by two
judges to the Commons.

Of what took place in the Commons we have but very meagre
accounts; but from those accounts it is clear that the Whigs, as
a body, supported the bill, and that the opposition came chiefly
from Tories. Old Titus, who had been a politician in the days of
the Commonwealth, entertained the House with a speech in the
style which had been fashionable in those days. Parliaments, he
said, resembled the manna which God bestowed on the chosen
people. They were excellent while they were fresh; but if kept
too long they became noisome; and foul worms were engendered by
the corruption of that which had been sweeter than honey.
Littleton and other leading Whigs spoke on the same side.
Seymour, Finch, and Tredenham, all stanch Tories, were vehement
against the bill; and even Sir John Lowther on this point
dissented from his friend and patron Caermarthen. Several Tory
orators appealed to a feeling which was strong in the House, and
which had, since the Revolution, prevented many laws from
passing. Whatever, they said, comes from the Peers is to be
received 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 merely because it has been brought down from them. If
their Lordships were to send us the most judicious of all money
bills, should we not kick it to the door? Yet to send us a money
bill would hardly be a grosser affront than to send us such a
bill as this. They have taken an initiative which, by every rule
of parliamentary courtesy, ought to have been left to us. They
have sate in judgment on us, convicted us, condemned us to
dissolution, and fixed the first of January for the execution.
Are we to submit patiently to so degrading a sentence, a sentence
too passed by men who have not so conducted themselves as to have
acquired any right to censure others? Have they ever made any
sacrifice of their own interest, of their own dignity, to the
general welfare? Have not excellent bills been lost because we
would not consent to insert in them clauses conferring new
privileges on the nobility? And now that their Lordships are bent
on obtaining popularity, do they propose to purchase it by
relinquishing even the smallest of their own oppressive
privileges? No; they offer to their country that which will cost
them nothing, but which will cost us and will cost the Crown
dear. In such circumstances it is our duty to repel the insult
which has been offered to us, and, by doing so, to vindicate the
lawful prerogative of the King.

Such topics as these were doubtless well qualified to inflame the
passions of the House of Commons. The near prospect of a
dissolution could not be very agreeable to a member whose
election was likely to be contested. He must go through all the
miseries of a canvass, must shake hands with crowds of
freeholders or freemen, must ask after their wives and children,
must hire conveyances for outvoters, must open alehouses, must
provide mountains of beef, must set rivers of ale running, and
might perhaps, after all the drudgery and all the expense, after
being lampooned, hustled, pelted, find himself at the bottom of
the poll, see his antagonists chaired, and sink half ruined into
obscurity. All this evil he was now invited to bring on himself,
and invited by men whose own seats in the legislature were
permanent, who gave up neither dignity nor quiet, neither power
nor money, but gained the praise of patriotism by forcing him to
abdicate a high station, to undergo harassing labour and anxiety,
to mortgage his cornfields and to hew down his woods. There was
naturally much irritation, more probably than is indicated by the
divisions. For the constituent bodies were generally delighted
with the bill; and many members who disliked it were afraid to
oppose it. The House yielded to the pressure of public opinion,
but not without a pang and a struggle. The discussions in the
committee seem to have been acrimonious. Such sharp words passed
between Seymour and one of the Whig members that it was necessary
to put the Speaker in the chair and the mace on the table for the
purpose of restoring order. One amendment was made. The respite
which the Lords had granted to the existing Parliament was
extended from the first of January to Lady Day, in order that
there might be full time for another session. The third reading
was carried by two hundred votes to a hundred and sixty-one. The
Lords agreed to the bill as amended; and nothing was wanting but
the royal assent. Whether that assent would or would not be given
was a question which remained in suspense till the last day of
the session.378

One strange inconsistency in the conduct of the reformers of that
generation deserves notice. It never occurred to any one of those
who were zealous for the Triennial Bill that every argument which
could be urged in favour of that bill was are argument against
the rules which had been framed in old times for the purpose of
keeping parliamentary deliberations and divisions strictly
secret. It is quite natural that a government which withholds
political privileges from the commonalty should withhold also
political information. But nothing can be more irrational than to
give power, and not to give the knowledge without which there is
the greatest risk that power will be abused. What could be more
absurd than to call constituent bodies frequently together that
they might decide whether their representative had done his duty
by them, and yet strictly to interdict them from learning, on
trustworthy authority, what he had said or how he had voted? The
absurdity however appears to have passed altogether unchallenged.
It is highly probable that among the two hundred members of the
House of Commons who voted for the third reading of the Triennial
Bill there was not one who would have hesitated about sending to
Newgate any person who had dared to publish a 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
which would now be thought a grievance more intolerable than the
Shipmoney or the Star Chamber, was then inseparably associated,
even in the most honest and intelligent minds, with
constitutional freedom. A few old men still living could remember
times when a gentleman who was known at Whitehall to have let
fall a sharp word against a court favourite would have been
brought before the Privy Council and sent to the Tower. Those
times were gone, never to return. There was no longer any danger
that the King would oppress the members of the legislature; and
there was much danger that the members of the legislature might
oppress the people. Nevertheless the words Privilege of
Parliament, those words which the stern senators of the preceding
generation had murmured when a tyrant filled their chamber with
his guards, those words which a hundred thousand Londoners had
shouted in his ears when he ventured for the last time within the
walls of their city; still retained a magical influence over all
who loved liberty. It was long before even the most enlightened
men became sensible that the precautions which had been
originally devised for the purpose of protecting patriots against
the displeasure of the Court now served only to protect
sycophants against the displeasure of the nation.

It is also to be observed that few of those who showed at this
time the greatest desire to increase the political power of the
people were as yet 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 in dispute, proved that
the public mind was beginning dimly to perceive how closely civil
freedom and freedom of conscience are connected with freedom of
discussion.

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

During the first three years of William's reign scarcely a voice
seems to have been raised against the restrictions which the law
imposed on literature. Those restrictions were in perfect
harmony with the theory of government held by the Tories, and
were not, in practice, galling to the Whigs. Roger Lestrange, who
had been licenser under the last two Kings of the House of
Stuart, and who had shown as little tenderness to Exclusionists
and Presbyterians in that character as in his other character of
Observator, was turned out of office at the Revolution, and was
succeeded by a Scotch gentleman, who, on account of his passion
for rare books, and his habit of attending all sales of
libraries, was known in the shops and coffeehouses near Saint
Paul's by the name of Catalogue Fraser. Fraser was a zealous
Whig. By Whig authors and publishers he was extolled as a most
impartial and humane man. But the conduct which obtained their
applause drew on him the abuse of the Tories, and was not
altogether pleasing to his official superior Nottingham.379 No
serious difference however seems to have arisen till the year
1692. In that year an honest old clergyman named Walker, who had,
in the time of the Commonwealth, been Gauden's curate, wrote a
book which convinced all sensible and dispassionate readers that
Gauden, and not Charles the First, was the author of the Icon
Basilike. This book Fraser suffered to be printed. If he had
authorised the publication of a work in which the Gospel of Saint
John or the Epistle to the Romans had been represented as
spurious, the indignation of the High Church party could hardly
have been greater. The question was not literary, but religious.
Doubt was impiety. In truth the Icon was to many fervent
Royalists a supplementary revelation. One of them indeed had gone
so far as to propose that lessons taken out of the inestimable
little volume should be read in the churches.380 Fraser found it
necessary to resign his place; and Nottingham appointed a
gentleman of good blood and scanty fortune named Edmund Bohun.
This change of men produced an immediate and total change of
system; for Bohun was as strong a Tory as a conscientious man who
had taken the oaths could possibly be. He had been conspicuous as
a persecutor of nonconformists and a champion of the doctrine of
passive obedience. He had edited Filmer's absurd treatise on the
origin of government, and had written an answer to the paper
which Algernon Sidney had delivered to the Sheriffs on Tower
Hill. Nor did Bohun admit that, in swearing allegiance to William
and Mary, he had done any thing inconsistent with his old creed.
For he had succeeded in convincing himself that they reigned by
right of conquest, and that it was the duty of an Englishman to
serve them as faithfully as Daniel had served Darius or as
Nehemiah had served Artaxerxes. This doctrine, whatever peace it
might bring to his own conscience, found little favour with any
party. The Whigs loathed it as servile; the Jacobites loathed it
as revolutionary. Great numbers of Tories had doubtless submitted
to William on the ground that he was, rightfully or wrongfully,
King in possession; but very few of them were disposed to allow
that his possession had originated in conquest. Indeed the plea
which had satisfied the weak and narrow mind of Bohun was a mere
fiction, and, had it been a truth, would have been a truth not to
be uttered by Englishmen without agonies of shame and
mortification.381 He however clung to his favourite whimsy with a
tenacity which the general disapprobation only made more intense.
His old friends, the stedfast adherents of indefeasible
hereditary right, grew cold and reserved. He asked Sancroft'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 of
transgressing the rules of Christian charity and courtesy,
murmured something about a little scribbler. Thus cast out by one
faction, Bohun was not received by any other. He formed indeed a
class apart; for he was at once a zealous Filmerite and a zealous
Williamite. He held that pure monarchy, not limited by any law or
contract, was the form of government which had been divinely
ordained. But he held that William was now the absolute monarch,
who might annul the Great Charter, abolish trial by jury, or
impose taxes by royal proclamation, without forfeiting the right
to be implicitly obeyed by Christian men. As to the rest, Bohun
was a man of some learning, mean understanding and unpopular
manners. He had no sooner entered on his functions than all
Paternoster Row and Little Britain were in a ferment. The Whigs
had, under Fraser's administration, enjoyed almost as entire a
liberty as if there had been no censorship. But they were now as
severely treated as in the days of Lestrange. 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. But the new
licenser refused his Imprimatur. The book, he said, represented
rebels and schismatics as heroes and martyrs; and he would not
sanction it for its weight in gold. A charge delivered by Lord
Warrington to the grand jury of Cheshire was not permitted to
appear, because His Lordship had spoken contemptuously of divine
right and passive obedience. Julian Johnson found that, if he
wished to promulgate his notions of government, he must again
have recourse, as in the evil times of King James, to a secret
press.382 Such restraint as this, coming after several years of
unbounded freedom, naturally produced violent exasperation. Some
Whigs began to think that the censorship itself was a grievance;
all Whigs agreed in pronouncing the new censor unfit for his
post, and were prepared to join in an effort to get rid of him.

Of the transactions which terminated in Bohun's dismission, and
which produced the first parliamentary struggle for the liberty
of unlicensed printing, we have accounts written by Bohun himself
and by others; but there are strong reasons for believing that in
none of those accounts is the whole truth to be found. It may
perhaps not be impossible, even at this distance of time, to put
together dispersed fragments of evidence in such a manner as to
produce an authentic narrative which would have astonished the
unfortunate licenser himself.

There was then about town a man of good family, of some reading,
and of some small literary talent, named Charles Blount.383 In
politics he belonged to the extreme section of the Whig party. In
the days of the Exclusion Bill he had been one of Shaftesbury's
brisk boys, and had, under the signature of Junius Brutus,
magnified the virtues and public services of Titus Oates, and
exhorted the Protestants to take signal vengeance on the Papists
for the fire of London and for the murder of Godfrey.384 As to
the theological questions which were in issue between Protestants
and Papists, Blount was perfectly impartial. He was an infidel,
and the head of a small school of infidels who were troubled with
a morbid desire to make converts. He translated from the Latin
translation part of the Life of Apollonius of Tyana, and appended
to it notes of which the flippant profaneness called forth the
severe censure of an unbeliever of a very different order, the
illustrious Bayle.385 Blount also attacked Christianity in
several original treatises, or rather in several treatises
purporting to be original; for he was the most audacious of
literary thieves, and transcribed, without acknowledgment, whole
pages from authors who had preceded him. His delight was to worry
the priests by asking them how light existed before the sun was
made, how Paradise could be bounded by Pison, Gihon, Hiddekel and
Euphrates, how serpents moved before they were condemned to
crawl, and where Eve found thread to stitch her figleaves. To his
speculations on these subjects he gave the lofty name of the
Oracles of Reason; and indeed whatever he said or wrote was
considered as oracular by his disciples. Of those disciples the
most noted was a bad writer named Gildon, who lived to pester
another generation with doggrel and slander, and whose memory is
still preserved, not by his own voluminous works, but by two or
three lines in which his stupidity and venality have been
contemptuously mentioned by Pope.386

Little as either the intellectual or the moral character of
Blount may seem to deserve respect, it is in a great measure to
him that we must attribute the emancipation of the English press.
Between him and the licensers there was a feud of long standing.
Before the Revolution one of his heterodox treatises had been
grievously mutilated by Lestrange, and at last suppressed by
orders from Lestrange's superior the Bishop of 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
any license, and which is entitled A Just Vindication of Learning
and of the Liberty of the Press, by Philopatris.388 Whoever reads
this piece, and is not aware that Blount was one of the most
unscrupulous plagiaries that ever lived, will be surprised to
find, mingled with the poor thoughts and poor words of a
thirdrate pamphleteer, passages so elevated in sentiment and
style that they would be worthy of the greatest name in letters.
The truth is that the just Vindication consists chiefly of
garbled extracts from the Areopagitica of Milton. That noble
discourse had been neglected by the generation to which it was
addressed, had sunk into oblivion, and was at the mercy of every
pilferer. The literary workmanship of Blount resembled the
architectural workmanship of those barbarians who used the
Coliseum and the Theatre of Pompey as quarries, who built hovels
out of Ionian friezes and propped cowhouses on pillars of
lazulite. Blount concluded, as Milton had done, by recommending
that any book might be printed without a license, provided that
the name of the author or publisher were registered.389 The Just
Vindication was well received. The blow was speedily followed up.
There still remained in the Areopagitica many fine passages which
Blount had not used in his first pamphlet. Out of these passages
he constructed a second pamphlet entitled Reasons for the Liberty
of Unlicensed Printing.390 To these Reasons he appended a
postscript entitled A Just and True Character of Edmund Bohun.
This character was written with extreme bitterness. Passages were
quoted from the licenser's writings to prove that he held the
doctrines of passive obedience and nonresistance. He was accused
of using his power systematically for the purpose of favouring
the enemies and silencing the friends of the Sovereigns whose
bread he ate; and it was asserted that he was the friend and the
pupil of his predecessor Sir Roger.

Blount's Character of Bohun could not be publicly sold; but it
was widely circulated. While it was passing from hand to hand,
and while the Whigs were every where exclaiming against the new
censor as a second Lestrange, he was requested to authorise the
publication of an anonymous work entitled King William and Queen
Mary Conquerors.391 He readily and indeed eagerly complied. For
in truth there was between the doctrines which he had long
professed and the doctrines which were propounded in this
treatise a coincidence so exact that many suspected him of being
the author; nor was this suspicion weakened by a passage to which
a compliment was paid to his political writings. But the real
author was that very Blount who was, at that very time, labouring
to inflame the public both against the Licensing Act and the
licenser. Blount's motives may easily be divined. His own
opinions were diametrically opposed to those which, on this
occasion, he put forward in the most offensive manner. It is
therefore impossible to doubt that his object was to ensnare and
to ruin Bohun. It was a base and wicked scheme. But it cannot be
denied that the trap was laid and baited with much skill. The
republican succeeded in personating a high Tory. The atheist
succeeded in personating a high Churchman. The pamphlet concluded
with a devout prayer that the God of light and love would open
the understanding and govern the will of Englishmen, so that they
might see the things which belonged to their peace. The censor
was in raptures. In every page he found his own thoughts
expressed more plainly than he had ever expressed them. Never
before, in his opinion, had the true claim of their Majesties to
obedience been so clearly stated. Every Jacobite who read this
admirable tract must inevitably be converted. The nonjurors would
flock to take the oaths. The nation, so long divided, would at
length be united. From these pleasing dreams Bohun was awakened
by learning, a few hours after the appearance of the discourse
which had charmed him, that the titlepage had set all London in a
flame, and that the odious words, King William and Queen Mary
Conquerors, had moved the indignation of multitudes who had never
read further. Only four days after the publication he heard that
the House of Commons had taken the matter up, that the book had
been called by some members a rascally book, and that, as the
author was unknown, the Serjeant at Arms was in search of the
licenser.392 Bohun's mind had never been strong; and he was
entirely unnerved and bewildered by the fury and suddenness of
the storm which had burst upon him. He went to the House. Most of
the members whom he met in the passages and lobbies frowned on
him. When he was put to the bar, and, after three profound
obeisances, ventured to lift his head and look round him, he
could read his doom in the angry and contemptuous looks which
were cast on him from every side. He hesitated, blundered,
contradicted himself, called the Speaker My Lord, and, by his
confused way of speaking, raised a tempest of rude laughter which
confused him still more. As soon as he had withdrawn, it was
unanimously resolved that the obnoxious treatise should be burned
in Palace Yard by the common hangman. It was also resolved,
without a division, that the King should be requested to remove
Bohun from the office 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 members
clamorously demanded a more important victim. Burnet had, shortly
after he became Bishop of Salisbury, addressed to the clergy of
his diocese a Pastoral Letter, exhorting them to take the oaths.
In one paragraph of this letter he had held language bearing some
resemblance to that of the pamphlet which had just been sentenced
to the flames. There were indeed distinctions which a judicious
and impartial tribunal would not have failed to notice. But the
tribunal before which Burnet was arraigned was neither judicious
nor impartial. His faults had made him many enemies, and his
virtues many more. The discontented Whigs complained that he
leaned towards the Court, the High Churchmen that he leaned
towards the Dissenters; nor can it be supposed that a man of so
much boldness and so little tact, a man so indiscreetly frank and
so restlessly active, had passed through life without crossing
the schemes and wounding the feelings of some whose opinions
agreed with his. He was regarded with peculiar malevolence by
Howe. Howe had never, even while he was in office, been in the
habit of restraining his bitter and petulant tongue; and he had
recently been turned out of office in a way which had made him
ungovernably ferocious. The history of his dismission is not
accurately known, but it was certainly accompanied by some
circumstances which had cruelly galled his temper. If rumour
could be trusted, he had fancied that Mary was in love with him,
and had availed himself of an opportunity which offered itself
while he was in attendance on her as Vice Chamberlain to make
some advances which had justly moved her indignation. Soon after
he was discarded, he was prosecuted for having, in a fit of
passion, beaten one of his servants savagely within the verge of
the palace. He had pleaded guilty, and had been pardoned; but
from this time he showed, on every occasion, the most rancorous
personal hatred of his royal mistress, of her husband, and of all
who were favoured by either. It was known that the Queen
frequently consulted Burnet; and Howe was possessed with the
belief that her severity was to be 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 still affected to
be--represented Burnet as a Tory of the worst class. "There
should be a law," he said, "making it penal for the clergy to
introduce politics into their discourses. Formerly they sought to
enslave us by crying 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 a conquered people." It was moved that the
Bishop should be impeached. To this motion there was an
unanswerable objection, which the Speaker pointed out. The
Pastoral Letter had been written in 1689, and was therefore
covered by the Act of Grace which had been passed in 1690. Yet a
member was not ashamed to say, "No matter: impeach him; and force
him to plead the Act." Few, however, were disposed to take a
course so unworthy 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 of laughter. It was moved that the
Pastoral Letter should be burned by the common hangman. A long
and vehement debate followed. For Burnet was a man warmly loved
as well as warmly hated. The great majority of the Whigs stood
firmly by him; and his goodnature and generosity had made him
friends even among the Tories. The contest lasted two days.
Montague and Finch, men of widely different opinions, appear to
have been foremost among the Bishop's champions. An attempt to
get rid of the subject by moving the previous question failed. At
length the main question was put; and the Pastoral Letter was
condemned to the flames by a 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 least of 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 had led had not tended to make them finer. He had been during
many years a mark for theological and political animosity. Grave
doctors had anathematized him; ribald poets had lampooned him;
princes and ministers had 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 and quartered. Yet none of
these things had ever seemed to move him. His selfconceit had
been proof against ridicule, and his dauntless temper against
danger. But on this occasion his fortitude seems to have failed
him. To be stigmatized by the popular branch of the legislature
as a teacher of doctrines so servile that they disgusted even
Tories, to be joined in one sentence of condemnation with the
editor of Filmer, was too much. How deeply Burnet was wounded
appeared many years later, when, after his death, his History of
his Life and Times was given to the world. In that work he is
ordinarily garrulous even to minuteness about all that concerns
himself, and sometimes relates with amusing ingenuousness his own
mistakes and the censures which those mistakes brought upon him.
But about the ignominious judgment passed by the House of Commons
on his Pastoral Letter he has preserved a most significant
silence.397

The plot which ruined Bohun, though it did no honour to those who
contrived it, produced important and salutary effects. Before the
conduct of the unlucky licenser had been brought under the
consideration of Parliament, the Commons had resolved, without
any division, and, as far as appears, without any discussion,
that the Act which subjected literature to a censorship should be
continued. But the question had now assumed a new aspect; and the
continuation of the Act was no longer regarded as a matter of
course. A feeling in favour of the liberty of the press, a
feeling not yet, it is true, of wide extent or formidable
intensity, began to show itself. The existing system, it was
said, was prejudicial both to commerce and to learning. Could it
be expected that any capitalist would advance the funds necessary
for a great literary undertaking, or that any scholar would
expend years of toil and research on such an undertaking, while
it was possible that, at the last moment, the caprice, the
malice, the folly of one man might frustrate the whole design?
And was it certain that the law which so grievously restricted
both the freedom of trade and the freedom of thought had really
added to the security of the State? Had not recent experience
proved that the licenser might himself be an enemy of their
Majesties, or, worse still, an absurd and perverse friend; that
he might suppress a book of which it would be for their interest
that every house in the country should have a copy, and that he
might readily give his sanction to a libel which tended to make
them hateful to their people, and which deserved to be torn and
burned by the hand of Ketch? Had the government gained much by
establishing a literary police which prevented Englishmen from
having the History of the Bloody Circuit, and allowed them, by
way of compensation, to read tracts which represented King
William and Queen Mary as conquerors?

In that age persons who were not specially interested in a public
bill very seldom petitioned Parliament against it or for it. The
only petitions therefore which were at this conjuncture presented
to the two Houses against the censorship came from booksellers,
bookbinders and printers.398 But the opinion which these classes
expressed was certainly not confined to them.

The law which was about to expire had lasted eight years. It was
renewed for only two years. It appears, from an entry in the
journals of the Commons which unfortunately is defective, that a
division took place on an 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 and stolen from him by
Blount, to exempt from the authority of the licenser every book
which bore the name of an author or publisher. This amendment was
rejected; and the bill passed, but not without a protest signed
by eleven peers who declared that they could not think it for the
public interest to subject all learning and true information to
the arbitrary will and pleasure of a mercenary and perhaps
ignorant licenser. Among those who protested were Halifax,
Shrewsbury and Mulgrave, three noblemen belonging to different
political parties, but all distinguished by their literary
attainments. It is to be lamented that the signatures of
Tillotson and Burnet, who were both present on that day, should
be wanting. Dorset was absent.399

Blount, by whose exertions and machinations the opposition to the
censorship had been raised, did not live to see that opposition
successful. Though not a very young man, he was possessed by an
insane passion for the sister of his deceased wife. Having long
laboured in vain to convince the object of his love that she
might lawfully marry him, he at last, whether from weariness of
life, or in the hope of touching her heart, inflicted on himself
a wound of which, after languishing long, he died. He has often
been mentioned as a blasphemer and selfmurderer. But the
important service which, by means doubtless most immoral and
dishonourable, he rendered to his country, has passed almost
unnoticed.400

Late in this busy and eventful session the attention of the
Houses was called to the state of Ireland. The government of that
kingdom had, during the six months which followed the surrender
of Limerick, been in an unsettled state. It was not till the
Irish troops who adhered to Sarsfield had sailed for France, and
till the Irish troops who had made their election to remain at
home had been disbanded, that William at length put forth a
proclamation solemnly announcing the termination of 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
first faint murmurs of the Englishry began to be heard. Coningsby
was during some months at the head of the administration. He soon
made himself in the highest degree odious to the dominant caste.
He was an unprincipled man; he was insatiable of riches; and he
was in a situation in which riches were easily to be obtained by
an unprincipled man. Immense sums of money, immense quantities of
military stores had been sent over from England. Immense
confiscations were taking place in Ireland. The rapacious
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 greatest offence. They might have pardoned his covetousness;
but they could not pardon the clemency which he showed to their
vanquished and enslaved enemies. His clemency indeed amounted
merely to this, that he loved money more than he hated Papists,
and that he was not unwilling to sell for a high price a scanty
measure of justice to some of the oppressed class. Unhappily, to
the ruling minority, sore from recent conflict and drunk with
recent victory, the subjugated majority was as a drove of cattle,
or rather as a pack of wolves. Man acknowledges in the inferior
animals no rights inconsistent with his own convenience; and as
man deals with the inferior animals the Cromwellian thought
himself at liberty to deal with the Roman Catholic. Coningsby
therefore drew on himself a greater storm of obloquy by his few
good acts than by his many bad acts. The clamour against him was
so violent that he was removed; and Sidney went over, with the
full power and dignity of Lord Lieutenant, to hold a Parliament
at Dublin.401

But the easy temper and graceful manners of Sidney failed to
produce a conciliatory effect. He does not indeed appear to have
been greedy of unlawful gain. But he did not restrain with a
sufficiently firm hand the crowd of subordinate functionaries
whom Coningsby's example and protection had encouraged to plunder
the public and to sell their good offices to suitors. Nor was the
new Viceroy of a temper to bear hard on the feeble remains of the
native aristocracy. He therefore speedily became an object of
suspicion and aversion to the Anglosaxon settlers. His first act
was to send out the writs for a general election. The Roman
Catholics had been excluded from every municipal corporation; but
no law had yet deprived them of the county franchise. It is
probable however that not a single Roman Catholic freeholder
ventured to approach the hustings. The members chosen were, with
few exceptions, men animated by the spirit of Enniskillen and
Londonderry, a spirit eminently heroic in times of distress and
peril, but too often cruel and imperious in the season of
prosperity and power. They detested the civil treaty of Limerick,
and were indignant when they learned that the Lord Lieutenant
fully expected from them a parliamentary ratification of that
odious contract, a contract which gave a licence to the idolatry
of the mass, and which prevented good Protestants from ruining
their Popish neighbours by bringing civil actions for injuries
done during the war.402

On the fifth of October 1692 the Parliament met at Dublin in
Chichester House. It was very differently composed from the
assembly which had borne the same title in 1689. Scarcely one
peer, not one member of the House of Commons, who had sate at the
King's Inns, was to be seen. To the 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, evidently
emigrants from Scotland, and probably Presbyterians, had seats in
the assembly.

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

The session opened with a solemn recognition of the paramount
authority of the mother country. The Commons ordered their clerk
to read to them the English Act which required them to take the
Oath of Supremacy and to subscribe the Declaration against
Transubstantiation. Having heard the Act read, they immediately
proceeded to obey it. Addresses were then voted which expressed
the warmest gratitude and attachment to the King. Two members,
who had been untrue to the Protestant and English interest during
the troubles, were expelled. Supplies, liberal when compared with
the resources of a country devastated by years of predatory war,
were voted with eagerness. But the bill for confirming the Act of
Settlement was thought to be too favourable to the native gentry,
and, as it could not be amended, was with little ceremony
rejected. A committee of the whole House resolved that the
unjustifiable indulgence with which the Irish had been treated
since the battle of the Boyne was one of the chief causes of the
misery of the kingdom. A Committee of Grievances sate daily till
eleven in the evening; and the proceedings of this inquest
greatly alarmed the Castle. Many instances of gross venality and
knavery on the part of men high in office were brought to light,
and many instances also of what was then thought a criminal
lenity towards the 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 a horse; a fourth had been protected
against Protestants who wished to bring actions against him for
wrongs committed during the years of confusion. The Lord
Lieutenant, having obtained nearly as much money as he could
expect, determined to put an end to these unpleasant inquiries.
He knew, however, that if he quarrelled with the Parliament for
treating either peculators or Papists with severity, he should
have little support in England. He therefore looked out for a
pretext, and was fortunate enough to find one. The Commons had
passed a vote which might with some plausibility be represented
as inconsistent with the Poynings statute. Any thing which looked
like a violation of that great fundamental law was likely to
excite strong disapprobation on the other side of Saint George's
Channel. The Viceroy saw his advantage, and availed himself of
it. He went to the chamber of the Lords at Chichester House, sent
for the Commons, reprimanded theme in strong language, charged
them with undutifully and ungratefully encroaching on the rights
of the mother country, and put an end to the session.404

Those whom he had lectured withdrew full of resentment. The
imputation which he had thrown on them was unjust. They had a
strong feeling of love and reverence for the land from which they
sprang, and looked with confidence for redress to the supreme
Parliament. Several of them went to London for the purpose of
vindicating themselves and of accusing the Lord Lieutenant. They
were favoured with a long and attentive audience, both by the
Lords and by the Commons, and were requested to put the substance
of what had been said into writing. The humble language of the
petitioners, and their protestations that they had never intended
to violate the Poynings statute, or to dispute the paramount
authority of England, effaced the impression which Sidney's
accusations had made. Both Houses addressed the King on the state
of Ireland. They censured no delinquent by name; but they
expressed an opinion that there had been gross maladministration,
that the public had been plundered, and that Roman Catholics had
been treated with unjustifiable tenderness. William in reply
promised that what was amiss should be corrected. His friend
Sidney was soon recalled, and consoled for the loss of the
viceregal dignity with the lucrative place of Master of the
Ordnance. The government of Ireland was for a time entrusted to
Lords justices, among whom Sir Henry Capel, a zealous Whig, very
little disposed to show indulgence to Papists, had the foremost
place.

The prorogation drew nigh; and still the fate of the Triennial
Bill was uncertain. Some of the ablest ministers thought the bill
a good one; and, even had they thought it a bad one, they would
probably have tried to dissuade their master from rejecting it.
It was impossible, however, to remove from his mind the
impression that a concession on this point would seriously impair
his authority. Not relying on the judgment of his ordinary
advisers, he sent Portland to ask the opinion of Sir William
Temple. Temple had made a retreat for himself at a place called
Moor Park, in the neighbourhood of Farnham. The country round his
dwelling was almost a wilderness. His amusement during some years
had been to create in the waste what those Dutch burgomasters
among whom he had passed some of the best years of his life,
would have considered as a paradise. His hermitage had been
occasionally honoured by the presence of the King, who had from a
boy known and esteemed the author of the Triple Alliance, and who
was well pleased to find, among the heath and furze 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 beds of
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 was apprehensive that the reasons which led him to form
this opinion might not be fully and correctly reported to the
King by Portland, who was indeed as brave a soldier and as trusty
a friend as ever lived, whose natural abilities were not
inconsiderable, and who, in some departments of business, had
great experience, but who was very imperfectly acquainted with
the history and constitution of England. As the state of Sir
William's health made it impossible for him to go himself to
Kensington, he determined to send his secretary thither. The
secretary was a poor scholar of four or five and twenty, under
whose plain garb and ungainly deportment were concealed some of
the choicest gifts that have ever been bestowed on any of the
children of men; rare powers of observation, brilliant wit,
grotesque invention, humour of the most austere flavour, yet
exquisitely delicious, eloquence singularly pure, manly and
perspicuous. This young man was named Jonathan Swift. He was born
in Ireland, but would have thought himself insulted if he had
been called an Irishman. He was of unmixed English blood, and,
through life, regarded the aboriginal population of the island in
which he first drew breath as an alien and a servile caste. He
had in the late reign kept terms at the University of Dublin, but
had been distinguished there only by his irregularities, and had
with difficulty obtained his degree. At the time of the
Revolution, he had, with many thousands of his fellow colonists,
taken refuge in the mother country from the violence of
Tyrconnel, and had thought himself fortunate in being able to
obtain shelter at Moor Park.405 For that shelter, however, he had
to pay a heavy price. He was thought to be sufficiently
remunerated for his services with twenty pounds a year and his
board. He dined at the second table. Sometimes, indeed, when
better company was not to be had, he was honoured by being
invited to play at cards with his patron; and on such occasions
Sir William was so generous as to give his antagonist a little
silver to begin with.406 The humble student would not have dared
to raise 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 make love to a pretty waitingmaid who was the
chief ornament of the servants' hall, and whose name is
inseparably associated with his in a sad and mysterious history.

Swift many years later confessed some part of what he felt when
he found himself on his way to Court. His spirit had been bowed
down, and might seem to have been broken, by calamities and
humiliations. The language which he was in the habit of holding
to his patron, as far as we can judge 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 master sufficed to make the
servant miserable during several days.408 But this tameness was
merely the tameness with which a tiger, caught, caged and
starved, submits to the keeper who brings him food. The humble
menial was at heart the haughtiest, the most aspiring, the most
vindictive, the most despotic of men. And now at length a great,
a boundless prospect was opening before him. To William he was
already slightly known. At Moor Park the King had sometimes, when
his host was confined by gout to an easy chair, been attended by
the secretary about the grounds. His Majesty had condescended to
teach his companion the Dutch way of cutting and eating
asparagus, and had graciously asked whether Mr. Swift would like
to have a captain's commission in a cavalry regiment. But now for
the first time the young man was to stand in the royal presence
as a counsellor. He was admitted into the closet, delivered a
letter from Temple, and explained and enforced the arguments
which that letter contained, concisely, but doubtless with
clearness and ability. There was, he said, no reason to think
that short Parliaments would be more disposed than long
Parliaments to encroach on the just prerogatives of the Crown. In
fact the Parliament which had, in the preceding generation, waged
war against a king, led him captive, sent him to the prison, to
the bar, to the scaffold, was known in our annals as emphatically
the Long Parliament. Never would such disasters have befallen the
monarchy but for the fatal law which secured that assembly from
dissolution.409 There was, it must be owned, a flaw in this
reasoning which a man less shrewd than William might easily
detect. That one restriction of the royal prerogative had been
mischievous did not prove that another restriction would be
salutary. It by no means followed because one sovereign had been
ruined by being unable to get rid of a hostile Parliament that
another sovereign might not be ruined by being forced to part
with a friendly Parliament. To the great mortification of the
ambassador, his arguments failed to shake the King's resolution.
On the fourteenth of March the Commons were summoned to the Upper
House; the title of the Triennial Bill was read; and it was
announced, after the ancient form, that the King and Queen would
take the matter into their consideration. The Parliament was then
prorogued.

Soon after the prorogation William set out for the Continent. It
was necessary that, before his departure, he should make some
important changes. He was resolved not to discard Nottingham, on
whose integrity, a virtue rare among English statesmen, he placed
a well founded reliance. Yet, if Nottingham remained Secretary of
State, it was impossible to employ Russell at sea. Russell,
though much mortified, was induced to accept a lucrative post in
the household; and two naval officers of great note in their
profession, Killegrew and Delaval, were placed at the Board of
Admiralty and entrusted with the command of the Channel Fleet.410
These arrangements caused much murmuring among the Whigs; for
Killegrew and Delaval were certainly Tories, and were by many
suspected of being Jacobites. But other promotions which took place at the same
time proved that the King wished to bear himself evenly between the hostile
factions. Nottingham had, during a year, been the sole Secretary of State. He
was now joined with a colleague in whose
society he must have felt himself very ill at ease, John
Trenchard. Trenchard belonged to the extreme section of the Whig
party. He was a Taunton man, animated by that spirit which had,
during two generations, peculiarly distinguished Taunton. He had,
in the days of Popeburnings and of Protestant flails, been one of
the renowned Green Riband Club; he had been an active member of
several stormy Parliaments; he had brought in the first Exclusion
Bill; he had been deeply concerned in the plots formed 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 the
general pardon of 1686. Though his life had been passed in
turmoil, his temper was naturally calm; but he was closely
connected with a set of men whose passions were far fiercer than
his own. He had married the sister of Hugh Speke, one of the
falsest and most malignant of the libellers who brought disgrace
on the cause of constitutional freedom. Aaron Smith, the
solicitor of the Treasury, a man in whom the fanatic and the
pettifogger were strangely united, possessed too much influence
over the new Secretary, with whom he had, ten years before,
discussed plans of rebellion at the Rose. Why Trenchard was
selected in preference to many men of higher rank and greater
ability for a post of the first dignity and importance, it is
difficult to say. It seems however that, though he bore the title
and drew the salary of Secretary of State, he was not trusted
with any of the graver secrets of State, and that he was little
more than a superintendent of police, charged to look after the
printers 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 a far higher place in the administration. The Great Seal had
now been four years in commission. Since Maynard's retirement,
the constitution of the Court of Chancery had commanded little
respect. Trevor, who was the First Commissioner, wanted neither
parts nor learning; but his integrity was with good reason
suspected; and the duties which, as Speaker of the House of
Commons, he had to perform during four or five months in the
busiest part of every year, made it impossible for him to be an
efficient judge in equity. Every suitor complained that he had to
wait a most unreasonable time for a judgment, and that, when at
length a judgment had been pronounced, it was very likely to be
reversed on appeal. Meanwhile there was no efficient minister of
justice, no great functionary to whom it especially belonged to
advise the King touching the appointment of judges, of Counsel
for the Crown, of Justices of the Peace.412 It was known that
William was sensible of the inconvenience of this state of
things; and, during several months, there had been flying rumours
that a Lord Keeper or a Lord Chancellor would soon be
appointed.413 The name most frequently mentioned was that of
Nottingham. But the same reasons which had prevented him from
accepting the Great Seal in 1689 had, since that year, rather
gained than lost strength. William at length fixed his choice on
Somers.

Somers was only in his forty-second year; and five years had not
elapsed since, on the great day of the trial of the Bishops, his
powers had first been made known to the world. From that time his
fame had been steadily and rapidly rising. Neither in forensic
nor in parliamentary eloquence had he any superior. The
consistency of his public conduct had gained for him the entire
confidence of the Whigs; and the urbanity of his manners had
conciliated the Tories. It was not without great reluctance that
he consented to quit an assembly over which he exercised an
immense influence for an assembly where it would be necessary for
him to sit in silence. He had been but a short time in great
practice. His savings were small. Not having the means of
supporting a hereditary title, he must, if he accepted the high
dignity which was offered to him, preside during some years in
the Upper House without taking part in the debates. The opinion
of others, however, was that he would be more useful 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 is necessary for the public service that you should take this
charge upon you; and I have it in command from His Majesty to say
that he can admit of no excuse." Somers submitted. The seal was
delivered to him, with a patent which entitled him to a pension
of two thousand a year from the day on which he should quit his
office; and he was immediately sworn in a 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
the twenty-fourth of March.

He left orders that the Estates of Scotland should, after a
recess of more than two years and a half, be again called
together. Hamilton, who had 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 was necessary that one of the
Secretaries of State for Scotland should be in attendance on the
King. The Master of Stair had therefore gone to the Continent.
His colleague, Johnstone, was chief manager for the Crown at
Edinburgh, and was charged to correspond regularly with
Carstairs, who never quitted William.415

It might naturally have been expected that the session would be
turbulent. The Parliament was that very Parliament which had in
1689 passed, by overwhelming majorities, all the most violent
resolutions which Montgomery and his club could frame, which had
refused supplies, which had proscribed the ministers of the
Crown, which had closed the Courts of justice, which had seemed
bent on turning Scotland into an oligarchical republic. In 1690
the Estates had been in a better temper. Yet, even in 1690, they
had, when the ecclesiastical polity of the realm was under
consideration, paid little deference to what was well known to be
the royal wish. They had abolished patronage; they had sanctioned
the rabbling of the episcopal clergy; they had refused to pass a
Toleration Act. It seemed likely that they would still be found
unmanageable when questions touching religion came before them;
and such questions it was unfortunately necessary to bring
forward. William had, during the recess, attempted to persuade
the General Assembly of the Church to receive into communion such
of the old curates as should subscribe the Confession of Faith
and should submit to the government of Synods. But the attempt
had failed; and the Assembly had consequently been dissolved by
the Lord Commissioner. Unhappily, the Act which established the
Presbyterian polity had not defined the extent of the power which
was to be exercised by the Sovereign over the Spiritual Courts.
No sooner therefore had the dissolution been announced than the
Moderator requested permission to speak. He was told that he was
now merely a private person. As a private person he requested a
hearing, and protested, in the name of his brethren, against the
royal mandate. The right, he said, of the office bearers of the
Church to meet and deliberate 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 their concurrence in what their
President had said. Before they retired they fixed a day for
their next meeting.416 It was indeed a very distant day; and when
it came neither minister nor elder attended;for even the boldest
members shrank from a complete rupture with the civil power. But,
though there was not open war between the Church and the
Government, they were estranged from each other, jealous of each
other, and afraid of each other. No progress had been made
towards a reconciliation when the Estates met; and which side the
Estates would take might well be doubted.

But the proceedings of this strange Parliament, in almost every
one of its sessions, falsified all the predictions of
politicians. It had once been 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 most noisy agitators of the
club, with the exception of Montgomery, who was dying of want and
of a broken heart in a garret far from his native land. There was
the canting Ross and the perfidious Annandale. There was Sir
Patrick Hume, lately created a peer, and henceforth to be called
Lord Polwarth, but still as eloquent as when his interminable
declamations and dissertations ruined the expedition of Argyle.
But the whole spirit of the assembly had undergone a change. The
members listened with profound respect to the royal letter, and
returned an answer in reverential and affectionate language. An
extraordinary aid of a hundred and fourteen thousand pounds
sterling was granted to the Crown. Severe laws were enacted
against the Jacobites. The legislation on ecclesiastical matters
was as Erastian as William himself could have desired. An Act was
passed requiring all ministers of the Established Church to swear
fealty to their Majesties, and directing the General Assembly to
receive into communion those Episcopalian ministers, not yet
deprived, who should declare that they conformed to the
Presbyterian doctrine and discipline.417 Nay, the Estates carried
adulation so far as to make it their humble request to the King
that he would be pleased to confer a Scotch peerage on his
favourite Portland. This was indeed their chief petition. They
did not ask for redress of a single grievance. They contented
themselves with hinting in general terms that there were abuses
which required correction, and with referring the King for fuller
information to his own Ministers, the Lord High Commissioner and
the Secretary of State.418

There was one subject on which it may seem strange that even the
most servile of Scottish Parliaments should have kept silence.
More than a year had elapsed since the massacre of Glencoe; and
it might have been expected that the whole assembly, peers,
commissioners of shires, commissioners of burghs, would with one
voice have demanded a strict investigation into that great crime.
It is certain, however, that no motion for investigation was
made. The state of the Gaelic clans was indeed taken into
consideration. A law was passed for the more effectual
suppressing of depredations and outrages beyond the Highland
line; and in that law was inserted a special proviso reserving to
Mac Callum More his hereditary jurisdiction. But it does not
appear, either from the public records of the proceedings of the
Estates, or from those private letters in which Johnstone
regularly gave Carstairs an account of what had passed, that any
speaker made any allusion to the fate of Mac Ian and his
kinsmen.419 The only explanation of this extraordinary silence
seems to be that the public men who were assembled in the capital
of Scotland knew little and cared little about the fate of a
thieving tribe of Celts. The injured clan, bowed down by fear of
the allpowerful Campbells, and little accustomed to resort to the
constituted authorities of the kingdom for protection or redress,
presented no petition to the Estates. The story of the butchery
had been told at coffeehouses, but had been told in different
ways. Very recently, one or two books, in which the facts were
but too truly related, had come forth from the secret presses of
London. But those books were not publicly exposed to sale. They
bore the name of no responsible author. The Jacobite writers
were, as a class, savagely malignant and utterly regardless of
truth. Since the Macdonalds did not complain, a prudent man might
naturally be unwilling to incur the displeasure of the King, of
the ministers, and of the most powerful family in Scotland, by
bringing forward an accusation grounded on nothing but reports
wandering from mouth to mouth, or pamphlets which no licenser had
approved, to which no author had put his name, and which no
bookseller ventured to place in his shop-window. But whether this
be or be not the true solution, it is certain that the Estates
separated quietly after a session of two months, during which, as
far as can now be discovered, the name of Glencoe was not once
uttered in the Parliament 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 his kingdom burned down to the water edge, had returned in no
good humour to his abode near Paris. Misfortune generally made
him devout after his own fashion; and he now starved himself and
flogged himself till his spiritual guides were forced to
interfere.420

It is difficult to conceive a duller place than Saint Germains was
when he held his Court there; and yet there was scarcely in all
Europe a residence more enviably situated than that which the
generous Lewis had assigned to his suppliants. The woods were
magnificent, the air clear and salubrious, the prospects
extensive and cheerful. No charm of rural life was wanting; and
the towers of the most superb city of the Continent were visible
in the distance. The royal apartments were richly adorned with
tapestry and marquetry, vases of silver and mirrors in gilded
frames. A pension of more than forty thousand pounds sterling was
annually paid to James from the French Treasury. He had a guard
of honour composed of some of the finest soldiers in Europe. If
he wished to amuse himself with field sports, he had at his
command an establishment far more sumptuous than that which had
belonged to him when he was at the head of a great kingdom, an
army of huntsmen and fowlers, a vast arsenal of guns, spears,
buglehorns and tents, miles of network, staghounds, foxhounds,
harriers, packs for the boar and packs for the wolf, gerfalcons
for the heron and haggards for the wild duck. His presence
chamber and his antechamber were in outward show as splendid as
when he was at Whitehall. He was still surrounded by blue ribands
and white staves. But over the mansion and the domain brooded a
constant gloom, the effect, partly of bitter regrets and of
deferred hopes, but chiefly of the abject superstition which had
taken complete possession of his own mind, and which was affected
by almost all those who aspired to his favour. His palace wore
the aspect of a monastery. There were three places of worship
within the spacious pile. Thirty or forty ecclesiastics were
lodged in the building; and their apartments were eyed with envy
by noblemen and gentlemen who had followed the fortunes of their
Sovereign, and who thought it hard that, when there was so much
room under his roof, they should be forced to sleep in the
garrets of the neighbouring town. Among the murmurers was the
brilliant Anthony 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 owe the most highly finished and vividly
coloured picture of the English Court in the days when the
English Court was gayest. He complains that existence was one
round of religious exercises; that, in order to live in peace, it
was necessary to pass half the day in devotion or in the outward
show of devotion; that, if he tried to dissipate his melancholy
by breathing the fresh air of that noble terrace which looks down
on the valley of the Seine, he was driven away by the clamour of
a Jesuit who had 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 strong fellow 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 of friendship and
of piety. All the saints of the royal household were praying for
each other and backbiting each other from morning, to night. Here
and there in the throng of hypocrites might be remarked a man too
highspirited to dissemble. But such a man, however advantageously
he might have made himself known elsewhere, was certain to be
treated with disdain 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, it was infinitely more disagreeable to a Protestant.
For the Protestant had to endure, in addition to all the dulness
of which the Roman Catholic complained, a crowd of vexations from
which the Roman Catholic was free. In every competition between a
Protestant and a Roman Catholic the Roman Catholic was preferred.
In every quarrel between a Protestant and a Roman Catholic the
Roman Catholic was supposed to be in the right. While the
ambitious Protestant looked in vain for promotion, while the
dissipated Protestant looked in vain for amusement, the serious
Protestant looked in vain for spiritual instruction and
consolation. James might, no doubt, easily have obtained
permission for those members of the Church of England who had
sacrificed every thing in his cause to meet privately in some
modest oratory, and to receive the eucharistic bread and wine
from the hands of one of their own clergy; but he did not wish
his residence to be defiled by such impious rites. Doctor Dennis
Granville, who had quitted the richest deanery, the richest
archdeaconry and 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 his own communion. His request was
refused; and he was so grossly insulted by his master's chaplains
and their retainers that he was forced to quit Saint Germains.
Lest some other Anglican doctor should be equally importunate,
James wrote to inform his agents in England that he wished no
Protestant divine to come out to him.422 Indeed the nonjuring
clergy were at least as much sneered at and as much railed at in
his palace as in his nephew's. If any man had a claim to be
mentioned with respect at Saint Germains, it was surely Sancroft.
Yet it was reported that the bigots who were assembled there
never spoke of him but with aversion and disgust. The sacrifice
of the first place in the Church, of the first place in the
peerage, of the mansion at Lambeth and the mansion at Croydon, of
immense patronage and of a revenue of more than five thousand a
year was thought but a poor atonement for the great crime of
having modestly remonstrated against the unconstitutional
Declaration of Indulgence. Sancroft was pronounced to be just
such a traitor and just such a penitent as Judas Iscariot. The
old hypocrite had, it was said, while affecting reverence and
love for his master, given the fatal signal to his master's
enemies. When the mischief had been done and could not be
repaired, the conscience of the sinner had begun to torture him.
He had, like his prototype, blamed himself and bemoaned himself.
He had, like his prototype, flung down his wealth at the feet of
those whose instrument he had been. The best thing that he could
now do was to make the parallel complete by hanging himself.423

James seems to have thought that the strongest proof of kindness
which he could give to heretics who had resigned wealth, country,
family, for his sake, was to suffer them to be beset, on their
dying beds, by his priests. If some sick man, helpless in body
and in mind, and deafened by the din of bad logic and bad
rhetoric, suffered a wafer to be thrust into his mouth, a great
work of grace was triumphantly announced to the Court; and the
neophyte was buried with all the pomp of religion. But if a
royalist, of the highest rank and most stainless character, died
professing firm attachment to the Church of England, a hole was
dug in the fields; and, at dead of night, he was flung into it
and covered up like a mass of carrion. Such were the obsequies of
the Earl of Dunfermline, who had served the House of Stuart with
the hazard of his life and to the utter ruin of his fortunes, who
had fought at Killiecrankie, and who had, after the victory,
lifted from the earth the still breathing remains of Dundee.
While living he had been treated with contumely. The Scottish
officers who had long served under him had in vain entreated
that, when they were formed into a company, he might still be
their commander. His religion had been thought a fatal
disqualification. A worthless adventurer, whose only
recommendation was that he was a Papist, was preferred.
Dunfermline continued, during a short time, to make his
appearance in the circle which surrounded the Prince whom he had
served too well; but it was to no purpose. The bigots who ruled
the Court refused to the ruined and expatriated Protestant Lord
the means of subsistence; he died of a broken heart; and they
refused him even a grave.424

The insults daily offered at Saint Germains to the Protestant
religion produced a great effect in England. The Whigs
triumphantly asked whether it were not clear that the old tyrant
was utterly incorrigible; and many even of the nonjurors observed
his proceedings with shame, disgust and alarm.425 The Jacobite
party had, from the first, been divided into two sections, which,
three or four years after the Revolution, began to be known as
the Compounders and the Noncompounders. The Compounders were
those who wished for a restoration, but for a restoration
accompanied by a general amnesty, and by guarantees for the
security of the civil and ecclesiastical constitution of the
realm. The Noncompounders thought it downright Whiggery,
downright rebellion; to take advantage of His Majesty's
unfortunate situation for the purpose of imposing on him any
condition. The plain duty of his subjects was to bring him back.
What traitors he would punish and what traitors he would spare,
what laws he would observe and with what laws he would dispense,
were questions to be decided by himself alone. If he decided them
wrongly, he must answer for his 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 Roman Catholics, who, very naturally, were not
solicitous to obtain any security for a religion which they
thought heretical, or for a polity from the benefits of which
they were excluded. There were also some Protestant nonjurors,
such as Kettlewell and Hickes, who resolutely followed the theory
of Filmer to all the extreme consequences to which it led. But,
though Kettlewell tried to convince his countrymen that
monarchical government had been ordained by God, not as a means
of making them happy here, but as a cross which it was their duty
to take up and bear in the hope of being recompensed for their
sufferings hereafter, and though Hickes assured them that there
was not a single Compounder in the whole Theban legion, very few
churchmen were inclined to run the risk of the gallows merely for
the purpose of reestablishing the High Commission and the
Dispensing Power.

The Compounders formed the main strength of the Jacobite party in
England; but the Noncompounders had hitherto had undivided sway
at Saint Germains. No Protestant, no moderate Roman Catholic, no
man who dared to hint that any law could bind the royal
prerogative, could hope for the smallest mark of favour from the
banished King. The priests and the apostate Melfort, the avowed
enemy of the Protestant religion and of civil liberty, of
Parliaments, of trial by jury and of the Habeas Corpus Act, were
in exclusive possession of the royal ear. Herbert was called
Chancellor, walked before the other officers of state, wore a
black robe embroidered with gold, and carried a seal; but he was
a member of the Church of England; and therefore he was not
suffered to sit at the Council 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 reciprocity of obligation. Their duty was to risk
property, liberty, life, in order to replace him on the throne,
and then to bear patiently whatever he chose to inflict upon
them. They could no more pretend to merit before him than before
God. When they had done all, they were still unprofitable
servants. The highest praise due to the royalist who shed his
blood on the field of battle or on the scaffold for hereditary
monarchy was simply that he was not a traitor. After all the
severe discipline which the deposed King had undergone, he was
still as much bent on plundering and abasing the Church of
England as on the day when he told the kneeling fellows of
Magdalene to get out of his sight, or on the day when he sent the
Bishops to the Tower. He was in the habit of declaring that he
would rather die without seeing England again than stoop to
capitulate with those whom he ought to command.427 In the
Declaration of April 1692 the whole man appears without disguise,
full of his own imaginary rights, unable to understand how any
body but himself can have any rights, dull, obstinate and cruel.
Another paper which he drew up about the same time shows, if
possible, still more clearly, how little he had profited by a
sharp experience. In that paper he set forth the plan according
to which he intended to govern when he should be restored. He
laid it down as a rule that one Commissioner of the Treasury, one
of the two Secretaries of State, the Secretary at War, the
majority of the Great Officers of the Household, the majority of
the 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 from
London letter after letter filled with judicious counsel and
earnest supplication. It was to no purpose that they demonstrated
in the plainest manner the impossibility of establishing Popish
ascendancy in a country where at least forty-nine fiftieths of
the population and much more than forty-nine fiftieths of the
wealth and the intelligence were Protestant. It was to no purpose
that they informed their master that the Declaration of April
1692 had been read with exultation by his enemies and with deep
affliction by his friends, that it had been printed and
circulated by the usurpers, that it had done more than all the
libels of the Whigs to inflame the nation against him, and that
it had furnished those naval officers who had promised him
support with a plausible pretext for breaking faith with him, and
for destroying the fleet which was to have convoyed him back to
his kingdom. He continued to be deaf to the remonstrances of his
best friends in England till those remonstrances began to be
echoed at Versailles. All the information which Lewis and his
ministers were able to obtain touching the state of our island
satisfied them that James would never be restored unless he could
bring himself to make large concessions to his subjects. It was
therefore intimated to him, kindly and courteously, but
seriously, that he would do well to change his counsels and his
counsellors. France could not continue the war for the purpose of
forcing a Sovereign on an unwilling nation. She was crushed by
public burdens. Her trade and industry languished. Her harvest
and her vintage had failed. The peasantry were starving. The
faint murmurs of the provincial Estates began to be heard. There
was a limit to the amount of the sacrifices which the most
absolute prince could demand from those whom he ruled. However
desirous the Most Christian King might be to uphold the cause of
hereditary monarchy and of pure religion all over the world, his
first duty was to his own kingdom; and, unless a
counterrevolution speedily took place in England, his duty to his
own kingdom might impose on him the painful necessity of treating
with the Prince of Orange. It would therefore be wise in James to
do without delay whatever he could honourably and conscientiously
do to win back the hearts of his people.

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

Middleton's family and his peerage were Scotch. But he was
closely connected with some of the noblest houses of England; he
had resided long in England; he had been appointed by Charles the
Second one of the English Secretaries of State, and had been
entrusted by James with the lead of the English House of Commons.
His abilities and acquirements were considerable; his temper was
easy and generous; his manners were popular; and his conduct had
generally been consistent and honourable. He had, when Popery was
in the ascendant, resolutely refused to purchase the royal favour
by apostasy. Roman Catholic ecclesiastics had been sent to
convert him; and the town had been much amused by the dexterity
with which the layman baffled the divines. A priest undertook to
demonstrate the doctrine of transubstantiation, and made the
approaches in the usual form. "Your Lordship believes in the
Trinity." "Who told you so?" said Middleton. "Not believe in the
Trinity!" cried the priest in amazement. "Nay," said Middleton;
"prove your religion to be true if you can; but do not catechize
me about mine." As it was plain that the Secretary was not a
disputant whom it was easy to take at an advantage, the
controversy ended almost as soon as it began.429 When fortune
changed, Middleton adhered to the cause of hereditary monarchy
with a stedfastness which was the more respectable because he
would have had no difficulty in making his peace with the new
government. His sentiments were so well known that, when the
kingdom was agitated by apprehensions of an invasion and an
insurrection, he was arrested and sent to the Tower; but no
evidence on which he could be convicted of treason was
discovered; and, when the dangerous crisis was past, he was set
at liberty. It should seem indeed that, during the three years
which followed the Revolution, he was by no means an active
plotter. He saw that a Restoration could be effected only with
the general assent of the nation, and that the nation would never
assent to a Restoration without securities against Popery and
arbitrary power. He therefore conceived that, while his banished
master obstinately refused to give such securities, it would be
worse than idle to conspire against the existing government.

Such was the man whom James, in consequence of strong
representations from Versailles, now invited to join him in
France. The great body of Compounders learned with delight that
they were at length to be represented in the Council at Saint
Germains by one of their favourite leaders. Some noblemen and
gentlemen, who, though they had not approved of the deposition of
James, had been so much disgusted by his perverse and absurd
conduct that they had long avoided all connection with him, now
began to hope that he had seen his error. They had refused to
have any thing to do with Melfort; but they communicated freely
with Middleton. The new minister conferred also with the four
traitors whose infamy has been made preeminently conspicuous by
their station, their abilities, and their great public services;
with Godolphin, the great object of whose life was to be in
favour with both the rival Kings at once, and to keep, through
all revolutions and counterrevolutions, his head, his estate and
a place at the Board of Treasury; with Shrewsbury, who, having
once in a fatal moment entangled himself in criminal and
dishonourable engagements, had not had the resolution to break
through them; with Marlborough, who continued to profess the
deepest repentance for 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 La Hogue, and renewed his promise to
do what Monk had done, on condition that a general pardon should
be granted to all political offenders, and that the royal power
should be placed under strong constitutional restraints.

Before Middleton left England he had collected the sense of all
the leading Compounders. They were of opinion that there was one
expedient which would reconcile contending factions at home, and
lead to the speedy pacification of Europe. This expedient was
that James should resign the Crown in favour of the Prince of
Wales, and that the Prince of Wales should be bred a Protestant.
If, as was but too probable, His Majesty should refuse to listen
to this suggestion, he must at least consent to put forth a
Declaration which might do away the unfavourable impression made
by his Declaration of the preceding spring. A paper such as it
was thought expedient that he should publish was carefully drawn
up, and, after much discussion, approved.

Early in the year 1693, Middleton, having been put in full
possession of the views of the principal English Jacobites, stole
across the Channel, and made his appearance at the Court of
James. There was at that Court no want of slanderers and sneerers
whose malignity was only the more dangerous because it wore a
meek and sanctimonious air. Middleton found, on his arrival, that
numerous lies, fabricated by the priests who feared and hated
him, were already in circulation. Some Noncompounders too had
written from London that he was at heart a Presbyterian and a
republican. He was however very graciously received, and was
appointed Secretary of State conjointly with Melfort.430

It very soon appeared that James was fully resolved never to
resign the Crown, or to suffer the Prince of Wales to be bred a
heretic; and it long seemed doubtful whether any arguments or
entreaties would induce him to sign the Declaration which his
friends in England had prepared. It was indeed a document very
different from any that had yet appeared under his Great Seal. He
was made to promise that he would grant a free pardon to all his
subjects who should not oppose him after he should land in the
island; that, as soon as he was restored, he would call a
Parliament; that he would confirm all such laws, passed during
the usurpation, as the Houses should tender to him for
confirmation; that he would waive his right to the chimney money;
that he would protect and defend the Established Church in the
enjoyment of all her possessions and privileges; that he would
not again violate the Test Act; that he would leave it to the
legislature to define the extent of his dispensing power; and
that he would maintain the Act of Settlement in Ireland.

He struggled long and hard. He pleaded his conscience. Could a
son of the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church bind himself
to protect and defend heresy, and to enforce a law which excluded
true believers from office? Some of the ecclesiastics who swarmed
in his household told him that he could not without sin give any
such pledge as his undutiful subjects demanded. On this point the
opinion of Middleton, who was a Protestant, could be of no
weight. But Middleton found an ally in one whom he regarded as a
rival and an enemy. Melfort, scared by the universal hatred of
which he knew himself to be the object, and afraid that he should
be held accountable, both in England and in France, for his
master's wrongheadedness, submitted the case to several eminent
Doctors of the Sorbonne. These learned casuists pronounced the
Declaration unobjectionable in a religious point of view. The
great Bossuet, Bishop of Meaux, who was regarded by the Gallican
Church as a father scarcely inferior in authority to Cyprian or
Augustin, showed, by powerful arguments, both theological and
political, that the scruple which tormented James was precisely
of that sort against which a much wiser King had given a caution
in the words, "Be not righteous overmuch."431 The authority of
the French divines was supported by the authority of the French
government. The language held at Versailles was so strong that
James began to be alarmed. What if Lewis should take serious
offence, should think his hospitality ungratefully requited,
should conclude a peace with the usurpers, and should request his
unfortunate 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 own right and to establish the liberties of our
people; and may God give us success in the prosecution of the one
as we sincerely intend the confirmation of the other!"432 The
prayer was heard. The success of James was strictly proportioned
to his sincerity. What his sincerity was we know on the best
evidence. Scarcely had he called on heaven to witness the truth
of his professions, when he directed
Melfort to send a copy of the Declaration to Rome with such
explanations as might satisfy the Pope. Melfort's letter ends
thus: "After all, the object of this Declaration is only to get
us back to England. We shall fight the battle of the Catholics
with much greater advantage at Whitehall than at Saint
Germains."433

Meanwhile the document from which so much was expected had been
despatched to London. There it was printed at a secret press in
the house of a Quaker; for there was among the Quakers a party,
small in number, but zealous and active, which had imbibed the
politics of William Penn.434 To circulate such a work was a
service of some danger; but agents were found. Several persons
were taken up while distributing copies in the streets of the
city. A hundred packets were stopped 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 to suppress what could
not be suppressed, and published the Declaration at full length,
accompanied by a severe commentary.435

The commentary, however, was hardly needed. The Declaration
altogether failed to produce the effect which Middleton had
anticipated. The truth is that his advice had not been asked till
it mattered not what advice he gave. If James had put forth such
a manifesto in January 1689, the throne would probably not have
been declared vacant. If he had put forth such a manifesto when
he was on the coast of Normandy at the head of an army, he would
have conciliated a large part of the nation, and he might
possibly have been joined by a large part of the fleet. But both
in 1689 and in 1692 he had held the language of an implacable
tyrant; and it was now too late to affect tenderness of heart and
reverence for the constitution of the realm. The contrast between
the new Declaration and the preceding Declaration excited, not
without reason, general suspicion and contempt. What confidence
could be placed in the word of a Prince so unstable, of a Prince
who veered from extreme to extreme? In 1692 nothing would satisfy
him but the heads and quarters of hundreds of poor ploughmen and
boatmen who had, several years before, taken some rustic
liberties with him at which his grandfather Henry the Fourth
would have had a hearty laugh. In 1693 the foulest and most
ungrateful treasons were to be covered with oblivion. Caermarthen
expressed the general sentiment. "I do not," he said, "understand
all this. Last April I was to be hanged. This April I am to have
a free pardon. I cannot imagine what I have done during the past
year to deserve such goodness." The general opinion was that a
snare was hidden under this unwonted clemency, this unwonted
respect for law. The Declaration, it was said, was excellent; and
so was the Coronation oath. Every body knew how King James had
observed his Coronation oath; and every body might guess how he
would observe his Declaration. While grave men reasoned thus, the
Whig jesters were not sparing of their pasquinades. Some of the
Noncompounders, meantime, uttered indignant murmurs. The King was
in bad hands, in the hands of men who hated monarchy. His mercy
was cruelty of the worst sort. The general pardon which he had
granted to his enemies was in truth a general proscription of his
friends. Hitherto the judges appointed by the usurper had been
under a restraint, imperfect indeed, yet not absolutely nugatory.
They had known that a day of reckoning might come, and had
therefore in general dealt tenderly with the persecuted adherents
of the rightful King. That restraint His Majesty had now taken
away. He had told Holt and Treby that, till he should land in
England, they might hang royalists without the smallest fear of
being called to account.436

But by no class of people was the Declaration read with so much
disgust and indignation as by the native aristocracy of Ireland.
This then was the reward of their loyalty. This was the faith of
kings. When England had cast James out, when Scotland had
rejected him, the Irish had still been true to him; and he had,
in return, solemnly given his sanction to a law which restored to
them an immense domain of which they had been despoiled. Nothing
that had happened since that time had diminished their claim to
his favour. They had defended his cause to the last; they had
fought for him long after he had deserted them; many of them,
when unable to contend longer against superior force, had
followed him into banishment; and now it appeared that he was
desirous to make peace with his deadliest enemies at the expense
of his most faithful friends. There was much discontent in the
Irish regiments which were dispersed through the Netherlands and
along the frontiers of Germany and Italy. Even the Whigs allowed
that, for once, the O's and Macs were in the right, and asked
triumphantly whether a prince who had broken his word to his
devoted servants could be expected to keep it to his foes?437

While the Declaration was the subject of general conversation in
England, military operations recommenced on the Continent. The
preparations of France had been such as amazed even those who
estimated most highly her resources and the abilities of her
rulers. Both her agriculture and her commerce were suffering. The
vineyards of Burgundy, the interminable cornfields of the Beauce,
had failed to yield their increase; the looms of Lyons were
silent; and the merchant ships were rotting in the harbour of
Marseilles. Yet the monarchy presented to its numerous enemies a
front more haughty and more menacing than ever. Lewis had
determined not to make any advance towards a reconciliation with
the new government of England till the whole strength of his
realm had been put forth in one more effort. A mighty effort in
truth it was, but too exhausting to be repeated. He made an
immense display of force at once on the Pyrenees and on the Alps,
on the Rhine and on the Meuse, in the Atlantic and in the
Mediterranean. That nothing might be wanting which could excite
the martial ardour of a nation eminently highspirited, he
instituted, a few days before he left his palace for the camp, a
new military order of knighthood, and placed it under the
protection of his own sainted ancestor and patron. The new cross
of Saint Lewis shone on the breasts of the gentlemen who had been
conspicuous in the trenches before Mons and Namur, and on the
fields of Fleurus and Steinkirk; and the sight raised a generous
emulation among those who had still to win an honourable fame in
arms.438

In the week in which this celebrated order began to exist
Middleton visited Versailles. A letter in which he gave his
friends in England an account of his visit has come down to
us.439 He was presented to Lewis, was most kindly received, and
was overpowered by gratitude and admiration. Of all the wonders
of the Court,--so Middleton wrote,--its master was the greatest.
The splendour of the great King's personal merit threw even the
splendour of his fortunes into the shade. The language which His
Most Christian Majesty held about English politics was, on the
whole, highly satisfactory. Yet in one thing this accomplished
prince and his able and experienced ministers were strangely
mistaken. They were all possessed with the absurd notion that the
Prince of Orange was a great man. No pains had been spared to
undeceive them; but they were under an incurable delusion. They
saw through a magnifying glass of such power that the leech
appeared to them a leviathan. It ought to have occurred to
Middleton that possibly the delusion might be in his own vision
and not in theirs. Lewis and the counsellors who surrounded him
were far indeed from loving William. But they did not hate him
with that mad hatred which raged in the breasts of his English
enemies. Middleton was one of the wisest and most moderate of the
Jacobites. Yet even Middleton's judgment was so much darkened by
malice that, on this subject, he talked nonsense unworthy of his
capacity. He, like the rest of his party, could see in the
usurper nothing but what was odious and contemptible, the heart
of a fiend, the understanding and manners of a stupid, brutal,
Dutch boor, who generally observed a sulky silence, and, when
forced to speak, gave short testy answers in bad English. The
French statesmen, on the other hand, judged of William's
faculties from an intimate knowledge of the way in which he had,
during twenty years, conducted affairs of the greatest moment and
of the greatest difficulty. He had, ever since 1673, been playing
against themselves a most complicated game of mixed chance and
skill for an immense stake; they were proud, and with reason, of
their own dexterity at that game; yet they were conscious that in
him they had found more than their match. At the commencement of
the long contest every advantage had been on their side. They had
at their absolute command all the resources of the greatest
kingdom in Europe; and he was merely the servant of a
commonwealth, of which the whole territory was inferior in extent
to Normandy or Guienne. A succession of generals and diplomatists
of eminent ability had been opposed to him. A powerful faction in
his native country had pertinaciously crossed his designs. He had
undergone defeats in the field and defeats in the senate; but his
wisdom and firmness had turned defeats into victories.
Notwithstanding all that could be done to keep him down, his
influence and fame had been almost constantly rising and
spreading. The most important and arduous enterprise in the
history of modern Europe had been planned and conducted to a
prosperous termination by him alone. The most extensive coalition
that the world had seen for ages had been formed by him, and
would be instantly dissolved if his superintending care were
withdrawn. He had gained two kingdoms by statecraft, and a third
by conquest; and he was still maintaining himself in the
possession of all three in spite of both foreign and domestic
foes. That these things had been effected by a poor creature, a
man of the most ordinary capacity, was an assertion which might
easily find credence among the nonjuring parsons who congregated
at Sam's Coffee-house, but which moved the laughter of the
veteran politicians of Versailles.

While Middleton was in vain trying to convince the French that
William was a greatly overrated man, William, who did full
justice to Middleton's merit, felt much uneasiness at learning
that the Court of Saint 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 that spring pressed on the King's mind.
He was preparing for the opening of the campaign, imploring his
allies to be early in the field, rousing the sluggish, haggling
with the greedy, making up quarrels, adjusting points of
precedence. He had to prevail on the Cabinet of Vienna to send
timely succours into Piedmont. He had to keep a vigilant eye on
those Northern potentates who were trying to form a third party
in Europe. He had to act as tutor to the Elector of Bavaria in
the Netherlands. He had to provide for the defence of Liege, a
matter which the authorities of Liege coolly declared to be not
at all their business, but the business of England and Holland.
He had to prevent the House of Brunswick Wolfenbuttel from going
to blows with the House of Brunswick Lunenburg; he had to
accommodate a dispute between the Prince of Baden and the Elector
of Saxony, each of whom wished to be at the head of an army on
the Rhine; and he had to manage the Landgrave of Hesse, who
omitted to furnish his own contingent, and yet wanted to command
the contingents furnished by other princes.441

And now the time for action had arrived. On the eighteenth of May
Lewis left Versailles; early in June he was under the walls of
Namur. The Princesses, who had accompanied him, held their court
within the fortress. He took under his immediate command the army
of Boufflers, which was encamped at Gembloux. Little more than a
mile off lay the army of Luxemburg. The force collected in that
neighbourhood under the French lilies 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 the stratagem by which
Mons had been taken in 1691 and Namur in 1692; and he 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 the two threatened cities, and watched every
movement of the enemy.

Lewis was disappointed. He found that it would not be possible
for him to gratify his vanity so safely and so easily as in the
two preceding years, to sit down before a great town, to enter
the gates in triumph, and to receive the keys, without exposing
himself to any risk greater than that of a staghunt at
Fontainebleau. Before he could lay siege either to Liege or to
Brussels he must fight and win a battle. The chances were indeed
greatly in his favour; for his army was more numerous, better
officered and better disciplined than that of the allies.
Luxemburg strongly advised him to march against William. The
aristocracy of France anticipated with intrepid gaiety a bloody
but a glorious day, followed by a large distribution of the
crosses of the new order. William himself was perfectly aware of
his danger, and prepared to meet it with calm but mournful
fortitude.442 Just at this conjuncture Lewis announced his
intention to return instantly to Versailles, and to send the
Dauphin and Boufflers, with part of the army which was assembled
near Namur, to join Marshal Lorges who commanded in the
Palatinate. Luxemburg was thunderstruck. He expostulated boldly
and earnestly. Never, he said, was such an opportunity thrown
away. If His Majesty would march against the Prince of Orange,
victory was almost certain. Could any advantage which it was
possible to obtain on the Rhine be set against the advantage of a
victory gained in the heart of Brabant over the principal army
and the principal captain of the coalition? The Marshal reasoned;
he implored; he went on his knees; but in vain; and he quitted
the royal presence in the deepest dejection. Lewis left the camp
a week after he had joined it, and never afterwards made war in
person.

The astonishment was great throughout his army. All the awe which
he inspired could not prevent his old generals from grumbling and
looking sullen, his young nobles from venting their spleen,
sometimes in curses and sometimes in sarcasms, and even his
common soldiers from holding irreverent language round their
watchfires. His enemies rejoiced with vindictive and insulting
joy. Was it not strange, they asked, that this great prince
should have gone in state to the theatre of war, and then in a
week have gone in the same state back again? Was it necessary
that all that vast retinue, princesses, dames of honour and
tirewomen, equerries and gentlemen of the bedchamber, cooks,
confectioners and musicians, long trains of waggons, droves of
led horses and sumpter mules, piles of plate, bales of tapestry,
should travel four hundred miles merely in order that the Most
Christian King might look at his soldiers and then return? The
ignominious truth was too evident to be concealed. He had gone to
the Netherlands in the hope that he might again be able to snatch
some military glory without any hazard to his person, and had
hastened back rather than expose himself to the chances of a
pitched field.443 This was not the first time that His Most
Christian Majesty had shown the same kind of prudence. Seventeen
years before he had been opposed under the wails of Bouchain to
the same antagonist. William, with the ardour of a very young
commander, had most imprudently offered battle. The opinion of
the ablest generals was that, if Lewis had seized the
opportunity, the war might have been ended in a day. The French
army had eagerly asked to be led to the onset. The King had
called his lieutenants round him and had collected their
opinions. Some courtly officers to whom a hint of his wishes had
been dexterously conveyed had, blushing and stammering with
shame, voted against fighting. It was to no purpose that bold and
honest men, who prized his honour more than his life, had proved
to him that, on all principles of the military art, he ought to
accept the challenge rashly given by the enemy. His Majesty had
gravely expressed his sorrow that he could not, consistently with
his public duty, obey the impetuous movement of his blood, 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 still to flow, for the gratification of a man who wanted
the vulgar courage which was found in the meanest of the hundreds
of thousands whom he had sacrificed to his vainglorious ambition?

Though the French army in the Netherlands had been weakened by
the departure of the forces commanded by the Dauphin and
Boufflers, and though the allied army was daily strengthened by
the arrival of fresh troops, Luxemburg still had a superiority of
force; and that superiority he increased by an adroit stratagem.
He marched towards Liege, and made as 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 among the
inhabitants. He quitted his position near Louvain, advanced to
Nether Hespen, and encamped there with the river Gette in his
rear. On his march he learned that Huy had opened its gates to
the French. The news increased his anxiety about Liege, and
determined him to send thither a force sufficient to overawe
malecontents within the city, and to repel any attack from
without.445 This was exactly what Luxemburg had expected and
desired. His feint had served its purpose. He turned his back on
the fortress which had hitherto seemed to be his object, and
hastened towards the Gette. William, who had detached more than
twenty thousand men, and who had but fifty thousand left in his
camp, was alarmed by learning from his scouts, on the eighteenth
of July, that the French 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 was strong; and it could easily be made still
stronger. He set all his troops to work. Ditches were dug, mounds
thrown up, palisades fixed in the earth. In a few hours the
ground wore a new aspect; and the King trusted that he should be
able to repel the attack even of a force greatly outnumbering his
own. Nor was it without much appearance of reason that he felt
this confidence. When the morning of the nineteenth of July
broke, the bravest men of Lewis's army looked gravely and
anxiously on the fortress which had suddenly sprung up to arrest
their progress. The allies were protected by a breastwork. Here
and there along the entrenchments were formed little redoubts and
half moons. A hundred pieces of cannon were disposed along the
ramparts. On the left flank, the village of Romsdorff rose close
to the little stream of Landen, from which the English have named
the disastrous day. On the right was the village of Neerwinden.
Both villages were, after the fashion of the Low Countries,
surrounded by moats and fences; and, within these enclosures, the
little plots of ground occupied by different families were
separated by mud walls five feet in height and a foot in
thickness. All these barricades William had repaired and
strengthened. Saint Simon, who, after the battle, surveyed the
ground, could hardly, he tells us, believe that defences so
extensive and so formidable could have been created with such
rapidity.

Luxemburg, however, was determined to try whether even this
position could be maintained against the superior numbers and the
impetuous valour of his soldiers. Soon after sunrise the roar of
cannon began to be heard. William's batteries did much execution
before the French artillery could be so placed as to return the
fire. It was eight o'clock before the close fighting began. The
village of Neerwinden was regarded by both commanders as the
point on which every thing depended. There an attack was made by
the French left wing commanded by Montchevreuil, a veteran
officer of high reputation, and by Berwick, who, though young,
was fast rising to a high place among the captains of his time.
Berwick led the onset, and forced his way into the village, but
was soon driven out again with a terrible carnage. His followers
fled or perished; he, while trying to rally them, and cursing
them for not doing their duty better, was surrounded by foes. He
concealed his white cockade, and hoped to be able, by the help of
his native tongue, to pass himself off as an officer of the
English army. But his face was recognised by one of his mother's
brothers, George Churchill, who held on that day the command of a
brigade. A hurried embrace was exchanged between the kinsmen; and
the uncle conducted the nephew to William, who, as long as every
thing seemed to be going well, remained in the rear. The meeting
of the King and the captive, united by such close domestic ties,
and divided by such inexpiable injuries, was a strange sight.
Both behaved as became them. William uncovered, and addressed to
his prisoner a few words of courteous greeting. Berwick's only
reply was a solemn bow. The King put on his hat; the Duke put on
his hat; and the cousins parted for ever.

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

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

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

The household troops carne on in a manner worthy of their long
and terrible renown. A third time Neerwinden was taken. A third
time William tried to retake it. At the head of some English
regiments he charged the guards of Lewis with such fury that, for
the first time in the memory of the oldest warrior, that far
famed band gave way.446 It was only by the strenuous exertions of
Luxemburg, of the Duke of Chartres, and of the Duke of Bourbon,
that the broken ranks were rallied. But by this time the centre
and left of the allied army had been so much thinned for the
purpose of supporting the conflict at Neerwinden that the
entrenchments could no longer be defended on other points. A
little after four in the afternoon the whole line gave way. All
was havoc and confusion. Solmes had received a mortal wound, and
fell, still alive, into the hands of the enemy. The English
soldiers, to whom his name was hateful, accused him of having in
his sufferings shown pusillanimity unworthy 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 rich diamond 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 valuable
prisoner. The Duke's life was saved; and he was speedily
exchanged for Berwick. Ruvigny, animated by the true refugee
hatred of the country which had cast him out, was taken fighting
in the thickest of the battle. Those into whose hands he had
fallen knew him well, and knew that, if they carried him to their
camp, his head would pay for that treason to which persecution
had driven him. With admirable generosity they pretended not to
recognise him, and suffered him to make his escape in the tumult.

It was only on such occasions as this that the whole greatness of
William's character appeared. Amidst the rout and uproar, while
arms and standards were flung away, while multitudes of fugitives
were choking up the bridges and fords of the Gette or perishing
in its waters, the King, having directed Talmash to superintend
the retreat, put himself at the head of a few brave regiments,
and by desperate efforts arrested the progress of the enemy. His
risk was greater than that which others ran. For he could not be
persuaded either to encumber his feeble frame with a cuirass, or
to hide the ensigns of the garter. He thought his star a good
rallying point for his own troops, and only smiled when he was
told that it was a good mark for the enemy. Many fell on his
right hand and on his left. Two led horses, which in the field
always closely followed his person, were struck dead by cannon
shots. One musket ball passed through the curls of his wig,
another through his coat; a third bruised his side and tore his
blue riband to tatters. Many years later greyhaired old
pensioners who crept about the arcades and alleys of Chelsea
Hospital used to relate how he charged at the head of Galway's
horse, how he dismounted four times to put heart into the
infantry, how he rallied one corps which seemed to be shrinking;
"That is not the way to fight, gentlemen. You must stand close up
to them. Thus, gentlemen, thus." "You might have seen him," an
eyewitness wrote, only four days after the battle, "with his
sword in his hand, throwing himself upon the enemy. It is certain
that one time, among the rest, he was seen at the head of two
English regiments, and that he fought seven with these two in
sight of the whole army, driving them before him above a quarter
of an hour. Thanks be to God that preserved him." The enemy
pressed on him so close that it was with difficulty that he at
length made his way over the 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
has produced in the art of war more strikingly illustrated than
on that day. Ajax beating down the Trojan leader with a rock
which two ordinary men could scarcely lift, Horatius defending
the bridge against an army, Richard the Lionhearted spurring
along the whole Saracen line without finding an enemy to stand
his assault, Robert Bruce crushing with one blow the helmet and
head of Sir Henry Bohun in sight of the whole array of England
and Scotland, such are the heroes of a dark age. In such an age
bodily vigour is the most indispensable qualification of a
warrior. At Landen two poor sickly beings, who, in a rude state
of society, would have been regarded as too puny to bear any part
in combats, were the souls of two great armies. In some heathen
countries they would have been exposed while infants. In
Christendom they would, six hundred years earlier, have been sent
to some quiet cloister. But their lot had fallen on a time when
men had discovered that the strength of the muscles is far
inferior in value to the strength of the mind. It is probable
that, among the hundred and twenty thousand soldiers who were
marshalled round Neerwinden under all the standards of Western
Europe, the two feeblest in body were the hunchbacked dwarf who
urged forward the fiery onset of France, and the asthmatic
skeleton who covered the slow retreat of England.

The French were victorious; but they had bought their victory
dear. More than ten thousand of the best troops of Lewis had
fallen. Neerwinden was a spectacle at which the oldest soldiers
stood aghast. The streets were piled breast high with corpses.
Among the slain were some great lords and some renowned warriors.
Montchevreuil was there, and the mutilated trunk of the Duke of
Uzes, first in order of precedence among the whole aristocracy of
France. Thence too Sarsfield was borne desperately wounded to a
pallet from which he never rose again. The Court of Saint
Germains had conferred on him the empty title of Earl of Lucan;
but history knows him by the name which is still dear to the most
unfortunate of nations. The region, renowned in history as the
battle field, during many ages, of the most warlike nations of
Europe, has seen only two more terrible days, the day of
Malplaquet and the day of Waterloo. During many months the ground
was strewn with skulls and bones of men and horses, and with
fragments of hats and shoes, saddles and holsters. The next
summer the soil, fertilised by twenty thousand corpses, broke
forth into millions of poppies. The traveller who, on the road
from Saint Tron to Tirlemont, saw that vast sheet of rich scarlet
spreading from Landen to Neerwinden, could hardly help fancying
that the figurative prediction of the Hebrew prophet was
literally accomplished, that the earth was disclosing her blood,
and refusing to cover the slain.448

There was no pursuit, though the sun was still high in the heaven
when William crossed the Gette. The conquerors were so much
exhausted by marching and fighting that they could scarcely move;
and the horses were in even worse condition than the men. Their
general thought it necessary to allow some time for rest and
refreshment. The French nobles unloaded their sumpter horses,
supped gaily, and pledged one another in champagne amidst the
heaps of dead; and, when night fell, whole brigades gladly lay
down to sleep in their ranks on the field of battle. The
inactivity of Luxemburg did not escape censure. None could deny
that he had in the action shown great skill and energy. But some
complained that he wanted patience and perseverance. Others
whispered that he had no wish to bring to 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 this occasion was
perhaps not altogether free from some emotions of jealousy,
contrived, it was reported, to mingle with the praise which he
bestowed on his lieutenant blame which, though delicately
expressed, was perfectly intelligible. "In the battle," he said,
"the Duke of Luxemburg behaved like Conde; and since the battle
the Prince of Orange has behaved like Turenne."

In truth the ability and vigour with which William repaired his
terrible defeat might well excite admiration. "In one respect,"
said the Admiral Coligni, "I may claim superiority over
Alexander, over Scipio, over Caesar. They won great battles, it is
true. I have lost four great battles; 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 had descended the
unconquerable spirit which could derive from failure as much
glory as happier commanders owed to success. The defeat of Landen
was 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 cry for peace throughout Holland might be such as
neither States General nor Stadtholder would be able to
resist.450 But there was delay; and a very short delay was enough
for William. From the field of battle he made his way through the
multitude of fugitives to the neighbourhood of Louvain, and there
began to collect his scattered forces. His character is not
lowered by the anxiety which, at that moment, the most disastrous
of his life, he felt for the two persons who were dearest to him.
As soon as he was safe, he wrote to assure his wife of his
safety.451 In the confusion of the flight he had lost sight of
Portland, who was then in very feeble health, and had therefore
run more than the ordinary risks of war. A short note which the
King sent to his friend a few hours later is still extant.452
"Though I hope to see you this evening, I cannot help writing to
tell you how rejoiced I am that you got off so well. God grant
that your health may soon be quite restored. These are great
trials, which he has been pleased to send me in quick succession.
I must try to submit to his pleasure without murmuring, and to
deserve his anger less."

His forces rallied fast. Large bodies of troops which he had,
perhaps imprudently, detached from his army while he supposed
that Liege was the object of the enemy, rejoined him by forced
marches. Three weeks after his defeat he held a review a few
miles from Brussels. The number of men under 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," he said,
"has been a terrible one. Thank God that it has ended thus." He
did not, however, think it prudent to try at that time the event
of another pitched field. He therefore suffered the French to
besiege and take Charleroy; and this was the only advantage which
they derived from the most sanguinary battle fought in Europe
during the seventeenth century.

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

The plan of the allies was that seventy ships of the line and
about thirty frigates and brigantines should assemble in the
Channel under the command of Killegrew and Delaval, the two new
Lords of the English Admiralty, and should convoy the Smyrna
fleet, as it was popularly called, beyond the limits within which
any danger could be apprehended from the Brest squadron. The
greater part of the armament might then return to guard the
Channel, while Rooke, with twenty sail, might accompany the
trading vessels and might protect them against the squadron which
lay at Toulon. The plan of the French government was that the
Brest squadron under Tourville and the Toulon squadron under
Estrees should meet in the neighbourhood of the Straits of
Gibraltar, and should there lie in wait for the booty.

Which plan was the better conceived may be doubted. Which was the
better executed 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 to different authorities; and, both in
England and in the United Provinces, the power was divided and
subdivided to such an extent that no single person was pressed by
a heavy responsibility. The spring came. The merchants loudly
complained that they had already lost more by delay than they
could hope to gain by the most successful voyage; and still the
ships of war were not half manned or half provisioned. The
Amsterdam squadron did not arrive on our coast till late in
April; the Zealand squadron not till the middle of May.453 It was
June before the immense fleet, near five hundred sail, lost sight
of the cliffs of England.

Tourville was already on the sea, and was steering southward. But
Killegrew and Delaval were so negligent or so unfortunate that
they had no intelligence of his movements. They at first took it
for granted that he was still lying in the port of Brest. Then
they heard a rumour that some shipping had been seen to the
northward; and they supposed that he was taking advantage of
their absence to threaten the coast of Devonshire. It never seems
to have occurred to them as possible that he might have effected
a junction with the Toulon squadron, and might be impatiently
waiting for his prey in the neighbourhood of Gibraltar. They
therefore, on the sixth of June, having convoyed the Smyrna fleet
about two hundred miles beyond Ushant, announced their intention
to part company with Rooke. Rooke expostulated, but to no
purpose. It was necessary for him to submit, and to proceed with
his twenty men of war to the Mediterranean, while his superiors,
with the rest of the armament, returned to the Channel.

It was by this time known in England that Tourville had stolen
out of Brest, and was hastening to join Estrees. The return of
Killegrew and Delaval therefore excited great alarm. A swift
sailing vessel was instantly despatched to warn Rooke of his
danger; but the warning never reached him. He ran before a fair
wind to Cape Saint Vincent; and there he learned that some French
ships were lying in the neighbouring Bay of Lagos. The first
information which he received led him to believe that they were
few in number; and so dexterously did they conceal their strength
that, till they were within half an hour's sail, he had no
suspicion that he was opposed to the whole maritime strength of a
great kingdom. To contend against fourfold odds would have been
madness. It was 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 in the rear, courageously sacrificed
themselves to save the fleet. With the rest of the armament, and
with about sixty merchant ships, Rooke got safe to Madeira and
thence to Cork. But more than three hundred of the vessels which
he had convoyed were scattered over the ocean. Some escaped to
Ireland; some to Corunna; some to Lisbon; some to Cadiz; some
were captured, and more destroyed. A few, which had taken shelter
under the rock of Gibraltar, and were pursued thither by the
enemy, were sunk when it was found that they could not be
defended. Others perished in the same manner under the batteries
of Malaga. The gain to the French seems not to have been great;
but the loss to England and Holland was immense.454

Never within the memory of man had there been in the City a day
of more gloom and agitation than that on which the news of the
encounter in the Bay of Lagos arrived. Many merchants, an
eyewitness said, went away from the Royal Exchange, as pale as if
they had received sentence of death. A deputation from the
merchants who had been sufferers by this great disaster went up
to the Queen with an address representing their grievances. They
were admitted to the Council Chamber, where she was seated at the
head of the Board. She directed Somers to reply to them in her
name; and he addressed to them a speech well calculated to soothe
their irritation. Her Majesty, he said, felt for them from her
heart; and she had already appointed a Committee of the Privy
Council to inquire into the cause of the late misfortune, and to
consider of the best means of preventing similar misfortunes in
time to come.455 This answer gave so much satisfaction that the
Lord Mayor soon came to the palace to thank the Queen for her
goodness, to assure her that, through all vicissitudes, London
would be true to her and her consort, and to inform her that,
severely as the late calamity had been felt by many great
commercial houses, the Common Council had unanimously resolved to
advance whatever might be necessary for the support of the
government.456

The ill humour which the public calamities naturally produced was
inflamed by every factious artifice. Never had the Jacobite
pamphleteers been so savagely scurrilous as during this
unfortunate summer. The police was consequently more active than
ever in seeking for the dens from which so much treason
proceeded. With great difficulty and after long search the most
important of all the unlicensed presses was discovered. This
press belonged to a Jacobite named William Anderton, whose
intrepidity and fanaticism marked him out as fit to be employed
on services from which prudent men and scrupulous men shrink.
During two years he had been watched by the agents of the
government; but where he exercised his craft was an impenetrable
mystery. At length he was tracked to a house near Saint James's
Street, where he was known by a feigned name, and where he passed
for a working jeweller. A messenger of the press went thither
with several assistants, and found Anderton's wife and mother
posted as sentinels at the door. The women knew the messenger,
rushed on him, tore his hair, and cried out "Thieves" and
"Murder." The alarm was thus given to Anderton. He concealed the
instruments of his calling, came forth with an assured air, and
bade defiance to the messenger, the Censor, the Secretary, and
Little Hooknose himself. After a struggle he was secured. His
room was searched; and at first sight no evidence of his guilt
appeared. But behind 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 the Late Revolution, is perhaps the
most frantic of all the Jacobite libels. In this tract the Prince
of Orange is gravely accused of having ordered fifty of his
wounded English soldiers to be burned alive. The governing
principle of his whole conduct, it is said, is not vainglory, or
ambition, or avarice, but a deadly hatred of Englishmen and a
desire to make them miserable. The nation is vehemently adjured,
on peril of incurring the severest judgments, to rise up and free
itself from this plague, this curse, this tyrant, whose depravity
makes it difficult to believe that he can have been procreated by
a human pair. Many copies were also found of another paper,
somewhat less ferocious but perhaps more dangerous, entitled A
French Conquest neither desirable nor practicable. In this tract
also the people are exhorted to rise in insurrection. They are
assured that a great part of the army is with them. The forces of
the Prince of Orange will melt away; he will be glad to make his
escape; and a charitable hope is sneeringly expressed that it may
not be necessary to do him any harm beyond sending him back to
Loo, where he may live surrounded by luxuries for which the
English have paid dear.

The government, provoked and alarmed by the virulence of the
Jacobite pamphleteers, determined to make Anderton an example. He
was indicted for high treason, and brought to the bar of the Old
Bailey. Treby, now Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, and Powell,
who had honourably distinguished himself on the day of the trial
of the bishops, were on the Bench. It is unfortunate that no
detailed report of the evidence has come down to us, and that we
are forced to content ourselves with such fragments of
information as can be collected from the contradictory narratives
of writers evidently partial, intemperate and dishonest. The
indictment, however, is extant; and the overt acts which it
imputes to the prisoner undoubtedly amount to high treason.457 To
exhort the subjects of the realm to rise up and depose the King
by force, and to add to that exhortation the expression,
evidently ironical, of a hope that it may not be necessary to
inflict on him any evil worse than banishment, is surely an
offence which the least courtly lawyer will admit to be within
the scope of the statute of Edward the Third. On this point
indeed there seems to have been no dispute, either at the trial
or subsequently.

The prisoner denied that he had printed the libels. On this point
it seems reasonable that, since the evidence has not come down to
us, we should give credit to the judges and the jury who heard
what the witnesses 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 as unanswerable, was that, as the art of printing had
been unknown in the reign of Edward the Third, printing could not
be an overt act of treason under a statute of that reign. The
judges treated this argument very lightly; and they were surely
justified in so treating it. For it is an argument which would
lead to the conclusion that it could not be an overt act of
treason to behead a King with a guillotine or to shoot him with a
Minie rifle.

It was also urged in Anderton's favour,--and this was undoubtedly
an argument well entitled to consideration,--that a distinction
ought to be made between the author of a treasonable paper and
the man who merely printed it. The former could not pretend that
he had not understood the meaning of the words which he had
himself selected. But to the latter those words might convey no
idea whatever. The metaphors, the allusions, the sarcasms, might
be far beyond his comprehension; and, while his hands were busy
among the types, his thoughts might be wandering to things
altogether unconnected with the manuscript which was before him.
It is undoubtedly true that it may be no crime to print what it
would be a great crime to write. But this is evidently a matter
concerning which no general rule can be laid down. Whether
Anderton had, as a mere mechanic, contributed to spread a work
the tendency of which he did not suspect, or had knowingly lent
his help to raise a rebellion, was a question for the jury; and
the jury might reasonably infer from his change of his name, from
the secret manner in which he worked, from the strict 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 zealous
accomplice of traitors. The twelve, after passing a considerable
time in deliberation, informed the Court that one of them
entertained doubts. Those doubts were removed by the arguments of
Treby and Powell; and a verdict of Guilty was found.

The fate of the prisoner remained during sometime in suspense.
The Ministers hoped that he might be induced to save his own neck
at the expense of the necks of the pamphleteers who had employed
him. But his natural courage was kept up by spiritual stimulants
which the nonjuring divines well understood how to administer. He
suffered death with fortitude, and continued to revile the
government to the last. The Jacobites clamoured loudly against
the cruelty of the judges who had tried him and of the Queen who
had left him for execution, and, not very consistently,
represented him at once as a poor ignorant artisan who was not
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 banished King and the persecuted Church.458

The Ministers were much mistaken if they flattered themselves
that the fate of Anderton would deter others from imitating his
example. His execution produced several pamphlets scarcely less
virulent than those for which he had suffered. Collier, in what
he called Remarks on the London Gazette, exulted with cruel joy
over the carnage of Landen, and the 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 place or 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 at
this time, and was indeed a password by which the members of the
party recognised each other: "Box it about; it will come to my
father." The hidden 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 by the malecontent street
poets. Numerous copies of a ballad exhorting the weavers to rise
against the government were discovered in the house of that
Quaker who had printed James's Declaration.461 Every art was
used for the purpose of exciting discontent in a much more
formidable body of men, the sailors; and unhappily the vices of
the naval administration furnished the enemies of the State with
but too good a choice of inflammatory topics. Some seamen
deserted; some mutinied; then came executions; and then came more
ballads and broadsides representing those executions as barbarous
murders. Reports that the government had determined to defraud
its defenders of their hard earned pay were circulated with so
much effect that a great crowd of women from Wapping and
Rotherhithe besieged Whitehall, clamouring for what was due to
their husbands. Mary had the good sense and good nature to order
four of those importunate petitioners to be admitted into the
room where she was holding a Council. She heard their complaints,
and herself assured them that the rumour which had alarmed them
was unfounded.462 By this time Saint Bartholomew's day drew near;
and the great annual fair, the delight of idle apprentices and
the horror of Puritanical Aldermen, was opened in Smithfield with
the usual display of dwarfs, giants, and dancing dogs, the man
that ate fire, and the elephant that loaded and fired a musket.
But of all the shows none proved so attractive as a dramatic
performance which, in conception, though doubtless not in
execution, seems to have borne much resemblance to those immortal
masterpieces of humour in which Aristophanes held up Cleon and
Lamachus to derision. Two strollers personated Killegrew and
Delaval. The Admirals were represented as flying with their whole
fleet before a few French privateers, and taking shelter under
the grins of the Tower. The office of Chorus was performed by a
Jackpudding who expressed very freely his opinion of the naval
administration. Immense crowds flocked to see this strange farce.
The applauses were loud; the receipts were great; and the
mountebanks, who had at first ventured to attack only the unlucky
and unpopular Board of Admiralty, now, emboldened by impunity and
success, and probably prompted and rewarded by persons of much
higher station than their own, began to cast reflections on other
departments of the government. This attempt to revive the license
of the Attic Stage was soon brought to a close by the appearance
of a strong body of constables who carried off the actors to
prison.463 Meanwhile the streets of London were every night
strewn with seditious handbills. At all the taverns the zealots
of hereditary right were limping about with glasses of wine and
punch at their lips. This fashion had just come in; and the
uninitiated wondered much that so great a number of jolly
gentlemen should have suddenly become lame. But, those who were
in the secret knew that the word Limp was a consecrated word,
that every one of 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 his bumper to Lewis, James, Mary,
and the Prince.464

It was not only in the capital that the Jacobites, at this time,
made a great display of their wit. They mustered strong at Bath,
where the Lord President Caermarthen was trying to recruit his
feeble health. Every evening they met, as they phrased it, to
serenade the Marquess. In other words they assembled under the
sick man's window, and there sang doggrel lampoons on him.465

It is remarkable that the Lord President, at the very time at
which he was insulted as a Williamite at Bath, was considered as
a stanch Jacobite at Saint Germains. How he came to be so
considered is a most perplexing question. Some writers are of
opinion that he, like Shrewsbury, Russell, Godolphin and
Marlborough, entered into engagements with one king while eating
the bread of the other. But this opinion does not rest on
sufficient proofs. About the treasons of Shrewsbury, of Russell,
of Godolphin and of Marlborough, we have a great mass of
evidence, derived from various sources, and extending
over several years. But all the information which we possess
about Caermarthen's dealings with James is contained in a single
short paper written by Melfort on the sixteenth of October 1693.
From that paper it is quite clear that some intelligence had
reached the banished King and his Ministers which led them to
regard Caermarthen as a friend. But there is no proof that they
ever so regarded him, either before that day or after that
day.466 On the whole, the most probable explanation of this
mystery seems to be that Caermarthen had been sounded by some
Jacobite emissary much less artful than himself, and had, for
the purpose of getting 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 an exaggerated account of what had
passed had been sent to Saint Germains, and that there had been
much rejoicing there at a conversion which soon proved to have
been feigned. It seems strange that such a conversion should even
for a moment have been thought sincere. It was plainly
Caermarthen's interest to stand by the sovereigns in possession.
He was their chief minister. He could not hope to be the chief
minister of James. It can indeed hardly be supposed that the
political conduct of a cunning old man, insatiably ambitious and
covetous, was much influenced by personal partiality. But, if
there were any person to whom Caermarthen was partial, that
person was undoubtedly Mary. That he had seriously engaged in a
plot to depose her, at the risk of his head if he failed, and
with the certainty of losing immense power and wealth if he
succeeded, was a story too absurd for any credulity but the
credulity of exiles.

Caermarthen had indeed at that moment peculiarly strong reasons
for being satisfied with the place which he held in the counsels
of William and Mary. There is but too strong reason to believe
that he was then accumulating unlawful gain with a rapidity
unexampled even in his experience.

The contest between the two East India Companies was, during the
autumn of 1693, fiercer than ever. The House of Commons, finding
the Old Company obstinately averse to all compromise, had, a
little before the close of the late session, requested the King
to give the three years' warning prescribed by the Charter. Child
and his fellows now began to be seriously alarmed. They expected
every day to receive the dreaded notice. Nay, they were not sure
that their exclusive privilege might not be taken away without
any notice at all; for they found that they had, by inadvertently
omitting to pay the tax lately imposed on their stock at the
precise time fixed by law, forfeited their Charter; and, though
it would, in ordinary circumstances, have been thought cruel in
the government to take advantage of such a slip, the public was
not inclined to allow the Old Company any thing more than the
strict letter of the bond. Every thing was lost if the Charter
were not renewed before the meeting of Parliament. There can be
little doubt that the proceedings of the corporation were still
really directed by Child. But he had, it should seem, perceived
that his unpopularity had injuriously affected the interests
which were under his care, and therefore did not obtrude himself
on the public notice. His place was ostensibly filled by his near
kinsman Sir Thomas Cook, one of the greatest merchants of London,
and Member of Parliament for the borough of Colchester. The
Directors placed at Cook's absolute disposal all the immense
wealth which lay in their treasury; and in a short time near a
hundred thousand pounds were expended in corruption on a gigantic
scale. In what proportions this enormous sum was distributed
among the great men at Whitehall, and how much of it was
embezzled by intermediate agents, is still a mystery. We know
with certainty however that thousands went to Seymour and
thousands to Caermarthen.

The effect of these bribes was that the Attorney General received
orders to 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 reluctantly consented to accept the new Charter on
terms substantially the same with those which the House of
Commons had sanctioned.

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

The autumn was by this time far advanced, and the armies in the
Netherlands had gone into quarters for the winter. On the last
day of October William landed in England. The Parliament was
about to meet; and he had every reason to expect a session even
more stormy than the last. The people were discontented, and not
without cause. The year had been every where disastrous to the
allies, not only on the sea and in the Low Countries, but also in
Servia, in Spain, in Italy, and in Germany. The Turks had
compelled the generals of the Empire to raise the siege of
Belgrade. A newly created Marshal of France, the Duke of
Noailles, had invaded Catalonia and taken the fortress of Rosas.
Another newly created Marshal, the skilful and valiant Catinat,
had descended from the Alps on Piedmont, and had, at Marsiglia,
gained a complete victory over the forces of the Duke of Savoy.
This battle is memorable as the first of a long series of battles
in which the Irish troops retrieved the honour lost by
misfortunes and misconduct in domestic war. Some of the exiles of
Limerick showed, on that day, under the standard of France, a
valour which distinguished them among many thousands of brave
men. It is remarkable that on the same day a battalion of the
persecuted and expatriated Huguenots stood firm amidst the
general disorder round the standard of Savoy, and fell fighting
desperately to the last.

The Duke of Lorges had marched into the Palatinate, already twice
devastated, and had found that Turenne and Duras had left him
something to destroy. Heidelberg, just beginning to rise again
from its ruins, was again sacked, the peaceable citizens
butchered, their wives and daughters foully outraged. The very
choirs of the churches were stained with blood; the pyxes and
crucifixes were torn from the altars; the tombs of the ancient
Electors were broken open; the corpses, stripped of their
cerecloths and ornaments, were dragged about the streets. The
skull of the father of the Duchess of Orleans was beaten to
fragments by the soldiers of a prince among the ladies of whose
splendid Court she held the foremost place.

And yet a discerning eye might have perceived that, unfortunate
as the confederates seemed to have been, the advantage had really
been on their side. The contest was quite as much a financial as
a military contest. The French King had, some months before, said
that the last piece of gold would carry the clay; and he now
began painfully to feel the truth of the saying. England was
undoubtedly hard pressed by public burdens; but still she stood
up erect. France meanwhile was fast sinking. Her recent efforts
had been too much for her strength, and had left her spent and
unnerved. Never had her rulers shown more ingenuity in devising
taxes or more severity in exacting them; but by no ingenuity, by
no severity, was it possible to raise the sums necessary for
another such 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 or more shameful dishonesty, tried to
direct the public indignation against the dealers in grain.
Decrees appeared which seemed to have been elaborately framed for
the purpose of turning dearth into famine. The nation was assured
that there was no reason for uneasiness, that there was more than
a sufficient supply of food, and that the scarcity had been
produced by the villanous arts of misers, who locked up their
stores in the hope of making enormous gains. Commissioners were
appointed to inspect the granaries, and were empowered to send to
market all the corn that was not necessary for the consumption of
the proprietors. Such interference of course increased the
suffering which it was meant to relieve. But in the midst of the
general distress there was an artificial plenty in one favoured
spot. The most arbitrary prince must always stand in some awe of
an immense mass of human beings collected in the neighbourhood of
his own palace. Apprehensions similar to those which had induced
the Caesars to extort from Africa and Egypt the means of
pampering the rabble of Rome induced Lewis to aggravate the
misery of twenty provinces for the purpose of keeping one huge
city in good humour. He ordered bread to be distributed in all
the parishes of the capital at less than half the market price.
The English Jacobites were stupid enough to extol the wisdom and
humanity of this arrangement. The harvest, they said, had been
good in England and bad in France; and yet the loaf was cheaper
at Paris than in London; and the explanation was simple. The
French had a sovereign whose heart was French, and who watched
over his people with the solicitude of a father, while the
English 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 Lewis would have raised all England in arms from
Northumberland to Cornwall. That there might be abundance at
Paris, the people of Normandy and Anjou were stuffing themselves
with nettles. That there might be tranquillity at Paris, the
peasantry were fighting with the bargemen and the troops all
along the Loire and the Seine. Multitudes fled from those rural
districts where bread cost five sous a pound to the happy place
where bread was to be had for two sous a pound. It was necessary
to drive the famished crowds back by force from the barriers, and
to denounce the most terrible punishments against all who should
not go home and starve quietly.468

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

He had long been communicating through various channels with some
members of the confederacy, and trying to induce them to separate
themselves from the rest. But he had as yet made no overture
tending to a general pacification. For he knew that there could
be no general pacification unless he was prepared to abandon the
cause of James, and to acknowledge the Prince and Princess of
Orange as King and Queen of England. This was in truth the point
on which every thing turned. What should be done with those great
fortresses which Lewis had unjustly seized and annexed to his
empire in time of peace, Luxemburg which overawed the Moselle,
and Strasburg which domineered over the Upper Rhine; what should
be done with the places which he had recently won in open war,
Philipsburg, Mons and Namur, Huy and Charleroy; what barrier
should be given to the States General; on what terms Lorraine
should be restored to its hereditary Dukes; these were assuredly
not unimportant questions. But the all important question was
whether England was to be, as she had been under James, a
dependency of France, or, as she was under William and Mary, a
power of the first rank. If Lewis really wished for peace, he
must bring himself to recognise the Sovereigns whom he had so
often designated as usurpers. Could he bring himself to recognise
them? His superstition, his pride, his regard for the unhappy
exiles who were pining at Saint Germains, his personal dislike of
the indefatigable and unconquerable adversary who had been
constantly crossing his path during twenty years, were on one
side; his interests and those of his people were on the other. He
must have been sensible that it was not in his power to subjugate
the English, that he must at last leave them to choose their
government for themselves, and that what he must do at last it
would be best to do soon. Yet he could not at once make up his
mind to what was so disagreeable to him. He however opened a
negotiation with the States General through the intervention of
Sweden and Denmark, and sent a confidential emissary to confer in
secret at Brussels with Dykvelt, who possessed the entire
confidence of William. There was much discussion about matters of
secondary importance; but the great question remained unsettled.
The French agent used, in private conversation, expressions
plainly implying that the government which he represented was
prepared to recognise William and Mary; but no formal assurance
could be obtained from him. Just at the same time the King of
Denmark informed the allies that he was endeavouring to prevail
on France not to insist on the restoration of James as an
indispensable condition of peace, but did not say that his
endeavours had as yet been successful. Meanwhile Avaux, who was
now Ambassador at Stockholm, informed the King of Sweden, that,
as the dignity of all crowned heads had been outraged in the
person of James, the Most Christian King felt assured that not
only neutral powers, but even the Emperor, would try to find some
expedient which might remove so grave a cause of quarrel. The
expedient at which Avaux hinted doubtless was that James should
waive his rights, and that the Prince of Wales should be sent to
England, bred a Protestant, adopted by William and Mary, and
declared their heir. To such an arrangement William would
probably have had no personal objection. But we may be assured
that he never would have consented to make it a condition of
peace with France. Who should reign in England was a question to
be decided by England alone.469

It might well be suspected that a negotiation conducted in this
manner was merely meant to divide the confederates. William
understood the whole importance of the conjuncture. He had not,
it may be, the eye of a great captain for all the turns of a
battle. But he had, in the highest perfection, 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 proof that she felt
herself spent and sinking. That those overtures were made with
extreme reluctance and hesitation proved that she had not yet
come to a temper in which it was possible to have peace with her
on fair terms. He saw that the enemy was beginning to give
ground, and that this was the time to assume the offensive, to
push forward, to bring up every reserve. But whether the
opportunity should be seized or lost it did not belong to him to
decide. The King of France might levy troops and exact taxes
without any limit save that which the laws of nature impose on
despotism. But the King of England could do nothing without the
support of the House of Commons; and the House of Commons, though
it had hitherto supported him zealously and liberally, was not a
body on which he could rely. It had indeed got into a state which
perplexed and alarmed all the most sagacious politicians of that
age. There was something appalling in the union of such boundless
power and such boundless caprice. The fate of the whole civilised
world depended on the votes of the representatives of the English
people; and there was no public man who could venture to say with
confidence what those representatives might not be induced to
vote within twenty-four hours.470 William painfully felt that it
was scarcely possible for a prince dependent on an assembly so
violent at one time, so languid at another, to effect any thing
great. Indeed, though no sovereign did so much to secure and to
extend the power of the House of Commons, no sovereign loved the
House of Commons less. Nor is this strange; for he saw that House
at the very worst. He saw it when it had just acquired the power
and had not yet acquired the gravity of a senate. In his letters
to Heinsius he perpetually complains of the endless talking, the
factious squabbling, the inconstancy, the dilatoriness, of the
body which his situation made it necessary for him to treat with
deference. His complaints were by no means unfounded; but he had
not discovered either the cause or the cure of the evil.

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

It is essential to our liberties that the House of Commons should
exercise a control over all the departments of the executive
administration. And yet it is evident that a crowd of five or six
hundred people, even if they were intellectually much above the
average of the members of the best Parliament, even if every one
of them were a Burleigh, or a Sully, would be unfit for executive
functions. It has been truly said that every large collection of
human beings, however well educated, has a strong tendency to
become a mob; and a country of which the Supreme Executive
Council is a mob is surely in a perilous situation.

Happily a way has been found out in which the House of Commons
can exercise a paramount influence over the executive government,
without assuming functions such as can never be well discharged
by a body so numerous and so variously composed. An institution
which did not exist in the times, of the Plantagenets, of the
Tudors or of the Stuarts, an institution not known to the law, an
institution not mentioned in any statute, an institution of which
such writers as De Lolme and Blackstone take no notice, began to
exist a few years after the Revolution, grew rapidly into
importance, became firmly established, and is now almost as
essential a part of our polity as the Parliament itself. This
institution is the Ministry.

The Ministry is, in fact, a committee of leading members of the
two Houses. It is nominated by the Crown; but it consists
exclusively of statesmen whose opinions on the pressing questions
of the time agree, in the main, with the opinions of the majority
of the House of Commons. Among the members of this committee are
distributed the great departments of the administration. Each
Minister conducts the ordinary business of his own office without
reference to his colleagues. But the most important business of
every office, and especially such business as is likely to be the
subject of discussion in Parliament, is brought under the
consideration of the whole Ministry. In Parliament the Ministers
are bound to act as one man on all questions relating to the
executive government. If one of them dissents from the rest on a
question 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 motion which reflects on them or is
likely to embarrass them. If they forfeit that confidence, if the
parliamentary majority is dissatisfied with the way in which
patronage is distributed, with the way in which the prerogative
of mercy is used, with the conduct of foreign affairs, with the
conduct of a war, the remedy is simple. It is not necessary that
the Commons should take on themselves the business of
administration, that they should request the Crown to make this
man a bishop and that man a judge, to pardon one criminal and to
execute another, to negotiate a treaty on a particular basis or
to send an expedition to a particular place. They have merely to
declare that they have ceased to trust the Ministry, and to ask
for a Ministry which they can trust.

It is by means of Ministries thus constituted, and thus changed,
that the English government has long been conducted in general
conformity with the deliberate sense of the House of Commons, and
yet has been wonderfully free from the vices which are
characteristic of governments administered by large, tumultuous
and divided assemblies. A few distinguished persons, agreeing in
their general opinions, are the confidential advisers at once of
the Sovereign and of the Estates of the Realm. In the closet they
speak with the authority of men who stand high in the estimation
of the representatives of the people. In Parliament they speak
with the authority of men versed in great affairs and acquainted
with all the secrets of the State. Thus the Cabinet has something
of the popular character of a representative body; and the
representative body has something of the gravity of a cabinet.

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

No writer has yet attempted to trace the progress of this
institution, an institution indispensable to the harmonious
working of our other institutions. The first Ministry was the
work, partly of mere chance, and partly of wisdom, not however of
that highest wisdom which is conversant with great principles of
political philosophy, but of that lower wisdom which meets daily
exigencies by daily expedients. Neither William nor the most
enlightened of his advisers fully understood the nature and
importance of that noiseless revolution,--for it was no less,--
which began about the close of 1693, and was completed about the
close of 1696. But every body could perceive that, at the close
of 1693, the chief offices in the government were distributed not
unequally between the two great parties, that the men who held
those offices were perpetually caballing against each other,
haranguing against each other, moving votes of censure on each
other, exhibiting articles of impeachment against each other, and
that the temper of the House of Commons was wild, ungovernable
and uncertain. Everybody could perceive that at the close of
1696, all the principal servants of the Crown were Whigs, closely
bound together by public and private ties, and prompt to defend
one another against every attack, and that the majority of the
House of Commons was arrayed in good order under those leaders,
and had learned to move, like one man, at the word of command.
The history of the period of transition and of the steps by which
the change was effected is in a high degree curious and
interesting.

The statesman who had the chief share in forming the first
English Ministry had once been but too well known, but had long
hidden himself from the public gaze, and had but recently emerged
from the obscurity in which it had been expected that he would
pass the remains of an ignominious and disastrous life. During
that period of general terror and confusion which followed the
flight of James, Sunderland had disappeared. It was high time;
for of all the agents of the fallen government he was, with the
single exception of Jeffreys, the most odious to the nation. Few
knew that Sunderland's voice had in secret been given against the
spoliation of Magdalene College and the prosecution of the
Bishops; but all knew that he had signed numerous instruments
dispensing with statutes, that he had sate in the High
Commission, that he had turned or pretended to turn Papist, that
he had, a few days after his apostasy, appeared in Westminster
Hall as a witness against the oppressed fathers of the Church. He
had indeed atoned for many crimes by one crime baser than all the
rest. As soon as he had reason to believe that the day of
deliverance and retribution was at hand, he had, by a most
dexterous and seasonable treason, earned his pardon. During the
three months which preceded the arrival of the Dutch armament in
Torbay, he had rendered to the cause of liberty and of the
Protestant religion services of which it is difficult to overrate
either the wickedness or the utility. To him chiefly it was owing
that, at the most critical moment in our history, a French army
was not menacing the Batavian frontier and a French fleet
hovering about the English coast. William could not, without
staining his own honour, refuse to protect one whom he had not
scrupled to employ. Yet it was no easy task even for William to
save that guilty head from the first outbreak of public fury. For
even those extreme politicians of both sides who agreed in
nothing else agreed in calling for vengeance on the renegade. The
Whigs hated him as the vilest of the slaves by whom the late
government had been served, and the Jacobites as the vilest of
the traitors by whom it had been overthrown. Had he remained in
England, he would probably have died by the hand of the
executioner, if indeed the executioner had not been anticipated
by the populace. But in Holland a political refugee, favoured by
the Stadtholder, might hope to live unmolested. To Holland
Sunderland fled, disguised, it is said, as a woman; and his wife
accompanied him. At Rotterdam, a town devoted to the House of
Orange, he thought himself secure. But the magistrates were not
in all the secrets of the Prince, and were assured by some busy
Englishmen that His Highness would be delighted to hear of the
arrest of the Popish dog, the Judas, whose appearance on Tower
Hill was impatiently expected by all London. Sunderland was
thrown into prison, and remained there till an order for his
release arrived from Whitehall. He then proceeded to Amsterdam,
and there changed his religion again. His second apostasy edified
his wife as much as his first apostasy had edified his master.
The Countess wrote to assure her pious friends in England that
her poor dear lord's heart had at last been really touched by
divine grace, and that, in spite of all her afflictions, she was
comforted by seeing him so true a convert. We may, however,
without any violation of Christian charity, suspect that he was
still the same false, callous, Sunderland who, a few months
before, had made Bonrepaux shudder by denying the existence of a
God, and had, at the same time, won the heart of James by
pretending to believe in transubstantiation. In a short time the
banished man put forth an apology for his conduct. This apology,
when examined, will be found to amount merely to a confession
that he had committed one series of crimes in order to gain
James's favour, and another series in order to avoid being
involved in James's ruin. The writer concluded by announcing his
intention to pass all the rest of his life in penitence and
prayer. He soon retired from Amsterdam to Utrecht, and at Utrecht
made himself conspicuous by his regular and devout attendance on
the ministrations of Huguenot preachers. If his letters and those
of his wife were to be trusted, he had done for ever with
ambition. He longed indeed to be permitted to return from exile,
not that he might again enjoy and dispense the favours of the
Crown, not that his antechambers might again be filled by the
daily swarm of suitors, but that he might see again the turf, the
trees and the family pictures of his country seat. His only wish
was to be suffered to end his troubled life at Althorpe; and he
would be content to forfeit his head if ever he went beyond the
palings of his park.471

While the House of Commons, which had been elected during the
vacancy of the throne, was busily engaged in the work of
proscription, he could not venture to show himself in England.
But when that assembly had ceased to exist, he thought himself
safe. He returned a few days after the Act of Grace had been laid
on the table of the Lords. From the benefit of that Act he was by
name excluded; but he well knew that he had now nothing to fear.
He went privately to Kensington, was admitted into the closet,
had an audience which lasted two hours, and then retired to his
country house.472

During many months be led a secluded life, and had no residence
in London. Once in the spring of 1692, to the great astonishment
of the public, he showed his face in the circle at Court, and was
graciously received.473  He seems to have been afraid that he
might, on his reappearance 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, and on which they met merely for
the purpose of adjourning again. Sunderland had just time to
present himself, to take the oaths, to sign the declaration
against transubstantiation, and to resume his seat. None of the
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, even when he was at the zenith of power. His talents
were not those of a public speaker. The art in which he surpassed
all men was the art of whispering. His tact, his quick eye for
the foibles of individuals, his caressing manners, his power of
insinuation, and, above all, his apparent frankness, made him
irresistible in private conversation. By means of these qualities
he had governed James, and now aspired to govern William.

To govern William, indeed, was not easy. But Sunderland succeeded
in obtaining such a measure of favour and influence as excited
much surprise and some indignation. In truth, scarcely any mind
was strong enough to resist the witchery of his talk and of his
manners. Every man is prone to believe in the gratitude and
attachment even of the most worthless persons on whom he has
conferred great benefits. It can therefore hardly be thought
strange that the most skilful of all flatterers should have been
heard with favour, when he, with every outward sign of strong
emotion, implored permission to dedicate all his faculties to the
service of the generous protector to whom he owed property,
liberty, life. It is not necessary, however, to suppose that the
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 truth is that Sunderland proved, on the whole,
a more faithful servant than a much less depraved man might have
been. He did indeed make, in profound secresy, some timid
overtures towards a reconciliation with James. But it may be
confidently affirmed that, even had those overtures been
graciously received,--and they appear to have been received very
ungraciously,--the twice turned renegade would never have
rendered any real service to the Jacobite cause. He well knew
that he had done that which at Saint Germains must be regarded as
inexpiable. It was not merely that he had been treacherous and
ungrateful. Marlborough had been as treacherous and ungrateful;
and Marlborough had been pardoned. But Marlborough had not been
guilty of the impious hypocrisy of counterfeiting the signs of
conversion. Marlborough had not pretended to be convinced by the
arguments of the Jesuits, to be touched by divine grace, 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
turn of fortune came, apostatized back again, and proclaimed to
all the world that, when he knelt at the confessional and
received the host, he was merely laughing at the King and the
priests. The crime of Sunderland was one which could never be
forgiven by James; and a crime which could never be forgiven by
James was, in some sense, a recommendation to William. The Court,
nay, the Council, was full of men who might hope to prosper if
the banished King were restored. But Sunderland had left himself
no retreat. He had broken down all the bridges behind him. He had
been so false to one side that he must of necessity be true to
the other. That he was in the main true to the government which
now protected him there is no reason to doubt; and, being true,
he could not but be useful. He was, in some respects, eminently
qualified to be at that time an adviser of the Crown. He had
exactly the talents and the knowledge which William wanted. The
two together would have made up a consummate statesman. The
master was capable of forming and executing large designs, but
was negligent of those small arts in which the servant excelled.
The master saw farther off than other men; but what was near no
man saw so clearly as the servant. The master, though profoundly
versed in the politics of the great community of nations, never
thoroughly understood the politics of his own kingdom. The
servant was perfectly well informed as to the temper and the
organization of the English factions, and as to the strong and
weak parts of the character of every Englishman of note.

Early in 1693, it was rumoured that Sunderland was consulted on
all important questions relating to the internal administration
of the realm; and the rumour became stronger when it was known
that he had come up to London in the autumn before the meeting of
Parliament and that he had taken a large mansion near Whitehall.
The coffeehouse politicians were 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, and to leave the show to
others.475

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

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

In the second place, as to the particular matter on which his
heart was at present set, the Whigs were, as a body, prepared to
support him strenuously, and the Tories were, as a body, inclined
to thwart him. The minds of men were at this time much occupied
by the question, in what way the war ought to be carried on. To
that question the two parties returned very different answers. An
opinion had during many months been growing among the Tories that
the policy of England ought to be strictly insular; that she
ought to leave the defence of Flanders and the Rhine to the
States General, the House of Austria and the Princes of the
Empire; that she ought to carry on hostilities with vigour by
sea, but to keep up only such an army as might, with the help of
the militia, be sufficient to repel an invasion. It was plain
that, if this system were adopted, there might be an immediate
reduction of the taxes which pressed most heavily on the nation.
But the Whigs maintained that this relief would be dearly
purchased. Many thousands of brave English soldiers were now in
Flanders. Yet the allies had not been able to prevent the French
from taking Mons in 1691, Namur in 1692, Charleroy in 1693. If
the English troops were withdrawn, it was certain that Ostend,
Ghent, Liege, Brussels would fall. The German Princes would
hasten to make peace, each for himself. The Spanish Netherlands
would probably be annexed to the French monarchy. The United
Provinces would be again in as great peril as in 1672, and would
accept whatever terms Lewis might be pleased to dictate. In a few
months, he would be at liberty to put forth his whole strength
against our island. Then would come a struggle for life and
death. It might well be hoped that we should be able to defend
our soil even against such a general and such an army as had won
the battle of Landen. But the fight must be long and hard. How
many fertile counties would be turned into deserts, how many
flourishing towns would be laid in ashes, before the invaders
were destroyed or driven out! One triumphant campaign in Kent and
Middlesex would do more to impoverish the nation than ten
disastrous campaigns in Brabant. It is remarkable that this
dispute between the two great factions was, during seventy years,
regularly revived as often as our country was at war with France.
That England ought never to attempt great military operations on
the Continent continued to be a fundamental article of the creed
of the Tories till the French Revolution produced a complete
change in their feelings.476 As the chief object of William was
to open the campaign of 1694 in Flanders with an immense display
of force, it was sufficiently clear to whom he must look for
assistance.

In the third place, the Whigs were the stronger party in
Parliament. The general election of 1690, indeed, had not been
favourable to them. They had been, for a time, a minority; but
they had ever since been constantly gaining ground; they were now
in number a full half of the Lower House; and their effective
strength was more than proportioned to their number; for in
energy, alertness and discipline, they were decidedly superior to
their opponents. Their organization was not indeed so perfect as
it afterwards became; but they had already begun to look for
guidance to a small knot of distinguished men, which was long
afterwards widely known by the name of the junto. There is,
perhaps, no parallel in history, ancient or modern, to the
authority exercised by this council, during twenty troubled
years, over the Whig body. The men who acquired that authority in
the days of William and Mary continued to possess it, without
interruption, in office and out of office, till George the First
was on the throne.

One of these men was Russell. Of his shameful dealings with the
Court of Saint Germains we possess proofs which leave no room for
doubt. But no such 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; they rested on no evidence; they could
be traced to no trustworthy author; and they might well be
regarded by his contemporaries as Jacobite calumnies. What was
quite certain was that he sprang from an illustrious house, which
had done and suffered great things for liberty and for the
Protestant religion, that he had signed the invitation of the
thirtieth of June, that he had landed with the Deliverer at
Torbay, that he had in Parliament, on all occasions, spoken and
voted as a zealous Whig, that he had won a great victory, that he
had saved his country from an invasion, and that, since he had
left the Admiralty, every thing had gone wrong. We cannot
therefore wonder that his influence over his party should have
been considerable.

But the greatest man among the members of the junto, and, in some
respects, the greatest man of that age, was the Lord Keeper
Somers. He was equally eminent as a jurist and as a politician,
as an orator and as a writer. His speeches have perished; but his
State papers remain, and are models of terse, luminous, and
dignified eloquence. He had left a great reputation in the House
of Commons, where he had, during four years, been always heard
with delight; and the Whig members still looked up 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 so
borne himself that, after a very few months, even faction and
envy had ceased to murmur at his elevation. In truth, he united
all the qualities of a great judge, an intellect comprehensive,
quick and acute, diligence, integrity, patience, suavity. In
council, the calm wisdom which he possessed in a measure rarely
found among men of parts so quick and of opinions so decided as
his, acquired for him the authority of an oracle. The superiority
of his powers appeared not less clearly in private circles. The
charm of his conversation was heightened by the frankness with
which he poured out his thoughts.477 His good temper and his good
breeding never failed. His gesture, his look, his tones were
expressive of benevolence. His humanity was the more remarkable,
because he had received from nature a body such as is generally
found united with a peevish and irritable mind. His life was one
long malady; his nerves were weak; his complexion was livid; his
face was prematurely wrinkled. Yet his enemies could not pretend
that he had ever once, during a long and troubled public life,
been goaded, even by sudden provocation, into vehemence
inconsistent with the mild dignity of his character. All that was
left to them was to assert that his disposition was very far from
being so gentle as the world believed, that he was really prone
to the angry passions, and that sometimes, while his voice was
soft, and his words kind and courteous, his delicate frame was
almost convulsed by suppressed emotion. It will perhaps be
thought that this reproach is the highest of all eulogies.

The most accomplished men of those times have told us that there
was scarcely any subject on which Somers was not competent to
instruct and to delight. He had never travelled; and, in that
age, an Englishman who had not travelled was generally thought
incompetent to give an opinion on works of art. But connoisseurs
familiar with the masterpieces of the Vatican and of the
Florentine gallery allowed that the taste of Somers in painting
and sculpture was exquisite. Philology was one of his favourite
pursuits. He had traversed the whole vast range of polite
literature, ancient and modern. He was at once a munificent and
severely judicious patron of genius and learning. Locke owed
opulence to Somers. By Somers Addison was drawn forth from a cell
in a college. In distant countries the name of Somers was
mentioned with respect and gratitude by great scholars and poets
who had never seen his face. He was the benefactor of Leclerc. He
was the friend of Filicaja. Neither political nor religious
differences prevented him from extending his powerful protection
to merit. Hickes, the fiercest and most intolerant of all the
nonjurors, obtained, by the influence of Somers, permission to
study Teutonic antiquities in freedom and safety. Vertue, a
strict Roman Catholic, was raised by the discriminating and
liberal patronage of Somers from poverty and obscurity to the
first rank among the engravers of the age.

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

His powers of mind and his acquirements were not denied, even by
his detractors. The most acrimonious Tories were forced to admit,
with an ungracious snarl, which increased the value of their
praise, that he had all the intellectual qualities of a great
man, and that in him alone, among his contemporaries, brilliant
eloquence and wit were to be found associated with the quiet and
steady prudence which ensures success in life. It is a remarkable
fact, that, in the foulest of all the many libels that were
published against him, he was slandered under the name of Cicero.
As his abilities could not be questioned, he was charged with
irreligion and immorality. That he was heterodox all the country
vicars and foxhunting squires firmly believed; but as to the
nature and extent of his heterodoxy there were many different
opinions. He seems to have been a Low Churchman of the school of
Tillotson, whom he always loved and honoured; and he was, like
Tillotson, called by bigots a Presbyterian, an Arian, a Socinian,
a Deist, and an Atheist.

The private life of this great statesman and magistrate was
malignantly scrutinised; and tales were told about his
libertinism which went on growing till they became too absurd for
the credulity even of party spirit. At last, long after he had
been condemned to flannel and chicken broth, a wretched
courtesan, who had probably never seen him except in the stage
box at the theatre, when she was following her vocation below in
a mask, published a lampoon in which she described him as the
master of a haram more costly than the Great Turk's. There is,
however, reason to believe that there was a small nucleus of
truth round which this great mass of fiction gathered, and that
the wisdom and selfcommand which Somers never wanted in the
senate, on the judgment seat, at the council 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 by those who envied his success. That they should have
called him so may seem strange; for few of the statesmen of his
time could show such a pedigree as his. He sprang from a family
as old as the Conquest; he was in the succession to an earldom,
and was, by the paternal side, cousin of three earls. But he was
the younger son of a younger brother; and that phrase had, ever
since the time of Shakspeare and Raleigh, and perhaps before
their time, been proverbially used to designate a person so poor
as to be broken to the most abject servitude or ready for the
most desperate adventure.

Charles Montague was early destined for the Church, was entered
on the foundation of Westminster, and, after distinguishing
himself there by skill in Latin versification, was sent up to
Trinity College, Cambridge. At Cambridge the philosophy of Des
Cartes was still dominant in the schools. But a few select
spirits had separated from the crowd, and formed a fit audience
round a far greater teacher.479 Conspicuous among the youths of
high promise who were proud to sit at the feet of Newton was the
quick and versatile Montague. Under such guidance the young
student made considerable proficiency in the severe sciences; but
poetry was his favourite pursuit; and when the University invited
her sons to celebrate royal marriages and funerals, he was
generally allowed to have surpassed his competitors. His fame
travelled to London; he was thought a clever lad by the wits who
met at Will's, and the lively parody which he wrote, in concert
with his friend and fellow student Prior, on Dryden's Hind and
Panther, was received with great applause.

At this time all Montague's wishes pointed towards the Church. At
a later period, when he was a peer with twelve thousand a year,
when his villa on the Thames was regarded as the most delightful
of all suburban retreats, 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, and costing three guineas a piece,
his enemies were fond of reminding him that there had been a time
when he had eked out by his wits an income of barely fifty
pounds, when he had been happy with a trencher of mutton chops
and a flagon of ale from the College buttery, and when a tithe
pig was the rarest luxury for which he had dared to hope. The
Revolution came, and changed his whole scheme of life. He
obtained, by the influence of Dorset, who took a peculiar
pleasure in befriending young men of promise, a seat in the House
of Commons. Still, during a few months, the needy scholar
hesitated between politics and divinity. But it soon became clear
that, in the new order of things, parliamentary ability must
fetch a higher price than any other kind of ability; and he felt
that in parliamentary ability he had no superior. He was in the
very situation for which he was peculiarly fitted by nature; and
during some years his life was a series of triumphs.

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

It has long been usual to represent the imagination under the
figure of a wing, and to call the successful exertions of the
imagination flights. One poet is the eagle; another is the swan;
a third modestly compares himself 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 weak to lift the ostrich into
the air, enables her, while she remains on the earth, to outrun
hound, horse and dromedary. If the man who possesses this kind of
genius attempts to ascend the heaven of invention, his awkward
and unsuccessful efforts expose him to derision. But if he will
be content to stay in the terrestrial region of business, he will
find that the faculties which would not enable him to soar into a
higher sphere will enable him to distance all his competitors in
the lower. As a poet Montague could never have risen above the
crowd. But in the House of Commons, now fast becoming supreme in
the State, and extending its control over one executive
department after another, the young adventurer soon obtained a
place very different from the place which he occupies among men
of letters. At thirty, he would gladly have given all his chances
in life for a comfortable vicarage and a chaplain's scarf. At
thirty-seven, he was First Lord of the Treasury, Chancellor of
the Exchequer and a Regent of the kingdom; and this elevation he
owed not at all to favour, but solely to the unquestionable
superiority of his talents 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 of Treason, placed him at once in the first rank
of parliamentary orators. On that occasion he was opposed to a
crowd of veteran senators renowned for their eloquence, Halifax,
Rochester, Nottingham, Mulgrave, and proved himself a match for
them all. He was speedily seated at the Board of Treasury; and
there the clearheaded and experienced Godolphin soon found that
his young colleague was his master. When Somers had quitted the
House of Commons, Montague had no rival there. Sir Thomas
Littleton, once distinguished as the ablest debater and man of
business among the Whig members, was content to serve under his
junior. To this day we may discern in many parts of our financial
and commercial system the marks of the vigorous intellect and
daring spirit of Montague. His bitterest enemies were unable to
deny that some of the expedients which he had proposed had proved
highly beneficial to the nation. But it was said that these
expedients were not devised by himself. He was represented, in a
hundred pamphlets, as the daw in borrowed plumes. He had taken,
it was affirmed, the hint of every one of his great plans from
the writings or the conversation of some ingenious speculator.
This reproach was, in truth, no reproach. We can scarcely expect
to find in the same human being the talents which are necessary
for the making of new discoveries in political science, and the
talents which obtain the assent of divided and tumultuous
assemblies to great practical reforms. To be at once an Adam
Smith and a Pitt is scarcely possible. It is surely praise enough
for a busy politician that he knows how to use the theories of
others, that he discerns, among the schemes of innumerable
projectors, the precise scheme which is wanted and which is
practicable, that he shapes it to suit pressing circumstances and
popular humours, that he proposes it just when it is most likely
to be favourably received, that he triumphantly defends it
against all objectors, and that he carries it into execution with
prudence and energy; and to this praise no English statesman has
a fairer claim than Montague.

It is a remarkable proof of his selfknowledge that, from the
moment at which he began to distinguish himself in public life,
he ceased to be a versifier. It does not appear that, after he
became a Lord of the Treasury, he ever wrote a couplet, with the
exception of a few well turned lines inscribed on a set of
toasting glasses which were sacred to the most renowned Whig
beauties of his time. He wisely determined to derive from the
poetry of others a glory which he never would have derived from
his own. As a patron of genius and learning he ranks with his two
illustrious friends, Dorset and Somers. His munificence fully
equalled theirs; and, though he was inferior to them in delicacy
of taste, he succeeded in associating his name inseparably with
some names which will last as long as our language.

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

With Russell, Somers and Montague, was closely connected, during
a quarter of a century a fourth Whig, who in character bore
little resemblance to any of them. This was Thomas Wharton,
eldest son of Philip Lord Wharton. Thomas Wharton has been
repeatedly mentioned in the course of this narrative. But it is
now time to describe him more fully. He was in his forty-seventh
year, but was still a young man in constitution, in appearance
and in manners. Those who hated him most heartily,--and no man
was hated more heartily,--admitted that his natural parts were
excellent, and that he was equally qualified for debate and for
action. The history of his mind deserves notice; for it was the
history of many thousands of minds. His rank and abilities made
him so conspicuous that in him we are able to trace distinctly
the origin and progress of a moral taint which was epidemic among
his contemporaries.

He was born in the days of the Covenant, and was the heir of a
covenanted house. His father was renowned as a distributor of
Calvinistic tracts, and a patron of Calvinistic divines. The
boy's first years were past amidst Geneva bands, heads of lank
hair, upturned eyes, nasal psalmody, and sermons three hours
long. Plays and poems, hunting and dancing, were proscribed by
the austere discipline of his saintly family. The fruits of this
education became visible, when, from the sullen mansion of
Puritan parents, the hotblooded, quickwitted young patrician
emerged into the gay and voluptuous London of the Restoration.
The most dissolute cavaliers stood aghast at the dissoluteness of
the emancipated precisian. He early acquired and retained to the
last the reputation of being the greatest rake in England. Of
wine indeed he never became the slave; and he used it chiefly for
the purpose of making himself the master of his associates. But
to the end of his long life the wives and daughters of his
nearest friends were not safe from his licentious plots. The
ribaldry of his conversation moved astonishment even in that age.
To the religion of his country he offered, in the mere wantonness
of impiety, insults too foul to be described. His mendacity and
his effrontery passed into proverbs. Of all the liars of his time
he was the most deliberate, the most inventive and the most
circumstantial. What shame meant he did not seem to understand.
No reproaches, even when pointed and barbed with the sharpest
wit, appeared to give him pain. Great satirists, animated by a
deadly personal aversion, exhausted all their strength in attacks
upon him. They assailed him with keen invective; they assailed
him with still keener irony; but they found that neither
invective nor irony could move him to any thing but an unforced
smile and a goodhumoured curse; and they at length threw down the
lash, acknowledging that it was impossible to make him feel.
That, with such vices, he should have played a great part in
life, should have carried numerous elections against the most
formidable opposition by his personal popularity, should have had
a large following in Parliament, should have risen to the highest
offices of the State, seems extraordinary. But he lived in times
when faction was almost a madness; and he possessed in an eminent
degree the qualities of the leader of a faction. There was a
single tie which he respected. The falsest of mankind in all
relations but one, he was the truest of Whigs. The religious
tenets of his family he had early renounced with contempt; but to
the politics of his family he stedfastly adhered through all the
temptations and dangers of half a century. In small things and in
great his devotion to his party constantly appeared. He had the
finest stud in England; and his delight was to win plates from
Tories. Sometimes when, in a distant county, it was fully
expected that the horse of a High Church squire would be first on
the course, down came, on the very eve of the race, Wharton's
Careless, who had ceased to run at Newmarket merely for want of
competitors, or Wharton's Gelding, for whom Lewis the Fourteenth
had in vain offered a thousand pistoles. A man whose mere sport
was of this description was not likely to be easily beaten in any
serious contest. Such a master of the whole art of electioneering
England had never seen. Buckinghamshire was his own especial
province; and there he ruled without a rival. But he extended his
care over the Whig interest in Yorkshire, Cumberland,
Westmoreland, Wiltshire. Sometimes twenty, sometimes thirty,
members of Parliament were named by him. As a canvasser he was
irresistible. He never forgot a face that he had once seen. Nay,
in the towns in which he wished to establish an interest, he
remembered, not only the voters, but their families. His
opponents were confounded by the strength of his memory and the
affability of his deportment, and owned, that it was impossible
to contend against a great man who called the shoemaker by his
Christian name, who was sure that the butcher's daughter must be
growing a fine girl, and who was anxious to know whether the
blacksmith's youngest boy was breeched. By such arts as these he
made himself so popular that his journeys to the Buckinghamshire
Quarter Sessions resembled royal progresses. 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 not
less than eighty thousand pounds, a sum which, when compared with
the value of estates, must be considered as equivalent to more
than three hundred thousand pounds in our time.

But the chief service which Wharton rendered to the Whig party
was that of bringing in recruits from the young aristocracy. He
was quite as dexterous a canvasser among the embroidered coats at
the Saint James's Coffeehouse as among the leathern aprons at
Wycombe and Aylesbury. He had his eye on every boy of quality who
came of age; and it was not easy for such a boy to resist the
arts of a noble, eloquent and wealthy flatterer, who united
juvenile vivacity to profound art and long experience of the gay
world. It mattered not what the novice preferred, gallantry or
field sports, the dicebox or the bottle. Wharton soon found out
the master passion, offered sympathy, advice and assistance, and,
while seeming to be only the minister of his disciple's
pleasures, made sure 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, judged him, as was natural, far too leniently. He was
widely known by the very undeserved appellation of Honest Tom.
Some pious men, Burnet, for example, and Addison, averted their
eyes from the scandal which he gave, and spoke of him, not indeed
with esteem, yet with goodwill. A most ingenious and accomplished
Whig, the third Earl of Shaftesbury, author of the
Characteristics, described Wharton as the most mysterious of
human beings, as a strange compound of best and worst, of private
depravity and public virtue, and owned himself unable to
understand how a man utterly without principle in every thing but
politics should in politics be as true as steel. But that which,
in the judgment of one faction, more than half redeemed all
Wharton's faults, seemed to the other faction to aggravate them
all. The opinion which the Tories entertained of him is expressed
in a single line written after his death by the ablest man of
that party; "He was the most universal villain that ever I
knew."480 Wharton's political adversaries thirsted for his blood,
and repeatedly tried to shed it. Had he not been a man of
imperturbable temper, dauntless courage and consummate skill in
fence, his life would have been a short one. But neither anger
nor danger ever deprived him of his presence of mind; he was an
incomparable swordsman; and he had a peculiar way of disarming
opponents which moved the envy of all the duellists of his time.
His friends said that he had never given a challenge, that he had
never refused one, that he had never taken a life, and yet that
he had never fought without having his antagonist's life at his
mercy.481

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

While the great body of the Whigs was, under these able chiefs,
arraying itself in order resembling that of a regular army, the
Tories were in a state 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 this time, any chief in the House
of Commons. The name of Seymour had once been great among them,
and had not quite lost its influence. But, since he had been at
the Board of Treasury, he had disgusted them by vehemently
defending all that he had himself, when out of place, vehemently
attacked. They had once looked up to the Speaker, Trevor; but his
greediness, impudence and venality were now so notorious that all
respectable gentlemen, of all shades of opinion, were ashamed to
see him in the chair. Of the old Tory members Sir Christopher
Musgrave alone had much weight. Indeed the real leaders of the
party were two or three men bred in principles diametrically
opposed to Toryism, men who had carried Whiggism to the verge of
republicanism, and who had been considered not merely as Low
Churchmen, but as more than half Presbyterians. Of these men the
most eminent were two great Herefordshire squires, Robert Harley
and 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, he exercised on the politics of all Europe, the close
intimacy in which he lived with some of the greatest wits and
poets of his time, and the frequent recurrence of his name in the
works of Swift, Pope, Arbuthnot, and Prior, must always make him
an object of interest. Yet the man himself was of all men the
least interesting. There is indeed a whimsical contrast between
the very ordinary qualities of his mind and the 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, had commanded a regiment under Essex, had, after the
Restoration, been an active opponent of the Court,  had supported
the Exclusion Bill, had harboured dissenting preachers, had
frequented meetinghouses, and had made himself so obnoxious to
the ruling powers that at the time of the Western Insurrection,
he had been placed under arrest, and his house had been searched
for arms. When the Dutch army was marching from Torbay towards
London, he and his eldest son Robert declared for the Prince of
Orange and a free Parliament, raised a large body of horse, took
possession of Worcester, and evinced their zeal against Popery by
publicly breaking to pieces, in the High Street of that city, a
piece of sculpture which to rigid precisians seemed idolatrous.
Soon after the Convention became a Parliament, Robert Harley was
sent up to Westminster as member for a Cornish borough. His
conduct was such as might have been expected from his birth and
education. He was a Whig, and indeed an intolerant and vindictive
Whig. Nothing would satisfy him but a general proscription of the
Tories. His name appears in the list of those members who voted
for the Sacheverell clause; and, at the general election which
took place in the spring of 1690, the party which he had
persecuted 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; and this cry produced so much effect that it was with
difficulty that any of them could obtain a seat. Such was the
commencement of the public life of a man whose name, a quarter of
a century later, was inseparably coupled with the High Church in
the acclamations of Jacobite mobs.482

Soon, however, it began to be observed that in every division
Harley was in the company of those gentlemen who held his
political opinions in abhorrence; nor was this strange; for he
affected the character of a Whig of the old pattern; and before
the Revolution it had always been supposed that a Whig was a
person who watched with jealousy every exertion of the
prerogative, who was slow to loose the strings of the public
purse, and who was extreme to mark the faults of the ministers of
the Crown. Such a Whig Harley still professed to be. He did not
admit that the recent change of dynasty had made any change in
the duties of a representative of the people. The new government
ought to be observed as suspiciously, checked as severely, and
supplied as sparingly as the old one. Acting on these principles
he necessarily found himself acting with men whose principles
were diametrically opposed to his. He liked to thwart the King;
they liked to thwart the usurper; the consequence was that,
whenever there was an opportunity of thwarting William, the
Roundhead stayed in the House or went into the lobby in company
with the whole crowd of Cavaliers.

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

He had none of the external graces of an orator. His countenance
was heavy, his figure mean and somewhat deformed, and his
gestures uncouth. Yet he was heard with respect. For, such as his
mind was, it had been assiduously cultivated. His youth had been
studious; and to the last he continued 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 occasionally employed hours
which should have been very differently spent in composing verses
more execrable than the bellman's.484 His time however was not
always so absurdly wasted. He had that sort of industry and that
sort of exactness which would have made him a respectable
antiquary 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 any man could obtain an accurate and extensive
knowledge of the law of Parliament. Having few rivals in this
laborious and unattractive pursuit, he soon began to be regarded
as an oracle on questions of form and 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. No
illicit amour was imputed to him even by satirists. Gambling he
held in aversion; and it was said that he never passed White's,
then the favourite haunt of noble sharpers and dupes, without an
exclamation of anger. His practice of flustering himself daily
with claret was hardly considered as a fault by his
contemporaries. His knowledge, his gravity and his independent
position gained for him the ear of the House; and even his bad
speaking was, in some sense, an advantage to him. For people are
very loth to admit that the same man can unite very different
kinds of excellence. It is soothing to envy to believe that what
is splendid cannot be solid, that what is clear cannot be
profound. Very slowly was the public brought to acknowledge that
Mansfield was a great jurist, and that Burke was a great master
of political science. Montague was a brilliant rhetorician, and,
therefore, though he had ten times Harley's capacity for the
driest parts of business, was represented by detractors as a
superficial, prating pretender. But from the absence of show in
Harley's discourses many people inferred that there must be much
substance; and he was pronounced to be a deep read, deep thinking
gentleman, not a fine talker, but fitter to direct affairs of
state than all the fine talkers in the world. This character he
long supported with that cunning which is frequently found in
company with ambitious and unquiet mediocrity. He constantly had,
even with his best friends, an air of mystery and reserve which
seemed to indicate that he knew some momentous 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 was not 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, that
his admirers began to find out that he was really a dull
puzzleheaded man.485

Soon after the general election of 1690, Harley, generally voting
with the Tories, began to turn Tory. The change was so gradual as
to be almost imperceptible; but was not the less real. He early
began to hold the Tory doctrine that England ought to confine
herself to a maritime war. He early felt the true Tory antipathy
to Dutchmen and to moneyed men. The antipathy to Dissenters,
which was necessary to the completeness of the character, came
much later. At length the transformation was complete; and the
old haunter of conventicles became an intolerant High Churchman.
Yet to the last the traces of his early breeding would now and
then show themselves; and, while he acted after the fashion of
Laud, he sometimes wrote in the style of Praise God Barebones.486

Of Paul Foley we know comparatively little. His history, up to a
certain point, greatly resembles that of Harley: but he appears
to have been superior to Harley both in parts and in elevation of
character. He was the 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 munificent charity. The Foleys were,
like their neighbours the Harleys, Whigs and Puritans. Thomas
Foley lived on terms of close intimacy with Baxter, in whose
writings he is mentioned with warm eulogy. The opinions and the
attachments of Paul Foley were at first those of his family. But
be, like Harley, became, merely from the vehemence of his
Whiggism, an ally of the Tories, and might, perhaps, like Harley,
have been completely metamorphosed into a Tory, if the process of
transmutation had not been interrupted by death. Foley's
abilities were highly respectable, and had been improved by
education. He was so wealthy that it was unnecessary for him to
follow the law as a profession; but he had studied it carefully
as a science. His morals were without stain; and the greatest
fault which could be imputed to him was that he paraded his
independence and disinterestedness too ostentatiously, and was so
much afraid of being thought to fawn that he was always growling.

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

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

From this view of the state of parties in the House of Commons,
it seems clear that Sunderland had good reason for recommending
that the administration should be entrusted to the Whigs. The
King, however, hesitated long before he could bring himself to
quit that neutral position which he had long occupied between the
contending parties. If one of those parties was disposed to
question his title, the other was on principle hostile to his
prerogative. He still remembered with bitterness the unreasonable
and vindictive conduct of the Convention Parliament at the close
of 1689 and the beginning of 16go; and he shrank from the thought
of being entirely in the hands of the men who had obstructed the
Bill of Indemnity, who had voted for the Sacheverell clause, who
had tried to prevent him from taking the command of his army in
Ireland, and who had called him an ungrateful tyrant merely
because he would not be their slave and their hangman. He had
once, by a bold and unexpected effort, freed himself from their
yoke; and he was not inclined to put it on his neck again. He
personally disliked Wharton and Russell. He thought highly of the
capacity of Caermarthen, of the integrity of Nottingham, of the
diligence and financial skill of Godolphin. 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 of parties instantly began. William from the throne
pressed on the Houses the necessity of making a great exertion to
arrest the progress of France on the Continent. During the last
campaign, he said, she had, on every point, had a superiority of
force; and it had therefore been found impossible to cope with
her. His allies had promised to increase their armies; 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 into
consideration. The miscarriage of the Smyrna fleet was the chief
subject of discussion. The cry for inquiry was universal: but it
was evident that the two parties raised that cry for very
different reasons. Montague spoke the sense of the Whigs. He
declared that the disasters of the summer could not, in his
opinion, be explained by the ignorance and imbecility of those
who had charge of the naval administration. There must have been
treason. It was impossible to believe that Lewis, when he sent
his Brest squadron to the Straits of Gibraltar, and left the
whole coast of his kingdom from Dunkirk to Bayonne unprotected,
had trusted merely to chance. He must have been well assured that
his fleet would meet with a vast booty under a feeble convoy. As
there had been treachery in some quarters, there had been
incapacity in others. The State was ill served. And then the
orator pronounced a warm panegyric on his friend Somers. "Would
that all men in power would follow the example of my Lord Keeper!
If all patronage were bestowed as judiciously and disinterestedly
as his, we should not see the public offices filled with men who
draw salaries and perform no duties." It was moved and carried
unanimously, that the Commons would support their Majesties, and
would forthwith proceed to investigate the cause of the disaster
in the Bay of Lagos.489 The Lords of the Admiralty were directed
to produce a great mass of documentary evidence. The King sent
down copies of the examinations taken before the Committee of
Council which Mary had appointed to inquire into the grievances
of the Turkey merchants. The Turkey 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 soon thought that
sufficient ground had been laid for a vote condemning the naval
administration, and moved a resolution attributing the
miscarriage of the Smyrna fleet to notorious and treacherous
mismanagement. That there had been mismanagement could not be
disputed; but that there had been foul play had certainly not
been proved. The Tories proposed that the word "treacherous" should be omitted.
A division took place; and the Whigs carried
their point by a hundred and forty votes to a hundred and three.
Wharton was a teller for the majority.490

It was now decided that there had been treason, but not who was
the traitor. Several keen debates followed. The Whigs tried to
throw the blame on Killegrew and Delaval, who were Tories; the
Tories did their best to make out that the fault lay with the
Victualling Department, which was under the direction of Whigs.
But the House of Commons has always been much more ready to pass
votes of censure drawn in general terms than to brand individuals
by name. A resolution clearing the Victualling Office was
proposed by Montague, and carried, after a debate of two days, by
a hundred and eighty-eight votes to a hundred and fifty-two.491
But when the victorious party brought forward a motion
inculpating the admirals, the Tories came up in great numbers
from the country, and, after a debate which lasted from nine in
the morning till near eleven at night, succeeded in saving their
friends. The Noes were a hundred and seventy, and the Ayes only a
hundred and sixty-one. Another attack was made a few days later
with no better success. The Noes were a hundred and eighty-five,
the Ayes only a hundred and seventy-five. The indefatigable and
implacable Wharton was on both occasions tellers for the
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 indeed escaped impeachment; but the escape had
been so narrow that it was impossible for the King to employ them
any longer. The advice of Sunderland prevailed. A new Commission
of Admiralty was prepared; and Russell was named First Lord. He
had already been appointed to the command 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 and politically hostile to each other holding high
offices at the same time, the relation between the First Lord of
the Admiralty and the Secretary of 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 be well conducted
without cordial cooperation between them; and between Nottingham
and Russell such cooperation was not to be expected. "I thank
you," William said to Nottingham, "for your services. I have
nothing to complain of in your conduct. It is only from necessity
that I part with you." Nottingham retired with dignity. Though a
very honest man, he went out of office much richer than lie had
come in five years before. What were then considered as the
legitimate emoluments of his place were great; he had sold
Kensington House to the Crown for a large sum; and he had
probably, after the fashion of that time, obtained for himself
some lucrative grants. He laid out all his gains in purchasing
land. He heard, he said, that his enemies meant to accuse him of
having acquired wealth by illicit means. He was perfectly ready
to abide the issue of an inquiry. He would not, as some ministers
had done, place his fortune beyond the reach of the justice of
his country. He would have no secret hoard. He would invest
nothing in foreign funds. His property should all be such as
could be readily discovered and seized.493

During some weeks the seals which Nottingham had delivered up
remained in the royal closet. To dispose of them proved no easy
matter. They were offered to Shrewsbury, who of all the Whig
leaders stood highest in the King's favour; but Shrewsbury
excused himself, and, in order to avoid further importunity,
retired into the country. There he soon received a pressing
letter from Elizabeth Villiers. This lady had, when a girl,
inspired William with a passion which had caused much scandal and
much unhappiness in the little Court of the Hague. Her influence
over him she owed not to her personal charms,--for it tasked all
the art of Kneller to make her look tolerably on canvass,--not to
those talents which peculiarly 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 guide the counsels of
statesmen. To the end of her life great politicians sought her
advice. Even Swift, the shrewdest and most cynical of her
contemporaries, pronounced her the wisest of women, and more than
once sate, fascinated by her conversation, from two in the
afternoon till near midnight.494 By degrees the virtues and
charms of Mary conquered the first place in her husband's
affection. But he still, in difficult conjunctures, frequently
applied to Elizabeth Villiers for advice and assistance. She now
implored Shrewsbury to reconsider his determination, and not to
throw away the opportunity of uniting the Whig party for ever.
Wharton and Russell wrote to the same effect. In reply came
flimsy and unmeaning excuses: "I am not qualified for a court
life; I am unequal to a place which requires much exertion; I do
not quite agree with any party in the State; in short, I am unfit
for the world; I want to travel; I want to see Spain." These were
mere pretences. Had Shrewsbury spoken the whole truth, he would
have said that he had, in an evil hour, been false to the cause
of that Revolution in which he had borne so great a part, that he
had entered into engagements of which he repented, but from which
he knew not how to extricate himself, and that, while he remained
under those engagements, he was unwilling to enter into the
service of the existing government. Marlborough, Godolphin and
Russell, indeed, had no scruple about corresponding with one King
while holding office under the other. But Shrewsbury had, what
was wanting to Marlborough, Godolphin and Russell, a conscience,
a conscience which indeed too often failed to restrain him from
doing wrong, but which never failed to punish him.495

In consequence of his refusal to accept the Seals, the
ministerial arrangements which the King had planned were not
carried into entire effect till the end of the session. Meanwhile
the proceedings of the two Houses had been highly interesting and
important.

Soon after the Parliament met, the attention of the Commons was
again called to the state of the trade with India; and the
charter which had just been granted to the Old Company was laid
before them. They would probably have been disposed to sanction
the new arrangement, which, in truth, differed little from that
which they had themselves suggested not many months before, if
the Directors had acted with prudence. But the Directors, from
the day on which they had obtained their charter, had persecuted
the interlopers without mercy, and had quite forgotten that it
was one thing to persecute interlopers in the Eastern Seas, and
another to persecute them in the port of London. Hitherto the war
of the monopolists against the private trade had been generally
carried on at the distance of fifteen thousand miles from
England. If harsh things were done, the English did not see them
done, and did not hear of them till long after they had been
done; nor was it by any means easy to ascertain at Westminster
who had been right and who had been wrong in a dispute which had
arisen three or four years before at Moorshedabad or Canton. With
incredible rashness the Directors determined, at the very moment
when the fate of their company was in the balance, to give the
people of this country a near view of the most odious features of
the monopoly. Some wealthy merchants of London had equipped a
fine ship named the Redbridge. Her crew was numerous, her cargo
of immense value. Her papers had been made out for Alicant: but
there was some reason to suspect that she was really bound for
the countries lying beyond the Cape of Good Hope. She was stopped
by the Admiralty, in obedience to an order which the Company
obtained from the Privy Council, doubtless by the help of the
Lord President. Every day that she lay in the Thames caused a
heavy expense to the owners. The indignation in the City was
great and general. The Company maintained that from the legality
of the monopoly the legality of the detention necessarily
followed. The public turned the argument round, and, being firmly
convinced that the detention was illegal, drew the inference that
the monopoly must be illegal too. The dispute was at the height
when the Parliament met. Petitions on both sides were speedily
laid on the table of the Commons; and it was resolved that these
petitions should be taken into consideration by a Committee of
the whole House. The first question on which the conflicting
parties tried their strength was the choice of a chairman. The
enemies of the Old Company proposed Papillon, once the closest
ally and subsequently the keenest opponent of Child, and carried
their point by a hundred and thirty-eight votes to a hundred and
six. The Committee proceeded to inquire by what authority the
Redbridge had been stopped. One of her owners, Gilbert Heathcote,
a rich merchant and a stanch Whig, appeared at the bar as a
witness. He was asked whether he would venture to deny that the
ship had really been fitted out for the Indian trade. "It is no
sin that I know of," he answered, "to trade with India; and I
shall trade with India till I am restrained by Act of
Parliament." Papillon reported that in the opinion of the
Committee, the detention of the Redbridge was illegal. The
question was then put, that the House would agree with the
Committee. The friends of the Old Company ventured on a second
division, and were defeated by a hundred and seventy-one votes to
a hundred and twenty-five.496

The blow was quickly followed up. A few days later it was moved
that all subjects of England had equal right to trade to the East
Indies unless prohibited by Act of Parliament; and the supporters
of the Old Company, sensible that they were in a minority,
suffered the motion to pass without a division.497

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

The opinion of the great majority of the House of Commons was
that the Indian trade could be advantageously carried on only by
means of a joint stock and a monopoly. It might therefore have
been expected that the resolution which destroyed the monopoly of
the Old Company would have been immediately followed by a law
granting a monopoly to the New Company. No such law, however, was
passed. The Old Company, though not strong enough to defend its
own privileges, was able, with the help of its Tory friends, to
prevent the rival association from obtaining similar privileges.
The consequence was that, during some years, there was nominally
a free trade with India. In fact, the trade still lay under
severe restrictions. The private adventurer found indeed no
difficulty in sailing from England; but his situation was as
perilous as ever when he had turned the Cape of Good Hope.
Whatever respect might be paid to a vote of the House of Commons
by public functionaries in London, such a vote was, at Bombay or
Calcutta, much less regarded than a private letter from Child;
and Child still continued to fight the battle with unbroken
spirit. He sent out to the factories of the Company orders that
no indulgence should be shown to the intruders. For the House of
Commons and for its resolutions he expressed the bitterest
contempt. "Be guided by my instructions," he wrote," and not by
the nonsense of a few ignorant country gentlemen who have hardly
wit enough to manage their own private affairs, and who know
nothing at all about questions of trade." It appears that his
directions were obeyed.

Every where in the East, during this period of anarchy, servant
of the Company and the independent merchant waged war on each
other, accused each other of piracy, and tried by every artifice
to exasperate the Mogul government against each other.498

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

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

The fate of the Triennial Bill confounded all the calculations of
the best informed politicians of that time, and may therefore
well seem extraordinary to us. During the recess, that bill had
been described in numerous pamphlets, written for the most part
by persons zealous for the Revolution and for popular principles
of government, as the one thing needful, as the universal cure
for the distempers of the State. On the first, second and third
readings in the House of Commons no division took place. The
Whigs were enthusiastic. The Tories seemed to be acquiescent. It
was understood that the King, though he had used his Veto for the
purpose of giving the Houses an opportunity of reconsidering the
subject, had no intention of offering a pertinacious opposition
to their wishes. But Seymour, with a cunning which long
experience 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 question whether it should pass, the Noes were a hundred
and forty-six, the Ayes only a hundred and thirty-six.500 Some
eager Whigs flattered themselves that their defeat was the effect
of a surprise, and might be retrieved. Within three days,
therefore, Monmouth, the most ardent and restless man in the
whole party, brought into the Upper House a bill substantially
the same with that which had so strangely miscarried in the
Lower. The Peers passed this bill very expeditiously, and sent it
down to the Commons. But in the Commons it found no favour. Many
members, who professed to wish that the duration of parliaments
should be limited, resented the interference of the hereditary
branch of the legislature in a matter which peculiarly concerned
the elective branch. The subject, they said, is one which
especially belongs to us; we have considered it; we have come to
a decision; and it is scarcely parliamentary, it is certainly
most indelicate, in their Lordships, to call upon us to reverse
that decision. The question now is, not whether the duration of
parliaments ought to be limited, but whether we ought to submit
our judgment to the authority of the Peers, and to rescind, at
their bidding, what we did only a fortnight ago. The animosity
with which the patrician order was regarded was inflamed by the
arts and the eloquence of Seymour. The bill contained a
definition of the words, "to hold a Parliament." This definition
was scrutinised with extreme jealousy, and was thought by many,
with very little reason, to have been framed for the purpose of
extending the privileges, already invidiously great, of the
nobility. It appears, from the scanty and obscure fragments of
the debates which have come down to us, that bitter reflections
were thrown on the general conduct, both political and judicial,
of the Peers. Old Titus, though zealous for triennial
parliaments, owned that he was not surprised at the ill humour
which many gentlemen showed. "It is true," he said, "that we
ought to be dissolved; but it is rather hard, I must own, that
the Lords are to prescribe the time of our dissolution. The
Apostle Paul wished to be dissolved; but, I doubt, if his friends
had set him a day, he would not have taken it kindly of them."
The bill was rejected by a hundred and ninety-seven votes to a
hundred and twenty-seven.501

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

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

He resolved, however, to run the risk. Whether he had any adviser
is not known. His determination seems to have taken both the
leading Whigs and the leading Tories by surprise. When the Clerk
had proclaimed that the King and Queen would consider of the bill
touching free and impartial proceedings in Parliament, the
Commons retired from the bar of the Lords in a resentful and
ungovernable mood. As soon as the Speaker was again in his chair
there was a long and tempestuous debate. All other business was
postponed. All committees were adjourned. It was resolved that
the House would, early the next morning, take into consideration
the state of the nation. When the morning came, the excitement
did not appear to have abated. The mace was sent into Westminster
Hall and into the Court of Requests. All members who could be
found were brought into the House. That none might be able to
steal away unnoticed, the back door was locked, and the key laid
on the table. All strangers were ordered to retire. With these
solemn preparations began a sitting which reminded a few old men
of some of the first sittings of the Kong Parliament. High words
were uttered by the enemies of the government. Its friends,
afraid of being accused of abandoning the cause of the Commons of
England for the sake of royal favour, hardly ventured to raise
their voices. Montague alone seems to have defended the King.
Lowther, though high in office and a member of the cabinet, owned
that there were evil influences at work, and expressed a wish to
see the Sovereign surrounded by 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 were public
enemies, was carried with only two or three Noes. Harley, after
reminding his hearers that they had their negative voice as the
King had his, and that, if His Majesty refused then redress, they
could refuse him money, moved that they should go up to the
Throne, not, as usual, with a Humble Address, but with a
Representation. Some members proposed to 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
that the storm had greatly subsided. The malignant joy and the
wild hopes which the Jacobites had, during the last forty-eight
hours, expressed with their usual imprudence, had incensed and
alarmed the Whigs and the moderate Tories. Many members too were
frightened by hearing that William was fully determined not to
yield without an appeal to the nation. Such an appeal might have
been successful: for a dissolution, on any ground whatever,
would, at that moment, have been a highly popular exercise of the
prerogative. The constituent bodies, it was well known, were
generally zealous for the Triennial Bill, and cared comparatively
little about the Place Bill. Many Tory members, therefore, who
had recently voted against the Triennial Bill, were by no means
desirous to run the risks of a general election. When the
Representation which Harley and his friends had prepared was
read, it was thought offensively strong. After being recommitted,
shortened and softened, it was presented by the whole House.
William's answer was kind and gentle; but he conceded nothing. He
assured the Commons that he remembered with gratitude the support
which he had on many occasions received from them, that he should
always consider their advice as most valuable, and that he should
look on counsellors who might attempt to raise dissension between
him and his Parliament as his enemies but he uttered not a word
which could be construed into an acknowledgment that he had used
his Veto ill, or into a promise that he would not use it again.

The Commons on the morrow took his speech into consideration.
Harley and 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 make a second representation pressing His Majesty
to explain himself more distinctly. But by this time there was a
strong reflux of feeling in the assembly. The Whigs had not only
recovered from their dismay, but were in high spirits and eager
for conflict. Wharton, Russell and Littleton maintained that the
House ought to be satisfied with what the King had said. "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 we come
through the lobby, in the face and gestures of every nonjuror
whom we pass, delight at the momentary coolness which has arisen
between us and the King. That should be enough for us. We may be
sure that we are voting rightly when we give a vote which tends
to confound the hopes of traitors." The House divided. Harley was
a teller on one side, Wharton on the other. Only eighty-eight
voted with Harley, two hundred and twenty-nine with Wharton. The
Whigs were so much elated by their victory that some of them
wished to move a vote of thanks to William for his gracious
answer; but they were restrained by wiser men. "We have lost time
enough already in these unhappy debates," said a leader of the
party. "Let us get to Ways and Means as fast as we can. The best
form which our thanks can take is that of a money bill."

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

Another question, which excited scarcely less angry feeling in
Parliament and in the country, was, about the same time, under
consideration. On the sixth of December, a Whig member of the
House of Commons obtained leave to bring in a bill for the
Naturalisation of Foreign Protestants. Plausible arguments in
favour of such a bill were not wanting. Great numbers of people,
eminently industrious and intelligent, firmly attached to our
faith, and deadly enemies of our deadly enemies, were at that
time without a country. Among the Huguenots who had fled from the
tyranny of the French King were many persons of great fame in
war, in letters, in arts and in sciences; and even the humblest
refugees were intellectually and morally above the average of the
common people of any kingdom in Europe. With French Protestants
who had been driven into exile by the edicts of Lewis were now
mingled German Protestants who had been driven into exile by his
arms. Vienna, Berlin, Basle, Hamburg, Amsterdam, London, swarmed
with honest laborious men who had once been thriving burghers of
Heidelberg or Mannheim, or who had cultivated vineyards along the
banks of the Neckar and the Rhine. A statesman might well think
that it would be at once generous and politic to invite to the
English shores and to incorporate with the English people
emigrants so unfortunate and so respectable. Their ingenuity and
their diligence could not fail to enrich any land which should
afford them an asylum; nor could it be doubted that they would
manfully defend the country of their adoption against him whose
cruelty had driven them from the country of their birth.

The first two readings passed without a division. But, on the
motion that the bill should be committed, there was a debate in
which the right of free speech was most liberally used by the
opponents of the government. It was idle, they said, to talk
about the poor Huguenots or the poor Palatines. The bill was
evidently meant for the benefit, not of French Protestants or
German Protestants, but of Dutchmen, who would be Protestants,
Papists or Pagans for a guilder a head, and who would, no doubt,
be as ready to sign the Declaration against Transubstantiation in
England as to trample on the Cross in Japan. They would come over
in multitudes. They would swarm in every public office. They
would collect the customs, and gauge the beer barrels. Our
Navigation Laws would be virtually repealed. Every merchant ship
that cleared out from the Thames or the Severn would be manned by
Zealanders and Hollanders and Frieslanders. To our own sailors
would be left the hard and perilous service of the royal navy.
For Hans, after filling the pockets of his huge trunk hose with
our money by assuming the character of a native, would, as soon
as a pressgang appeared, lay claim to the privileges of an alien.
The intruders would soon rule every corporation. They would elbow
our own Aldermen off the Royal Exchange. They would buy the
hereditary woods and halls of our country gentlemen. Already one
of the most noisome of the plagues of Egypt was among us. Frogs
had made their appearance even in the royal chambers. Nobody
could go to Saint James's without being disgusted by hearing the
reptiles of the Batavian marshes croaking all round him; and if
this bill should pass, the whole country would be as much
infested by the loathsome brood as the palace already was.

The orator who indulged himself most freely in this sort of
rhetoric was Sir John Knight, member for Bristol, a coarseminded
and spiteful Jacobite, who, if he had been an honest man, would
have been a nonjuror. Two years before, when Mayor of Bristol, he
had acquired a discreditable notoriety by treating with gross
disrespect a commission sealed with the great 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 the Serjeant
at Arms would open the doors, in order that the odious roll of
parchment, which was nothing less than a surrender of the
birthright of the English people, might be treated with proper
contumely. "Let us first," he said, "kick the bill out of the
House; and then let us kick the foreigners out of the kingdom."

On a division the motion for committing the bill was carried by a
hundred and sixty-three votes to a hundred and twenty-eight.504
But the minority was zealous and pertinacious; and the majority
speedily began to waver. Knight's speech, retouched and made more
offensive, soon appeared in print without a license. Tens of
thousands of copies were circulated by the post, or dropped in
the streets; and such was the strength of national prejudice that
too many persons read this ribaldry with assent and admiration.
But, when a copy was produced in the House, there was such an
outbreak of indignation and disgust, as cowed even the impudent
and savage nature of the orator. Finding himself in imminent
danger of being expelled and sent to prison, he apologized, and
disclaimed all knowledge of the paper which purported to be a
report of what he had said. He escaped with impunity; but his
speech was voted false, scandalous and seditious, and was burned
by the hangman in Palace Yard. The bill which had caused all this
ferment was prudently suffered to drop.505

Meanwhile the Commons were busied with financial questions of
grave importance. The estimates for the year 1694 were enormous.
The King proposed to add to the regular army, already the
greatest regular army that England had ever supported, four
regiments of dragoons, eight of horse, and twenty-five of
infantry. The whole number of men, officers included, would thus
be increased to about ninety-four thousand.506 Cromwell, while
holding down three reluctant kingdoms, and making vigorous war on
Spain in Europe and America, had never had two thirds of the
military force which William now thought necessary. The great
body of the Tories, headed by three Whig chiefs, Harley, Foley
and Howe, opposed any augmentation. The great body of the Whigs,
headed by Montague and Wharton, would have granted all that was
asked. After many long discussions, and probably many close
divisions, in the Committee of Supply, the King obtained the
greater part of what he demanded. The House allowed him four new
regiments of dragoons, six of horse, and fifteen of infantry. The
whole number of troops voted for the year amounted to eighty-
three thousand, the charge to more than two millions and a half,
including about two hundred thousand pounds for the ordnance.507

The naval estimates passed much more rapidly; for Whigs and
Tories agreed in thinking that the maritime ascendency of England
ought to be maintained at any cost. Five hundred thousand pounds
were voted for paying the arrears due to seamen, and two millions
for the expenses of the year 1694.508

The Commons then proceeded to consider the Ways and Means. The
land tax was renewed at four shillings in the pound; and by this
simple but powerful machinery about two millions were raised with
certainty and despatch.509 A poll tax was imposed.510 Stamp
duties had long been among the fiscal resources of Holland and
France, and had existed here during part of the reign of Charles
the Second, but had been suffered to expire. They were now
revived; and they have ever since formed an important part of the
revenue of the State.511 The hackney coaches of the capital were
taxed, and were placed under the government of commissioners, 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 large
deficiency; and it was again necessary to borrow. A new duty on
salt and some other imposts of less importance were set apart to
form a fund for a loan. On the security of this fund a million
was to be raised by a lottery, but a lottery which had scarcely
any thing but the name in common with the lotteries of a later
period. The sum to be contributed was divided into a hundred
thousand shares of ten pounds each. The interest on each share
was to be twenty shillings annually, or, in other words, ten per
cent., during sixteen years. But ten per cent. for sixteen years
was not a bait which was likely to attract lenders. An additional
lure was therefore held out to capitalists. On one fortieth of
the shares much higher interest was to be paid than on the other
thirty-nine fortieths. Which of the shares should be prizes was
to be determined by lot. The arrangements for the drawing of the
tickets were made by an adventurer of the name of Neale, who,
after squandering away two fortunes, had been glad to become
groom porter at the palace. His duties were to call the odds when
the Court played at hazard, to provide cards and dice, and to
decide any dispute which might arise on the bowling green or at
the gaming table. He was eminently skilled in the business of
this not very exalted post, and had made such sums by raffles
that he was able to engage in very costly speculations, and was
then covering the ground round the Seven Dials with buildings. He
was probably the best adviser that could have been consulted
about the details of a lottery. Yet there were not wanting
persons who thought it hardly decent in the Treasury to call in
the aid of a gambler by profession.513

By the lottery loan, as it was called, one million was obtained.
But another million was wanted to bring the estimated revenue for
the year 1694 up to a level with the estimated expenditure. The
ingenious and enterprising Montague had a plan ready, a plan to
which, except under the pressure of extreme pecuniary
difficulties, he might not easily have induced the Commons to
assent, but which, to his large and vigorous mind, appeared to
have advantages, both commercial and political, more important
than the immediate relief to the finances. He succeeded, not only
in supplying the wants of the State for twelve months, but in
creating a great institution, which, after the lapse of more than
a century and a half, continues to flourish, and which he lived
to see the stronghold, through all vicissitudes, of the Whig
party, and the bulwark, in dangerous times, of the Protestant
succession.

In the reign of William old men were still living who could
remember the days when there was not a single banking house in
the city of London. So late as the time of the Restoration every
trader had his own strong box in his own house, and, when an
acceptance was presented to him, told down the crowns and
Caroluses on his own counter. But the increase of wealth had
produced its natural effect, the subdivision of labour. Before
the end of the reign of Charles the Second, a new mode of paying
and receiving money had come into fashion among the merchants of
the capital. A class of agents arose, whose office was to keep
the cash of the commercial houses. This new branch of business
naturally fell into the hands of the goldsmiths, who were
accustomed to traffic largely in the precious metals, and who had
vaults in which great masses of bullion could lie secure from
fire and from robbers. It was at the shops of the goldsmiths 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 and
clamour. Oldfashioned merchants complained bitterly that a class
of men who, thirty years before, had confined themselves to their
proper functions, and had made a fair profit by embossing silver
bowls and chargers, by setting jewels for fine ladies, and by
selling pistoles and dollars to gentlemen setting out for the
Continent, had become the treasurers, and were fast becoming the
masters, of the whole City. These usurers, it was said, played at
hazard with what had been earned by the industry and hoarded by
the thrift of other men. If the dice turned up well, the knave
who kept the cash became an alderman; if they turned up ill, the
dupe who furnished the cash became a bankrupt. On the other side
the conveniences of the modern practice were set forth in
animated language. The new system, it was said, saved both labour
and money. Two clerks, 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 thus a hundred guineas,
locked in his safe close to the Exchange, did what would formerly
have required a thousand guineas, dispersed through many tills,
some on Ludgate Hill, some in Austin Friars, and some in Tower
Street.514

Gradually even those who had been loudest in murmuring against
the innovation gave way and conformed to the prevailing usage.
The last person who held out, strange to say, was Sir Dudley
North. When, in 1680, after residing many years abroad, he
returned to London, nothing astonished or displeased him more
than the practice of making payments by drawing bills on bankers.
He found that he could not go on Change without being followed
round the piazza by goldsmiths, who, with low bows, begged to
have the honour of serving him. He lost his temper when his
friends asked where he kept his cash. "Where should I keep it,"
he asked, "but in my own house?" With difficulty he was induced
to put his money into the hands of one of the Lombard Street men,
as they were called. Unhappily, the Lombard Street man broke, and
some of his customers suffered severely. Dudley North lost only
fifty pounds; but this loss confirmed him in his dislike of the
whole mystery of banking. It was in vain, however, that he
exhorted his fellow citizens to return to the good old practice,
and not to expose themselves to utter ruin in order to spare
themselves a little trouble. He stood alone against the whole
community. The advantages of the modern system were felt every
hour of every day in every part of London; and people were no
more disposed to relinquish those advantages for fear of
calamities which occurred at long intervals than to refrain from
building houses for fear of fires, or from building ships for
fear of hurricanes. It is a curious circumstance that a man who,
as a theorist, was distinguished from all the merchants of his
time by the largeness of his views and by his superiority to
vulgar prejudices, should, in practice, have been distinguished
from all the merchants of his time by the obstinacy with which he
adhered to an ancient mode of doing business, long after the
dullest and most ignorant plodders had abandoned that mode for
one better suited to a great commercial society.515

No sooner had banking become a separate and important trade, than
men began to discuss with earnestness the question whether it
would be expedient to erect a national bank. The general opinion
seems to have been 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 more advantage by individuals than by
great societies; and banking really is one of those few trades
which can be carried on to as much advantage by a great society
as by an individual. Two public banks had long been renowned
throughout Europe, the Bank of Saint George at Genoa, and the
Bank of Amsterdam. The immense wealth which was in the keeping of
those establishments, the confidence which they inspired, the
prosperity which they had created, their stability, tried by
panics, by wars, by revolutions, and found proof against all,
were favourite topics. The bank of Saint George had nearly
completed its third century. It had begun to receive deposits and
to make loans before Columbus had crossed the Atlantic, before
Gama had turned the Cape, when a Christian Emperor was reigning
at Constantinople, when a Mahomedan Sultan was reigning at
Granada, when Florence was a Republic, when Holland obeyed a
hereditary Prince. All these things had been changed. New
continents and new oceans had been discovered. The Turk was at
Constantinople; the Castilian was at Granada; Florence had its
hereditary Prince; Holland was a Republic; but the Bank of Saint
George was still receiving deposits and making loans. The Bank of
Amsterdam was little more than eighty years old; but its solvency
had stood severe tests. Even in the terrible crisis of 1672, when
the whole Delta of the Rhine was overrun by the French armies,
when the white flags were seen from the top of the Stadthouse,
there was one place where, amidst the general consternation and
confusion, tranquillity and order were still to be found; and
that place was the Bank. Why should not the Bank of London be as
great and as durable as the Banks of Genoa and of Amsterdam?
Before the end of the reign of Charles the Second several plans
were proposed, examined, attacked and defended. Some pamphleteers
maintained that a national bank ought to be under the direction
of the King. Others thought that the management ought to be
entrusted to the Lord Mayor, Aldermen and Common Council of the
capital.516 After the Revolution the subject was discussed with
an animation before unknown. For, under the influence of liberty,
the breed of political projectors multiplied exceedingly. A crowd
of plans, some of which resemble the fancies of a child or the
dreams of a man in a fever, were pressed on the government.
Preeminently conspicuous among the political mountebanks, whose
busy faces were seen every day in the lobby of the House of
Commons, were John Briscoe and Hugh Chamberlayne, two projectors
worthy to have been members of that Academy which Gulliver found
at Lagado. These men affirmed that the one cure for every
distemper of the State was a Land Bank. A Land Bank would work
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 to overflowing. There would be no poor rates; for there
would be no poor. The income of every landowner would be doubled.
The profits of every merchant would be increased. In short, the
island would, to use Briscoe's words, be the paradise of the
world. The only losers would be the moneyed men, those worst
enemies of the nation, who had done more injury to the gentry and
yeomanry than an invading army from France would have had the
heart to do.517

These blessed effects the Land Bank was to produce simply by
issuing enormous quantities of notes on landed security. The
doctrine of the projectors 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 his estate and two thousand
pounds in paper money.518 Both Briscoe and Chamberlayne treated
with the greatest contempt the notion that there could be an
overissue of paper as long as there was, for every ten pound
note, a piece of land in the country worth ten pounds. Nobody,
they said, would accuse a goldsmith of overissuing as long as his
vaults contained guineas and crowns to the full value of all the
notes which bore his signature. Indeed no goldsmith had in his
vaults guineas and crowns to the full value of all his paper. And
was not a square mile of rich land in Taunton Dean at least as
well entitled to be called wealth as a bag of gold or silver? The
projectors could not deny that many people had a prejudice in
favour of the precious metals, and that therefore, if the Land
Bank were bound to cash its notes, it would very soon stop
payment. This difficulty they got over by proposing that the
notes should be inconvertible, and that every body should be
forced to take them.

The speculations of Chamberlayne on the subject of the currency
may possibly find admirers even in our own time. But to his other
errors he added an error which began and ended with him. He was
fool enough to take it for granted, in all his reasonings, that
the value of an estate varied directly as the duration. He
maintained that if the annual income derived from a manor were a
thousand pounds, a grant of that manor for twenty years must be
worth twenty thousand pounds, and a grant for a hundred years
worth a hundred thousand pounds. If, therefore, the lord of 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 a
hundred thousand pounds. On this subject Chamberlayne was proof
to ridicule, to argument, even to arithmetical demonstration. He
was reminded that the fee simple of land would not sell for more
than twenty years' purchase. To say, therefore, that a term of a
hundred years was worth five times as much as a term of twenty
years, was to say that a term of a hundred years was worth five
times the fee simple; in other words, that a hundred was five
times infinity. Those who reasoned thus were refuted by being
told that they were usurers; and it should seem that a large
number of country gentlemen thought the refutation complete.519

In December 1693 Chamberlayne laid his plan, in all its naked
absurdity, before the Commons, and petitioned to be heard. He
confidently undertook to raise eight thousand pounds on every
freehold estate of a hundred and fifty pounds a year which should
be brought, as he expressed it, into his Land Bank, and this
without dispossessing the freeholder.520 All the squires in the
House must have known that the fee simple of such an estate would
hardly fetch three thousand pounds in the market. That less than
the fee simple of such an estate could, by any device, be made to
produce eight thousand pounds, would, it might have been thought,
have seemed incredible to the most illiterate foxhunter that
could be found on the benches. Distress, however, and animosity
had made the landed gentlemen credulous. They insisted on
referring Chamberlayne's plan to a committee; and the committee
reported that the plan was practicable, and would tend to the
benefit of the nation.521 But by this time the united force of
demonstration and derision had begun to produce an effect even on
the most ignorant rustics in the House. The report lay unnoticed
on the table; and the country was saved from a calamity compared
with which the defeat of Landen and the loss of the Smyrna fleet
would have been blessings.

All the projectors of this busy time, however, were not so
absurd as Chamberlayne. One among them, William Paterson, was an
ingenious, though not always a judicious, speculator. Of his early
life little is known except that he was a native of Scotland, and
that he had been in the West Indies. In what character he had
visited the West Indies was a matter about which his
contemporaries differed. His friends said that he had been a
missionary; his enemies that he had been a buccaneer. He seems to
have been gifted by nature with fertile invention, an ardent
temperament and great powers of persuasion, and to have acquired
somewhere in the course of his vagrant life a perfect knowledge
of accounts.

This man submitted to the government, in 1691, a plan of a
national bank; and his plan was favourably received both by
statesmen and by merchants. But years passed away; and nothing
was done, till, in the spring of 1694, it became absolutely
necessary to find some new mode of defraying the charges of the
war. Then at length the scheme devised by the poor and obscure
Scottish adventurer was taken up in earnest by Montague. With
Montague was closely allied Michael Godfrey, the brother of 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 the merchant princes of London. He was, as might have
been expected from his near connection with the martyr of the
Protestant faith, a zealous Whig. Some of his writings are still
extant, and prove him to have had a strong and clear mind.

By these two distinguished men Paterson's scheme was fathered.
Montague undertook to manage the House of Commons, Godfrey to
manage the City. An approving vote was obtained from the
Committee of Ways and Means; and a bill, the title of which gave
occasion to many sarcasms, was laid on the table. It was indeed
not easy to guess that a bill, which purported only to impose a
new duty on tonnage for the benefit of such persons as should
advance money towards carrying on the war, was really a bill
creating the greatest commercial institution that the world had
ever seen.

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

As soon as the plan became generally known, a paper war broke out
as furious as that between the swearers and the nonswearers, or
as that between the Old East India Company and the New East India
Company. The projectors who had failed to gain the ear of the
government fell like madmen on their more fortunate brother. All
the goldsmiths and pawnbrokers set up a howl of rage. Some
discontented Tories predicted ruin to the monarchy. It was
remarkable, they said, that Banks and Kings had never existed
together. Banks were republican institutions. There were
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 our liberties. Here, they said, is an instrument of
tyranny more formidable than the High Commission, than the Star
Chamber, than even the fifty thousand soldiers of Oliver. The
whole wealth of the nation will be in the hands of the Tonnage
Bank,--such was the nickname then in use;--and the Tonnage Bank
will be in the hands of the Sovereign. The power of the purse,
the one great security for all the rights of Englishmen, will be
transferred from the House of Commons to the Governor and
Directors of the new Company. This last consideration was really
of some weight, and was allowed to be so by the authors of the
bill. A clause was therefore most properly inserted which
inhibited the Bank from advancing money to the Crown without
authority from Parliament. Every infraction of this salutary rule
was to be punished by forfeiture of three times the sum advanced;
and it was provided that the King should not have power to remit
any part of the penalty.

The plan, thus amended, received the sanction of the Commons more
easily than might have been expected from the violence of the
adverse clamour. In truth, the Parliament was under duress. Money
must be had, and could in no other way be had so easily. What
took place when the House had resolved itself into a committee
cannot be discovered; but, while the Speaker was in the chair, no
division took place. The bill, however, was not safe when it had
reached the Upper House. Some Lords suspected that the plan of a
national bank had been devised for the purpose of exalting the
moneyed interest at the expense of the landed interest. Others
thought that this plan, whether good or bad, ought not to have
been submitted to them in such a form. Whether it would be safe
to call into existence a body which might one day rule the whole
commercial world, and how such a body should be constituted, were
questions which ought not to be decided by one branch of the
Legislature. The Peers ought to be at perfect liberty to examine
all the details of the proposed scheme, to suggest amendments, to
ask for conferences. It was therefore most unfair that the law
establishing the Bank should be sent up as part of a law granting
supplies to the Crown. The Jacobites entertained some hope that
the session would end with a quarrel between the Houses, that the
Tonnage Bill would be lost, and that William would enter on the
campaign without money. It was already May, according to the New
Style. The London season was over; and many noble families had
left Covent Garden and Soho Square for their woods and hayfields.
But summonses were sent out. There was a violent rush back to
town. The benches which had lately been deserted were crowded.
The sittings began at an hour unusually early, and were prolonged
to an hour unusually late. On the day on which the bill was
committed the contest lasted without intermission from nine in
the morning till six in the evening. Godolphin was in the chair.
Nottingham and Rochester proposed to strike out all the clauses
which related to the Bank. Something was said about the danger of
setting up a gigantic corporation which might soon give law to
the King and the three Estates of the Realm. But the Peers seemed
to be most moved by the appeal which was made to them as
landlords. The whole scheme, it was asserted, was intended to
enrich usurers at the expense of the nobility and gentry. Persons
who had laid by money would rather put it into the Bank than lend
it on mortgage at moderate interest. Caermarthen said little or
nothing in defence of what was, in truth, the work of his rivals
and enemies. He owned that there were grave objections to the
mode in which the Commons had provided for the public service of
the year. But would their Lordships amend a money bill? Would
they engage in a contest of which the end must be that they must
either yield, or incur the grave responsibility of leaving the
Channel without a fleet during the summer? This argument
prevailed; and, on a division, the amendment was rejected by
forty-three votes to thirty-one. A few hours later the bill
received the royal assent, and the Parliament was prorogued.523
In the City the success of Montague's plan was complete. It was
then at least as difficult to raise a million at eight per cent.
as it would now be to raise thirty millions at four per cent. It
had been supposed that contributions would drop in very slowly;
and a considerable time had therefore been allowed by the Act.
This indulgence was not needed. So popular was the new investment
that on the day on which the books were opened three hundred
thousand pounds were subscribed; three hundred thousand more were
subscribed during the next forty-eight hours; and, in ten days,
to the delight of all the friends of the government, it was
announced that the list was full. The whole sum which the
Corporation was bound to lend to the State was paid into the
Exchequer before the first instalment was due.524 Somers gladly
put the Great Seal to a charter framed in conformity with the
terms prescribed by Parliament; and the Bank of England commenced
its operations in the house of the Company of Grocers. There,
during many years, directors, secretaries and clerks might be
seen labouring in different parts of one spacious hall. The
persons employed by the bank were originally only fifty-four.
They are now nine hundred. The sum paid yearly in salaries
amounted at first to only four thousand three hundred and fifty
pounds. It now exceeds two hundred and ten thousand pounds. We
may therefore fairly infer that the incomes of commercial clerks
are, on an average, about three times as large in the reign of
Victoria as they were in the reign of William the Third.525

It soon appeared that Montague had, by skilfully availing himself
of the financial difficulties of the country, rendered an
inestimable service to his party. During several generations the
Bank of England was emphatically a Whig body. It was Whig, not
accidentally, but necessarily. It must have instantly stopped
payment if it had ceased to receive the interest on the sum which
it had advanced to the government; and of that interest James
would not have paid one farthing. Seventeen years after the
passing of the Tonnage Bill, Addison, in one of his most
ingenious and graceful little allegories, described the situation
of the great Company through which the immense wealth of London
was constantly circulating. He saw Public Credit on her throne in
Grocers' Hall, the Great Charter over her head, the Act of
Settlement full in her view. Her touch turned every thing to
gold. Behind her seat, bags filled with coin were piled up to the
ceiling. On her right and on her left the floor was hidden by
pyramids of guineas. On a sudden the door flies open. The
Pretender rushes in, a sponge in one hand, in the other a sword
which he shakes at the Act of Settlement. The beautiful Queen
sinks down fainting. The spell by which she has turned all things
around her into treasure is broken. The money bags shrink like
pricked bladders. The piles of gold pieces are turned into
bundles of rags or faggots of wooden tallies.526 The truth which
this parable was meant to convey was constantly present to the
minds of the rulers of the Bank. So closely was their interest
bound up with the interest of the government that the greater the
public danger the more ready were they to come to the rescue. In
old times, when the Treasury was empty, when the taxes came in
slowly, and when the pay of the soldiers and sailors was in
arrear, it had been necessary for the Chancellor of the Exchequer
to go, hat in hand, up and down Cheapside and Cornhill, attended
by the Lord Mayor and by the Aldermen, and to make up a sum by
borrowing a hundred pounds from this hosier, and two hundred
pounds from that ironmonger.527 Those times were over. The
government, instead of laboriously scooping up supplies from
numerous petty sources, could now draw whatever it required from
an immense reservoir, which all those petty sources kept
constantly replenished. It is hardly too much to say that, during
many years, the weight of the Bank, which was constantly in the
scale 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 had received the royal assent, the Parliament was
prorogued by the King with a speech in which he warmly thanked
the Commons for their liberality. Montague was immediately
rewarded for his services with the place of Chancellor of the
Exchequer.528

Shrewsbury had a few weeks before consented to accept the seals.
He had held out resolutely from November to March. While he was
trying to find excuses which might satisfy his political friends,
Sir James Montgomery visited him. Montgomery was now the most
miserable of human beings. Having borne a great part in a great
Revolution, having been charged with the august office of
presenting the Crown of Scotland to the Sovereigns whom the
Estates had chosen, having domineered without a rival, during
several months, in the Parliament at Edinburgh, having seen
before him in near prospect the seals of Secretary, the coronet
of an Earl, ample wealth, supreme power, he had on a sudden sunk
into obscurity and abject penury. His fine parts still remained;
and he was therefore used by the Jacobites; but, though used, he
was despised, distrusted and starved. He passed his life in
wandering from England to France and from France back to England,
without finding a resting place in either country. Sometimes he
waited in the antechamber at Saint Germains, where the priests
scowled at him as a Calvinist, and where even the Protestant
Jacobites cautioned one another in whispers against the old
Republican. Sometimes he lay hid in the garrets of London,
imagining that every footstep which he heard on the stairs was
that of a bailiff with a writ, or that of a King's messenger with
a warrant. He now obtained access to Shrewsbury, and ventured to
talk as a Jacobite to a brother Jacobite. Shrewsbury, who was not
at all inclined to put his estate and his neck in the power of a
man whom he knew to be both rash and perfidious, returned very
guarded answers. Through some channel which is not known to us,
William obtained full intelligence of what had passed on this
occasion. He sent for Shrewsbury, and again spoke earnestly about
the secretaryship. Shrewsbury again excused himself. His health,
he said, was bad. "That," said William, "is not your only
reason." "No, Sir," said Shrewsbury, "it is not." And he began to
speak of public grievances, and alluded to the fate of the
Triennial Bill, which he had himself introduced. But William cut
him short. "There is another reason behind. When did you see
Montgomery last?" Shrewsbury was thunderstruck. The King
proceeded to repeat some things which Montgomery had said. By
this time Shrewsbury had recovered from his dismay, and had
recollected that, in the conversation which had been so
accurately reported to the government, he had fortunately uttered
no treason, though he had heard much. "Sir," said he, "since Your
Majesty has been so correctly informed, you must be aware that I
gave no encouragement to that man's attempts to seduce me from my
allegiance." William did not deny this, but intimated that such
secret dealings with noted Jacobites raised suspicions which
Shrewsbury could remove only by accepting the seals. "That," he
said, "will put me quite at ease. I know that you are a man of
honour, and that, if you undertake to serve me, you will serve me
faithfully." So pressed, Shrewsbury complied, to the great joy of
his whole party; and was immediately rewarded for his compliance
with a dukedom and a garter.529

Thus a Whig ministry was gradually forming. There were now two
Whig Secretaries of State, a Whig Keeper of the Great Seal, a
Whig First Lord of the Admiralty, a Whig Chancellor of the
Exchequer. The Lord Privy Seal, Pembroke, might also be called a
Whig; for his mind was one which readily took the impress of any
stronger mind with which it was brought into contact. Seymour,
having been long enough a Commissioner of the Treasury to lose
much of his influence with the Tory country gentlemen who had
once listened to him as to an oracle, was dismissed, and his
place was filled by John Smith, a zealous and able Whig, who had
taken an active part in the debates of the late session.530 The
only Tories who still held great offices in the executive
government were the Lord President, Caermarthen, who, though he
began to feel that power was slipping from his grasp, still
clutched it desperately, and the first Lord of the Treasury,
Godolphin, who meddled little out of his own department, and
performed the duties of that department with skill and assiduity.

William, however, still tried to divide his favours between the
two parties. Though the Whigs were fast drawing to themselves the
substance of power, the Tories obtained their share of honorary
distinctions. Mulgrave, who had, during the late session, exerted
his great parliamentary talents in favour of the King's policy,
was created Marquess of Normanby, and named a Cabinet Councillor,
but was never consulted. He obtained at the same time a pension
of three thousand pounds a year. Caermarthen, whom the late
changes had deeply mortified, was in some degree consoled by a
signal mark of royal approbation. He became Duke of Leeds. It had
taken him little more than twenty years to climb from the station
of a Yorkshire country gentleman to the highest rank in the
peerage. Two great Whig Earls were at the same time created
Dukes, Bedford and Devonshire. It ought to be mentioned that
Bedford had repeatedly refused the dignity which he now somewhat
reluctantly accepted. He declared that he preferred his Earldom
to a Dukedom, and gave a very sensible reason for the preference.
An Earl who had a numerous family might send one son to the
Temple and another to a counting house in the city. But the sons
of a Duke were all lords; and a lord could not make his bread
either at the bar or on Change. The old man's objections,
however, were overcome; and the two great houses of Russell and
Cavendish, which had long been closely connected by friendship
and by marriage, by common opinions, common sufferings and common
triumphs, received on the same day the greatest honour which it
is in the power of the Crown to confer.531

The Gazette which announced these creations announced also that
the King had set out for the Continent. He had, before his
departure, consulted with his ministers about the means of
counteracting a plan of naval operations which had been formed by
the French government. Hitherto the maritime war had been carried
on chiefly in the Channel and the Atlantic. But Lewis had now
determined to concentrate his maritime forces in the
Mediterranean. He hoped that, with their help, the army of
Marshal Noailles would be able to take Barcelona, to subdue the
whole of Catalonia, and to compel Spain to sue for peace.
Accordingly, Tourville's squadron, consisting of fifty three men
of war, set sail from Brest on the twenty-fifth of April and
passed the Straits of Gibraltar on the fourth of May.

William, in order to cross the designs of the enemy, determined
to send Russell to the Mediterranean with the greater part of the
combined fleet of England and Holland. A squadron was to remain
in the British seas under the command of the Earl of Berkeley.
Talmash was to embark on board of this squadron with a large body
of troops, and was to attack Brest, which would, it was supposed,
in the absence of Tourville and his fifty-three vessels, be an
easy conquest.

That preparations were making at Portsmouth for an expedition, in
which the 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 the destination of the armament. Some talked of Rhe,
some of Oleron, some of Rochelle, some of Rochefort. Many, till
the fleet actually began to move westward, believed that it was
bound for Dunkirk. Many guessed that Brest would be the point of
attack; but they only guessed this; for the secret was much
better kept than most of the secrets of that age.532 Russell,
till he was ready to weigh anchor, persisted in assuring his
Jacobite friends that he knew nothing. His discretion was proof
even against all the arts of Marlborough. Marlborough, however,
had other sources of intelligence. To those sources he applied
himself; and he at length succeeded in discovering the whole plan
of the government. He instantly wrote to James. He had, he said,
but that moment ascertained that twelve regiments of infantry and
two regiments of marines were about to embark, under the command
of Talmash, for the purpose of destroying the harbour of Brest
and the shipping which lay there. "This," he added, "would be a
great advantage to England. But no consideration can, or ever
shall, hinder me from letting you know what I think may be for
your service." He then proceeded to caution James against
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 the
design for more than six weeks. This gives me a bad sign of this
man's intentions."

The intelligence sent by Marlborough to James was communicated by
James to the French government. That government took its measures
with characteristic promptitude. Promptitude was indeed
necessary; for, when Marlborough's letter was written, the
preparations at Portsmouth were all but complete; and, if the
wind had been favourable to the English, the objects of the
expedition might have been attained without a struggle. But
adverse gales detained our fleet in the Channel during another
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 commanded every spot where it seemed likely that an invader
would attempt to land. Eight large rafts, each carrying many
mortars, were moored in the harbour, and, some days before the
English arrived, all was ready for their reception.

On the sixth of June the whole allied fleet was on the Atlantic
about fifteen leagues west of Cape Finisterre. There Russell and
Berkeley parted company. Russell proceeded towards the
Mediterranean. Berkeley's squadron, with the troops on board,
steered for the coast of Brittany, and anchored just without
Camaret Bay, close to the mouth of the harbour of Brest. Talmash
proposed to land in Camaret Bay. It was therefore desirable to
ascertain with accuracy the state of the coast. The eldest son of
the Duke of Leeds, now called Marquess of Caermarthen, undertook
to enter the basin and to obtain the necessary information. The
passion of this brave and eccentric young man for maritime
adventure was unconquerable. 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 already mentioned in this
history. Cutts, who had distinguished himself by his intrepidity
in the Irish war, and had been rewarded with an Irish peerage,
offered to accompany Caermarthen, Lord Mohun, who, desirous, it
may be hoped, to efface by honourable exploits the stain which a
shameful and disastrous brawl had left on his name, was serving
with the troops as a volunteer, insisted on being of the party.
The Peregrine went into the bay with its gallant crew, and came
out safe, but not without having run great risks. Caermarthen
reported that the defences, of which however he had seen only a
small part, were formidable. But Berkeley and Talmash suspected
that he overrated the danger. They were not aware that their
design had long been known at Versailles, that an army had been
collected to oppose them, and that the greatest engineer in the
world had been employed to fortify the coast against them. They
therefore did not doubt that their troops might easily be put on
shore under the protection of a fire from the ships. On the
following morning Caermarthen was ordered to enter the bay with
eight vessels and to batter the French works. Talmash was to
follow with about a hundred boats full of soldiers. It soon
appeared that the enterprise was even more perilous than it had
on the preceding day appeared to be. Batteries which had then
escaped notice opened on the ships a fire so murderous that
several decks were soon cleared. Great bodies of foot and horse
were discernible; and, by their uniforms, they appeared to be
regular troops. The young Rear Admiral sent an officer in all
haste to warn Talmash. But Talmash was so completely possessed by
the notion that the French were not prepared to repel an attack
that he disregarded all cautions and would not even trust his own
eyes. He felt sure that the force 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 real soldiers, he
ordered his men to pull for the beach. He was soon undeceived. A
terrible fire mowed down his troops faster than they could get on
shore. He had himself scarcely sprung on dry ground when he
received a wound in the thigh from a cannon ball, and was carried
back to his skiff. His men reembarked in confusion. Ships and
boats made haste to get out of the bay, but did not succeed till
four hundred seamen and seven hundred soldiers had fallen. During
many days the waves continued to throw up pierced and shattered
corpses on the beach of Brittany. 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 held in his cabin. He was for going straight into the harbour
of Brest and bombarding the town. But this suggestion, which
indicated but too clearly that his judgment had been affected by
the irritation of a wounded body and a wounded mind, was wisely
rejected by the naval officers. The armament returned to
Portsmouth. There Talmash died, exclaiming with his last breath
that he had been lured into a snare by treachery. The public
grief and indignation were loudly expressed. The nation
remembered the services of the unfortunate general, forgave his
rashness, pitied his sufferings, and execrated the unknown
traitors whose machinations had been fatal to him. There were
many conjectures and many rumours. Some sturdy Englishmen, misled
by national prejudice, swore that none of our plans would ever be
kept a secret from the enemy while French refugees were in high
military command. Some zealous Whigs, misled by party sprit,
muttered that the Court of Saint Germains would never want good
intelligence while a single Tory remained in the Cabinet Council.
The real criminal was not named; nor, till the archives of the
House of Stuart were explored, was it known to the world that
Talmash had perished by the basest of all the hundred villanies
of Marlborough.533

Yet never had Marlborough been less a Jacobite than at the moment
when he rendered this wicked and shameful service to the Jacobite
cause. It may be confidently affirmed that to serve the banished
family was not his object, and that to ingratiate himself with
the banished family was only his secondary object. His primary
object was to force himself into the service of the existing
government, and to regain possession of those important and
lucrative places from which he had been dismissed more than two
years before. He knew that the country and the Parliament would
not patiently bear to see the English army commanded by foreign
generals. Two Englishmen only had shown themselves fit for high
military posts, himself and Talmash. If Talmash were defeated and
disgraced, William would scarcely have a choice. In fact, as soon
as it was known that the expedition had failed, and that Talmash
was no more, the general cry was that the King ought to receive
into his favour the accomplished Captain who had done such good
service at Walcourt, at Cork and at Kinsale. Nor can we blame the
multitude for raising this cry. For every body knew that
Marlborough was an eminently brave, skilful and successful
officer; but very few persons knew that he had, while commanding
William's troops, while sitting in William's council, while
waiting in William's bedchamber, formed a most artful and
dangerous plot for the subversion of William's throne; and still
fewer suspected the real author of the recent calamity, of the
slaughter in the Bay of Camaret, of the melancholy fate of
Talmash. The effect therefore of the foulest of all treasons was
to raise the traitor in public estimation. Nor was he wanting to
himself at this conjuncture. While the Royal Exchange was in
consternation at this disaster of which he was the cause, while
many families were clothing themselves in mourning for the brave
men of whom he was the murderer, he repaired to Whitehall; and
there, doubtless with all that grace, that nobleness, that
suavity, under which lay, hidden from all common observers, a
seared conscience and a remorseless heart, he professed himself
the most devoted, the most loyal, of all the subjects of William
and Mary, and expressed a hope that he might, in this emergency,
be permitted to offer his sword to their Majesties. Shrewsbury
was very desirous that the offer should be accepted; but a short
and dry answer from William, who was then in the Netherlands, put
an end for the present to all negotiation. About Talmash the King
expressed himself with generous tenderness. "The poor fellow's
fate," he wrote, "has affected me much. I do not indeed think
that he managed well; but it was his ardent desire to distinguish
himself that impelled him to attempt impossibilities."534

The armament which had returned to Portsmouth soon sailed again
for the coast of France, but achieved only exploits worse than
inglorious. An attempt was made to blow up the pier at Dunkirk.
Some towns inhabited by quiet tradesmen and fishermen were
bombarded. In Dieppe scarcely a house was left standing; a third
part of Havre was laid in ashes; and shells were thrown into
Calais which destroyed thirty private dwellings. The French and
the Jacobites loudly exclaimed against the cowardice and
barbarity of making war on an unwarlike population. The English
government vindicated itself by reminding the world of the
sufferings of the thrice wasted Palatinate; and, as against Lewis
and the flatterers of Lewis, the vindication was complete. But
whether it were consistent with humanity and with sound policy to
visit the crimes which an absolute Prince and a ferocious
soldiery had committed in the Palatinate on shopkeepers and
labourers, on women and children, who did not know that the
Palatinate existed, may perhaps be doubted.

Meanwhile Russell's fleet was rendering good service to the
common cause. Adverse winds had impeded his progress through the
Straits so long that he did not reach Carthagena till the middle
of July. By that time the progress of the French arms had spread
terror even to the Escurial. Noailles had, on the banks of the
Tar, routed an army commanded by the Viceroy of Catalonia; and,
on the day on which this victory was won, the Brest squadron had
joined the Toulon squadron in the Bay of Rosas. Palamos, attacked
at once by land and sea, was taken by storm. Gerona capitulated
after a faint show of resistance. Ostalric surrendered at the
first summons. Barcelona would in all probability have fallen,
had not the French Admirals learned that the conquerors of La
Hogue was approaching. They instantly quitted the coast of
Catalonia, and never thought themselves safe till they had taken
shelter under the batteries of Toulon.

The Spanish government expressed warm gratitude for this
seasonable assistance, and presented to the English Admiral a
jewel which was popularly said to be worth near twenty thousand
pounds sterling. There was no difficulty in finding such a jewel
among the hoards of gorgeous trinkets which had been left by
Charles the Fifth and Philip the Second to a degenerate race.
But, in all that constitutes the true wealth of states, Spain was
poor indeed. Her treasury was empty; her arsenals were
unfurnished; her ships were so rotten that they seemed likely to
fly asunder at the discharge of their own guns. Her ragged and
starving soldiers often mingled with the crowd of beggars at the
doors of convents, and battled there for a mess of pottage and a
crust of bread. Russell underwent those trials which no English
commander whose hard fate it has been to cooperate with Spaniards
has escaped. The Viceroy of Catalonia promised much, did nothing,
and expected every thing. He declared that three hundred and
fifty thousand rations were ready to be served out to the fleet
at Carthagena. It turned out that there were not in all the
stores of that port provisions sufficient to victual a single
frigate for a single week. Yet His Excellency thought himself
entitled to complain because England had not sent an army as well
as a fleet, and because the heretic Admiral did not choose to
expose the fleet to utter destruction by attacking the French
under the guns of Toulon. Russell implored the Spanish
authorities to look well to their dockyards, and to try to have,
by the next spring, a small squadron which might at least be able
to float; but he could not prevail on them to careen a single
ship. He could with difficulty obtain, on hard conditions,
permission to send a few of his sick men to marine hospitals on
shore. Yet, in spite of all the trouble given him by the
imbecility and ingratitude of a government which has generally
caused more annoyance to its allies than to its enemies, he
acquitted himself well. It is but just to him to say that, from
the time at which he became First Lord of the Admiralty, there
was a decided improvement in the naval administration. Though he
lay with his fleet many months near an inhospitable shore, and at
a great distance from England, there were no complaints about the
quality or the quantity of provisions. The crews had better food
and drink than they had ever had before; comforts which Spain did
not afford were supplied from home; and yet the charge was not
greater than when, in Torrington's time, the sailor was poisoned
with mouldy biscuit and nauseous 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 Barcelona in the following year, Russell received orders
to winter at Cadiz. In October he sailed to that port; and there
he employed himself in refitting his ships with an activity
unintelligible to the Spanish functionaries, who calmly suffered
the miserable remains of what had once 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 to languish. In Piedmont and on the Rhine the most
important events of the campaign were petty skirmishes and
predatory incursions. Lewis remained at Versailles, and sent his
son, the Dauphin, to represent him in the Netherlands; but the
Dauphin was placed under the tutelage of Luxemburg, and proved a
most submissive pupil. During several months the hostile armies
observed each other. The allies made one bold push with the
intention of carrying the war into the French territory; but
Luxemburg, by a forced march, which excited the admiration of
persons versed in the military art, frustrated the design.
William on the other hand succeeded in taking Huy, then a
fortress of the third rank. No battle was fought; no important
town was besieged; but the confederates were satisfied with their
campaign. Of the four previous years every one had been marked by
some great disaster. In 1690 Waldeck had been defeated at
Fleurus. In 1691 Mons had fallen. In 1692 Namur had been taken in
sight of the allied army; and this calamity had been speedily
followed by the defeat of Steinkirk. In 1693 the battle of Landen
had been lost; and Charleroy had submitted to the conqueror. At
length in 1694 the tide had begun to turn. The French arms had
made no progress. What had been gained by the allies was indeed
not much; but the smallest gain was welcome to those whom a long
run of evil fortune had discouraged.

In England, the general opinion was that, notwithstanding the
disaster in Camaret Bay, the war was on the whole proceeding
satisfactorily both by land and by sea. But some parts of the
internal administration excited, during this autumn, much
discontent.

Since Trenchard had been appointed Secretary of State, the
Jacobite agitators had found their situation much more unpleasant
than before. Sidney had been too indulgent and too fond of
pleasure to give them much trouble. Nottingham was a diligent and
honest minister; but he was as high a Tory as a faithful subject
of William and Mary could be; he loved and esteemed many of the
nonjurors; and, though he might force himself to be severe when
nothing but severity could save the State, he was not extreme to
mark the transgressions of his old friends; nor did he encourage
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 urged to severity by those who surrounded him. He had
constantly at his side Hugh Speke and Aaron Smith, men to whom a
hunt after a Jacobite was the most exciting of all sports. The
cry of the malecontents was that Nottingham had kept his
bloodhounds in the leash, but that Trenchard had let them slip.
Every honest gentleman who loved the Church and hated the Dutch
went in danger of his life. There was a constant bustle at the
Secretary's Office, a constant stream of informers coming in, and
of messengers with warrants going out. It was said too, that the
warrants were often irregularly drawn, that they did not specify
the person, that they did not specify the crime, and yet that,
under the authority of such instruments as these, houses were
entered, desks and cabinets searched, valuable papers carried
away, and men of good birth and breeding flung into gaol among
felons.536 The minister and his agents answered that Westminster
Hall was open; that, if any man had been illegally imprisoned, he
had only to bring his action; that juries were quite sufficiently
disposed to listen to any person who pretended to have been
oppressed by cruel and griping men in power, and that, as none of
the prisoners whose wrongs were so pathetically described had
ventured to resort to this obvious and easy mode of obtaining
redress, it might fairly be inferred that nothing had been done
which could not be justified. The clamour of the malecontents
however made a considerable impression on the public mind; and at
length, a transaction in which Trenchard was more unlucky than
culpable, brought on him and on the government with which he was
connected much temporary obloquy.

Among the informers who haunted his office was an Irish vagabond
who had borne more than one name and had professed more than one
religion. He now called himself Taaffe. He had been a priest of
the Roman Catholic Church, and secretary to Adda the Papal
Nuncio, but had since the Revolution turned Protestant, had taken
a wife, and had distinguished himself by his activity in
discovering the concealed property of those Jesuits and
Benedictines who, during the late reign, had been quartered in
London. The ministers despised him; but they trusted him. They
thought that he had, by his apostasy, and by the part which he
had borne in the spoliation of the religious orders, cut himself
off from all retreat, and that, having nothing but a halter to
expect from King James, he must be true to King William.537

This man fell in with a Jacobite agent named Lunt, who had, since
the Revolution, been repeatedly employed among the discontented
gentry of Cheshire and Lancashire, and who had been privy to
those plans of insurrection which had been disconcerted by the
battle of the Boyne in 1690, and by the battle of La Hogue in
1692. Lunt had once been arrested on suspicion of treason, but
had been discharged for want of legal proof of his guilt. He was
a mere hireling, and was, without much difficulty, induced by
Taaffe to turn approver. The pair went to Trenchard. Lunt told
his story, mentioned the names of some Cheshire and Lancashire
squires to whom he had, as he affirmed, carried commissions from
Saint Germains, and of others, who had, to his knowledge, formed
secret hoards of arms and ammunition. His simple oath would not
have been sufficient to support a charge of high treason; but he
produced another witness whose evidence seemed to make the case
complete. The narrative was plausible and coherent; and indeed,
though it may have been embellished by fictions, there can be
little doubt that it was in substance true.538 Messengers and
search warrants were sent down to Lancashire. Aaron Smith himself
went thither; and Taaffe went with him. The alarm had been given
by some of the numerous traitors who ate the bread of William.
Some of the accused persons had fled; and others had buried their
sabres and muskets and burned their papers. Nevertheless,
discoveries were made which confirmed Lunt's depositions. Behind
the wainscot of the old mansion of one Roman Catholic family was
discovered a commission signed by James. Another house, of which
the master had absconded, was strictly searched, in spite of the
solemn asseverations of his wife and his servants that no arms
were concealed there. While the lady, with her hand on her heart,
was protesting on her honour that her husband was falsely
accused, the messengers observed that the back of the chimney did
not seem to be firmly fixed. It was removed, and a heap of blades
such as were used by horse soldiers tumbled out. In one of the
garrets were found, carefully bricked up, thirty saddles for
troopers, as many breastplates, and sixty cavalry swords.
Trenchard and Aaron Smith thought the case complete; and it was
determined that those culprits who had 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 to Lancashire chiefly in order that he might, under the
protection of a search warrant, pilfer trinkets and broad pieces
from secret drawers. His sleight of hand however had not
altogether escaped the observation of his companions. They
discovered that he had made free with the communion plate of the
Popish families, whose private hoards he had assisted in
ransacking. When therefore he applied for reward, he was
dismissed, not merely with a refusal, but with a stern reprimand.
He went away mad with greediness and spite. There was yet one way
in which he might obtain both money and revenge; and that way he
took. He made overtures to the friends of the prisoners. He and
he alone could undo what he had done, could save the accused from
the gallows, could cover the accusers with infamy, could drive
from office the Secretary and the Solicitor who were the dread of
all the friends of King James. Loathsome as Taaffe was to the
Jacobites, his offer was not to be slighted. He received a sum in
hand; he was assured that a comfortable annuity for life should
be settled on him when the business was done; and he was sent
down into the country, and kept in strict seclusion against the
day of trial.540

Meanwhile unlicensed pamphlets, in which the Lancashire plot was
classed with Oates's plot, with Dangerfield's plot, with Fuller's
plot, with Young's plot, with Whitney's plot, were circulated all
over the kingdom, and especially in the county which was to
furnish the jury. Of these pamphlets the longest, the ablest, and
the bitterest, entitled a Letter to Secretary Trenchard, was
commonly ascribed to Ferguson. It is not improbable that Ferguson
may have furnished some of the materials, and may have conveyed
the manuscript to the press. But many passages are written with
an art and a vigour which assuredly did not belong to him. Those
who judge by internal evidence may perhaps think that, in some
parts of this remarkable tract, they can discern the last gleam
of the malignant genius of Montgomery. A few weeks after the
appearance of the Letter 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
important political engine than it had previously been. The
newsletters of one writer named Dyer were widely circulated in
manuscript. He affected to be a Tory and a High Churchman, and
was consequently regarded by the foxhunting lords of manors, all
over the kingdom, as an oracle. He had already been twice in
prison; but his gains had more than compensated for his
sufferings, and he still persisted in seasoning his intelligence
to suit the taste of the country gentlemen. He now turned the
Lancashire plot into ridicule, declared that the guns which had
been found were old fowling pieces, that the saddles were meant
only for hunting, and that the swords were rusty reliques of Edge
Hill and Marston Moor.542 The effect produced by all this
invective and sarcasm on the public mind seems to have been
great. Even at the Dutch Embassy, where assuredly there was no
leaning towards Jacobitism, there was a strong impression that it
would be unwise to bring the prisoners to trial. In Lancashire
and Cheshire the prevailing sentiments were pity for the accused
and hatred of the prosecutors. The government however persevered.
In October four Judges went down to Manchester. At present the
population of that town is made up of persons born in every part
of the British Isles, and consequently has no especial sympathy
with the landowners, the farmers and the agricultural labourers
of the neighbouring districts. But in the seventeenth century the
Manchester man was a Lancashire man. His politics were those of
his county. For the old Cavalier families of his county he felt a
great respect; and he was furious when he thought that some of
the best blood of his county was about to be shed by a knot of
Roundhead pettifoggers from London. Multitudes of people from the
neighbouring villages filled the streets of the town, and saw
with grief and indignation the array of drawn swords and loaded
carbines which surrounded the culprits. Aaron Smith's
arrangements do not seem to have been 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 the
latter part of his life. The recollection of that day on which he
had stood up in Westminster Hall, amidst laughter and hooting, to
defend the dispensing power and to attack the right of petition,
had, ever since the Revolution, kept him back from honour. He was
an angry and disappointed man, and was by no means disposed to
incur unpopularity in the cause of a government to which he owed
nothing, and from which he hoped nothing.

Of the trial no detailed report has come down to us; but we have
both a Whig narrative and a Jacobite narrative.543 It seems that
the prisoners who were first arraigned did not sever in their
challenges, and were consequently tried together. Williams
examined or rather crossexamined his own witnesses with a
severity which confused them. The crowd which filled the court
laughed and clamoured. Lunt in particular became completely
bewildered, mistook one person for another, and did not recover
himself till the judges took him out of the hands of the counsel
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 seemed doubtful till, to the dismay of the prosecutors,
Taaffe entered the box. He swore with unblushing forehead that
the whole story of the plot was a circumstantial lie devised by
himself and Lunt. Williams threw down his brief; and, in truth, a
more honest advocate might well have done the same. The prisoners
who were at the bar were instantly acquitted; those who had not
yet been tried were set at liberty; the witnesses for the
prosecution were pelted out of Manchester; the Clerk of the Crown
narrowly escaped with life; and the judges took their departure
amidst hisses and execrations.

A few days after the close of the trials at Manchester William
returned to England. On the twelfth of November, only forty-eight
hours after his arrival at Kensington, the Houses met. He
congratulated them on the improved aspect of affairs. Both by
land and by sea the events of the year which was about to close
had been, on the whole, favourable to the allies; the French
armies had made no progress; the French fleets had not ventured
to show themselves; nevertheless, a safe and honourable peace
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 settled the tonnage and poundage on the Crown for four
years was about to expire, and expressed his hope that it would
be renewed.

After the King had spoken, the Commons, for some reason which no
writer has explained, adjourned for a week. Before they met
again, an event took place which caused great sorrow at the
palace, and through all the ranks of the Low Church party.
Tillotson was taken suddenly ill while attending public worship
in the chapel of Whitehall. Prompt remedies might perhaps have
saved him; but he would not interrupt the prayers; and, before
the service was over, his malady was beyond the reach of
medicine. He was almost speechless; but his friends long
remembered with pleasure a few broken ejaculations which showed
that he enjoyed peace of mind to the last. He was buried in the
church of Saint Lawrence Jewry, near Guildhall. It was there that
he had won his immense oratorical reputation. He had preached
there during the thirty years which preceded his elevation to the
throne of Canterbury. His eloquence had attracted to the heart of
the City crowds of the learned and polite, from the Inns of Court
and from the lordly mansions of Saint James's and Soho. A
considerable part of his congregation had generally consisted of
young clergymen, who came to learn the art of preaching at the
feet of him who was universally considered as the first of
preachers. To this church his remains were now carried through a
mourning population. The hearse was followed by an endless train
of splendid equipages from Lambeth through Southwark and over
London Bridge. Burnet preached the funeral sermon. His kind and
honest heart was overcome by so many tender recollections that,
in the midst of his discourse, he paused and burst into tears,
while a loud moan of sorrow rose from the whole auditory. The
Queen could not speak of her favourite instructor without
weeping. Even William was visibly moved. "I have lost," he said,
"the best friend that I ever had, and the best man that I ever
knew." The only Englishman who is mentioned with tenderness in
any part of the great mass of letters which the King wrote to
Heinsius is Tillotson. The Archbishop had left a widow. To her
William granted a pension of four hundred a year, which he
afterwards increased to six hundred. His anxiety that she should
receive her income regularly and without stoppages was honourable
to him. Every quarterday he ordered the money, without any
deduction, to be brought to himself, and immediately sent it to
her. Tillotson had bequeathed to her no property, except a great
number of manuscript sermons. Such was his fame among his
contemporaries that those sermons were purchased by the
booksellers for the almost incredible sum of two thousand five
hundred guineas, equivalent, in the wretched state in which the
silver coin then was, to at least three thousand six hundred
pounds. Such a price had never before been given in England for
any copyright. About the same time Dryden, whose reputation was
then in the zenith, received thirteen hundred pounds for his
translation of all the works of Virgil, and was thought to have
been splendidly remunerated.544

It was not easy to fill satisfactorily the high place which
Tillotson had left vacant. Mary gave her voice for Stillingfleet,
and pressed his claims as earnestly as she ever ventured to press
any thing. In abilities and attainments he had few superiors
among the clergy. But, though he would probably have been
considered as a Low Churchman by Jane and South, he was too high
a Churchman for William; and Tenison was appointed. The new
primate was not eminently distinguished by eloquence or learning:
but he was honest, prudent, laborious and benevolent; he had been
a good rector of a large parish and a good bishop of a large
diocese; detraction had not yet been busy with his name; and it
might well be thought that a man of plain sense, moderation and
integrity, was more likely than a man of brilliant genius and
lofty spirit to succeed in the arduous task of quieting a
discontented and distracted Church.

Meanwhile the Commons had entered upon business. They cheerfully
voted about two million four hundred thousand pounds for the
army, and as much for the navy. The land tax for the year was
again fixed at four shillings in the pound; the Tonnage Act was
renewed for a term of five years; and a fund was established on
which the government was authorised to 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 with the advantage which they had already gained. Their
friends had been set free. The prosecutors had with difficulty
escaped from the hands of an enraged multitude. The character of
the government had been seriously damaged. The ministers were
accused, in prose and in verse, sometimes in earnest and
sometimes in jest, of having hired a gang of ruffians to swear
away the lives of honest gentlemen. Even moderate politicians,
who gave no credit to these foul imputations, owned that
Trenchard ought to have remembered the villanies of Fuller and
Young, and to have been on his guard against such wretches as
Taaffe and Lunt. The unfortunate Secretary's health and spirits
had given way. It was said that he was dying; and it was certain
that he would not long continue to hold the seals. The Tories had
won a great victory; but, in their eagerness to improve it, they
turned it into a defeat.

Early in the session Howe complained, with his usual vehemence
and asperity, of the indignities to which innocent and honourable
men, highly descended and highly esteemed, had been subjected by
Aaron Smith and the wretches who were in his pay. The leading
Whigs, with great judgment, demanded an inquiry. Then the Tories
began to flinch. They well knew that an inquiry could not
strengthen their case, and might weaken it. The issue, they said,
had been tried; a jury had pronounced; the verdict was
definitive; and it would be monstrous to give the false witnesses
who had been stoned out of Manchester an opportunity of repeating
their lesson. To this argument the answer was obvious. The
verdict was definitive as respected the defendants, but not as
respected the prosecutors. The prosecutors were now in their turn
defendants, and were entitled to all the privileges of
defendants. It did not follow, because the Lancashire gentlemen
had been found, and very properly found, not guilty of treason,
that the Secretary of State or the Solicitor of the Treasury had
been guilty of unfairness or even of rashness. The House, by one
hundred and nineteen votes to one hundred and two resolved that
Aaron Smith and the witnesses on both sides should be ordered to
attend. Several days were passed in examination and
crossexamination; and sometimes the sittings extended far into
the night. It soon became clear that the prosecution had not been
lightly instituted, and that some of the persons who had been
acquitted had been concerned in treasonable schemes. The Tories
would now have been content with a drawn battle; but the Whigs
were not disposed to forego their advantage. It was moved that
there had been a sufficient ground for the proceedings before the
Special Commission; and this motion was carried without a
division. The opposition proposed to add some words implying that
the witnesses for the Crown had forsworn themselves; but these
words were rejected by one hundred and thirty-six votes to one
hundred and nine, and it was resolved by one hundred and thirty-
three votes to ninety-seven that there had been a dangerous
conspiracy. The Lords had meanwhile been deliberating on the same
subject, and had come to the same conclusion. They sent Taaffe to
prison for prevarication; and they passed resolutions acquitting
both the government and the judges of all blame. The public
however continued to think that the gentlemen who had been tried
at Manchester had been unjustifiably persecuted, till a Jacobite
plot of singular atrocity, brought home to the plotters by
decisive evidence, produced a violent revulsion of feeling.545

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

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

The Bill for the Regulation of Trials in cases of Treason went up
again to the Peers. Their Lordships again added to it the clause
which had formerly been fatal to it. The Commons again refused to
grant any new privilege to the hereditary aristocracy.
Conferences were again held; reasons were again exchanged; both
Houses were again obstinate; and the bill was again lost.547

The Triennial Bill was more fortunate. It was brought in on the
first day of the session, and went easily and rapidly through
both Houses. The only question about which there was any serious
contention was, how long the existing Parliament should be
suffered to continue. After several sharp 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 of
members of both Houses was large. When the Clerk of the Crown
read the words, "A Bill for the frequent Calling and Meeting of
Parliaments," the anxiety was great. When the Clerk of the
Parliament made answer, "Le roy et la royne le veulent," a loud
and long hum of delight and exultation rose from the benches and
the bar.548 William had resolved many months before not to refuse
his assent a second time to so popular a law.549 There was some
however who thought that he would not have made so great a
concession if he had on that day been quite himself. It was plain
indeed that he was strangely agitated and unnerved. It had been
announced that he would dine in public at Whitehall. But he
disappointed the curiosity of the multitude which on such
occasions flocked to the Court, and hurried back to
Kensington.550

He had but too good reason to be uneasy. His wife had, during two
or three days, been poorly; and on the preceding evening grave
symptoms had appeared. Sir Thomas Millington, who was physician
in ordinary to the King, thought that she had the measles. But
Radcliffe, who, with coarse manners and little book learning, had
raised himself to the first practice in London chiefly by his
rare skill in diagnostics, uttered the more alarming words, small
pox. That disease, over which science has since achieved a
succession of glorious and beneficient victories, was then the
most terrible of all the ministers of death. The havoc of the
plague had been far more rapid; but the plague had visited our
shores only once or twice within living memory; and the small pox
was always present, filling the churchyards with corpses,
tormenting with constant fears all whom it had not yet stricken,
leaving on those whose lives it spared the hideous traces of its
power, turning the babe into a changeling at which the mother
shuddered, and making the eyes and cheeks of the betrothed maiden
objects of horror to the lover. Towards the end of the year 1694,
this pestilence was more than usually severe. At length the
infection spread to the palace, and reached the young and
blooming Queen. She received the intimation of her danger with
true greatness of soul. She gave orders that every lady of her
bedchamber, every maid of honour, nay, every menial servant, who
had not had the small pox, should instantly leave Kensington
House. She locked herself up during a short time in her closet,
burned some papers, arranged others, 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 which sufficiently indicates the state of medical science in
that age. The disease was measles; it was scarlet fever; it was
spotted fever; it was erysipelas. At one moment some symptoms,
which in truth showed that the case was almost hopeless, were
hailed as indications of returning health. At length all doubt was
over. Radcliffe's opinion proved to be right. It was plain that
the Queen was sinking under small pox of the most malignant type.

All this time William remained night and day near her bedside.
The little couch on which he slept when he was in camp was spread
for him in the antechamber; but he scarcely lay down on it. The
sight of his misery, the Dutch Envoy wrote, was enough to melt
the hardest heart. Nothing seemed to be left of the man whose
serene fortitude had been the wonder of old soldiers on the
disastrous day of Landen, and of old sailors on that fearful
night among the sheets of ice and banks of sand on the coast of
Goree. The very domestics saw the tears running unchecked down
that face, of which the stern composure had seldom been disturbed
by any triumph or by any defeat. Several of the prelates were in
attendance. The King drew Burnet aside, and gave way to an agony
of grief. "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 that such a communication, abruptly
made, might agitate her violently, and began with much
management. But she soon caught his meaning, and, with that
gentle womanly courage which so often puts our bravery to shame,
submitted herself to the will of God. She called for a small
cabinet in which her most important papers were locked up, gave
orders that, as soon as she was no more, it should be delivered
to the King, and then dismissed worldly cares from her mind. She
received the Eucharist, and repeated her part of the office with
unimpaired memory and intelligence, though in a feeble voice. She
observed that Tenison had been long standing at her bedside, and,
with that sweet courtesy which was habitual to her, faltered out
her commands that he would sit down, and repeated them till he
obeyed. After she had received the sacrament she sank rapidly,
and uttered only a few broken words. Twice she tried to take 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
alarming that his Privy Councillors, who were assembled in a
neighbouring room, were apprehensive for his reason and his life.
The Duke of Leeds, at the request of his colleagues, ventured to
assume the friendly guardianship of which minds deranged by
sorrow stand in need. A few minutes before the Queen expired,
William was removed, almost insensible, from the sick room.

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

The public sorrow was great and general. For Mary's blameless
life, her large charities and her winning manners had conquered
the hearts of her people. When the Commons next met they sate for
a time in profound silence. At length it was moved and resolved
that an Address of Condolence should be presented to the King;
and then the House broke up without proceeding to other business.
The Dutch envoy informed the States General that many of the
members had handkerchiefs at their eyes. The number of sad faces
in the street struck every observer. The mourning was more
general than even the mourning for Charles the Second had been.
On the Sunday which followed the Queen's death her virtues were
celebrated in almost every parish church of the Capital, and in
almost every great meeting of nonconformists.552

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

The Whigs soon had an opportunity of retaliating. They
triumphantly related that a scrivener in the Borough, a stanch
friend of hereditary right, while exulting in the judgment which
had overtaken the Queen, had himself fallen down dead in a
fit.555

The funeral was long remembered as the saddest and most august
that Westminster had ever seen. While the Queen's remains lay in
state at Whitehall, the neighbouring streets were filled every
day, from sunrise to sunset, by crowds which made all traffic
impossible. The two Houses with their maces followed the hearse,
the Lords robed in scarlet and ermine, the Commons in long black
mantles. No preceding Sovereign had ever been attended to the
grave by a Parliament; for, till then, the Parliament had always
expired with the Sovereign. A paper had indeed been circulated,
in which the logic of a small sharp pettifogger was employed to
prove that writs, issued in the joint names of William and Mary,
ceased to be of force as soon as William reigned alone. But this
paltry cavil had completely failed. It had not even been
mentioned in the Lower House, and had been mentioned in the Upper
only to be contemptuously overruled. The whole Magistracy of the
City swelled the procession. The banners of England and France,
Scotland and Ireland, were carried by great nobles before the
corpse. The pall was borne by the chiefs of the illustrious
houses of Howard, Seymour, Grey, and Stanley. On the gorgeous
coffin of purple and gold were laid the crown and 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 on the
black plumes of the funeral car. Within the Abbey, nave, choir
and transept were in a blaze with innumerable waxlights. The body
was deposited under a magnificent canopy in the centre of the
church while the Primate preached. The earlier part of his
discourse was deformed by pedantic divisions and subdivisions;
but towards the close he told what he had himself seen and heard
with a simplicity and earnestness more affecting than the most
skilful rhetoric. Through the whole ceremony the distant booming
of cannon was heard every minute from the batteries of the Tower.
The gentle Queen sleeps among her illustrious kindred in the
southern aisle of the Chapel of Henry the Seventh.556

The affection with which her husband cherished her memory was
soon attested by a monument the most superb that was ever erected
to any sovereign. No scheme had been so much her own, none had
been so near her heart, as that of converting the palace at
Greenwich into a retreat for seamen. It had occurred to her when
she had found it difficult to provide good shelter and good
attendance for the thousands of brave men who had come back to
England wounded after the battle of La Hogue. While she lived
scarcely any step was taken towards the accomplishing of her
favourite design. But it should seem that, as soon as her husband
had lost 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 for his soldiers, rose on the margin of the
Thames. Whoever reads the inscription which runs round the frieze
of the hall will observe that William claims no part of the merit
of the design, and that the praise is ascribed to Mary alone. Had
the King's life been prolonged till the works were completed, a
statue of her who was the real foundress of the institution would
have had a conspicuous place in that court which presents two
lofty domes and two graceful colonnades to the multitudes who are
perpetually passing up and down the imperial river. But that part
of the plan was never carried into effect; and few of those who
now gaze on the noblest of European hospitals are aware that it
is a memorial of the virtues of the good Queen Mary, of the love
and sorrow of 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. The Huguenots, in every part of Europe to which they
had wandered, bewailed the Elect Lady, who had retrenched from
her own royal state in order to furnish bread and shelter to the
persecuted people of God.557 In the United Provinces, where she
was well known and had always been popular, she was tenderly
lamented. Matthew Prior, whose parts and accomplishments had
obtained for him the patronage of the magnificent Dorset, and who
was now attached to the Embassy at the Hague, wrote that the
coldest and most passionless of nations was touched. The very
marble, he said, wept.558 The lamentations of Cambridge and
Oxford were echoed by Leyden and Utrecht. The States General put
on mourning. The bells of all the steeples of Holland tolled
dolefully day after day.559 James, meanwhile, strictly prohibited
all mourning at Saint Germains, and prevailed on Lewis to issue a
similar prohibition at Versailles. Some of the most illustrious
nobles of France, and among them the Dukes of Bouillon and of
Duras, were related to the House of Nassau, and had always, when
death visited that House, punctiliously observed the decent
ceremonial of sorrow. They were now forbidden to wear black; and
they submitted; but it was beyond the power of the great King to
prevent his highbred and sharpwitted courtiers from whispering to
each other that there was something pitiful in this revenge taken
by the living on the dead, by a parent on a child.560

The hopes of James and of his companions in exile were now higher
than they had been since the day of La Hogue. Indeed the general
opinion of politicians, both here and on the Continent was that
William would find it impossible to sustain himself much longer
on the throne. He would not, it was said, have sustained himself
so long but for the help of his wife. Her affability had
conciliated many who had been repelled by his freezing looks and
short answers. Her English tones, sentiments and tastes had
charmed many who were disgusted by his Dutch accent and Dutch
habits. Though she did not belong to the High Church party, she
loved that ritual to which she had been accustomed from infancy,
and complied willingly and reverently with some ceremonies which
he considered, not indeed as sinful, but as childish, and in
which he could hardly bring himself to take part. While the war
lasted, it would be necessary that he 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 equal confidence? To
what vicegerent would the nation look up with equal respect? All
the statesmen of Europe therefore agreed in thinking that his
position, difficult and dangerous at best, had been made far more
difficult and more dangerous by the death of the Queen. But all
the statesmen of Europe were deceived; and, strange to say, his
reign was decidedly more prosperous and more tranquil after the
decease of Mary than during her life.

A few hours after he had lost the most tender and beloved of all
his friends, he was delivered from the most formidable of all his
enemies. Death had been busy at Paris as well as in London. While
Tenison was praying by the bed of Mary, Bourdaloue was
administering the last unction to Luxemburg. The great French
general had never been a favourite at the French Court; but when
it was known that his feeble frame, exhausted by war and
pleasure, was sinking under a dangerous disease, the value of his
services was, for the first time, fully appreciated; the royal
physicians were sent to prescribe for him; the sisters of Saint
Cyr were ordered to pray for him; but prayers and prescriptions
were vain. "How glad the Prince of Orange will be," said Lewis,
"when the news of our loss reaches him." He was mistaken. That
news found William unable to think of any loss but his own.561

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

There was no interruption of parliamentary business. While the
Abbey was hanging with black for the funeral of the Queen, the
Commons came to a vote, which at the time attracted little
attention, which produced no excitement, which has been left
unnoticed by voluminous annalists, and of which the history can
be but imperfectly traced in the archives of Parliament, but
which has done more for liberty and for civilisation than the
Great Charter or the Bill of Rights. Early in the session a
select committee had been appointed to ascertain what temporary
statutes were about to expire, and to consider which of those
statutes it might be expedient to continue. The report was made;
and all the recommendations contained in that report were
adopted, with one exception. Among the laws which the committee
advised the House to renew was the law which subjected the press
to a censorship. The question was put, "that the House do agree
with the committee in the resolution that the Act entitled an Act
for preventing Abuses in printing seditious, treasonable and
unlicensed Pamphlets, and for regulating of Printing and Printing
Presses, be continued." The Speaker pronounced that the Noes had
it; and the Ayes did not think fit to divide.

A bill for continuing all the other temporary Acts, which, in the
opinion of the Committee, could not properly be suffered to
expire, was brought in, passed and sent to the Lords. In a short
time this bill came back with an important amendment. The Lords
had inserted in the list of Acts to be continued the Act which
placed the press under the control of licensers. The Commons
resolved not to agree to the amendment, demanded a conference,
and appointed a committee of managers. The leading manager was
Edward Clarke, a stanch Whig, who represented Taunton, the
stronghold, during fifty troubled years, of civil and religious
freedom.

Clarke delivered to the Lords in the Painted Chamber a paper
containing the reasons which had determined the Lower House not
to renew the Licensing Act. This paper completely vindicates the
resolution to which the Commons had come. But it proves at the
same time that they knew not what they were doing, what a
revolution they were making, what a power they were calling into
existence. They pointed out concisely, clearly, forcibly, and
sometimes with a grave irony which is not unbecoming, the
absurdities and iniquities of the statute which was about to
expire. But all their objections will be found to relate to
matters of detail. On the great question of principle, on the
question whether the liberty of unlicensed 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 thing essentially evil, but
on account of the petty grievances, the exactions, the jobs, the
commercial restrictions, the domiciliary visits which were
incidental to it. It is pronounced mischievous because it enables
the Company of Stationers to extort money from publishers,
because it empowers the agents of the government to search houses
under the authority of general warrants, because it confines the
foreign book trade to the port of London; because it detains
valuable packages of books at the Custom House till the pages are
mildewed. The Commons complain that the amount of the fee which
the licenser may demand is not fixed. They complain that it is
made penal in an officer of the Customs to open a box of books
from abroad, except in the presence of one of the censors of the
press. How, it is very sensibly asked, is the officer to know
that there are books in the box till he has opened it? Such were
the arguments which did what Milton's Areopagitica had failed to
do.

The Lords yielded without a contest. They probably expected that
some less objectionable bill for the regulation of the press
would soon be sent up to them; and in fact such a bill was
brought into the House of Commons, read twice, and referred to a
select committee. But the session closed before the committee had
reported; and English literature was emancipated, and emancipated
for ever, from the control of the government.563 This great event
passed almost unnoticed. Evelyn and Luttrell did not think it
worth mentioning in their diaries. The Dutch minister did not
think it worth mentioning in his despatches. No allusion to it is
to be found in the Monthly Mercuries. The public attention was
occupied by other and far more exciting subjects.

One of those subjects was the death of the most accomplished, the
most enlightened, and, in spite of great faults, the most
estimable of the statesmen who were formed in the corrupt and
licentious Whitehall of the Restoration. About a month after the
splendid obsequies of Mary, a funeral procession of almost
ostentatious simplicity passed round the shrine 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 of George
Savile, Marquess of Halifax.

Halifax and Nottingham had long been friends; and Lord Eland, now
Halifax's only son, had been affianced to the Lady Mary Finch,
Nottingham's daughter. The day of the nuptials was fixed; a
joyous company assembled at Burley on the Hill, the mansion of
the bride's father, which, from one of the noblest terraces in
the island, looks down on magnificent woods of beech and oak, on
the rich valley of Catmos, and on the spire of Oakham. The father
of the bridegroom was detained to London by indisposition, which
was not supposed to be dangerous. On a sudden his malady took an
alarming form. He was told that he had but a few hours to live.
He received the intimation with tranquil fortitude. It was
proposed to send off an express to summon his son to town. But
Halifax, good natured to the last, would not disturb the felicity
of the wedding day. He gave strict orders that his interment
should be private, prepared himself for the great change by
devotions which astonished those who had called him an atheist,
and died with the serenity of a philosopher and of a Christian,
while his friends and kindred, not suspecting his danger, were
tasting the sack posset and drawing the curtain.564 His
legitimate male posterity and his titles soon became extinct. No
small portion, however, of his wit and eloquence descended to his
daughter's son, Philip Stanhope, fourth Earl of Chesterfield. But
it is perhaps not generally known that some adventurers, who,
without advantages of fortune or position, made themselves
conspicuous by the mere force of ability, inherited the blood of
Halifax. He left a natural son, Henry Carey, whose dramas once
drew crowded audiences to the theatres, and some of whose gay and
spirited verses still live in the memory of hundreds of
thousands. From Henry Carey descended that Edmund Kean, who, in
our time, transformed himself so marvellously into Shylock, Iago
and Othello.

More than one historian has been charged with partiality to
Halifax. The truth is that the memory of Halifax is entitled in
an especial manner to the protection of history. For what
distinguishes him from all other English statesmen is this, that,
through a long public life, and through frequent and violent
revolutions of public feeling, he almost invariably took that
view of the great questions of his time which history has finally
adopted. He was called inconstant, because the relative position
in which he stood to the contending factions was perpetually
varying. As well might the pole star be called inconstant because
it is sometimes to the east and sometimes to the west of the
pointers. To have defended the ancient and legal constitution of
the realm against a seditious populace at one conjuncture and
against a tyrannical government at another; to have been the
foremost defender of order in the turbulent Parliament of 1680
and the foremost defender of liberty in the servile Parliament of
1685; to have been just and merciful to Roman Catholics in the
days of the 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 and the head of Russell; this was a course which
contemporaries, heated by passion and deluded by names and
badges, might not unnaturally call fickle, but which deserves a
very different name from the late justice of 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 the Convention, could have afterwards stooped to
hold communication with Saint Germains. The fact cannot be
disputed; yet for him there are excuses which cannot be pleaded
for others who were guilty of the same crime. He did not, like
Marlborough, Russell, Godolphin and Shrewsbury, betray a master
by whom he was trusted, and with whose benefits he was loaded. It
was by the ingratitude and malice of the Whigs that he was driven
to take shelter for a moment among the Jacobites. It may be added
that he soon repented of the error into which he had been hurried
by passion, that, though never reconciled to the Court, he
distinguished himself by his zeal for the vigorous prosecution of
the war, and that his last work was a tract in which he exhorted
his countrymen to remember that the public burdens, heavy as they
might seem, were light when compared with the yoke of France and
of Rome.565

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

The peculation and venality by which the official men of that age
were in the habit of enriching themselves had excited in the
public mind a feeling such as could not but vent itself, sooner
or later, in some formidable explosion. But the gains were
immediate; the day of retribution was uncertain; and the
plunderers of the public were as greedy and as audacious as ever,
when the vengeance, long threatened and long delayed, suddenly
overtook the proudest and most powerful among them.

The first mutterings of the coming storm did not at all indicate
the direction which it would take, or the fury with which it
would burst. An infantry regiment, which was quartered at
Royston, had levied contributions on the people of that town and
of the neighbourhood. The sum exacted was not large. In France or
Brabant the moderation of the demand would have been thought
wonderful. But to English shopkeepers and farmers military
extortion was happily quite new and quite insupportable. A
petition was sent up to the Commons. The Commons summoned the
accusers and the accused to the bar. It soon appeared that a
grave offence had been committed, but that the offenders were not
altogether without excuse. The public money which had been issued
from the Exchequer for their pay and subsistence had been
fraudulently detained by their colonel and by his agent. It was
not strange that men who had arms and who had not necessaries
should trouble themselves little about the Petition of Right and
the Declaration of Right. But it was monstrous that, while the
citizen was heavily taxed for the purpose of 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 laid
before William. William, who had been long struggling against
abuses which grievously impaired the efficiency of his army, was
glad to have his hands thus strengthened. He promised ample
redress, cashiered the offending colonel, gave strict orders that
the troops should receive their due regularly, and established a
military board for the purpose of detecting and punishing such
malpractices as had taken place at Royston.566

But the whole administration was in such a state that it was
hardly possible to track one offender without discovering ten
others. In the course of the inquiry into the conduct of the
troops at Royston, it was discovered that a bribe of two hundred
guineas had been received by Henry Guy, member of Parliament for
Heydon and Secretary of the Treasury. Guy was instantly sent to
the Tower, not without much exultation on the part of the Whigs;
for he was one of those tools who had passed, together with the
buildings and furniture of the public offices, from James to
William; he affected the character of a High Churchman; and he
was known to be closely connected with some of the heads of the
Tory party, and especially with Trevor.567

Another name, which was afterwards but too widely celebrated,
first became known to the public at this time. James Craggs had
begun life as a barber. He had then been a footman of the Duchess
of Cleveland. His abilities, eminently vigorous though not
improved by education, had raised him in the world; and he was
now entering on a career which was destined to end, after a
quarter of a century of prosperity, in unutterable misery and
despair. He had become an army clothier. He was examined as to
his dealings with the colonels of regiments; and, as he
obstinately refused to produce his books, he was sent to keep Guy
company in the Tower.568

A few hours after Craggs had been thrown into prison, a
committee, which had been appointed to inquire into the truth of
a petition signed by some of the hackney coachmen of London, laid
on the table of the House a report which excited universal
disgust and indignation. It appeared that these poor hardworking
men had been cruelly wronged by the board under the authority of
which an Act of the preceding session had placed them. They had
been pillaged and insulted, not only by the commissioners, but by
one commissioner's lacquey and by another commissioner's harlot.
The Commons addressed the King; and the King turned the
delinquents out of their places.569

But by this time delinquents far higher in power and rank were
beginning to be uneasy. At every new detection, the excitement,
both within and without the walls of Parliament, became more
intense. The frightful prevalence of bribery, corruption and
extortion was every where the subject of conversation. A
contemporary pamphleteer compares the state of the political
world at this conjuncture to the state of a city in which the
plague has just been discovered, and in which the terrible words,
"Lord have mercy on us," are already seen on some doors.570
Whispers, which at another time would have speedily died away and
been forgotten, now swelled, first into murmurs, and then into
clamours. A rumour rose and spread that the funds of the two
wealthiest corporations in the kingdom, the City of London and
the East India Company, had been largely employed for the purpose
of corrupting great men; and the names of 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 blasted characters, the Whigs would be
completely predominant both in the Parliament and in the Cabinet.

Wharton was not the man to let such an opportunity escape him. At
White's, no doubt, among those lads of quality who were his
pupils in politics and in debauchery, he would have laughed
heartily at the fury with which the nation had on a sudden begun
to persecute men for doing what every body had always done and
was always trying to do. But if people would be fools, it was the
business of a politician to make use of their folly. The cant of
political purity was not so familiar to the lips of Wharton as
blasphemy and ribaldry; but his abilities were so versatile, and
his impudence so consummate, that he ventured to appear before
the world as an austere patriot mourning over the venality and
perfidy of a degenerate age. While he, animated by that fierce
party spirit which in honest men would be thought a vice, but
which in him was almost a virtue, was eagerly stirring up his
friends to demand an inquiry 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 the distribution took
place at the bar with a buzz of conversation which drowned the
voices of the orators. Seymour, whose imperious temper always
prompted him to dictate and to chide, lectured the talkers on the
scandalous irregularity of their conduct, and called on the
Speaker to reprimand them. An angry discussion followed; and one
of the offenders was provoked into making an allusion to the
stories which were current about both Seymour and the Speaker.
"It is undoubtedly improper to talk while a bill is under
discussion; but it is much worse to take money for getting a bill
passed. If we are extreme to mark a slight breach of form, how
severely ought we to deal with that corruption which is eating
away the very substance of our institutions!" That was enough;
the spark had fallen; the train was ready; the explosion was
immediate and terrible. After a tumultuous debate in which the
cry of "the Tower" was repeatedly heard, Wharton managed to carry
his point. Before the House rose a committee was appointed to
examine the books of the City of London and of the East India
Company.571

Foley was placed in the chair of the committee. Within a week he
reported that the Speaker, Sir John Trevor, had in the preceding
session received from the City a thousand guineas for expediting
a local bill. This discovery gave great satisfaction to the
Whigs, who had always hated Trevor, and was not unpleasing to
many of the Tories. During six busy sessions his sordid rapacity
had made him an object of general aversion. The legitimate
emoluments of his post amounted to about four thousand a year;
but it was believed that he had made at least ten thousand a
year.572 His profligacy and insolence united had been too much
even for the angelic temper of Tillotson. It was said that the
gentle Archbishop had been heard to mutter something about a
knave as the Speaker passed by him.573 Yet, great as were the
offences of this bad man, his punishment was fully proportioned
to them. As soon as the report of the committee had been read, it
was moved that he had been guilty of a high crime and
misdemeanour. He had to stand up and to put the question. There
was a loud cry of Aye. He called on the Noes; and scarcely a
voice was heard. He was forced to declare that the Ayes had it. A
man of spirit would have given up the ghost with remorse and
shame; and the unutterable ignominy of that moment left its mark
even on the callous heart and brazen forehead of Trevor. Had he
returned to the House on the following day, he would have had to
put the question on a motion for his own expulsion. He therefore
pleaded illness, and shut himself up in his bedroom. Wharton soon
brought down a royal message authorising the Commons to elect
another Speaker.

The Whig chiefs wished to place Littleton in the chair; but they
were unable to accomplish their object. Foley was chosen,
presented and approved. Though he had of late generally voted
with the Tories, he still called himself a Whig, and was not
unacceptable to many of the Whigs. He had both the abilities and
the knowledge which were necessary to enable him to preside over
the debates with dignity; but what, in the peculiar circumstances
in which the House then found itself placed, was not unnaturally
considered as his principal recommendation, was that implacable
hatred of jobbery and corruption which he somewhat ostentatiously
professed, and doubtless sincerely felt. On the day after he
entered on his functions, his predecessor was expelled.574

The indiscretion of Trevor had been equal to his baseness; and
his guilt had been apparent on the first inspection of the
accounts of the City. The accounts of the East India Company were
more obscure. The committee reported that they had sate in
Leadenhall Street, had examined documents, had interrogated
directors and clerks, but had been unable to arrive at the bottom
of the mystery of iniquity. Some most suspicious entries had been
discovered, under the head of special service. The expenditure on
this account had, in the year 1693, exceeded eighty thousand
pounds. It was proved that, as to the outlay of this money, the
directors had placed implicit confidence in the governor, Sir
Thomas Cook. He had merely told them in general terms that he had
been at a charge of twenty-three thousand, of twenty-five
thousand, of thirty thousand pounds, in the matter of the
Charter; and the Court had, without calling on him for any
detailed explanation, thanked him for his care, and ordered
warrants for these great sums to be instantly made out. It
appeared that a few mutinous directors had murmured at this
immense outlay, and had called for a detailed statement. But the
only answer which they had been able to extract from Cook was
that there were some great persons whom it was necessary to
gratify.

The committee also reported that they had lighted on an agreement
by which the Company had covenanted to furnish a person named
Colston with two hundred tons of saltpetre. At the first glance,
this transaction seemed merchantlike and fair. But it was soon
discovered that Colston was merely an agent for Seymour.
Suspicion was excited. The complicated terms of the bargain were
severely examined, and were found to be framed in such a manner
that, in every possible event, Seymour must be a gainer and 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
was merely a disguise intended to cover a bribe. But the disguise
was so skilfully managed that the country gentlemen were
perplexed, and that the lawyers doubted whether there were such
evidence of corruption as would be held sufficient by a court of
justice. Seymour escaped without even a vote of censure, and
still continued to take a leading part in the debates of the
Commons.575 But the authority which he had long exercised in the
House and in the western counties of England, though not
destroyed, was visibly diminished; and, to the end of his life,
his traffic in saltpetre was a favourite theme of Whig
pamphleteers and poets.576

The escape of Seymour only inflamed the ardour of Wharton and of
Wharton's confederates. They were determined to discover what had
been done with the eighty or ninety thousand pounds of secret
service money which had been entrusted to Cook by the East India
Company. Cook, who was member for Colchester, was questioned in
his place; he refused to answer; he was sent to the Tower; and a
bill was brought in providing that if, before a certain day, he
should not acknowledge the whole truth, he should be incapable of
ever holding any office, should refund to the Company the whole
of the immense sum which had been confided to him, and should pay
a fine of twenty thousand pounds to the Crown. Rich as he was,
these penalties would have reduced him to penury. The Commons
were in such a temper that they passed the bill without a single
division.577 Seymour, indeed, though his saltpetre contract was
the talk of the whole town, came forward with unabashed forehead
to plead for his accomplice; but his effrontery only injured the
cause which he defended.578 In the Upper House the bill was
condemned in the strongest terms by the Duke of Leeds. Pressing
his hand on his heart, he declared, on his faith, on his honour,
that he had no personal interest in the question, and that he was
actuated by no motive but a pure love of justice. His eloquence
was powerfully seconded by the tears and lamentations of Cook,
who, from the bar, implored the Peers not to subject 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; and I
will tell you all." The Lords thought his request not altogether
unreasonable. After some communication with the Commons, it was
determined that a joint committee of the two Houses should be
appointed to inquire into the manner in which the secret service
money of the East India Company had been expended; and an Act was
rapidly passed providing that, if Cook would make to this
committee a true and full discovery, he should be indemnified for
the crimes which he might confess; and that, till he made such a
discovery, he should remain in the Tower. To this arrangement
Leeds gave in public all the opposition that he could with
decency give. In private those who were conscious of guilt
employed numerous artifices for the purpose of averting inquiry.
It was whispered that things might come out which every good
Englishman would wish to hide, and that the greater part of the
enormous sums which had passed through 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,
the joint committee, consisting of twelve lords and twenty-four
members of the House of Commons, met in the Exchequer Chamber.
Wharton was placed in 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 money dispensed by Cook; but he had not, during some
years, received even the ordinary present which the Company had,
in former reigns, laid annually at the foot of the throne. It
appeared that not less than fifty thousand pounds had been
offered to Portland, and rejected. The money lay during a whole
year ready to be paid to him if he should change his mind. He at
length told those who pressed this immense bribe on him, that if
they persisted in insulting him by such an offer, they would make
him an enemy of their Company. Many people wondered at the
probity which he showed on this occasion, for he was generally
thought interested and grasping. The truth seems to be that he
loved money, but that he was a man of strict integrity and
honour. He took, without scruple, whatever he thought that he
could honestly take, but was incapable of stooping to an act of
baseness. Indeed, he resented as affronts the compliments which
were paid him on this occasion.580 The integrity of Nottingham
could excite no surprise. Ten thousand pounds had been offered to
him, and had been refused. The number of cases in which bribery
was fully made out was small. A large part of the sum which Cook
had drawn from the Company's treasury had probably been embezzled
by the brokers whom he had employed in the work of corruption;
and what had become of the rest it was not easy to learn from the
reluctant witnesses who were brought before the committee. One
glimpse of light however was caught; it was followed; and it led
to a discovery of the highest moment. A large sum was traced from
Cook to an agent named Firebrace, and from Firebrace to another
agent named Bates, who was well known to be closely connected
with the High Church party and especially with Leeds. Bates was
summoned, but absconded; messengers were sent in pursuit of him;
he was caught, brought into the Exchequer Chamber and sworn. The
story which he told showed that he was distracted between the
fear of losing his ears and the fear of injuring his patron. He
owned that he had undertaken to bribe Leeds, had been for that
purpose furnished with five thousand five hundred guineas, had
offered those guineas to His Grace, and had, by His Grace's
permission, left them at His Grace's house in the care of a Swiss
named Robart, who was His Grace's confidential man of business.
It should seem that these facts admitted of only one
interpretation. Bates however swore that the Duke had refused to
accept a farthing. "Why then," it was asked, "was the gold left,
by his consent, at his house and in the hands of his servant?"
"Because," answered Bates, "I am bad at telling coin. I therefore
begged His Grace to let me leave the pieces, in order that Robart
might count them for me; 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 had remained half a year
where he had left them. The money had indeed at last,--and this
was one of the most suspicious circumstances in the case,--been
paid back by Robart on the very morning on which the committee
first met in the Exchequer Chamber. Who could believe that, if
the transaction had been free from all taint of corruption, the
guineas would have been detained as long as Cook was able to
remain silent, and would have been refunded on the very first day
on which he was under the necessity of speaking out?581

A few hours after the examination of Bates, Wharton reported to
the Commons what had passed in the Exchequer Chamber. The
indignation was general and vehement. "You now understand," said
Wharton, "why obstructions have been thrown in our way at every
step, why we have had to wring out truth drop by drop, why His
Majesty's name has been artfully used to prevent us from going
into an inquiry which has brought nothing to light but what is to
His Majesty's honour. Can we think it strange that our
difficulties should have been great, when we consider the power,
the dexterity, the experience of him who was secretly thwarting
us? It is time for us to prove signally to the world that it is
impossible for any criminal to double so cunningly that we cannot
track him, or to climb so high that we cannot reach him. Never
was there a more flagitious instance of corruption. Never was
there an offender who had less claim to indulgence. The
obligations which the Duke of Leeds has to his country are of no
common kind. One great debt we generously cancelled; but the
manner in which our generosity has been requited forces us to
remember that he was long ago impeached for receiving money from
France. How can we be safe while a man proved to be venal has
access to the royal ear? Our best laid enterprises have been
defeated. Our inmost counsels have been betrayed. And what wonder
is it? Can we doubt that, together with this home trade in
charters, a profitable foreign trade in secrets is carried on?
Can we doubt that he who sells us to one another will, for a good
price, sell us all to the common enemy?" Wharton concluded by
moving that Leeds should be impeached of high crimes and
misdemeanours.582

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

While Wharton had been making his report to the Commons, Leeds
had been haranguing the Lords. He denied with the most solemn
asseverations that he had taken any money for himself. But he
acknowledged, and indeed almost boasted, that he had abetted
Bates in getting money from the Company, and seemed to think that
this was a service which any man in power might be reasonably
expected to render to a friend. Too many persons, indeed, in that
age made a most absurd and pernicious distinction between a
minister who used his influence to obtain presents for himself
and a minister who used his influence to obtain presents for his
dependents. The former was corrupt; the latter was merely
goodnatured. Leeds proceeded to tell with great complacency a
story about himself, which would, in our days, drive a public
man, not only out of office, but out of the society of gentlemen.
"When I was Treasurer, in King Charles's time, my Lords, the
excise was to be farmed. There were several bidders. Harry
Savile, for whom I had a great value, informed me that they had
asked for his interest with me, and begged me to tell them that
he had done his best for them. 'What!' said I; '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 think that he
owes it to me.' The gentlemen came. I said to every one of them
separately, 'Sir, you are much obliged to Mr. Savile;' 'Sir, Mr.
Savile has been much your friend.' In the end Harry got a
handsome present; and I wished him good luck with it. I was his
shadow then. I am Mr. Bates's shadow now."

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

He spoke, but with less tact and judgment than usual. He
magnified his own public services. But for him, he said, there
would have been no House of Commons to impeach him; a boast so
extravagant that it naturally made his hearers unwilling to allow
him the praise which his conduct at the time of the Revolution
really deserved. As to the charge against him he said little more
than that he was innocent, that there had long been a malicious
design to ruin him, that he would not go into particulars, that
the facts which had been proved would bear two constructions, and
that of the two constructions the most favourable ought in
candour to be adopted. He withdrew, after praying the House to
reconsider the vote which had just been passed, or, if that could
not be, to let him have speedy justice.

His friends felt that his speech was no defence, and did not
attempt to rescind the resolution which had been carried just
before he was heard. Wharton, with a large following, went up to
the Lords, and informed them that the Commons had resolved to
impeach the Duke. A committee of managers was appointed to draw
up the articles and to prepare the evidence.583

The articles were speedily drawn; but to the chain of evidence
one link appeared to be wanting. That link Robart, if he had been
severely examined and confronted with other witnesses, would in
all probability have 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, and was there informed that the Swiss
was not within, that he had been three days absent, and that
where he was the porter could not tell. The Lords immediately
presented an address to the King, requesting him to give orders
that the ports might be stopped and the fugitive arrested. But
Robart 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 alone could furnish legal proof of that which was
already established by moral proof. Leeds, now at ease as to the
event of the impeachment, gave himself the airs of an injured
man. "My Lords," he said, "the conduct of the Commons is without
precedent. They impeach me of a high crime; they promise to prove
it; then they find that they have not the means of proving it;
and they revile me for not supplying them with the means. Surely
they ought not to have brought a charge like this, without well
considering whether they had or had not evidence sufficient to
support it. If Robart's testimony be, as they now say,
indispensable, why did they not send for him and hear his story
before they made up their minds? They may thank their own
intemperance, their own precipitancy, for his disappearance. He
is a foreigner; he is timid; he hears that a transaction in which
he has been concerned has been pronounced by the House of Commons
to be highly criminal, that his master is impeached, that his
friend Bates is in prison, that his own turn is coming. He
naturally takes fright; he escapes to his own country; and, from
what I know of him, I will venture to predict that it will be
long before he trusts himself again within reach of the Speaker's
warrant. But what is that to me? Am I to lie all my life under
the stigma of an accusation like this, merely because the
violence of my accusers has scared their own witness out of
England? I demand an immediate trial. I move your Lordships to
resolve that, unless the Commons shall proceed before the end of
the session, the impeachment shall be dismissed." A few friendly
voices cried out "Well moved." But the Peers were generally
unwilling to take a step which would have been in the highest
degree offensive to the Lower 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 the Parliament was prorogued.584

The impeachment was never revived. The evidence which would
warrant a formal verdict of guilty was not forthcoming; and a
formal verdict of guilty would hardly have answered Wharton's
purpose better than the informal verdict of guilty which the
whole nation had already pronounced. The work was done. The Whigs
were dominant. Leeds was no longer chief minister, was indeed no
longer a minister at all. William, from respect probably for the
memory of the beloved wife whom he had lately lost, and to whom
Leeds had shown peculiar attachment, avoided every thing that
could look like harshness. The fallen statesman was suffered to
retain during a considerable time the title of Lord President,
and to walk on public occasions between the Great Seal and the
Privy Seal. But he was told that he would do well not to show
himself at Council; the business and the patronage even of the
department of which he was the nominal head passed into other
hands; and the place which he ostensibly filled was considered in
political circles as 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 emerged from his retreat. Though he was well stricken
in years and cruelly tortured by disease, his ambition was still
as ardent as ever. With indefatigable energy he began a third
time to climb, as he flattered himself, towards that dizzy
pinnacle which he had twice reached, and from which he had twice
fallen. He took a prominent part in debate; but, though his
eloquence and knowledge always secured to him the attention of
his hearers, he was never again, even when the Tory party was in
power, admitted to the smallest share in the direction of
affairs.

There was one great humiliation which he could not be spared.
William was about to take the command of the army in the
Netherlands; and it was necessary that, before he sailed, he
should determine by whom the government should be administered
during his absence. Hitherto Mary had acted 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, Lord Chamberlain, Shrewsbury, Secretary of State, and
Godolphin, First Commissioner of the Treasury. It is easy to
judge from this list of names which way the balance of power was
now leaning. Godolphin alone of the seven was a Tory. The Lord
President, still second in rank, and a few days before first in
power, of the great lay dignitaries of the realm, was passed
over; and the omission was universally regarded as an official
announcement of his disgrace.586

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

Marlborough was now as desirous to support the government as he
had once been to subvert it. The death of Mary had produced a
complete change in all his schemes. There was one event to which
he looked forward with the most intense longing, the accession of
the Princess to the English throne. It was certain that, on the
day on which she began to reign, he would be in her Court all
that Buckingham had been in the Court of James the First.
Marlborough too must have been conscious of powers of a very
different order from those which Buckingham had possessed, of a
genius for politics not inferior to that of Richelieu, of a
genius for war not inferior to that of Turenne. Perhaps the
disgraced General, in obscurity and inaction, anticipated the day
when his power to help and hurt in Europe would be equal to that
of her mightiest princes, when he would be servilely flattered
and courted by Caesar on one side and by Lewis the Great on the
other, and when every year would add another hundred thousand
pounds to the largest fortune that had ever been accumulated by
any English subject. All this might be if Mrs. Morley were Queen.
But that Mr. Freeman should ever see Mrs. Morley Queen had till
lately been not very probable. Mary's life was a much better life
than his, and quite as good a life as her sister's. That William
would have issue seemed unlikely. But it was generally expected
that he would soon die. His widow might marry again, and might
leave children who would succeed her. In these circumstances
Marlborough might well think that he had very little interest in
maintaining that settlement of the Crown which had been made by
the Convention. Nothing was so likely to serve his purpose as
confusion, civil war, another revolution, another abdication,
another vacancy of the throne. Perhaps the nation, incensed
against William, yet not reconciled to James, and distracted
between hatred of foreigners and hatred of Jesuits, might prefer
both to the Dutch King and to the Popish King one who was at once
a native of our country and a member of our Church. That this was
the real explanation of Marlborough's dark and complicated plots
was, as we have seen, firmly believed by some of the most zealous
Jacobites, and is in the highest degree probable. It is certain
that during several years he had spared no 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 Crown was
entailed on Anne after the death of William. The death of William
could not be far distant. Indeed all the physicians who attended
him wondered that he was still alive; and, when the risks of war
were added to the risks of disease, the probability seemed to be
that in a few months he would be in his grave. Marlborough saw
that it would now be madness to throw every thing into disorder
and to put every thing to hazard. He had done his best to shake
the throne while it seemed unlikely that Anne would ever mount it
except by violent means. But he did his best to fix it firmly, as
soon as it became highly probably that she would soon be called
to fill it in the regular course of nature and of law.

The Princess was easily induced by the Churchills to write to the
King a submissive and affectionate letter of condolence. The
King, who was never much inclined to engage in a commerce of
insincere compliments, and who was still in the first agonies of
his grief, showed little disposition to meet her advances. But
Somers, who felt that every thing was at stake, went to
Kensington, and made his way into the royal closet.

William was sitting there, so deeply sunk in melancholy that he
did not seem to perceive that any person had entered the room.
The Lord Keeper, after a respectful pause, broke silence, and,
doubtless with all that cautious delicacy which was
characteristic of him, and which eminently qualified him to touch
the sore places of the mind without hurting them, implored His
Majesty to be reconciled to the Princess. "Do what you will,"
said William; "I can think of no business." Thus authorised, the
mediators speedily concluded a treaty.587 Anne came to
Kensington, and was graciously received; she was lodged in Saint
James's Palace; a guard of honour was again placed at her door;
and the Gazettes again, after a long interval, announced that
foreign ministers had had the honour of being presented to
her.588 The Churchills were again permitted to dwell under the
royal roof. But William did not at first include 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 the circle at
Kensington, and permitted to kiss the royal hand.589 The feeling
with which he was regarded by the King explains why Anne was not
appointed Regent. The Regency of Anne would have been the Regency
of Marlborough; and it is not strange that a man whom it was not
thought safe to entrust with any office in the State or the army
should not have been entrusted with the whole government of the
kingdom.

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

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

During the two years and a half which followed the execution of
Grandval, no serious design had been formed against the life of
William. Some hotheaded malecontents had indeed laid schemes for
kidnapping or 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 about removing his enemies by those means which
he had justly thought base and wicked when employed by his
enemies against himself. If any such scruple had arisen in his
mind, there was no want, under his roof, of casuists willing and
competent to soothe his conscience with sophisms such as had
corrupted the far nobler natures of Anthony Babington and Everard
Digby. To question the lawfulness of assassination, in cases
where assassination might promote the interests of the Church,
was to question the authority of the most illustrious Jesuits, of
Bellarmine and Suarez, of Molina and Mariana; nay, it was to
rebel against the Chair of Saint Peter. One Pope had walked in
procession at the head of his cardinals, had proclaimed a
jubilee, had ordered the guns of Saint Angelo to be fired, in
honour of the perfidious butchery in which Coligni had perished.
Another Pope had in a solemn allocution hymned the murder of
Henry the Third of France in rapturous language borrowed from the
ode of the prophet Habakkuk, and had extolled the murderer above
Phinehas and Judith.590 William was regarded at Saint Germains as
a monster compared with whom Coligni and Henry the Third were
saints. Nevertheless James, during some years, refused to
sanction any attempt on his nephew's person. The reasons which he
assigned for his refusal have come down to us, as he wrote them
with his own hand. He did not affect to think that assassination
was a sin which ought to be held in horror by a Christian, or a
villany unworthy of a gentleman; he merely said that the
difficulties were great, and that he would not push his friends
on extreme danger when it would not be in his power to second
them effectually.591 In truth, while Mary lived, it might well be
doubted whether the murder of her husband would really be a
service to the Jacobite cause. By his death the government would
lose indeed the strength derived from his eminent personal
qualities, but would at the same time be relieved from the load
of his personal unpopularity. His whole power would at once
devolve on his widow; and the nation would probably rally round
her with enthusiasm. If her political abilities were not equal to
his, she had not his repulsive manners, his foreign
pronunciation, his partiality for every thing Dutch and for every
thing Calvinistic. Many, who had thought her culpably wanting in
filial piety, would be of opinion that now at least she was
absolved from all duty to a father stained with the blood of her
husband. The whole machinery of the administration would continue
to work without that interruption which ordinarily followed a
demise of the Crown. There would be no dissolution of the
Parliament, no suspension of the customs and excise; commissions
would retain their force; and all that James would have gained 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
bullet should now reach the heart of William, it was probable
that there would instantly be general anarchy. The Parliament and
the Privy Council would cease to exist. The authority of
ministers and judges would expire with him from whom it was
derived. It might seem not improbable that at such a moment a
restoration might be effected without a blow.

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

With Charnock was closely connected George Porter, an adventurer
who called himself a Roman Catholic and a Royalist, but who was
in truth destitute of all religious and of all political
principle. Porter's friends 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 that he had been convicted of
manslaughter for a stab given in a brawl at the playhouse. His
enemies affirmed that he was addicted to nauseous and horrible
kinds of debauchery, and that he procured the means of indulging
his infamous tastes by cheating and marauding; that he was one of
a gang of clippers; that he sometimes got on horseback late in
the evening and stole out in disguise, and that, when he returned
from these mysterious excursions, his appearance justified the
suspicion that he had 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 the stage, had been kept, like some much greater men, by
the Duchess of Cleveland, had been taken into her house, had been
loaded by her with gifts, and had requited her by bribing an
Italian quack to poison two of her children. As the poison had
not been administered, Goodman could be prosecuted only for a
misdemeanour. He was tried, convicted and sentenced to a ruinous
fine. He had since distinguished himself as one of the first
forgers of bank notes.593

Sir William Parkyns, a wealthy knight bred to the law, who had
been conspicuous among the Tories in the days of the Exclusion
Bill, was one of the most important members of the confederacy.
He bore a much fairer character than most of his accomplices; but
in one respect he was more culpable than any of them. For he had,
in order to retain a lucrative office which he held in the Court
of Chancery, sworn allegiance to the Prince against whose life he
now conspired.

The design was imparted to Sir John Fenwick, celebrated on
account of the cowardly insult which he had offered to the
deceased Queen. Fenwick, if his own assertion is to be trusted,
was willing to join in an insurrection, but recoiled from the
thought of assassination, and showed so much of what was in his
mind as sufficed to make him an object of suspicion 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 the
conspirators from calling their design by the proper name. Even
in their private consultations they did not as yet talk of
killing the Prince of Orange. 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 swords and pistols, and nobody could
be answerable for what a thrust or a shot might do. In the spring
of 1695, the scheme of assassination, thus thinly veiled, was
communicated to James, and his sanction was earnestly requested.
But week followed week; and no answer arrived from him. He
doubtless remained silent in the hope that his adherents would,
after a short delay, venture to act on their own responsibility,
and that he might thus have the advantage without the scandal of
their crime. They seem indeed to have so understood him. He had
not, they said, authorised the attempt; but he had not prohibited
it; and, apprised as he was of their plan, the absence of
prohibition was a sufficient warrant. They therefore determined
to strike; but before they could make the necessary arrangements
William set out for Flanders; and the plot against his life was
necessarily suspended till his return.

It was on the twelfth of May that the King left Kensington for
Gravesend, where he proposed to embark for the Continent. Three
days before his departure the Parliament of Scotland had, after a
recess of about two years, met again at Edinburgh. Hamilton, who
had, in the preceding session, sate on the throne and held the
sceptre, was dead; and it was necessary to find a new Lord High
Commissioner. The person selected was John Hay, Marquess of
Tweedale, Chancellor of the Realm, a man grown old in business,
well informed, prudent, humane, blameless in private life, and,
on the whole, as respectable as any Scottish lord who had been
long and deeply concerned in the politics of those troubled
times.

His task was not without difficulty. It was indeed well known
that the Estates were generally inclined to support the
government. But it was also well known that there was one subject
which would require the most dexterous and delicate management.
The cry of the blood shed more than three years before in Glencoe
had at length made itself heard. Towards the close of the year
1693, the reports, which had at first been contemptuously derided
as factious calumnies, began to be generally thought deserving of
serious attention. Many people little disposed to place
confidence in any thing that came forth from the secret presses
of the Jacobites owned that, for the honour of the government,
some inquiry ought to be instituted. The amiable Mary had been
much shocked by what she heard. William had, at her request,
empowered the Duke of Hamilton and several other Scotchmen of
note to investigate the whole matter. But the Duke died; his
colleagues were slack in the performance of their duty; 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 as rightly by anticipating the wishes of the country. The
horrible story repeated by the nonjurors pertinaciously,
confidently, and with so many circumstances as almost enforced
belief, had at length roused all Scotland. The sensibility of a
people eminently patriotic was galled by the taunts of southern
pamphleteers, who asked whether there was on the north of the
Tweed, no law, no justice, no humanity, no spirit to demand
redress even for the foulest wrongs. Each of the two extreme
parties, which were diametrically opposed to each other in
general politics, was impelled by a peculiar feeling to call for
inquiry. The Jacobites were delighted by the prospect of being
able to make out a case which would bring discredit on the
usurper, and which might be set off against the many offences
imputed by the Whigs to Claverhouse and Mackenzie. The zealous
Presbyterians were not less delighted at the prospect of being
able to ruin the Master of Stair. They had never forgotten or
forgiven the service which he had rendered to the House of Stuart
in the time of the persecution. They knew that, though he had
cordially concurred in the political revolution which had freed
them from the hated dynasty, he had seen with displeasure that
ecclesiastical revolution which was, in their view, even more
important. They knew that church government was with him merely
an affair of State, and that, looking at it as an affair of
State, he preferred the episcopal to the synodical model. They
could not without uneasiness see so adroit and eloquent an enemy
of pure religion constantly attending the royal steps and
constantly breathing counsel in the royal ear. They were
therefore impatient for an investigation, which, if one half of
what was rumoured were true, must produce revelations fatal to
the power and fame of the minister whom they distrusted. Nor
could that minister rely on the cordial support of all who held
office under the Crown. His genius and influence had excited the
jealousy of many less successful courtiers, and especially of his
fellow secretary, Johnstone.

Thus, on the eve of the meeting of the Scottish Parliament,
Glencoe was 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, on this subject, the Estates must have
their way, and that the best thing that he could do would be to
put himself at the head of a movement which it was impossible for
him to resist. A Commission authorising Tweedale and several
other privy councillors to examine fully into the matter about
which the public mind was so strongly excited was signed by the
King at Kensington, was sent down to Edinburgh, and was there
sealed with the Great Seal of the realm. This was accomplished
just in time.595 The Parliament had scarcely entered on business
when a member rose to move for an inquiry into the circumstances
of the slaughter of Glencoe. Tweedale was able to inform the
Estates that His Majesty's goodness had prevented their desires,
that a Commission of Precognition had, a few hours before, passed
in all the forms, and that the lords and gentlemen named in that
instrument would hold their first meeting before night.596 The
Parliament unanimously voted thanks to the King for this instance
of his paternal care; but some of those who joined in the vote of
thanks expressed a very natural apprehension that the second
investigation might end as unsatisfactorily as the first
investigation had ended. The honour of the country, they said,
was at stake; and the Commissioners were bound to proceed with
such diligence that the result of the inquest might be known
before the end of the session. Tweedale gave assurances which,
for a time, silenced the murmurers.597 But, when three weeks had
passed away, many members became mutinous and suspicious. On the
fourteenth of June it was moved that the Commissioners should be
ordered to report. The motion was not carried; but it was renewed
day after day. In three successive sittings Tweedale was able to
restrain the eagerness of the assembly. But, when he at length
announced that the report had been completed; and added that it
would not be laid before the Estates till it had been submitted
to the King, there was a violent outcry. The public curiosity was
intense; for the examination had been conducted with closed
doors; and both Commissioners and clerks had been sworn to
secrecy. The King was in the Netherlands. Weeks must elapse
before his pleasure could he taken; and the session could not
last much longer. In a fourth debate there were signs which
convinced the Lord High Commissioner that it was expedient to
yield; and the report was produced.598

It is a paper highly creditable to those who framed it, an
excellent digest of evidence, clear, passionless, and austerely
just. No source from which valuable information was likely to be
derived had been neglected. Glengarry and Keppoch, though
notoriously disaffected to the government, had been permitted to
conduct the case on behalf of their unhappy kinsmen. Several of
the Macdonalds who had escaped from the havoc of that night had
been examined, and among them the reigning Mac Ian, the eldest
son of the murdered Chief. The correspondence of the Master of
Stair with the military men who commanded in the Highlands had
been subjected to a strict but not unfair scrutiny. The
conclusion to which the Commissioners came, and in which every
intelligent and candid inquirer will concur, was that the
slaughter of Glencoe was a barbarous murder, and that of this
barbarous murder the letters of the Master of Stair were the sole
warrant and cause.

That Breadalbane was an accomplice in the crime was not proved;
but he did not come off quite clear. In the course of the
investigation it was incidentally discovered that he had, while
distributing the money of William among the Highland Chiefs,
professed to them the warmest zeal for the interest of James, and
advised them to take what they could get from the usurper, but to
be constantly on the watch for a favourable opportunity of
bringing back the rightful King. Breadalbane's defence was that
he was a greater villain than his accusers imagined, and that he
had pretended to be a Jacobite only in order to get at the bottom
of the Jacobite plans. In truth the depths of this man's knavery
were unfathomable. It was impossible to say which of his treasons
were, to borrow the Italian classification, single treasons, and
which double treasons. On this occasion the Parliament supposed
him to have been guilty only of a single treason, and sent him to
the Castle of Edinburgh. The government, on full consideration,
gave credit to his assertion that he had been guilty of a double
treason, and let him out again.599

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

The indulgence which was shown to the principal offender was not
extended to his subordinates. Hamilton, who had fled and had been
vainly cited 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, and Serjeant Barbour, were still more distinctly
designated as murderers; and the King was requested to command
the Lord Advocate to prosecute them.

The Parliament of Scotland was undoubtedly, on this occasion,
severe in the wrong place and lenient in the wrong place. The
cruelty and baseness of Glenlyon and his comrades excite, even
after the lapse of a hundred and sixty years, emotions which make
it difficult to reason calmly. Yet whoever can bring himself to
look at the conduct of these men with judicial impartiality will
probably be of opinion that they could not, without great
detriment to the commonwealth, have been treated as assassins.
They had slain nobody whom they had not been positively directed
by their commanding officer to slay. That subordination without
which an army is the worst of all rabbles would be at an end, if
every soldier were to be held answerable for the justice of every
order in obedience to which he pulls his trigger. The case of
Glencoe was, doubtless, an extreme case; but it cannot easily be
distinguished in principle from cases which, in war, are of
ordinary occurrence. Very terrible military executions are
sometimes indispensable. Humanity itself may require them. Who
then is to decide whether there be an emergency such as makes
severity the truest mercy? Who is to determine whether it be or
be not necessary to lay a thriving town in ashes, to decimate a
large body of mutineers, to shoot a whole gang of banditti? Is
the responsibility with the commanding officer, or with the rank
and file whom he orders to make ready, present and fire? And if
the general rule be that the responsibility is with the
commanding officer, and not with those who obey him, is it
possible to find any reason for pronouncing the case of Glencoe
an exception to that rule? It is remarkable that no member of the
Scottish Parliament proposed that any of 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 valid
plea, every man who shot a Macdonald on that horrible night was a
murderer. And, if military obedience was a valid plea for the
musketeer who acted by order of Serjeant Barbour, why not for
Barbour who acted by order of Glenlyon? And why not for Glenlyon
who acted by order of Hamilton? It can scarcely be maintained
that more deference is due from a private to a noncommissioned
officer than from a noncommissioned officer to his captain, or
from a captain to his colonel.

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

It seems therefore that the guilt of Glenlyon and his fellows was
not within the scope of the penal law. The only punishment which
could properly be inflicted on them was that which made Cain cry
out that it was greater than he could bear; to be vagabonds on
the face of the earth, and to carry wherever they went a mark
from which even bad men should 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 Realm in full Parliament, to be the original
author of the massacre. That it was not advisable to make
examples of his tools was the strongest reason for making an
example of him. Every argument which can be urged against
punishing the soldier who executes the unjust and inhuman orders
of his superior is an argument for punishing with the utmost
rigour of the law the superior who gives unjust and inhuman
orders. Where there can be no responsibility below, there should
be double responsibility above. What the Parliament of Scotland
ought with one voice to have demanded was, not that a poor
illiterate serjeant, who was hardly more accountable than his own
halbert for the bloody work which he had done, should be hanged
in the Grassmarket, but that the real murderer, the most politic,
the most eloquent, the most powerful, of Scottish statesmen,
should be brought to a public trial, and should, if found guilty,
die the death of a 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 be treated with a
severity beyond the law, made the stain which the massacre had
left on the honour of the nation broader and deeper than before.

Nor is it possible to acquit the King of a great breach of duty.
It is, indeed, highly probable that, till he received the report
of his Commissioners, he had been very imperfectly informed as to
the circumstances of the slaughter. We can hardly suppose that he
was much in the habit of reading Jacobite pamphlets; and, if he
did read them, he would have found in them such a quantity of
absurd and rancorous invective against himself that he would have
been very little inclined to credit any imputation which they
might throw on his servants. He would have seen himself accused,
in one tract, of being a concealed Papist, in another of having
poisoned Jeffreys in the Tower, in a third of having contrived to
have Talmash taken off at Brest. He would have seen it asserted
that, in Ireland, he once ordered fifty of his wounded English
soldiers to be burned alive. He would have seen that the
unalterable affection which he felt from his boyhood to his death
for three or four of the bravest and most trusty friends that
ever prince had the happiness to possess was made a ground for
imputing to him abominations as foul as those which are buried
under the waters of the Dead Sea. He might therefore naturally be
slow to believe frightful imputations thrown by writers whom he
knew to be habitual liars on a statesman whose abilities he
valued highly, and to whose exertions he had, on some great
occasions, owed much. But he could not, after he had read the
documents transmitted to him from Edinburgh by Tweedale,
entertain the slightest doubt of the guilt of the Master of
Stair. To visit that guilt with exemplary punishment was the
sacred duty of a Sovereign who had sworn, with his hand lifted up
towards heaven, that he would, 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 contented himself with
dismissing the Master from office. For this great fault, a fault
amounting to a crime, Burnet tried to frame, not a defence, but
an excuse. He would have us believe that the King, alarmed by
finding how many persons had borne a part in the slaughter of
Glencoe, thought it better to grant a general amnesty than to
punish one massacre by another. 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, from a single mind. High
above the crowd of offenders towered one offender, preeminent in
parts, knowledge, rank and power. In return for many victims
immolated by treachery, only one victim was demanded by justice;
and it must ever be considered as a blemish on the fame of
William that the demand was refused.

On the seventeenth of July the session of the Parliament of
Scotland closed. The Estates had liberally voted such a supply as
the poor country which they represented could afford. They had
indeed been put into high good humour by the notion that they had
found out a way of speedily making that poor country rich. Their
attention had been divided between the inquiry into the slaughter
of Glencoe and some specious commercial projects of which the
nature will be explained and the fate related 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 and at Landen had not left his equal behind him. But
France still possessed Marshals well qualified for high command.
Already Catinat and Boufflers had given proofs of skill, of
resolution, and of zeal for the interests of the state. Either of
those distinguished officers would have been a successor worthy
of Luxemburg and an antagonist worthy of William; but their
master, unfortunately for himself, preferred to both the Duke of
Villeroy. The new general had been Lewis's playmate when they
were both children, had then become a favourite, and had never
ceased to be so. In those superficial graces for which the French
aristocracy was then renowned throughout Europe, Villeroy was
preeminent among the French aristocracy. His stature was tall,
his countenance handsome, his manners nobly and somewhat
haughtily polite, his dress, his furniture, his equipages, his
table, magnificent. No man told a story with more vivacity; no
man sate his horse better in a hunting party; no man made love
with more success; no man staked and lost heaps of gold with more
agreeable unconcern; no man was more intimately acquainted with
the adventures, the attachments, the enmities of the lords and
ladies who daily filled the halls of Versailles. There were two
characters especially which this fine gentleman had studied
during many years, and of 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. But there ended Villeroy's
acquirements. He was profoundly ignorant both of books and of
business. At the Council Board he never opened his mouth without
exposing himself. For war he had not a single qualification
except that personal courage which was common to him with the
whole class of which he was a member. At every great crisis of
his political and of his military life he was alternately drunk
with arrogance and sunk in dejection. Just before he took a
momentous step his selfconfidence was boundless; he would listen
to no suggestion; he would not admit into his mind the thought
that failure was possible. On the first check he gave up every
thing for lost, became incapable of directing, and ran up and
down in helpless despair. Lewis however loved him; and he, to do
him justice, loved Lewis. The kindness of the master was proof
against all the disasters which were brought on his kingdom by
the rashness and weakness of the servant; and the gratitude of
the servant was honourably, though not judiciously, manifested on
more than one occasion after the death of the master.601

Such was the general to whom the direction of the campaign in the
Netherlands was confided. The Duke of Maine was sent to learn the
art of war under this preceptor. Maine, the natural son of Lewis
by the Duchess of 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 Maintenon with 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 for this offspring of a double adultery. Kindness,
they said, was doubtless due from a parent to a child; but
decency was also due from a Sovereign to his people. In spite of
these murmurs the youth had been publicly acknowledged, loaded
with wealth and dignities, created a Duke and Peer, placed, by an
extraordinary act of royal power, above Dukes and Peers of older
creation, married to a Princess of the blood royal, and appointed
Grand Master of the Artillery of the Realm. With abilities and
courage he might have played a great part in the world. But his
intellect was small; his nerves were weak; and the women and
priests who had educated him had effectually assisted nature. He
was orthodox in belief, correct in morals, insinuating in
address, a hypocrite, a mischiefmaker and a coward.

It was expected at Versailles that Flanders would, during this
year, be the chief theatre of war. Here, therefore, a great army
was collected. Strong lines were formed from the Lys to the
Scheld, and Villeroy fixed his headquarters near Tournay.
Boufflers, with about twelve thousand men, 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 not far from Huy.

Early in June military operations commenced. The first movements
of William were mere feints intended to prevent the French
generals from suspecting 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 a disastrous war. The importance of Namur
in a military point of view had always been great, and had become
greater than ever during the three years which had elapsed since
the last siege. New works, the masterpieces of Vauban, had been
added to the old defences which had been constructed with the
utmost skill of Cohorn. So ably had the two illustrious engineers
vied with each other and cooperated with nature that the fortress
was esteemed the strongest in Europe. Over one gate had been
placed a vaunting inscription which defied the allies to wrench
the prize from the grasp of France.

William kept his own counsel so well that not a hint of his
intention got abroad. Some thought that Dunkirk, some that Ypres
was his object. The marches and skirmishes by which he disguised
his design were compared by Saint Simon to the moves of a skilful
chess player. Feuquieres, much more deeply versed in military
science than Saint Simon, informs us that some of these moves
were hazardous, and that such a game could not have been safely
played against Luxemburg; and this is probably true, but
Luxemburg was gone; and what Luxemburg had been to William,
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, contented themselves with plotting against his
government. They were somewhat less closely watched than during
the preceding year; for the event of the trials at Manchester had
discouraged Aaron Smith and his agents. Trenchard, whose
vigilance and severity had made him an object of terror and
hatred, was no more, and had been succeeded, in what may be
called the subordinate Secretaryship of State, by Sir William
Trumball, a learned civilian and an experienced diplomatist, of
moderate opinions, and of temper cautious to timidity.602 The
malecontents were emboldened by the lenity of the administration.
William had scarcely sailed for the Continent when they held a
great meeting at one of their favourite haunts, the Old King's
Head in Leadenhall Street. Charnock, Porter, Goodman, Parkyns and
Fenwick were present. The Earl of Aylesbury was there, a man
whose attachment to the exiled house was notorious, but who
always denied that he had ever thought of effecting a restoration
by immoral means. His denial would be entitled to more credit if
he had not, by taking the oaths to the government against which
he was constantly intriguing, forfeited the right to be
considered as a man of conscience and honour. In the assembly was
Sir John Friend, a nonjuror who had indeed a very slender wit,
but who had made a very large fortune by brewing, and who spent
it freely in sedition. After dinner,--for the plans of the
Jacobites were generally laid over wine, and generally bore some
trace of the conviviality in which they had originated,--it was
resolved that the time was come for an insurrection and a French
invasion, and that a special messenger should carry the sense of
the meeting to Saint Germains. Charnock was selected. He
undertook the commission, crossed the Channel, saw James, and had
interviews with the ministers of Lewis, but could arrange
nothing. The English malecontents would not stir till ten
thousand French troops were in the island; and ten thousand
French troops could not, without great risk, be withdrawn from
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 absence amused themselves, after their
fashion, by trying to raise a riot in London on the tenth of
June, the birthday of the unfortunate Prince of Wales. They met
at a tavern in Drury Lane, and, when hot with wine, sallied forth
sword in hand, headed by Porter and Goodman, beat kettledrums,
unfurled banners, and began to light bonfires. But the watch,
supported by the populace, was too strong for the revellers. They
were put to rout; the tavern where they had feasted was sacked by
the mob; the ringleaders were apprehended, tried, fined and
imprisoned, but regained their liberty in time to bear a part in
a far more criminal design.603

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

The news excited no alarm at the French Court. There it was not
doubted that William would soon be compelled to abandon his
enterprise with grievous loss and ignominy. The town was strong;
the castle was believed to be impregnable; the magazines were
filled with provisions and ammunition sufficient to last till the
time at which the armies of that age were expected to retire into
winter quarters; the garrison consisted of sixteen thousand of
the best troops in the world; they were commanded by an excellent
general; he was assisted by an excellent engineer; nor was it
doubted that Villeroy would march with his great army to the
assistance of Boufflers, and that the besiegers would then be in
much more 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 drive William from Namur. Vaudemont might try to avoid an
action; but he could not escape. The Marshal went so far as to
promise his master news of a complete victory within twenty-four
hours. Lewis passed a whole day in impatient expectation. At
last, instead of an officer of high rank loaded with English and
Dutch standards, arrived a courier bringing news that Vaudemont
had effected a retreat with scarcely any loss, and was safe under
the walls of Ghent. William extolled the generalship of his
lieutenant in the warmest terms. "My cousin," he wrote, "you have
shown yourself a greater master of your art than if you had won a
pitched battle."604 In the French camp, however, and at the
French Court it was universally held that Vaudemont had been
saved less by his own skill than by the misconduct of those to
whom he was opposed. Some threw the whole blame on Villeroy; and
Villeroy made no attempt to vindicate himself. But it was
generally believed that he might, at least to a great extent,
have vindicated himself, had he not preferred royal favour to
military renown. His plan, it was said, might have succeeded, had
not the execution been entrusted to the Duke of Maine. At the
first glimpse of danger the bastard's heart had died within him.
He had not been able to conceal his poltroonery. He had stood
trembling, stuttering, calling for his confessor, while the old
officers round him, with tears in their eyes, urged him to
advance. During a short time the disgrace of the son was
concealed from the father. But the silence of Villeroy showed
that there was a secret; the pleasantries of the Dutch gazettes
soon elucidated the mystery; and Lewis learned, if not the whole
truth, yet enough to make him miserable. Never during his long
reign had he been so moved. During some hours his gloomy
irritability kept his servants, his courtiers, even his priests,
in terror. He so far forgot the grace and dignity for which he
was renowned throughout the world that, in the sight of all the
splendid crowd of gentlemen and ladies who came to see him dine
at Marli, he broke a cane on the shoulders of a lacquey, and
pursued the poor man with the handle.605

The siege of Namur meanwhile was vigorously pressed by the
allies. The scientific 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 had fortified it, taken
by his great master Vauban. To retake it, now that the
fortifications had received Vauban's last improvements, would be
a noble revenge.

On the second of July the trenches were opened. On the eighth a
gallant sally of French dragoons was gallantly beaten back; and,
late on the same evening, a strong body of infantry, the English
footguards leading the way, stormed, after a bloody conflict, the
outworks on the Brussels side. The King in person directed the
attack; and his subjects were delighted to learn that, when the
fight was hottest, he laid his hand on the shoulder of the
Elector of Bavaria, and exclaimed, "Look, look at my brave
English!" Conspicuous in bravery even among those brave English
was Cutts. In that bulldog courage which flinches from no danger,
however terrible, he was unrivalled. There was no difficulty in
finding hardy volunteers, German, Dutch and British, to go on a
forlorn hope; but Cutts was the only man who appeared to consider
such an expedition as a party of pleasure. He was so much at his
ease in the hottest fire of the French batteries that his
soldiers gave him the honourable nickname 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, and returned thrice to the charge. At length, in spite
of the exertions of the French officers, who fought valiantly
sword in hand on the glacis, the assailants remained in
possession of the disputed works. While the conflict was raging,
William, who was giving his orders under a shower of bullets, saw
with surprise and anger, among the officers of his staff, Michael
Godfrey the Deputy Governor of the Bank of England. This
gentleman had come to the King's headquarters in order to make
some arrangements for the speedy and safe remittance of money
from England to the army in the Netherlands, and was curious to
see real war. Such curiosity William could not endure. "Mr.
Godfrey," he said, "you ought not to run these hazards; you are
not a soldier; you can be of no use to us here." "Sir," answered
Godfrey, "I run no more hazard than Your Majesty." "Not so," said
William; "I am where it is my duty to be; and I may without
presumption commit my life to God's keeping; but you--" While
they were talking a cannon ball from the ramparts laid Godfrey
dead at the King's feet. It was not found however that the fear
of being Godfreyed,--such was during some time the cant phrase,--
sufficed to prevent idle gazers from coming to the trenches.607
Though William forbade his coachmen, footmen and cooks to expose
themselves, he repeatedly saw them skulking near the most
dangerous spots and trying to get a peep at the fighting. He was
sometimes, it is said, provoked into horsewhipping 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
the direction of Cohorn, made themselves masters, after a hard
fight, of a line of works which Vauban had cut in the solid rock
from the Sambre to the Meuse. Three days later, the English and
Dutch, Cutts, as usual, in the front, lodged themselves on the
second counterscarp. All was ready for 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 half of what it had
been when the trenches were opened. Boufflers apprehended that it
would be impossible for eight thousand men to defend the whole
circuit of the walls much longer; but he felt confident that such
a force would be sufficient to keep the stronghold on the summit
of the rock. Terms of capitulation were speedily adjusted. A gate
was delivered up to the allies. The French were allowed forty-
eight hours to retire into the castle, and were assured that the
wounded men whom they left below, about fifteen hundred in
number, should he well treated. On the sixth the allies marched
in. The contest for the possession of the town was over; and a
second and more terrible contest began for the possession of the
citadel.608

Villeroy had in the meantime made some petty conquests. Dixmuyde,
which might have offered some resistance, had opened its gates to
him, not without grave suspicion of treachery on the part of the
governor. Deynse, which was less able to make any defence, had
followed the example. The garrisons of both towns were, in
violation of a convention which had been made for the exchange of
prisoners, sent into France. The Marshal then advanced towards
Brussels in the hope, as it should seem, that, by menacing that
beautiful capital, he might induce the allies to raise the siege
of the castle of Namur. During thirty-six hours he rained 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
town would have been burned to the ground, had not the
inhabitants stopped the conflagration by blowing up numerous
buildings. Immense quantities of the finest lace and tapestry
were destroyed; for the industry and trade which made Brussels
famous throughout the world had hitherto been little affected by
the war. Several of the stately piles which looked down on the
market place were laid in ruins. The Town Hall itself, the
noblest of the many noble senate houses reared by the burghers of
the Netherlands, was in imminent peril. All this devastation,
however, produced no effect except much private misery. William
was not to be intimidated or provoked into relaxing the firm
grasp with which he held Namur. The fire which his batteries kept
up round the castle was such as had never been known in war. The
French gunners were fairly driven from their pieces by the hail
of balls, and forced to take refuge in vaulted galleries under
the ground. Cohorn exultingly betted the Elector of Bavaria four
hundred pistoles that the place would fall by the thirty-first of
August, New Style. The great engineer lost his wager indeed, but
lost it only by a few hours.609

Boufflers now began to feel that his only hope was in Villeroy.
Villeroy had proceeded from Brussels to Enghien; he had there
collected all the French troops that could be spared from the
remotest fortresses of the Netherlands; and he now, at the head
of more than eighty thousand men, marched towards Namur.
Vaudemont meanwhile joined the besiegers. William therefore
thought himself strong enough to offer battle to Villeroy,
without intermitting for a moment the operations against
Boufflers. The Elector of Bavaria was entrusted with the
immediate direction of the siege. The King of England took up, on
the west of the town, a strong position strongly intrenched, and
there awaited the French, who were advancing from Enghien. Every
thing seemed to indicate that a great day was at hand. Two of the
most numerous and best ordered armies that Europe had ever seen
were brought face to face. On the fifteenth of August the
defenders of the castle saw from their watchtowers the mighty
host of their countrymen. But between that host and the citadel
was drawn up in battle order the not less mighty host of William.
Villeroy, by a salute of ninety guns, conveyed to Boufflers the
promise of a speedy rescue; and at night Boufflers, by fire
signals which were seen far over the vast plain of the Meuse and
Sambre, urged Villeroy to fulfil that promise without delay. In
the capitals both of France and England the anxiety was intense.
Lewis shut himself up in his oratory, confessed, received the
Eucharist, and gave orders that the host should be 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 of rumours
fabricated some by Jacobites and some by stockjobbers. Early one
morning it was confidently averred that there had been a battle,
that the allies had been beaten, that the King had been killed,
that the siege had been raised. The Exchange, as soon as it was
opened, was filled to overflowing by people who came to learn
whether the bad news was true. The streets were stopped up all
day by groups of talkers and listeners. In the afternoon the
Gazette, which had been impatiently expected, and which was
eagerly read by thousands, calmed the excitement, but not
completely; for it was known that the Jacobites sometimes
received, by the agency of privateers and smugglers who put to
sea in all weathers, intelligence earlier than that which came
through regular channels to the Secretary of State at Whitehall.
Before night, however, the agitation had altogether subsided; but
it was suddenly revived by a bold imposture. A horseman in the
uniform of the Guards spurred through the City, announcing that
the King had been killed. He would probably have raised a serious
tumult, had not some apprentices, zealous for the Revolution and
the Protestant religion, knocked him down and carried him to
Newgate. The confidential correspondent of the States General
informed them that, in spite of all the stories which the
disaffected party invented and circulated, the general persuasion
was that the allies would be successful. The touchstone of
sincerity in England, he said, was the betting. The Jacobites
were ready enough to prove that William must be defeated, or to
assert that he had been defeated; but they would not give the
odds, and could hardly be induced to take any moderate odds. The
Whigs, on the other hand, were ready to stake thousands of
guineas on the conduct and good fortune of the King.611

The event justified the confidence of the Whigs and the
backwardness of the Jacobites. On the sixteenth, the seventeenth,
and the eighteenth of August the army of Villeroy and the army of
William confronted each other. It was fully expected that the
nineteenth would be the decisive day. The allies were under arms
before dawn. At four William mounted, and continued till eight at
night to ride from post to post, disposing his own troops and
watching the movements of the enemy. The enemy approached his
lines in several places, near enough to see that it would not be
easy to dislodge him; but there was no fighting. He lay down to
rest, expecting to be attacked when the sun rose. But when the
sun rose he found that the French had fallen back some miles. He
immediately sent to request that the Elector would storm the
castle without delay. While the preparations were making,
Portland was sent to summon the garrison for the last time. It
was plain, he said to Boufflers, that Villeroy had given up all
hope of being able to raise the siege. It would therefore be an
useless waste of life to prolong the contest. Boufflers however
thought that another day of slaughter was necessary to the honour
of the French arms; and Portland returned unsuccessful.612

Early in the afternoon the assault was made in four places at
once by four divisions of the confederate army. One point was
assigned to the Brandenburghers, another to the Dutch, a third to
the Bavarians, and a fourth to the English. The English were at
first less fortunate than they had hitherto been. The truth is
that most of the regiments which had seen service had marched
with William to encounter Villeroy. As soon 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 of the
trenches with drums beating and colours flying. This gallant band
was to be supported by four battalions which had never been in
action, and which, though full of spirit, wanted the steadiness
which so terrible a service required. The officers fell fast.
Every Colonel, every Lieutenant Colonel, was killed or severely
wounded. Cutts received a shot in the head which for a time
disabled him. The raw recruits, left almost without direction,
rushed forward impetuously till they found themselves 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 in confusion,
till Cutts, whose wound had by this time been dressed, succeeded
in rallying them. He then led them, not to the place from which
they had been driven back, but to another spot where a fearful
battle was raging. The Bavarians had made their onset gallantly
but unsuccessfully; their general had fallen; and they were
beginning to waver when the arrival of the Salamander and his men
changed the fate of the day. Two hundred English volunteers,
bent on retrieving at all hazards the disgrace of the recent
repulse, were the first to force a way, sword in hand, through
the palisades, to storm a battery which had made great havoc
among the Bavarians, and to turn the guns against the garrison.
Meanwhile the Brandenburghers, excellently disciplined and
excellently commanded, had performed, with no great loss, the
duty assigned to them. The Dutch had been equally successful.
When the evening closed in the allies had made a lodgment of a
mile in extent on the outworks of the castle. The advantage had
been purchased by the loss of 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 that the hundreds of corpses which choked the ditches
and which would soon have spread pestilence among both the
besiegers and the besieged might be removed and interred. His
request was granted; and, before the time expired, he intimated
that he was disposed to capitulate. He would, he said, 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
prepare for an immediate assault. He yielded, and it was agreed
that he and his men should be suffered to depart, leaving the
citadel, the artillery, and the stores to the conquerors. Three
peals from all the guns of the confederate army notified to
Villeroy the fall of the stronghold which he had vainly attempted
to succour. He instantly retreated towards Mons, leaving William
to enjoy undisturbed a triumph which was made more delightful by
the recollection of many misfortunes.

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

The allied forces, foot and horse, drawn up in two lines, formed
a magnificent avenue from the breach which had lately been so
desperately contested to the bank of the Meuse. The Elector of
Bavaria, the Landgrave of Hesse, and many distinguished officers
were on horseback in the vicinity of the castle. William was near
them in his coach. The garrison, reduced to about five thousand
men, came forth with drums beating and ensigns flying. Boufflers
and his staff closed the procession. There had been some
difficulty about the form of the greeting which was to be
exchanged between him and the allied Sovereigns. An Elector of
Bavaria was hardly entitled to be saluted by the Marshal with the
sword. A King of England was undoubtedly entitled to such a mark
of respect; but France did not recognise William as King of
England. At last Boufflers consented to perform the salute
without marking for which of the two princes it was intended. He
lowered his sword. William alone acknowledged the compliment. A
short conversation followed. The Marshal, in order to avoid the
use of the words Sire and Majesty, addressed himself only to the
Elector. The Elector, with every mark of deference, reported to
William what had been said; and William gravely touched his hat.
The officers of the garrison carried back to their country the
news that the upstart who at Paris was designated only as Prince
of Orange, was treated by the proudest potentates of the Germanic
body with a respect as profound as that which Lewis exacted from
the gentlemen of his bedchamber.614

The ceremonial was now over; and Boufflers passed on but he had
proceeded but a short way when he was stopped by Dykvelt who
accompanied the allied army as deputy from the States General.
"You must return to the town, Sir," said Dykvelt. "The King of
England has ordered me to inform you that you are his prisoner."
Boufflers was in transports of rage. His officers crowded round
him and vowed to die in his defence. But resistance was out of
the question; a strong body of Dutch cavalry came up; and the
Brigadier who commanded them demanded the Marshal's sword. The
Marshal uttered indignant exclamations: "This is an infamous
breach of faith. Look at the terms of the capitulation. What have
I done to 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 without troubling myself about consequences."
Dykvelt calmly and courteously replied to the Marshal's indignant
exclamations. "The King of England has reluctantly followed the
example set by your master. The soldiers who garrisoned Dixmuyde
and Deynse have, in defiance of plighted faith, been sent
prisoners into France. The Prince whom they serve would be
wanting in his duty to them if he did not retaliate. His Majesty
might with perfect justice have detained all the French who were
in Namur. But he 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 not regard as an affront what is in
truth a mark of his very particular esteem. How can he pay you a
higher compliment than by showing that he considers you as fully
equivalent to the five or six thousand men whom your sovereign
wrongfully holds in captivity? Nay, you shall even now be
permitted to proceed if you will give me your word of honour to
return hither unless the garrisons of Dixmuyde and Deynse are
released within a fortnight." "I do not at all know," answered
Boufflers, "why the King my master detains those men; and
therefore I cannot hold out any hope that he will liberate them.
You have an army at your back; I am alone; and you must do your
pleasure." He gave up his sword, returned to Namur, and was 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
with marked respect by those who guarded him. In the shortest
time in which it was possible to post from the place where he was
confined to the French Court and back again, he received full
powers to promise that the garrisons of Dixmuyde and Deynse
should be sent back. He was instantly liberated; and he set off
for Fontainebleau, where an honourable reception awaited him. He
was created a Duke and a Peer. That he might be able to support
his new dignities a considerable sum of money was bestowed on
him; and, in the presence of the whole aristocracy of France, he
was welcomed home by Lewis with an affectionate embrace.615

In all the countries which were united against France the news of
the fall of Namur was received with joy; but here the exultation
was greatest. During several generations our ancestors had
achieved nothing considerable by land against foreign enemies. We
had indeed occasionally furnished to our allies small bands of
auxiliaries who had well maintained the honour of the nation. But
from the day on which the two brave Talbots, father and son, had
perished in the vain attempt to reconquer Guienne, till the
Revolution, there had been on the Continent no campaign in which
Englishmen had borne a principal part. At length our ancestors
had again, after an interval of near two centuries and a half,
begun to dispute with the warriors of France the palm of military
prowess. The struggle had been hard. The genius of Luxemburg and
the consummate discipline of the household troops of Lewis had
pervailed in two great battles; but the event of those battles
had been long doubtful; the victory had been dearly purchased,
and the victor had gained little more than the honour of
remaining master of the field of slaughter. Meanwhile he was
himself training his adversaries. The recruits who survived his
severe tuition speedily became veterans. Steinkirk and Landen had
formed the volunteers who followed Cutts through the palisades of
Namur. The judgment of all the great warriors whom all the
nations of Western Europe had sent to the confluence of the
Sambre and the Meuse was that the English subaltern was inferior
to no subaltern and the English private soldier to no private
soldier in Christendom. The English officers of higher rank were
thought hardly worthy to command such an army. Cutts, indeed, had
distinguished himself by his intrepidity. But those who most
admired him acknowledged that he had neither the capacity nor the
science necessary to a general.

The joy of the conquerors was heightened by the recollection of
the discomfiture which they had suffered, three years before, on
the same spot, and of the insolence with which their enemy had
then triumphed over 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 spirit and pleasantry, the
bombastic verses in which Boileau had celebrated the first taking
of Namur. The two odes, printed side by side, were read with
delight in London; and the critics at Will's pronounced that, in
wit as in arms, England had been victorious.

The fall of Namur was the great military event of this year. The
Turkish war still kept a large part of the forces of the Emperor
employed in indecisive operations on the Danube. Nothing
deserving to be mentioned took place either in Piedmont or on the
Rhine. In Catalonia the Spaniards obtained some slight
advantages, advantages due to their English and Dutch allies, who
seem to have done all that could be done to help a nation never
much disposed to help itself. The maritime superiority of England
and Holland was now fully established. During the whole year
Russell was the undisputed master of the Mediterranean, passed
and repassed between Spain and Italy, bombarded Palamos, spread
terror along the whole shore of Provence, and kept the French
fleet imprisoned in the harbour of Toulon. Meanwhile Berkeley was
the undisputed master of the Channel, sailed to and fro in sight
of the coasts of Artois, Picardy, Normandy and Brittany, threw
shells into Saint Maloes, Calais and Dunkirk, and burned
Granville to the ground. The navy of Lewis, which, five years
before, had been the most formidable in Europe, which had ranged
the British seas unopposed from the Downs to the Land's End,
which had anchored in Torbay and had laid Teignmouth in ashes,
now gave no sign of existence except by pillaging merchantmen
which were unprovided with convoy. In this lucrative war the
French privateers were, towards the close of the summer, very
successful. Several vessels laden with sugar from Barbadoes were
captured. The losses of the unfortunate East India Company,
already surrounded by difficulties and impoverished by boundless
prodigality in corruption, were enormous. Five large ships
returning from the Eastern seas, with cargoes of which the value
was popularly estimated at a million, fell into the hands of the
enemy. These misfortunes produced some murmuring on the Royal
Exchange. But, on the whole, the temper of the capital and of the
nation was better than it had been during some years.

Meanwhile events which no preceding historian has condescended to
mention, but which were of far greater importance than the
achievements of 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
England except the London Gazette, which was edited by a clerk in
the office of the Secretary of State, and which contained nothing
but what the Secretary of State wished the nation to know. There
were indeed many periodical papers; but none of those papers
could be called a newspaper. Welwood, a zealous Whig, published a
journal called the Observator; but his Observator, like the
Observator which Lestrange had formerly edited, contained, not
the news, but merely dissertations on politics. A crazy
bookseller, named John Dunton, published the Athenian Mercury;
but the Athenian Mercury merely discussed questions of natural
philosophy, of casuistry and of gallantry. A fellow of the Royal
Society, named John Houghton, published what he called a
Collection for the Improvement of Industry and Trade. But his
Collection contained little more than the prices of stocks,
explanations of the modes of doing business in the City, puffs of
new projects, and advertisements of books, quack medicines,
chocolate, spa water, civet cats, surgeons wanting ships, valets
wanting masters and ladies wanting husbands. If ever he printed
any political news, he transcribed it from the Gazette. The
Gazette was so partial and so meagre a chronicle of events that,
though it had no competitors, it had but a small circulation.
Only eight thousand copies were printed, much less than one to
each parish in the kingdom. In truth a person who had studied the
history of his own time only in the Gazette would have been
ignorant of many events of the highest importance. He would, for
example, have known nothing about the Court Martial on
Torrington, the Lancashire Trials, the burning of the Bishop of
Salisbury's Pastoral Letter or the impeachment of the Duke of
Leeds. But the deficiencies of the Gazette were to a certain
extent supplied in London by the coffeehouses, and in the country
by the newsletters.

On the third of May 1695 the law which had subjected the press to
a censorship expired. Within a fortnight, a stanch old Whig,
named Harris, who had, in the days of the Exclusion Bill,
attempted to set up a newspaper entitled Intelligence Domestic
and Foreign, and who had been speedily forced to relinquish that
design, announced that the Intelligence Domestic and Foreign,
suppressed fourteen years before by tyranny, would again appear.
Ten days after the first number of the Intelligence Domestic and
Foreign was printed the first number of the English 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 the
newspapers of England from that time to the present day is a most
interesting and instructive part of the history of the country.
At first they were small and meanlooking. Even the Postboy and
the Postman, which seem to have been the best conducted and the
most prosperous, were wretchedly printed on scraps of dingy paper
such as would not now be thought good enough for street ballads.
Only two numbers came out in a week, and a number contained
little more matter than may be found in a single column of a
daily paper of our time. What is now called a leading article
seldom appeared, except when there was a scarcity of
intelligence, when the Dutch mails were detained by the west
wind, when the Rapparees were quiet in the Bog of Allen, when no
stage coach had been stopped by highwaymen, when no nonjuring
congregation had been dispersed by constables, when no ambassador
had made his entry with a long train of coaches and six, when no
lord or poet had been buried in the Abbey, and when consequently
it was difficult to fill up four scanty pages. Yet the leading
articles, though inserted, as it should seem, only in the absence
of more attractive matter, are by no means contemptibly written.

It is a remarkable fact that the infant newspapers were all on
the side of King William and the Revolution. This fact may be
partly explained by the circumstance that the editors were, at
first, on their good behaviour. It was by no means clear that
their trade was not in itself illegal. The printing of newspapers
was certainly not prohibited by any statute. But, towards the
close of the reign of Charles the Second, the judges had
pronounced that it was a misdemeanour at common law to publish
political intelligence without the King's license. It is true
that the judges who laid down this doctrine were removable at the
royal pleasure and were eager on all occasions to exalt the royal
prerogative. How the question, if it were again raised, would be
decided by Holt and Treby was doubtful; and the effect of the
doubt was to make the ministers of the Crown indulgent and to
make the journalists cautious. On neither side was there a wish
to bring the question of right to issue. The government therefore
connived at the publication of the newspapers; and the conductors
of the newspapers carefully abstained from publishing any thing
that could provoke or alarm the government. It is true that, in
one of the earliest numbers of one of the new journals, a
paragraph appeared which seemed intended to convey an insinuation
that the Princess Anne did not sincerely rejoice at the fall of
Namur. But the printer made haste to atone for his fault by the
most submissive apologies. During a considerable time the
unofficial gazettes, though much more garrulous and amusing than
the official gazette, were scarcely less courtly. Whoever
examines them will find that the King is always mentioned with
profound respect. About the debates and divisions of the two
Houses a reverential silence is preserved. There is much
invective; but it is almost all directed against the Jacobites
and the French. It seems certain that the government of William
gained not a little by the substitution of these printed
newspapers, composed under constant dread of the Attorney
General, for the old newsletters, which were written with
unbounded license.616

The pamphleteers were under less restraint than the journalists;
yet no person who has studied with attention the political
controversies of that time can have failed to perceive that the
libels on William's person and government were decidedly less
coarse and rancorous during the latter half of his reign than
during the earlier half. And the reason evidently is that the
press, which had been fettered during the earlier half of his
reign, was free during the latter half. While the censorship
existed, no tract blaming, even in the most temperate and
decorous language, the conduct of any public department, was
likely to be printed with the approbation of the licenser. To
print such a tract without the approbation of the licenser was
illegal. In general, therefore, the respectable and moderate
opponents of the Court, not being able to publish in the manner
prescribed by law, and not thinking it right or safe to publish
in a manner prohibited by law, held their peace, and left the
business of criticizing the administration to two classes of men,
fanatical nonjurors who sincerely thought that the Prince of
Orange was entitled to as little charity or courtesy as the
Prince of Darkness, and Grub Street hacks, coarseminded,
badhearted and foulmouthed. Thus there was scarcely a single man
of judgment, temper and integrity among the many who were in the
habit of writing against the government. Indeed the habit of
writing against the government had, of itself, an unfavourable
effect on the character. For whoever was in the habit of writing
against the government was in the habit of breaking the law; and
the habit of breaking even an unreasonable law tends to make men
altogether lawless. However absurd a tariff may be, a smuggler is
but too likely to be a knave and a ruffian. How ever oppressive a
game law may be, the transition is but too easy from a poacher to
a murderer. And so, though little indeed can be said in favour of
the statutes which imposed restraints on literature, there was
much risk that a man who was constantly violating those statutes
would not be a man of high honour and rigid uprightness. An
author who was determined to print, and could not obtain the
sanction of the licenser, must employ the services of needy and
desperate outcasts, who, hunted by the peace officers, 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 pest
and the shame of great capitals. Such wretches as these he must
bribe to keep his secret and to run the chance of having their
backs flayed and their ears clipped in his stead. A man stooping
to such companions and to such expedients could hardly retain
unimpaired the delicacy of his sense of what was right and
becoming. The emancipation of the press produced a great and
salutary change. The best and wisest men in the ranks of the
opposition now assumed an office which had hitherto been
abandoned to the unprincipled or the hotheaded. Tracts against
the government were written in a style not misbecoming statesmen
and gentlemen; and even the compositions of the lower and fiercer
class of malecontents became somewhat less brutal and less ribald
than in the days of the licensers.

Some weak men had imagined that religion and morality stood in
need of the protection of the licenser. The event signally proved
that they were in error. In truth the censorship had scarcely put
any restraint on licentiousness or profaneness. The Paradise Lost
had narrowly escaped mutilation; for the Paradise Lost was the
work of a man whose politics were hateful to the ruling powers.
But Etherege's She Would If She Could, Wycherley's Country Wife,
Dryden's Translations from the Fourth Book of Lucretius, obtained
the Imprimatur without difficulty; for Dryden, Etherege and
Wycherley were courtiers. From the day on which the emancipation
of our literature was accomplished, the purification of our
literature began. That purification was effected, not by the
intervention of senates or magistrates, but by the opinion of the
great body of educated Englishmen, before whom good and evil were
set, and who were left free to make their choice. During a
hundred and sixty years the liberty of our press has been
constantly becoming more and more entire; and during those
hundred and sixty years the restraint imposed on writers by the
general feeling of readers has been constantly becoming more and
more strict. At length even that class of works in which it was
formerly thought that a voluptuous imagination was privileged to
disport itself, love songs, comedies, novels, have become more
decorous than the sermons of the seventeenth century. At this day
foreigners, who dare not print a word reflecting on the
government under which they live, are at a loss to understand how
it happens that the freest 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. During his passage through the capital to his palace,
the bells of every church were ringing, and every street was
lighted up. It was late before he made his way through the
shouting crowds to Kensington. But, late as it was, a council was
instantly held. An important point was to be decided. Should the
House of Commons be permitted to sit again, or should there be an
immediate dissolution? The King would probably have been willing
to keep that House to the end of his reign. But this was not in
his power. The Triennial Act had fixed the twenty-fifth of March
as the latest day of the existence of the Parliament. If
therefore there were not a general election in 1695, there must
be a general election in 1696; and who could say what might be
the state of the country in 1696? There might be an unfortunate
campaign. There might be, indeed there was but too good reason to
believe that there would be, a terrible commercial crisis. In
either case, it was probable that there would be much ill humour.
The campaign of 1695 had been brilliant; the nation was in an
excellent temper; and William wisely determined to seize the
fortunate moment. Two proclamations were immediately published.
One of them announced, in the ordinary form, that His Majesty had
determined to dissolve the old Parliament and had ordered writs
to be issued for a new Parliament. The other proclamation was
unprecedented. It signified the royal pleasure to be that every
regiment quartered in a place where an election was to be held
should march out of that place the day before the nomination, and
should not return till the people had made their choice. From
this order, which was generally considered as indicating a
laudable respect for popular rights, the garrisons of fortified
towns and castles were necessarily excepted.

But, though William carefully abstained from disgusting the
constituent bodies by any thing that could look like coercion or
intimidation, he did not disdain to influence their votes by
milder means. He resolved to spend the six weeks of the general
election in showing himself to the people of many districts which
he had never yet visited. He hoped to acquire in this way a
popularity which might have a considerable effect on the returns.
He therefore forced himself to behave with a graciousness and
affability in which he was too often deficient; and the
consequence was that he received, at every stage of his progress,
marks of the good will of his subjects. Before he set out he paid
a visit in form 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 his shoulder, came to meet his uncle, and
presented arms. "I am learning my drill," the child said, "that I
may help you to beat the French." The King laughed much, and, a
few days later, rewarded the young soldier with the Garter.617

On the seventeenth of October William went to Newmarket, now a
place rather of business than of pleasure, but, in the autumns of
the seventeenth century, the gayest and most luxurious spot in
the island. It was not unusual for the whole Court and Cabinet to
go down to the meetings. Jewellers and milliners, players and
fiddlers, venal wits and venal beauties followed in crowds. The
streets were made impassable by coaches and six. In the places of
public resort peers flirted with maids of honour; and officers of
the Life Guards, all plumes and gold lace, jostled professors in
trencher caps and black gowns. For the neighbouring University of
Cambridge always sent her highest functionaries with loyal
addresses, and selected her ablest theologians to preach before
the Sovereign and his splendid retinue. In the wild days of the
Restoration, indeed, the most learned and eloquent divine might
fail to draw a fashionable audience, particularly if Buckingham
announced his intention of holding forth; for sometimes His Grace
would enliven the dulness of a Sunday morning by addressing to
the bevy of fine gentlemen and fine ladies a ribald exhortation
which he called a sermon. But the Court of William was more
decent; and the Academic dignitaries were treated with marked
respect. With lords and ladies from Saint James's and Soho, and
with doctors from Trinity College and King's College, were
mingled the provincial aristocracy, foxhunting squires and their
rosycheeked daughters, who had come in queerlooking family
coaches drawn by carthorses from the remotest parishes of three
or four counties to see their Sovereign. The heath was fringed by
a wild gipsylike camp of vast extent. For the hope of being able
to feed on the leavings of many sumptuous tables, and to pick up
some of the guineas and crowns which the spendthrifts of London
were throwing about, attracted thousands of peasants from a
circle of many miles.618

William, after holding his court a few days at this joyous place,
and receiving the homage of Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire and
Suffolk, proceeded to Althorpe. It seems strange that he should,
in the course of what was really a canvassing tour, have honoured
with such a mark of favour a man so generally distrusted and
hated as Sunderland. But the people were determined to be
pleased. All Northamptonshire crowded to kiss the royal hand in
that fine gallery which had been embellished by the pencil of
Vandyke and made classical by the muse of Waller; and the Earl
tried to conciliate his neighbours by feasting them at eight
tables, all blazing with plate. From Althorpe the King proceeded
to Stamford. The Earl of Exeter, whose princely seat was, and
still is, one of the great sights of England, had never taken the
oaths, and had, in order to avoid an interview which must have
been disagreeable, found some pretext for going up to London, but
had left directions that the illustrious guest should be received
with fitting hospitality. William was fond of architecture and of
gardening; and his nobles could not flatter him more than by
asking his opinion about the improvement of their country seats.
At a time when he had many cares pressing on his mind he took a
great interest in the building of Castle Howard; and a wooden
model of that edifice, the finest specimen of a vicious style,
was sent to Kensington for his inspection. We cannot therefore
wonder that he should have seen Burleigh with delight. He was
indeed not content with one view, but rose early on the
following morning for the purpose of examining the building a
second time. From Stamford he went on 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 lies between
the Trent and the German Ocean. After attending divine service in
the magnificent cathedral, he took his departure, and journeyed
eastward. On the frontier of Nottinghamshire the Lord Lieutenant
of the county, John Holles, Duke of Newcastle, with a great
following, met the royal carriages and escorted them to his seat
at Welbeck, a mansion surrounded by gigantic oaks which scarcely
seem older now than on the day when that splendid procession
passed under their shade. The house in which William was then,
during a few hours, a guest, passed long after his death, by
female descents, from the Holleses to the Harleys, and from the
Harleys to the Bentincks, and now contains the originals of those
singularly interesting letters which passed between him and his
trusty friend and servant Portland. At Welbeck the grandees of
the north were assembled. The Lord Mayor of York came thither
with a train of magistrates, and the Archbishop of York with a
train of divines. William hunted several times in that forest,
the finest in the kingdom, which in old times gave shelter to
Robin Hood and Little John, and which is now portioned out into
the princely domains of Welbeck, Thoresby, Clumber and 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 run which he should have with them, and that he must hire a
hunting box among their delightful woods. He then turned
southward. He was entertained during one day by the Earl of
Stamford at Bradgate, the place where Lady Jane Grey sate alone
reading the last words of Socrates while the deer was flying
through the park followed by the whirlwind of hounds and hunters.
On the morrow the Lord Brook welcomed his Sovereign to Warwick
Castle, the finest of those fortresses of the middle ages which
have been turned into peaceful dwellings. Guy's Tower was
illuminated. A hundred and twenty gallons of punch were drunk to
His Majesty's health; and a mighty pile of faggots blazed in the
middle of the spacious court overhung by ruins green with the ivy
of centuries. The next morning the King, accompanied by a
multitude of Warwickshire gentlemen on horseback, proceeded
towards the borders of Gloucestershire. He deviated from his
route to dine with Shrewsbury at a 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 a small token of
their love. Burford was then renowned for its saddles. One
inhabitant of the town, in particular, was said by the English to
be the best saddler in Europe. Two of his masterpieces were
respectfully offered to William, who received them with much
grace, and ordered them to be especially reserved for his own
use.619

At Oxford he was received with great pomp, complimented in a
Latin oration, presented with some of the most beautiful
productions of the Academic press, entertained with music, and
invited to a sumptuous feast in the Sheldonian theatre. He
departed in a few hours, pleading as an excuse for the shortness
of his stay that he had seen the colleges before, and that this
was a visit, not of curiosity, but of kindness. As it was well
known that he did not love the Oxonians and was not loved by
them, his haste gave occasion to some idle rumours which found
credit with the vulgar. It was said that he hurried away without
tasting the costly banquet which had been provided for him,
because he had been warned 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 who could scarcely be induced,
by the most earnest entreaties of his friends, to take the most
common precautions against assassins of whose designs he had
trustworthy evidence, would have been scared by so silly a hoax;
and it is quite certain that the stages of his progress had been
marked, and that he remained at Oxford as long as was compatible
with arrangements previously made.620

He was welcomed back to his capital by a splendid show, which had
been prepared at great cost during his absence. Sidney, now Earl
of Romney and Master of the Ordnance, had determined to astonish
London by an exhibition which had never been seen in England on
so large a scale. The whole skill of the pyrotechnists of his
department was employed to produce a display of fireworks which
might vie with any that had been seen 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. All the
stately mansions on the northern, eastern and western sides were
crowded with people of fashion. The King appeared at a window of
Romney's drawing room. The Princess of Denmark, her husband and
her court occupied a neighbouring house. The whole diplomatic
body assembled at the dwelling of the minister of the United
Provinces. A huge pyramid of flame in the centre of the area
threw out brilliant cascades which were seen by hundreds of
thousands who crowded the neighbouring streets and parks. The
States General were informed by their correspondent that, great
as the multitude was, the night had passed without the slightest
disturbance.621

By this time the elections were almost completed. In every part
of the country it had been manifest that the constituent bodies
were generally zealous for the King and for the war. The City of
London, which had returned four Tories in 1690, returned four
Whigs in 1695. Of the proceedings at Westminster an account more
than usually circumstantial has come down to us. In 1690 the
electors, disgusted by the Sacheverell Clause, had returned two
Tories. In 1695, as soon as it was known that a new Parliament
was likely to be called, a meeting was held, at which it was
resolved that a deputation should be sent with an invitation to
two Commissioners of the Treasury, Charles Montague and Sir
Stephen Fox. Sir Walter Clarges stood on the Tory interest. On
the day of nomination near five thousand electors paraded the
streets on horseback. They were divided into three bands; and at
the head of each band rode one of the candidates. It was easy to
estimate at a glance the comparative strength of the parties. For
the cavalcade which followed Clarges was the least numerous of
the three; and it was well known that the followers of Montague
would vote for Fox, and the followers of Fox for Montague. The
business of the day was interrupted by loud clamours. The Whigs
cried shame on the Jacobite candidate who wished to make the
English go to mass, eat frogs and wear wooden shoes. The Tories
hooted the two placemen who were raising great estates out of the
plunder of the poor overburdened nation. From words the incensed
factions proceeded to blows; and there was a riot which was with
some difficulty quelled. The High Bailiff then walked round the
three companies of horsemen, and pronounced, on the view, that
Montague and Fox were duly elected. A poll was demanded. The
Tories exerted themselves strenuously. Neither money nor ink was
spared. Clarges disbursed two thousand pounds in a few hours, a
great outlay in times when the average income of a member of
Parliament was not estimated at more than eight hundred a year.
In the course of the night which followed the nomination,
broadsides filled with invectives against the two courtly
upstarts who had raised themselves by knavery from poverty and
obscurity to opulence and power were scattered all over the
capital. The Bishop of London canvassed openly against the
government; for the interference of peers in elections had not
yet been declared by the Commons to be a breach of privilege. But
all was vain. Clarges was at the bottom of the poll without hope
of rising. He withdrew; and Montague was carried on the shoulders
of an immense multitude from Westminster Abbey to his office at
Whitehall.622

The same feeling exhibited itself in many other places. The
freeholders of Cumberland instructed their representatives to
support the King, and to vote whatever supplies might be
necessary for the purpose of carrying on the war with vigour; and
this example was followed by several counties and towns.623
Russell did not arrive in England till after the writs had gone
out. But he had only to choose for what place he would sit. His
popularity was immense; for his villanies were secret, and his
public services were universally known. He had won the battle of
La Hogue. He had commanded two years in the Mediterranean. He had
there shut up the French fleets in the harbour of Toulon, and had
stopped and turned 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 long absence in a remote sea, lost a single
vessel either by war or by weather. He had made the red cross of
Saint George an object of terror to all the princes and
commonwealths of Italy. The effect of his successes was that
embassies were on their way from Florence, Genoa and Venice, with
tardy congratulations to William on his accession. Russell's
merits, artfully magnified by the Whigs, made such an impression
that he was returned to Parliament not only by Portsmouth where
his official situation gave him great influence, and by
Cambridgeshire where his private property was considerable, but
also by Middlesex. This last distinction, indeed, he owed chiefly
to the name which he bore. Before his arrival in England it had
been generally thought that two Tories would be returned for the
metropolitan county. Somers and Shrewsbury were of opinion that
the only way to avert such a misfortune was to conjure with the
name of the most virtuous of all the martyrs of English liberty.
They entreated Lady Russell to suffer her eldest son, a boy of
fifteen, who was about to commence his studies at Cambridge, to
be put in nomination. He must, they said, drop, for one day, his
new title of Marquess of Tavistock, and call himself Lord
Russell. There will be no expense. There will be no contest.
Thousands of gentlemen on horseback will escort him to the
hustings; nobody will dare to stand against him; and he will not
only come in himself, but bring in another Whig. The widowed
mother, in a letter written with all the excellent sense and
feeling which distinguished her, refused to sacrifice her son to
her party. His education, she said, would be interrupted; his
head would be turned; his triumph would be his undoing. Just at
this conjuncture the Admiral arrived. He made his appearance
before the freeholders of Middlesex assembled on the top of
Hampstead Hill, and was returned without opposition.624

Meanwhile several noted malecontents received marks of public
disapprobation. John Knight, the most factious and insolent of
those Jacobites who had dishonestly sworn fealty to King William
in order to qualify themselves to sit in Parliament, ceased to
represent the great city of Bristol. Exeter, the capital of the
west, was violently agitated. It had been long supposed that the
ability, the eloquence, the experience, the ample fortune, the
noble descent of Seymour would make it impossible to unseat him.
But his moral character, which had never stood very high, had,
during the last three or four years, been constantly sinking. He
had been virulent in opposition till he had got a place. While he
had a place he had defended the most unpopular acts of the
government. As soon as he was out of place, he had again been
virulent in opposition.

His saltpetre contract had left a deep stain on his personal
honour. Two candidates were therefore brought forward against
him; and a contest, the longest and fiercest of that age, fixed
the attention of the whole kingdom, and was watched with interest
even by foreign governments. The poll was open five weeks. The
expense on both sides was enormous. The freemen of Exeter, who,
while the election lasted, fared sumptuously every day, were by
no means impatient for the termination of their luxurious
carnival. They ate and drank heartily; they turned out every
evening with good cudgels to fight for Mother Church or for King
William; but the votes came in very slowly. It was not till the
eve of the meeting of Parliament that the return was made.
Seymour was defeated, to his bitter mortification, and was forced
to take refuge in the 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 a member of Parliament, been brooding over his evil
fate and his indelible shame, and occasionally venting his spleen
in bitter pamphlets against the government. When the Whigs had
become predominant at the Court and in the House of Commons, when
Nottingham had retired, when Caermarthen had been impeached,
Hampden, it should seem, again conceived the hope that he might
play a great part in public life. But the leaders of his party,
apparently, did not wish for an ally of so acrimonious and
turbulent a spirit. He found himself still excluded from the
House of Commons. He led, during a few months, a miserable life,
sometimes trying to forget his cares among the wellbred gamblers
and frail beauties who filled the drawingroom of the Duchess of
Mazarine, and sometimes sunk in 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 to Parliament; and he
expected that he should, by the help of Wharton, whose dominion
over the Buckinghamshire Whigs was absolute, be returned without
difficulty. Wharton, however, gave his interest to another
candidate. This was a final blow. The town was agitated by the
news that John Hampden had cut his throat, that he had survived
his wound a few hours, that he had professed deep penitence for
his sins, had requested the prayers of Burnet, and had sent a
solemn warning to the Duchess of Mazarine. A coroner's jury found
a verdict of insanity. The wretched man had entered on life with
the fairest prospects. He bore a name which was more than noble.
He was heir to an ample estate and to a patrimony much more
precious, the confidence and attachment of hundreds of thousands
of his countrymen. His own abilities were considerable, and had
been carefully cultivated. Unhappily ambition and party spirit
impelled him to place himself in a situation full of danger. To
that danger his fortitude proved unequal. He stooped to
supplications which saved him and dishonoured him. From that
moment, he never knew peace of mind. His temper became perverse;
and his understanding was perverted by his temper. He tried to
find relief in devotion and in revenge, in fashionable
dissipation and in political turmoil. But the dark shade never
passed away from his mind, till, in the twelfth year of his
humiliation, his unhappy life was terminated by an unhappy
death.626

The result of the general election proved that William had chosen
a fortunate moment for dissolving. The slumber of new members was
about a hundred and sixty; and most of these were known to be
thoroughly well affected to the government.627

It was of the highest importance that the House of Commons
should, at that moment, be disposed to cooperate cordially with
the King. For it was absolutely necessary to apply a remedy to an
internal evil which had by slow degrees grown to a fearful
magnitude. The silver coin, which was then the standard coin of
the realm, was in a state at which the boldest and most
enlightened statesmen stood aghast.628

Till the reign of Charles the Second our coin had been struck by
a process as old as the thirteenth century. Edward the First had
invited hither skilful artists from Florence, which, in his time,
was to London what London, in the time of William the Third, was
to Moscow. During many generations, the instruments which were
then introduced into our mint continued to be employed with
little alteration. The metal was divided with shears, and
afterwards shaped and stamped by the hammer. In these operations
much was left to the hand and eye of the workman. It necessarily
happened that some pieces contained a little more and some a
little less than the just quantity of silver; few pieces were
exactly round; and the rims were not marked. It was therefore in
the course of years discovered that to clip the coin was one of
the easiest and most profitable kinds of fraud. In the reign of
Elizabeth it had been thought necessary to enact that the clipper
should be, as the coiner had long been, liable to the penalties
of high treason.629 The practice of paring down money, however,
was far too lucrative to be so checked; and, about the time of
the Restoration, people began to observe that a large proportion
of the crowns, halfcrowns and shillings which were passing from
hand to hand had undergone some slight mutilation.

That was a time fruitful of experiments and inventions in all the
departments of science. A great improvement in the mode of
shaping and striking the coin was suggested. A mill, which to a
great extent superseded the human hand, was set up in the Tower
of London. This mill was worked by horses, and would doubtless be
considered by modern engineers as a rude and feeble machine. The
pieces which it produced, however, were among the best in Europe.
It was not easy to counterfeit them; and, as their shape was
exactly circular, and their edges were inscribed with a legend,
clipping was not to be apprehended.630 The hammered coins and the
milled coins were current together. They were received without
distinction in public, and consequently in private, payments. The
financiers of that age seem to have expected that the new money,
which was excellent, would soon displace the old money which was
much impaired. Yet any man of plain understanding might have
known that, when the State treats perfect coin and light coin as
of equal value, the perfect coin will not drive the light coin
out of circulation, but will itself be driven out. A clipped
crown, on English ground, went as far in the 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 the Channel,
became much more valuable than the clipped crown. It might
therefore have been predicted, as confidently as any thing can be
predicted which depends on the human will, that the inferior
pieces would remain in the only market in which they could fetch
the same price as the superior pieces, and that the superior
pieces would take some form or fly to some place in which some
advantage could be derived from their superiority.631

The politicians of that age, however, generally overlooked these
very obvious considerations. They marvelled exceedingly that
every body should 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 of silver when ten would serve
the turn. The horse in the Tower still paced his rounds. Fresh
waggon loads of choice money still came forth from the mill; and
still they vanished as fast as they appeared. Great masses were
melted down; great masses exported; great masses hoarded; but
scarcely one new piece was to be found in the till of a shop, or
in the leathern bag which the farmer carried home from the cattle
fair. In the receipts and payments of the Exchequer the milled
money did not exceed ten shillings in a hundred pounds. A writer
of that age mentions the case of a merchant who, in a sum of
thirty-five pounds, received only a single halfcrown in milled
silver. Meanwhile the shears of the clippers were constantly at
work. The comers too multiplied and prospered; for the worse the
current money became the more easily it was imitated. During more
than thirty years this evil had gone on increasing. At first it
had been disregarded; but it had at length become an
insupportable curse to the country. It was to no purpose that the
rigorous laws against coining and clipping were rigorously
executed. At every session that was held at the Old Bailey
terrible examples were made. Hurdles, with four, five, six
wretches convicted of counterfeiting or mutilating the 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 more than proportioned to the risks. Some clippers were
said to have made great fortunes. One in particular offered six
thousand pounds for a pardon. His bribe was indeed rejected; but
the fame of his riches did much to counteract the effect which
the spectacle of his death was designed to produce.632 Nay the
severity of the punishment gave encouragement to the crime. For
the practice of clipping, pernicious as it was, did not excite in
the common mind a detestation resembling that with which men
regard murder, arson, robbery, nay, even theft. The injury done
by the whole body of clippers to the whole society was indeed
immense; but each particular act of clipping was a trifle. To
pass a halfcrown, after paring a pennyworth of silver from it,
seemed a minute, an almost imperceptible, fault. Even while the
nation was crying out most loudly under the distress which the
state of the currency had produced, every individual who was
capitally punished for contributing to bring the currency into
that state had the general sympathy on his side. Constables were
unwilling to arrest the offenders. Justices were unwilling to
commit. Witnesses were unwilling to tell the whole truth. Juries
were unwilling to pronounce the word Guilty. It was vain to tell
the common people that the mutilators of the coin were causing
far more misery than all the highwaymen and housebreakers in the
island. For, great as the aggregate of the evil was, only an
infinitesimal part of that evil was brought home to the
individual malefactor. There was, therefore, a general conspiracy
to prevent the law from taking its course. The convictions,
numerous as they might seem, were few indeed when compared with
the offences; and the offenders who were convicted looked on
themselves as murdered men, and were firm in the belief that
their sin, if sin it were, was as venial as that of a schoolboy
who goes nutting in the wood of a neighbour. All the eloquence of
the ordinary could seldom induce them to conform to the wholesome
usage of acknowledging in their dying speeches the enormity of
their wickedness.633

The evil proceeded with constantly accelerating velocity. At
length in the autumn of 1695 it could hardly be said that the
country possessed, for practical purposes, any measure of the
value of commodities. It was a mere chance whether what was
called a shilling was really tenpence, sixpence or a groat. The
results of some experiments which were tried at that time deserve
to be mentioned. The officers of the Exchequer weighed fifty-
seven thousand two hundred pounds of hammered money which had
recently been paid in. The weight ought to have been above two
hundred and twenty thousand ounces. It proved to be under one
hundred and fourteen thousand ounces.634 Three eminent London
goldsmiths were invited to send a hundred pounds each in current
silver to be tried by the balance. Three hundred pounds ought to
have weighed about twelve hundred ounces. The actual weight
proved to be six hundred and twenty-four ounces. The same test
was applied in various parts of the kingdom. It was found that a
hundred pounds, which should have weighed about four hundred
ounces, did actually weigh at Bristol two hundred and forty
ounces, at Cambridge two hundred and three, at Exeter one hundred
and eighty, and at Oxford only one hundred and sixteen.635 There
were, indeed, some northern districts into which the clipped
money had only begun to find its way. An honest Quaker, who lived
in one of these districts, recorded, in some notes which are
still extant, the amazement with which, when he travelled
southward, shopkeepers and innkeepers stared 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. The guinea which
he purchased for twenty-two shillings at Lancaster bore a
different value at every stage of his journey. When he reached
London it was worth thirty shillings, and would indeed have been
worth more had not the government fixed that rate as the highest
at which gold should be received in the payment of taxes.636

The evils produced by this state of the currency were not such as
have generally been thought worthy to occupy a prominent place in
history. Yet it may well be doubted whether all the misery which
had been inflicted on the English nation in a quarter of a
century by bad Kings, bad Ministers, bad Parliaments and bad
judges, was equal to the misery caused in a single year by bad
crowns and bad shillings. Those events which furnish the best
themes for pathetic or indignant eloquence are not always those
which most affect the happiness of the great body of the people.
The misgovernment of Charles and James, gross as it had been, had
not prevented the common business of life from going steadily and
prosperously on. While the honour and independence of the State
were sold to a foreign power, while chartered rights were
invaded, while fundamental laws were violated, hundreds of
thousands of quiet, honest and industrious families laboured and
traded, ate their meals and lay down to rest, in comfort and
security. Whether Whigs or Tories, Protestants or Jesuits were
uppermost, the grazier drove his beasts to market; the grocer
weighed out his currants; the draper measured out his broadcloth;
the hum of buyers and sellers was as loud as ever in the towns;
the harvest home was celebrated as joyously as ever in the
hamlets; the cream overflowed the pails of Cheshire; the apple
juice foamed in the presses of Herefordshire; the piles of
crockery glowed in the furnaces of the Trent; and the barrows of
coal rolled fast along the timber railways of the Tyne. But when
the great instrument of exchange became thoroughly deranged, all
trade, all industry, were smitten as with a palsy. The evil was
felt daily and hourly in almost every place and by almost every
class, in the dairy and on the threshing floor, by the anvil and
by the loom, on the billows of the ocean and in the depths of the
mine. Nothing could be purchased without a dispute. Over every
counter there was wrangling from morning to night. The workman
and his employer had a quarrel as regularly as the Saturday came
round. On a fair day or a market day the clamours, the
reproaches, the taunts, the curses, were incessant; and it was
well if no booth was overturned and no head broken.637 No
merchant would contract to deliver goods without making some
stipulation about the quality of the coin in which he was to be
paid. Even men of business were often bewildered by the confusion
into which all pecuniary transactions were thrown. The simple and
the careless were pillaged without mercy by extortioners whose
demands grew even more rapidly than the money shrank. The price
of the necessaries of life, of shoes, of ale, of oatmeal, rose
fast. The labourer found that the bit of metal which when he
received it was called a shilling would hardly, when he wanted to
purchase a pot of beer or a loaf of rye bread, go as far as
sixpence. Where artisans of more than usual intelligence were
collected together in great numbers, as in the dockyard at
Chatham, they were able to make their complaints heard and to
obtain some redress.638 But the ignorant and helpless peasant was
cruelly ground between one class which would give money only by
tale and another which would take it only by weight. Yet his
sufferings hardly exceeded those of the unfortunate race of
authors. Of the way in which obscure writers were treated we may
easily a judgment from the letters, still extant, of Dryden to
his bookseller Tonson. One day Tonson 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 guineas at
twenty-nine shillings each. "I expect," he says in one letter,
"good silver, not such as I have had formerly." "If you have any
silver that will go," he says in another letter, "my wife will be
glad of it. I lost thirty shillings or more by the last payment
of fifty pounds." These complaints and demands, which have been
preserved from destruction only by the eminence of the writer,
are doubtless merely a fair sample of the correspondence which
filled all the mail bags of England during several months.

In the midst of the public distress one class prospered greatly,
the bankers; and among the bankers none could in skill or in luck
bear a comparison with Charles Duncombe. He had been, not many
years before, a goldsmith of very moderate wealth. He had
probably, after the fashion of his craft, plied for customers
under the arcades of the Royal Exchange, had saluted merchants
with profound bows, and had begged to be allowed the honour of
keeping their cash. But so dexterously did he now avail himself
of the opportunities of profit which the general confusion of
prices gave to a moneychanger, that, at the moment when the trade
of the kingdom was depressed to the lowest point, he laid down
near ninety thousand pounds for the estate of Helmsley in the
North Riding of Yorkshire. That great property had, in a troubled
time, been bestowed by the Commons of England on their victorious
general Fairfax, and had been part of the dower which Fairfax's
daughter had brought to the brilliant and dissolute Buckingham.
Thither Buckingham, having wasted in mad intemperance, sensual
and intellectual, all the choicest bounties of nature and of
fortune, had carried the feeble ruins of his fine person and of
his fine mind; and there he had closed his chequered life under
that humble roof and on that coarse pallet which the great
satirist of the succeeding generation described in immortal
verse. The spacious domain passed to a new race; and in a few
years a palace more splendid and costly than had ever been
inhabited by the magnificent Villiers rose amidst the beautiful
woods and waters which had been his, and was called by the once
humble name of Duncombe.

Since the Revolution the state of the currency had been
repeatedly discussed in Parliament. In 1689 a committee of the
Commons had been appointed to investigate the subject, but had
made no report. In 1690 another committee had reported that
immense quantities of silver were carried out of the country by
Jews, who, it was said, would do any thing for profit. Schemes
were formed for encouraging the importation and discouraging the
exportation of the precious metals. One foolish bill after
another was brought in and dropped. At length, in the beginning
of the year 1695, the question assumed so serious an aspect that
the Houses applied themselves to it in earnest. The only
practical result of their deliberations, however, was a new penal
law which, it was hoped, would prevent the clipping of the
hammered coin and the melting and exporting of the milled coin.
It was enacted that every person who informed against a clipper
should be entitled to a reward of forty pounds, that every
clipper who informed against two clippers should be entitled to a
pardon, and that whoever should be found in possession of silver
filings or parings should be burned in the cheek with a redhot
iron. Certain officers were empowered to search for bullion. If
bullion were found in a house or on board of a ship, the burden
of proving that it had never been part of the money of the realm
was thrown on the owner. If he failed in making out a
satisfactory history of every ingot he was liable to severe
penalties. This Act was, as might have been expected, altogether
ineffective. During the following summer and autumn, the coins
went on dwindling, and the cry of distress from every county in
the realm became louder and more piercing.

But happily for England there were among her rulers some who
clearly perceived that it was not by halters and branding irons
that her decaying industry and commerce could be restored to
health. The state of the currency had during some time occupied
the serious attention of four eminent men closely connected by
public and private ties. Two of them were politicians who had
never, in the midst of official and parliamentary business,
ceased to love and honour philosophy; and two were philosophers,
in whom habits of abstruse meditation had not impaired the homely
good sense without which even genius is mischievous in politics.
Never had there been an occasion which more urgently required
both practical and speculative abilities; and never had the world
seen the highest practical and the highest speculative abilities
united in an alliance so close, so harmonious, and so honourable
as that which bound Somers and Montague to Locke and Newton.

It is much to be lamented that we have not a minute history of
the conferences of the men to whom England owed the restoration
of her currency and the long series of prosperous years which
dates from that restoration. It would be interesting to see how
the pure gold of scientific truth found by the two philosophers
was mingled by the two statesmen with just that quantity of alloy
which was necessary for the working. It would be curious to study
the many plans which were propounded, discussed and rejected,
some as inefficacious, some as unjust, some as too costly, some
as too hazardous, till at length a plan was devised of which the
wisdom was proved by the best evidence, complete success.

Newton has left to posterity no exposition of his opinions
touching the currency. But the tracts of Locke on this subject
are happily still extant; and it may be doubted whether in any of
his writings, even in those ingenious and deeply meditated
chapters on language which form perhaps the most valuable part of
the Essay on the Human Understanding, the force of his mind
appears more conspicuously. Whether he had ever been acquainted
with Dudley North is not known. In moral character the two men
bore little resemblance to each other. They belonged to different
parties. Indeed, had not Locke taken shelter from tyranny in
Holland, it is by no means impossible that he might have been
sent to Tyburn by a jury which Dudley North had packed.
Intellectually, however, there was much in common between the
Tory and the Whig. They had laboriously thought out, each for
himself, a theory of political economy, substantially the same
with that which Adam Smith afterwards expounded. Nay, in some
respects the theory of Locke and North was more complete and
symmetrical than that of their illustrious successor. Adam Smith
has often been justly blamed for maintaining, in direct
opposition to all his own principles, that the rate of interest
ought to be regulated by the State; and he is the more blamable
because, long before he was born, both Locke and North had taught
that it was as absurd to make laws fixing the price of money as
to make laws fixing the price of cutlery 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 a plan for the restoration of the currency.
This plan appears to have been substantially the same with that
which was afterwards fully developed and ably defended by Locke.

One question, which was doubtless the subject of many anxious
deliberations, was whether any thing should be done while the war
lasted. In whatever way the restoration of the coin might be
effected, great sacrifices must be made, the whole community or
by a part of the community. And to call for such sacrifices at a
time when the nation was already paying taxes such as, ten years
before, no financier would have thought it possible to raise, was
undoubtedly a course full of danger. Timorous politicians were
for delay; but the deliberate conviction of the great Whig
leaders was that something must be hazarded, or that every thing
was lost. Montague, in particular, is said to have expressed in
strong language his determination to kill or cure. If indeed
there had 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 experiment which must severely try the strength of the
body politic. But the evil was one which daily made progress
almost visible to the eye. There might have been a recoinage in
1691 with half the risk which must be run in 1696; and, great as
would be the risk in 1696, that risk would be doubled if the
coinage were postponed till 1698.

Those politicians whose voice was for delay gave less trouble
than another set of politicians, who were for a general and
immediate recoinage, but who insisted that the new shilling
should be worth only ninepence or ninepence halfpenny. At the
head of this party was William Lowndes, Secretary of the
Treasury, and member of Parliament for the borough of Seaford, a
most respectable and industrious public servant, but much more
versed in the details of his office than in the higher parts of
political philosophy. He was not in the least aware that a piece
of metal with the King's head on it was a commodity of which the
price was governed by the same laws which govern the price of a
piece of metal fashioned into a spoon or a buckle, and that it
was no more in the power of Parliament to make the kingdom richer
by calling a crown a pound than to make the kingdom larger by
calling a furlong a mile. He seriously believed, incredible as it
may seem, that, if the ounce of silver were divided into seven
shillings instead of five, foreign nations would sell us their
wines and their silks for a smaller number of ounces. He had a
considerable following, composed partly of dull men who really
believed what he told them, and partly of shrewd men who were
perfectly willing to be authorised by law to pay a hundred pounds
with eighty. Had his arguments prevailed, the evils of a vast
confiscation would have been added to all the other evils which
afflicted the nation; public credit, still in its tender and
sickly infancy, would have been destroyed; and there would have
been much risk of a general mutiny of the fleet and army. Happily
Lowndes was completely refuted by Locke in a paper drawn up for
the use of Somers. Somers was delighted with this little
treatise, and desired that it might be printed. It speedily
became the text book of all the most enlightened politicians in
the kingdom, and may still be read with pleasure and profit. The
effect of Locke's forcible and perspicuous reasoning is greatly
heightened by his evident anxiety to get at the truth, and by the
singularly generous and graceful courtesy with which he treats an
antagonist of powers far inferior to his own. Flamsteed, the
Astronomer Royal, described the controversy well by saying that
the point in dispute was whether five was six or only five.640

Thus far Somers and Montague entirely agreed with Locke; but as
to the manner in which the restoration of the currency ought to
be effected there was some difference of opinion. Locke
recommended, as Dudley North had recommended, that the King
should by proclamation fix a near day after which the hammered
money should in all payments pass only by weight. The advantages
of this plan were doubtless great and obvious. It was most
simple, and, at the same time, most efficient. What searching,
fining, branding, hanging, burning, had failed to do would be
done in an instant. The clipping of the hammered pieces, the
melting of the milled pieces would cease. Great quantities of
good coin would come forth from secret drawers and from behind
the panels of wainscots. The mutilated silver would gradually
flow into the mint, and would come forth again in a form which
would make mutilation impossible. In a short time the whole
currency of the realm would be in a sound state, and, during the
progress of this great change, there would never at any moment be
any scarcity of money.

These were weighty considerations; and to the joint authority of
North and Locke on such a question great respect is due. Yet it
must be owned that their plan was open to one serious objection,
which did not indeed altogether escape their notice, but of which
they seem to have thought too lightly. The restoration of the
currency was a benefit to the whole community. On what principle
then was the expense of restoring the currency to be borne by a
part of the community? It was most desirable doubtless that the
words pound and shilling should again have a fixed signification,
that every man should know what his contracts meant and what his
property was worth. But was it just to attain this excellent end
by means of which the effect would be that every farmer who had
put by a hundred pounds to pay his rent, every trader who had
scraped together a hundred pounds to meet his acceptances, would
find his hundred pounds reduced in a moment to fifty or sixty? It
was not the fault of such a farmer or of such a trader that his
crowns and halfcrowns were not of full weight. The government
itself was to blame. The evil which the State had caused the
State was bound to repair, and it would evidently have been wrong
to throw the charge of the reparation on a particular class,
merely because that class was so situated that it could
conveniently be pillaged. It would have been as reasonable to
require the timber merchants to bear the whole cost of fitting
out the Channel fleet, or the gunsmiths to bear the whole cost of
supplying arms to the regiments in Flanders, as to restore the
currency of the kingdom at the expense of those individuals in
whose hands the clipped sliver happened at a particular moment to
be.

Locke declared that he regretted the loss which, if his advice
were taken, would fall on the holders of the short money. But it
appeared to him that the nation must make a choice between evils.
And in truth it was much easier to lay down the general
proposition that the expenses of restoring the currency ought to
be borne by the public than to devise any mode in which they
could without extreme inconvenience and danger be so borne. Was
it to be announced that every person who should within a term of
a year or half a year carry to the mint a clipped crown should
receive in exchange for it a milled crown, and that the
difference between the value of the two pieces should be made
good out of the public purse? That would be to offer a premium
for clipping. The shears would be more busy than ever. The short
money would every day become shorter. The difference which the
taxpayers would have to make good would probably be greater by a
million at the end of the term than at the beginning; and the
whole of this million would go to reward malefactors. If the time
allowed for the bringing in of the hammered coin were much
shortened, the danger of further clipping would be proportionally
diminished; but another danger would be incurred. The silver
would flow into the mint so much faster than it could possibly
flow out, that there must during some months be a grievous
scarcity of money.

A singularly bold and ingenious expedient occurred to Somers and
was approved by William. It was that a proclamation should be
prepared with great secresy, and published at once in all parts
of the kingdom. This proclamation was to announce that hammered
coins would thenceforth pass only by weight. But every possessor
of such coins was to be invited to deliver them up within three
days, in a sealed packet, to the public authorities. The coins
were to be examined, numbered, weighed, and returned to the owner
with a promissory note entitling him to receive from the Treasury
at a future time the difference between the actual quantity 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 to
the clipping, the melting and the exporting; and the expense of
the restoration of the currency would have been borne, as was
right, by the public. The inconvenience arising from a scarcity
of money would have been of very short duration; for the
mutilated pieces would have been detained only till they could be
told and weighed; they would then have been sent back into
circulation, and the recoinage would have taken place gradually
and without any perceptible suspension or disturbance of trade.
But against these great advantages were to be set off hazards,
which Somers was prepared to brave, but from which it is not
strange that politicians of less elevated character should have
shrunk. The course which he recommended to his colleagues was
indeed the safest for the country, but was by no means the safest
for themselves. His plan could not be successful unless the
execution were sudden; the execution could not be sudden if the
previous sanction of Parliament were asked and obtained; and to
take a step of such fearful importance without the previous
sanction of Parliament was to run the risk of censure,
impeachment, imprisonment, ruin. The King and the Lord Keeper
were alone in the Council. Even Montague quailed; and it was
determined to do nothing without the authority of the
legislature. Montague undertook to submit to the Commons a
scheme, which was not indeed without dangers and inconveniences,
but which was probably the best which he could hope to carry.

On the twenty-second of November the Houses met. Foley was on
that day again chosen Speaker. On the following day he was
presented and approved. The King opened the session with a speech
very skilfully framed. He congratulated his hearers on the
success of the campaign on the Continent. That success he
attributed, in language which must have gratified their feelings,
to the bravery of the English army. He spoke of the evils which
had arisen from the deplorable state of the coin, and of the
necessity of applying a speedy remedy. He intimated very plainly
his opinion that the expense of restoring the currency ought to
be borne by the State; but he declared that he referred the whole
matter to the wisdom of his Great Council. Before he concluded he
addressed himself particularly to the newly elected House of
Commons, and warmly expressed his approbation of the excellent
choice which his people had made. The speech was received with a
low but very significant hum of assent both from above and from
below the bar, and was as favourably received by the public as by
the Parliament.642 In the Commons an address of thanks was moved
by Wharton, faintly opposed by Musgrave, adopted without a
division, and carried up by the whole House to Kensington. At the
palace the loyalty of the crowd of gentlemen showed itself in a
way which would now be thought hardly consistent with senatorial
gravity. When refreshments were handed round in the antechamber,
the Speaker filled his glass, and proposed two toasts, the health
of King William, and confusion to King Lewis; and both were drunk
with loud acclamations. Yet near observers could perceive that,
though the representatives of the nation were as a body zealous
for civil liberty and for the Protestant religion, and though
they were prepared to endure every thing rather than see their
country again reduced to vassalage, they were anxious and
dispirited. All were thinking of the state of the coin; all were
saying that something must be done; and all acknowledged that
they did not know what could be done. "I am afraid," said a
member who expressed what many felt, "that the nation can bear
neither the disease nor the cure."643

There was indeed a minority by which the difficulties and dangers
of that crisis were seen with malignant delight; and of that
minority the keenest, boldest and most factious leader was Howe,
whom poverty had made more acrimonious than ever. He moved that
the House should resolve itself into a Committee on the State of
the Nation; and the Ministry, for that word may now with
propriety be used, readily consented. Indeed the great question
touching the currency could not be brought forward more
conveniently than in such a Committee. When the Speaker had left
the chair, Howe harangued against the war as vehemently as he had
in former 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 might bear up the frame; but faintness must soon
come on. No moral energy could long hold out against physical
exhaustion. He found very little support. The great majority of
his hearers were fully determined to put every thing to hazard
rather than submit to France. It was sneeringly remarked that the
state of his own finances had suggested to him the image of a man
bleeding to death, and that, if a cordial were administered to
him in the form of a salary, he would trouble himself little
about the drained veins of the commonwealth. "We did not," said
the Whig orators, "degrade ourselves by suing for peace when our
flag was chased out of our own Channel, when Tourville's fleet
lay at anchor in Torbay, when the Irish nation was in arms
against us, when every post from the Netherlands brought news of
some disaster, when we had to contend against the genius of
Louvois in the Cabinet and of Luxemburg in the field. And are we
to turn suppliants now, when no hostile squadron dares to show
itself even in the Mediterranean, when our arms are victorious on
the Continent, when God has removed the great statesman and the
great soldier whose abilities long frustrated our efforts, and
when the weakness of the French administration indicates, in a
manner not to be mistaken, the ascendency of a female favourite?"
Howe's suggestion was contemptuously rejected; and the Committee
proceeded to take into consideration the state of the
currency.644

Meanwhile the newly liberated presses of the capital never rested
a moment. Innumerable pamphlets and broadsides about the coin lay
on the counters of the booksellers, and were thrust into the
hands of members of Parliament in the lobby. In one of the most
curious and amusing of these pieces Lewis and his ministers are
introduced, expressing the greatest alarm lest England should
make herself the richest country in the world by the simple
expedient of calling ninepence a shilling, and confidently
predicting that, if the old standard were maintained, there would
be another revolution. Some writers vehemently objected to the
proposition that the public should bear the expense of restoring
the currency; some urged the government to take this opportunity
of assimilating 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
several anxious days. At length Montague, after defeating, first
those who were for letting things remain unaltered till the
peace, and then those who were for the little shilling, carried
eleven resolutions in which the outlines of his own plan were set
forth. It was resolved that the money of the kingdom should be
recoined according to the old standard both of weight and of
fineness; that all the new pieces should be milled; that the loss
on the clipped pieces should be borne by the public; that a time
should be fixed after which no clipped money should pass, except
in payments to the government; and that a later time should be
fixed, after which no clipped money should pass at all. What
divisions took place in the Committee cannot be ascertained. When
the resolutions were reported there was one division. It was on
the question whether the old standard of 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
brought in. A few days later the Chancellor of the Exchequer
explained to the Commons, in a Committee of Ways and Means, the
plan by which he proposed to meet the expense of the recoinage.
It was impossible to estimate with precision the charge of making
good the deficiencies of the clipped money. But it was certain
that at least twelve hundred thousand pounds would be required.
Twelve hundred thousand pounds the Bank of England undertook to
advance on good security. It was a maxim received among
financiers that no security which the government could offer was
so good as the old hearth money had been. That tax, odious as it
was to the great majority of those who paid it, was remembered
with regret at the Treasury and in the City. It occurred to the
Chancellor of the Exchequer that it might be possible to devise
an impost on houses, which might be not less productive nor less
certain than the hearth money, but which might press less heavily
on the poor, and might be collected by a less vexatious process.
The number of hearths in a house could not be ascertained without
domiciliary visits. The windows a collector might count without
passing the threshold. Montague proposed that the inhabitants of
cottages, who had been cruelly harassed by the chimney men,
should be altogether exempted from the new duty. His plan was
approved by the Committee of Ways and Means, and was sanctioned
by the House without a division. Such was the origin of the
window tax, a tax which, though doubtless a great evil, must be
considered as a blessing when compared with the curse from which
it rescued the nation.647

Thus far things had gone smoothly. But now came a crisis which
required the most skilful steering. The news that the Parliament
and the government were determined on a reform of the currency
produced an ignorant panic among the common people. Every man
wished to get rid of his clipped crowns and halfcrowns. No man
liked to take them. There were brawls approaching to riots in
half the streets of London. The Jacobites, always full of joy and
hope in a day of adversity and public danger, ran about with
eager looks and noisy tongues. The health of King James was
publicly drunk in taverns and on ale benches. Many members of
Parliament, who had hitherto supported the government, began to
waver; and, that nothing might be wanting to the difficulties of
the conjuncture, 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 of which, in the opinion of the
Commons, their Lordships had no right to make. The emergency was
too serious to admit of delay. Montague brought in a new bill;
which was in fact his former bill modified in some points to meet
the wishes of the Lords; the Lords, though not perfectly
contented with the new bill, passed it without any alteration;
and the royal assent was immediately given. The fourth of May, a
date long remembered over the whole kingdom and especially in the
capital, was fixed as the day on which the government would cease
to receive the clipped money in payment of taxes.648

The principles of the Recoinage Act are excellent. But some of
the details, both of that Act and of a supplementary Act which
was passed at a later period of the session, seem to prove that
Montague had not fully considered what legislation can, and what
it cannot, effect. For example, he persuaded the Parliament to
enact that it should be penal to give or take more than twenty-
two shillings for a guinea. It may be confidently affirmed that
this enactment was not suggested or approved by Locke. He well
knew that the high price of gold was not the evil which afflicted
the State, but merely a symptom of that evil, and that a fall in
the price of gold would inevitably follow, and could by no human
power or ingenuity be made to precede, the recoinage of the
silver. In fact, the penalty seems to have produced no effect
whatever, good or bad. Till the milled silver was in circulation,
the guinea continued, in spite of the law, to pass for thirty
shillings. When the milled silver became plentiful, the guinea
fell, not to twenty-two shillings, which was the highest price
allowed by the law, but to twenty-one shillings and sixpence.649

Early in February the panic which had been caused by the first
debates on the currency subsided; and, from that time till the
fourth of May, the want of money was not very severely felt. The
recoinage began. Ten furnaces were erected, in the garden behind
the Treasury; and every day huge heaps of pared and defaced
crowns and shillings were turned into massy ingots which were
instantly sent off to the mint in the Tower.650

With the fate of the law which restored the currency was closely
connected the fate of another law, which had been several years
under the consideration of Parliament, and had caused several
warm disputes between the hereditary and the elective branch of
the legislature. The session had scarcely commenced when the Bill
for regulating Trials in cases of High Treason was again laid on
the table of the Commons. Of the debates to which it gave
occasion nothing is known except one interesting circumstance
which has been preserved by tradition. Among those who supported
the bill appeared conspicuous a young Whig of high rank, of ample
fortune, and of great abilities which had been assiduously
improved by study. This was Anthony Ashley Cooper, Lord Ashley,
eldest son of the second Earl of Shaftesbury, and grandson of
that renowned politician who had, in the days of Charles the
Second, been at one time the most unprincipled of ministers, and
at another the most unprincipled of demagogues. Ashley had just
been returned to Parliament for the borough of Poole, and was in
his twenty-fifth year. In the course of his speech he faltered,
stammered and seemed to lose the thread of his reasoning. The
House, then, as now, indulgent to novices, and then, as now, well
aware that, on a first appearance, the hesitation which is the
effect of modesty and sensibility is quite as 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 this bill than
my own failure? My fortune, my character, my life, are not at
stake. I am speaking to an audience whose kindness might well
inspire me with courage. And yet, from mere nervousness, from
mere want of practice in addressing large assemblies, I have lost
my recollection; I am unable to 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, without a moment's
preparation, to the ablest and most experienced advocates in the
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 a gallows, and leave beggary and infamy to those who are
dearest to him." It may reasonably be suspected that Ashley's
confusion and the ingenious use which he made of it had been
carefully premeditated. His speech, however, made a great
impression, and probably raised expectations which were not
fulfilled. His health was delicate; his taste was refined even to
fastidiousness; he soon left politics to men whose bodies and
minds were of coarser texture than his own, gave himself up to
mere intellectual luxury, lost himself in the mazes of the old
Academic philosophy, and aspired to the glory of reviving the old
Academic eloquence. His diction, affected and florid, but often
singularly beautiful and melodious, fascinated many young
enthusiasts. He had not merely disciples, but worshippers. His
life was short; but he lived long enough to become the founder of
a new sect of English freethinkers, diametrically opposed in
opinions and feelings to that sect of freethinkers of which
Hobbes was the oracle. During many years the Characteristics
continued to be the Gospel of romantic and sentimental
unbelievers, while the Gospel of coldblooded and hardheaded
unbelievers was the Leviathan.

The bill, so often brought in and so often lost, went through the
Commons without a division, and was carried up to the Lords. It
soon came back with the long disputed clause altering the
constitution of the Court of the Lord High Steward. A strong
party among the representatives of the people was still unwilling
to grant any new privilege to the nobility; but the moment was
critical. The misunderstanding which had arisen beween the Houses
touching the Recoinage Bill had produced inconveniences which
might well alarm even a bold politician. It was necessary to
purchase concession by concession. The Commons, by a hundred and
ninety-two votes to a hundred and fifty, agreed to the amendment
on which the Lords had, during four years, so obstinately
insisted; and the Lords in return immediately passed the
Recoinage Bill without any amendment.

There had been much contention as to the time at which the new
system of procedure in cases of high treason should come into
operation; and the bill had once been lost in consequence of a
dispute on this point. Many persons were of opinion that the
change ought not to take place till the close of the war. It was
notorious, they said, that the foreign enemy was abetted by too
many traitors at home; and, at such a time, the severity of the
laws which protected the commonwealth against the machinations of
bad citizens ought not to be relaxed. It was at last determined
that the new regulations should take effect on the twenty-fifth
of March, the first day, according to the old Calendar, of the
year 1696.

On the twenty-first of January the Recoinage Bill and the Bill
for regulating Trials in cases of High Treason received the royal
assent. On the following day the Commons repaired to Kensington
on an errand by no means agreeable either to themselves or to the
King. They were, as a body, fully resolved to support him, at
whatever cost and at whatever hazard, against every foreign and
domestic foe. But they were, as indeed every assembly of five
hundred and thirteen English gentlemen that could by any process
have been brought together must have been, jealous of the favour
which he showed to the friends of his youth. He had set his heart
on placing the house of Bentinck on a level in wealth and
splendour with the houses of Howard and Seymour, of Russell and
Cavendish.

Some of the fairest hereditary domains of the Crown had been
granted to Portland, not without murmuring on the part both of
Whigs and Tories. Nothing had been done, it is true, which was
not in conformity with the letter of the law and with a long
series of precedents. Every English sovereign had from time
immemorial considered the lands to which he had succeeded in
virtue of his office as his private property. Every family that
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
carved ducal estates for his bastards out of his hereditary
domain. Nor did the Bill of Rights contain a word which could be
construed to mean that the King was not at perfect liberty to
alienate any part of the estates of the Crown. At first,
therefore, William's liberality to his countrymen, though it
caused much discontent, called forth no remonstrance from the
Parliament. But he at length went too far. In 1695 he ordered the
Lords of the Treasury to make out a warrant granting to Portland
a magnificent estate in Denbighshire. This estate was said to be
worth more than a hundred thousand pounds. The annual income,
therefore, can hardly have been less than six thousand pounds;
and the annual rent which was reserved to the Crown was only six
and eightpence. This, however, was not the worst. With the
property were inseparably connected extensive royalties, which
the people of North Wales could not patiently see in the hands of
any subject. More than a century before Elizabeth had bestowed a
part of the same territory on her favourite Leicester. On that
occasion the population of Denbighshire had risen in arms; and,
after much tumult and several executions, Leicester had thought
it advisable to resign his mistress's gift back to her. The
opposition to Portland was less violent, but not less effective.
Some of the chief gentlemen of the principality made strong
representations to the ministers through whose offices the
warrant had to pass, and at length brought the subject under the
consideration of the Lower House. An address was unanimously
voted requesting the King to stop the grant; Portland begged that
he might not be the cause of a dispute between his master and the
Parliament; and the King, though much mortified, yielded to 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 still more angry with the Whig ministers who had not
ventured to defend his grant. The loyal affection which the
Parliament had testified to him during the first days of the
session had perceptibly cooled; and he was almost as unpopular as
he had ever been, when an event took place which suddenly brought
back to him the hearts of millions, and made him for a time 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 preceding
spring had been given up in consequence of William's departure
for the Continent. The plan of insurrection which had been formed
in the summer had been given up for want of help from France. But
before the end of the autumn both plans were resumed. William had
returned to England; and the possibility of getting rid of him by
a lucky shot or stab was again seriously discussed. The French
troops had gone into winter quarters; and the force, which
Charnock had in vain demanded while war was raging round Namur,
might now be spared without inconvenience. Now, therefore, a plot
was laid, more formidable than any that had yet threatened the
throne and the life of William; or rather, as has more than once
happened in our history, two plots were laid, one within the
other. The object of the greater plot was an open insurrection,
an insurrection which was to be supported by a foreign army. In
this plot almost all the Jacobites of note were more or less
concerned. Some laid in arms; some bought horses; some made lists
of the servants and tenants in whom they could place firm
reliance. The less warlike members of the party could at least
take off bumpers to the King over the water, and intimate by
significant shrugs and whispers that he would not be over the
water long. It was universally remarked that the malecontents
looked wiser than usual when they were sober, and bragged more
loudly than usual when they were drunk.653 To the smaller plot,
of which the object was the murder of William, only a few select
traitors were privy.

Each of these plots was under the direction of a leader specially
sent from Saint Germains. The more honourable mission was
entrusted to Berwick. He was charged to communicate with the
Jacobite nobility and gentry, to ascertain what force they could
bring into the field, and to fix a time for the rising. He was
authorised to assure them that the French government was
collecting troops and transports at Calais, and that, as soon as
it was known there that a rebellion had broken out in England,
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,
but of great address, activity and courage. This was Sir George
Barclay, a Scotch 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 from the royal lips. He was
directed to steal across the Channel and to repair to London. He
was told that a few select officers and soldiers should speedily
follow him by twos and threes. That they might have no difficulty
in finding him, he was to walk, on Mondays and Thursdays, in the
Piazza of Covent Garden after nightfall, with a white
handkerchief hanging from his coat pocket. He was furnished with
a considerable sum of money, and with a commission which was not
only signed but written from beginning to end by James himself.
This commission authorised the bearer to do from time to time
such acts of hostility against the Prince of Orange and that
Prince's adherents as should most conduce to the service of the
King. What explanation of these very comprehensive words was
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 for him to put himself under the care of a surgeon
at Paris.654 He set out with eight hundred pounds in his
portmanteau, hastened to the coast, and embarked on board of a
privateer which was employed by the Jacobites as a regular packet
boat between France and England. This vessel conveyed him to a
desolate spot in Romney Marsh. About half a mile from the landing
place a smuggler named Hunt lived on a dreary and unwholesome fen
where he had no neighbours but a few rude shepherds. His dwelling
was singularly well situated for a contraband traffic in French
wares. Cargoes of Lyons silk and Valenciennes lace sufficient to
load thirty packhorses had repeatedly been landed in that dismal
solitude without attracting notice. But, since the Revolution,
Hunt had discovered that of all cargoes a cargo of traitors paid
best. His lonely abode became the resort of men of high
consideration, Earls and Barons, Knights and Doctors of Divinity.
Some of them lodged many days under his roof while waiting for a
passage. A clandestine post was established between his house and
London. The couriers were constantly going and returning; they
performed their journeys up and down on foot; but they appeared
to be gentlemen, and it was whispered that one of them was the
son of a titled man. The letters from Saint Germains were few and
small. Those directed to Saint Germains were numerous and bulky;
they were made up like parcels of millinery, and were buried in
the morass till they were called for by the privateer.

Here Barclay landed in January 1696; and hence he took the road
to London. He was followed, a few days later, by a tall youth,
who concealed his name, but who produced credentials of the
highest authority. This youth too proceeded to London. Hunt
afterwards discovered that his humble roof had had the honour of
sheltering the Duke of Berwick.655

The part which Barclay had to perform was difficult and
hazardous; and he omitted no precaution. He had been little in
London; and his face was consequently unknown to the agents of
the government. Nevertheless he had several lodgings; he
disguised himself so well that his oldest friends would not have
known him by broad daylight; and yet he seldom ventured into the
streets except in the dark. His chief agent was a monk who, under
several names, heard confessions and said masses at the risk of
his neck. This man intimated to some of the zealots with whom he
consorted a special agent of the royal family was to be spoken
with in Covent Garden, on certain nights, at a certain hour, and
might be known by certain signs.656 In this way Barclay became
acquainted with several men fit for his purpose. The first
persons to whom he fully opened himself were Charnock and
Parkyns. He talked with them about the plot which they and some
of their friends had formed in the preceding spring against the
life of William. Both Charnock and Parkyns declared that the
scheme might easily be executed, that there was no want of
resolute hearts among the Royalists, and that all that was
wanting was some sign of His Majesty's approbation.

Then Barclay produced his commission. He showed his two
accomplices that James had expressly commanded all good
Englishmen, not only to rise in arms, not only to make war on the
usurping government, not only to seize forts and towns, but also
to do from time to time such other acts of hostility against the
Prince of Orange as might be for the royal service. These words,
Barclay said, plainly authorised an attack on the Prince's
person. Charnock and Parkyns were satisfied. How in truth was it
possible for them to doubt that James's confidential agent
correctly construed James's expressions? Nay, how was it possible
for them to understand the large words of the commission in any
sense but one, even if Barclay had not been there to act as
commentator? If indeed
the subject had never been brought under James's consideration,
it might well be thought that those words had dropped from his
pen without any definite meaning. But he had been repeatedly
apprised that some of his friends in England meditated a deed of
blood, and that they were waiting only 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 broken silence, he
merely told them to do what ever might be beneficial to himself
and prejudicial to the usurper. They had his authority as plainly
given as they could reasonably expect to have it given in such a
case.657

All that remained was to find a sufficient number of courageous
and trustworthy assistants, to provide horses and weapons, and to
fix the hour and the place of the slaughter. Forty or fifty men,
it was thought, would be sufficient. Those troopers of James's
guard who had already followed Barclay across the Channel made up
nearly half that number. James had himself seen some of these men
before their departure from Saint Germains, had given them money
for their journey, had told them by what name each of them was to
pass in England, had commanded them to act as they should be
directed by Barclay, and had informed them where Barclay 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 different
reasons 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 Scotch college and study for a learned profession. Under
such pretexts about twenty picked men left the palace of James,
made their way by Romney Marsh to London, and found their captain
walking in the dim lamplight of the Piazza with the handkerchief
hanging from his pocket. One of these men was Ambrose Rockwood,
who held the rank of Brigadier, and who had a high reputation for
courage and honour; another was Major John Bernardi, an
adventurer of Genoese extraction, whose name has derived a
melancholy celebrity from a punishment so strangely prolonged
that it at length shocked a generation which could not remember
his crime.659

It was in these adventurers from France that Barclay placed his
chief trust. In a moment of elation he once called them his
Janissaries, and expressed a hope that they would get him the
George and Garter. But twenty more assassins at least were
wanted. The conspirators probably expected valuable help from Sir
John Friend, who had received a Colonel's commission signed by
James, and had been most active in enlisting men and providing
arms against the day when the French should appear on the coast
of Kent. The design was imparted to him; but he thought it so
rash, and so likely to bring reproach and disaster on the good
cause, that he would lend no assistance to his friends, though he
kept their secret religiously.660 Charnock undertook to find
eight brave and trusty fellows. He communicated the design to
Porter, not with Barclay's entire approbation; for Barclay
appears to have thought that a tavern brawler, who had recently
been in prison for swaggering drunk about the streets and
huzzaing in honour of the Prince of Wales, was hardly to be
trusted with a secret of such fearful import. Porter entered into
the plot with enthusiasm, and promised to bring in others who
would be useful. Among those whose help he engaged was his
servant Thomas Keyes. Keyes was a far more formidable conspirator
than might have been expected from his station in life. The
household troops generally were devoted to William; but there was
a taint of disaffection among the Blues. The chief conspirators
had already been tampering with some Roman Catholics who were in
that regiment; and Keyes was excellently qualified to bear a part
in this work; for he had formerly been trumpeter of the corps,
and, though he had quitted the service, he still kept up an
acquaintaince with some of the old soldiers in whose company he
had lived at free quarter on the Somersetshire farmers after the
battle of Sedgemoor.

Parkyns, who was old and gouty, could not himself take a share in
the work of death. But he employed himself in providing horses,
saddles and weapons for his younger and more active accomplices.
In this department of business he was assisted by Charles
Cranburne, a person who had long acted as a broker between
Jacobite plotters and people who dealt in cutlery and firearms.
Special orders were given by Barclay that the swords should be
made rather for stabbing than for slashing. Barclay himself
enlisted Edward Lowick, who had been a major in the Irish army,
and who had, since the capitulation of Limerick, been living
obscurely in London. The monk who had been Barclay's first
confidant recommended two busy Papists, Richard Fisher and
Christopher Knightley; and this recommendation was thought
sufficient. Knightley drew in Edward King, a Roman Catholic
gentleman of hot and restless temper; and King procured the
assistance of a French gambler and bully named De la Rue.661

Meanwhile the heads of the conspiracy held frequent meetings at
treason taverns, for the purpose of settling a plan of
operations. Several schemes were proposed, applauded, and, on
full consideration, abandoned. At one time it was thought that an
attack on Kensington House at dead of night might probably be
successful. The outer wall might easily be scaled. If once forty
armed men were in the garden, the palace would soon be stormed or
set on fire. Some were of opinion that it would be best to strike
the blow on a Sunday as
William went from Kensington to attend divine service at the
chapel of Saint James's Palace. The murderers might assemble near
the spot where Apsley House and Hamilton Place now stand. Just as
the royal coach passed out of Hyde Park, and was about to enter
what has since been called the Green Park, thirty of the
conspirators, well mounted, might fall on the guards. The guards
were ordinarily only five and twenty. They would be taken
completely by surprise; and probably half of them would be shot
or cut down before they could strike a blow. Meanwhile ten or
twelve resolute men on foot would stop the carriage by shooting
the horses, and would then without difficulty despatch the King.
At last the preference was given to a plan originally sketched by
Fisher and put into shape by Porter. William was in the habit of
going every Saturday from Kensington to hunt in Richmond Park.
There was then no bridge over the Thames between London and
Kingston. The King therefore went, in a coach escorted by some of
his body guards, through Turnham Green to the river. There he
took boat, crossed the water and found another coach and another
set of guards ready to receive him on the Surrey side. The first
coach and the first set of guards awaited his return on the
northern bank. The conspirators ascertained with great precision
the whole order of these journeys, and carefully examined the
ground on both sides of the Thames. They thought that they should
attack the King with more advantage on the Middlesex than on the
Surrey bank, and when he was returning than when he was going.
For, when he was going, he was often attended to the water side
by a great retinue of lords and gentlemen; but on his return he
had only his guards about him. The place and time were fixed.
The place was to be a narrow and winding lane leading from the
landingplace on the north of the rover to Turnham Green. The spot
may still be easily found. The ground has since been drained by
trenches. But in the seventeenth century it was a quagmire,
through which the royal coach was with difficulty tugged at a
foot's pace. The time was to be the afternoon of Saturday the
fifteenth of February. On that day the Forty were to assemble in
small parties at public houses near the Green. When the signal
was given that the coach was approaching they were to take horse
and repair to their posts. As the cavalcade came up this lane
Charnock was to attack the guards in the rear, Rockwood on one
flank, Porter on the other. Meanwhile Barclay, with eight trusty
men, was to stop the coach and to do the deed. That no movement
of the King might escape notice, two orderlies were appointed to
watch the palace. One of these men, a bold and active Fleming,
named Durant, was especially charged to keep Barclay well
informed. The other, whose business was to communicate with
Charnock, was a ruffian named Chambers, who had served in the
Irish army, had received a severe wound in the breast at the
Boyne, and, on account 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 rise in arms. But this was no easy task. Several
consultations were held; and there was one great muster of the
party under the pretence of a masquerade, for which tickets were
distributed among the initiated at one guinea each.663 All ended
however in talking, singing and drinking. Many men of rank and
fortune indeed declared that they would draw their swords for
their rightful Sovereign as soon as their rightful Sovereign was
in the island with a French army; and Berwick had been empowered
to assure there that a French army should be sent as soon as they
had drawn the sword. But between what they asked and what he was
authorised to grant there was a difference which admitted of no
compromise. Lewis, situated as he was, would not risk ten or
twelve thousand excellent soldiers on the mere faith of promises.
Similar promises had been made in 1690; and yet, when the fleet
of Tourville had appeared on the coast of Devonshire, the western
counties had risen as one man in defence of the government, and
not a single malecontent had dared to utter a whisper in favour
of the invaders. Similar promises had been made in 1692; and to
the confidence which had been placed in those promises was to be
attributed the great disaster of La Hogue. The French King would
not be deceived a third time. He would gladly help the English
royalists; but he must first see them help themselves. There was
much reason in this; and there was reason also in what the
Jacobites urged on the other side. If, they said, they were to
rise, without a single disciplined regiment to back them, against
an usurper supported by a regular army, they should all be cut to
pieces before the news that they were up could reach Versailles.
As Berwick could hold out no hope that there would be an invasion
before there was an insurrection, and as his English friends were
immovable in their determination that there should be no
insurrection till there was an invasion, he had nothing more to
do here, and became impatient to depart.

He was the more impatient to depart because the fifteenth of
February drew near. For he was in constant communication with
Barclay, and was perfectly apprised of all the details of the
crime which was to be perpetrated on that day. He was generally
considered as a man of sturdy and even ungracious integrity. But
to such a degree had his sense of right and wrong been perverted
by his zeal for the interests of his family, and by his respect
for the lessons of his priests, that he did not, as he has
himself ingenuously confessed, think that he lay under any
obligation to dissuade the assassins from the execution of their
purpose. He had indeed only one objection to their design; and
that objection he kept to himself. It was simply this, that all
who were concerned were very likely to be hanged. That, however,
was their affair; and, if they chose to run such a risk in the
good cause, it was not his business to discourage them. His
mission was quite distinct from theirs; he was not to act with
them; and he had no inclination to suffer with then. He therefore
hastened down to Romney Marsh, and crossed to Calais.664

At Calais he found preparations making for a descent on Kent.
Troops filled the town; transports filled the port. Boufflers had
been ordered to repair thither from Flanders, and to take the
command. James himself was daily expected. In fact he had already
left Saint Germains. Berwick, however, would not wait. He took
the road to Paris, met his father at Clermont, and made a full
report of the state of things in England. His embassy had failed;
the Royalist nobility and gentry seemed resolved not to rise till
a French army was in the island; but there was still a hope; news
would probably come within a few days that the usurper was no
more; and such news would change the whole aspect of affairs.
James determined to go on to Calais, and there to await the event
of Barclay's plot. Berwick hastened to Versailles for the purpose
of giving explanations to Lewis. What the nature of the
explanations was we know from Berwick's own narrative. He
plainly told the French King that a small band of loyal men would
in a short time make an attempt on the life of the great enemy of
France. The next courier might bring tidings of an event which
would probably subvert the English government and dissolve the
European coalition. It might have been thought that a prince who
ostentatiously affected the character of a devout Christian and
of a courteous knight would instantly have taken measures for
conveying to his rival a caution which perhaps might still arrive
in time, and would have severely reprimanded the guests who had
so grossly abused his hospitality. Such, however, was not the
conduct of Lewis. Had he been asked to give his sanction to a
murder he would probably have refused with indignation. But he
was not moved to indignation by learning that, without his
sanction, a crime was likely to be committed which would be far
more beneficial to his interests than ten such victories as that
of Landen. He sent down orders to Calais that his fleet should be
in such readiness as might enable him to take advantage of the
great crisis which he anticipated. At Calais James waited with
still more impatience for the signal that his nephew was no more.
That signal was to be given by a fire, of which the fuel was
already prepared on the cliffs of Kent, and which would be
visible across the straits.665

But a peculiar fate has, in our country, always attended such
conspiracies as that of Barclay and Charnock. The English regard
assassination, and have during some ages regarded it, with a
loathing peculiar to themselves. So English indeed is this
sentiment that it cannot even now be called Irish, and till a
recent period, it was not Scotch. In Ireland to this day the
villain who shoots at his enemy from behind a hedge is too often
protected from justice by public sympathy. In Scotland plans of
assassination were often, during the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, successfully executed, though known to great numbers
of persons. The murders of Beaton, of Rizzio, of Darnley, of
Murray, of Sharpe, are conspicuous instances. The royalists who
murdered Lisle in Switzerland were Irishmen; the royalists who
murdered Ascham at Madrid were Irishmen; the royalists who
murdered Dorislaus at the Hague were Scotchmen. In England, as
soon as such a design ceases to be a secret hidden in the
recesses of one gloomy and ulcerated heart, the risk of detection
and failure becomes extreme. Felton and Bellingham reposed trust
in no human being; and they were therefore able to accomplish
their evil purposes. But Babington's conspiracy against
Elizabeth, Fawkes's conspiracy against James, Gerard's conspiracy
against Cromwell, the Rye House conspiracy, the Cato Street
conspiracy, were all discovered, frustrated and punished. In
truth such a conspiracy is here exposed to equal danger from the
good and from the bad qualities of the conspirators. Scarcely
any Englishman, not utterly destitute of conscience and honour,
will engage in a plot for slaying an unsuspecting fellow
creature; and a wretch who has neither conscience nor honour is
likely to think much on the danger which he incurs by being true
to his associates, and on the rewards which he may obtain by
betraying them. There are, it is true, persons in whom religious
or political fanaticism has destroyed all moral sensibility on
one particular point, and yet has left that sensibility generally
unimpaired. Such a person was Digby. He had no scruple about
blowing King, Lords and Commons into the air. Yet to his
accomplices he was religiously and chivalrously faithful; nor
could even the fear of the rack extort from him one word to their
prejudice. But this union of depravity and heroism is very rare.
The vast majority of men are either not vicious enough or not
virtuous enough to be loyal and devoted members of treacherous
and cruel confederacies; and, if a single member should want
either the necessary vice or the necessary virtue, the whole
confederacy is in danger. To bring together in one body forty
Englishmen, all hardened cutthroats, and yet all so upright and
generous that neither the hope of opulence nor the dread of the
gallows can tempt any one of them to be false to the rest, has
hitherto been found, and will, it is to be hoped, always be found
impossible.

There were among Barclay's followers both men too bad and men too
good to be trusted with such a secret as his. The first whose
heart failed him was Fisher. Even before the time and place of
the crime had been fixed, he obtained an audience of Portland,
and told that lord that a design was forming against the King's
life. Some days later Fisher came again with more precise
intelligence. But his character was not such as entitled him to
much credit; and the knavery of Fuller, of Young, of Whitney and
of Taffe, had made men of sense slow to believe stories of
plots. Portland, therefore, though in general very easily alarmed
where the safety of his master and friend was concerned, seems
to have thought little about the matter. But, on the evening of
the fourteenth of February, he received a visit from a person
whose testimony he could not treat lightly. This was a Roman
Catholic gentleman of known courage and honour, named
Pendergrass. He had, on the preceding day, come up to town from
Hampshire, in consequence of a pressing summons from Porter, who,
dissolute and unprincipled as he was, had to Pendergrass been a
most kind friend, indeed almost a father. In a Jacobite
insurrection Pendergrass would probably have been one of the
foremost. But he learned with horror that he was expected to bear
a part in a wicked and shameful deed. He found himself in one of
those situations which most cruelly torture noble and sensitive
natures. What was he to do? Was he to commit a murder? Was he to
suffer a murder which he could prevent to be committed? Yet was
he to betray one who, however culpable, had loaded him with
benefits? Perhaps it might be possible to save William without
harming Porter? Pendergrass determined to make the attempt. "My
Lord," he said to Portland, "as you value King William's life, do
not let him hunt tomorrow. He is the enemy of my religion; yet my
religion constrains me to give him this caution. But the names of
the conspirators I am resolved to conceal; some of them are my
friends; one of them especially is my benefactor; and I will not
betray them."

Portland went instantly to the King; but the King received the
intelligence very coolly, and seemed determined not to be
frightened out of a good day's sport by such an idle story.
Portland argued and implored in vain. He was at last forced to
threaten that he would immediately make the whole matter public,
unless His Majesty would consent to remain within doors during
the next day; and this threat was successful.666

Saturday the fifteenth came. The Forty were all ready to mount,
when they received intelligence from the orderlies who watched
Kensington House that the King did not mean to hunt that morning.
"The fox," said Chambers, with vindictive bitterness, "keeps his
earth." Then he opened his shirt; showed the great scar in his
breast, and vowed revenge on William.

The first thought of the conspirators was that their design had
been detected. But they were soon reassured. It was given out
that the weather had kept the King at home; and indeed the day
was cold and stormy. There was no sign of agitation at the
palace. No extraordinary precaution was taken. No arrest was
made. No ominous whisper was heard at the coffeehouses. The delay
was vexatious; but Saturday the twenty-second would do as well.

But, before Saturday the twenty-second arrived, a third informer,
De la Rue, had presented himself at the palace. His way of life
did not entitle him to much respect; but his story agreed so
exactly with what had been said by Fisher and Pendergrass that
even William began to believe that there was real danger.

Very late in the evening of Friday the twenty-first, Pendergrass,
who had as yet disclosed much less than either of the other
informers, but whose single word was worth much more than their
joint oath, was sent for to the royal closet. The faithful
Portland and the gallant Cutts were the only persons who
witnessed the singular interview between the King and his
generous enemy. William, with courtesy and animation which he
rarely showed, but which he never showed without making a deep
impression, urged Pendergrass to speak out. "You are a man of
true probity and honour; I am deeply obliged to you; but you must
feel that the same considerations which have induced you to tell
us so much ought to induce you to tell us something more. The
cautions which you have as yet given can only make me suspect
every body that comes near me. They are 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 an hour the King
continued to entreat and Pendergrass to refuse. At last
Pendergrass said that he would give the information which was
required, if he could be assured that it would be used only for
the prevention of the crime, and not for the destruction of the
criminals. "I give you my word of honour," said William, "that
your evidence shall not be used against any person without your
own free consent." It was long past midnight when Pendergrass
wrote down the names of the chief conspirators.

While these things were passing at Kensington, a large party of
the assassins were revelling at a Jacobite tavern in Maiden Lane.
Here they received their final orders for the morrow. "Tomorrow
or never," said King. "Tomorrow, boys," cried Cassels with a
curse, "we shall have the plunder of the field." The morrow came.
All was ready; the horses were saddled; the pistols were loaded;
the swords were sharpened; the orderlies were on the alert; they
early sent intelligence from the palace that the King was
certainly going a hunting; all the usual preparations had been
made; a party of guards had been sent round by Kingston Bridge to
Richmond; the royal coaches, each with six horses, had gone from
the stables at Charing Cross to Kensington. The chief murderers
assembled in high glee at Porter's lodgings. Pendergrass, who, by
the King's command, appeared among them, was greeted with
ferocious mirth. "Pendergrass," said Porter, "you are named one
of the eight who are to do his business. I have a musquetoon for
you that will carry eight balls." "Mr. Pendergrass," said King,
"pray do not be afraid of smashing the glass windows." From
Porter's lodgings the party adjourned to the Blue Posts in Spring
Gardens, where they meant to take some refreshment before they
started for Turnham Green. They were at table when a message came
from an orderly that the King had changed his mind and would not
hunt; and scarcely had they recovered from their first surprise
at this ominous news, when Keyes, who had been out scouting among
his old comrades, arrived with news more ominous still. "The
coaches have returned to Charing Cross. The guards that were sent
round to Richmond have just come back to Kensington at full
gallop, the flanks of the horses all white with foam. I have had
a word with one of the Blues. He told me that strange things are
muttered." Then the countenances of the assassins fell; and their
hearts died within them. Porter made a feeble attempt to disguise
his uneasiness. He took up an orange and squeezed it. "What
cannot be done one day may be done another. Come, gentlemen,
before we part let us have one glass to the squeezing of the
rotten orange." The squeezing of the rotten orange was drunk; and
the company dispersed.667

A few hours elapsed before all the conspirators abandoned all
hope. Some of 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 were so, the blow might still be struck. Two
Saturdays had been unpropitious. But Sunday was at hand. One of
the plans which had formerly been discussed and abandoned might
be resumed. The usurper might be set upon at Hyde Park Corner on
his way to his chapel. Charnock was ready for any enterprise
however desperate. If the hunt was up, it was better to die
biting and scratching to the last than to be worried without
resistance or revenge. He assembled some of his accomplices at
one of the numerous houses at which he had lodgings, and plied
there hard with healths to the King, to the Queen, to the Prince,
and to the Grand Monarch, as they called Lewis. But the terror
and dejection of the gang were beyond the power of wine; and so
many had stolen away that those who were left could effect
nothing. In the course of the afternoon it was known that the
guards had been doubled at the palace; and soon after nightfall
messengers from the Secretary of State's office were hurrying to
and fro with 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 Tower Hill. Seventeen more traitors
were seized before noon; and three of the Blues were put under
arrest. That morning a Council was held; and, as soon as it rose,
an express was sent off to call home some regiments from
Flanders; Dorset set out for Sussex, of which he was Lord
Lieutenant; Romney, who was Warden of the Cinque Ports, started
for the coast of Kent; and Russell hastened down the Thames to
take the command of the fleet. In the evening the Council sate
again. Some of the prisoners were examined and committed. The
Lord Mayor was in attendance, was informed of what had been
discovered, and was specially charged to look well to the peace
of the capital.668

On Monday morning all the trainbands of the City were under arms.
The King went in state to the House of Lords, sent for the
Commons, and from the throne told the Parliament that, but for
the protection of a gracious Providence, he should at that moment
have been a corpse, and the kingdom would have been invaded by a
French army. The danger of invasion, he added, was still great;
but he had already given such orders as would, he hoped, suffice
for the protection of the realm. Some traitors were in custody;
warrants were out against others; he should do 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
thankfully acknowledged the divine goodness which had preserved
him to his people, and implored him to take more than ordinary
care of his person. They concluded by exhorting him to seize and
secure all persons whom he regarded as dangerous.

On the same day two important bills were brought into the
Commons. By one the Habeas Corpus Act was suspended. The other
provided that the Parliament should not be dissolved by the death
of William. Sir Rowland Gwyn, an honest country gentleman, made a
motion of which he did not at all foresee the important
consequences. He proposed that the members should enter into an
association for the defence of their Sovereign and their country.
Montague, who of all men was the quickest at taking and improving
a hint, saw how much such an association would strengthen the
government and the Whig party.670 An instrument was immediately
drawn tip, by which the representatives of the people, each for
himself, solemnly recognised William as rightful and lawful King,
and bound themselves to stand by him and by each other against
James and James's adherents. Lastly they vowed that, if His
Majesty's life should be shortened by violence, they would avenge
him signally on his murderers, and would, with one heart,
strenuously support the order of succession settled by the Bill
of Rights. It was ordered that the House should be called over
the next morning.671 The attendance was consequently great; the
Association, engrossed on parchment, was on the table; and the
members went up, county by county, to sign their names.672

The King's speech, the joint address of both Houses, the
Association framed by the Commons, and a proclamation, containing
a list of the conspirators and offering a reward of a thousand
pounds for the apprehension of any one of them, were soon cried
in all the streets of the capital and carried out by all the
postbags. Wherever the news came it raised the whole country.
Those two hateful words, assassination and invasion, acted like a
spell. No impressment was necessary. The seamen came forth from
their hiding places by thousands to man the fleet. Only three
days after the King had appealed to the nation, Russell sailed
out of the Thames with one great squadron. Another was ready for
action at Spithead. The militia of all the maritime counties from
the Wash to the Land's End was under arms. For persons accused of
offences merely political there was generally much sympathy. But
Barclay's assassins were hunted like wolves by the whole
population. The abhorrence which the English have, through many
generations, felt for domiciliary visits, and for all those
impediments which the police of continental states throws in the
way of travellers, was for a time suspended. The gates of the
City of London were kept many hours closed while a strict search
was made within. The magistrates of almost every walled town in
the kingdom followed the example of the capital. On every highway
parties of armed men were posted with orders to stop passengers
of suspicious appearance. During a few days it was hardly
possible to perform a journey without a passport, or to procure
posthorses without the authority of a justice of the peace. Nor
was any voice raised against these precautions. The common people
indeed were, if possible, more eager than the public
functionaries to bring the traitors to justice. This eagerness
may perhaps be in part ascribed to the great rewards promised by
the royal proclamation. The hatred which every good Protestant
felt for Popish cutthroats was not a little strengthened by the
songs in which the street poets celebrated the lucky hackney
coachman who had caught his traitor, had received his thousand
pounds, and had set up as a gentleman.673 The zeal of the
populace could in some places hardly be kept within the limits of
the law. At the country seat of Parkyns in Warwickshire, arms and
accoutrements sufficient to equip a troop of cavalry were found.
As soon as this was known, a furious mob assembled, pulled down
the house and laid the gardens utterly waste.674 Parkyns himself
was tracked to a garret in the Temple. Porter and Keyes, who had
fled into Surrey, were pursued by the hue and cry, stopped by the
country people near Leatherhead, and, after some show of
resistance, secured and sent to prison. Friend was found hidden
in the house of a Quaker. Knightley was caught in the dress of a
fine lady, and recognised in spite of his patches and paint. In a
few days all the chief conspirators were in custody except
Barclay, who succeeded in making his escape to France.

At the same time some notorious malecontents were arrested, and
were detained for a time on suspicion. Old Roger Lestrange, now
in his eightieth year, was taken up. Ferguson was found hidden
under a bed in 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 the traitors. There was no want of
evidence. For, of the conspirators who had been seized, ten or
twelve were ready to save themselves by bearing witness against
their associates. None had been deeper in guilt, and none shrank
with more abject terror from death, than Porter. The government
consented to spare him, and thus obtained, not only his evidence,
but the much more respectable evidence of Pendergrass.
Pendergrass was in no danger; he had committed no offence; his
character was fair; and his testimony would have far greater
weight with a jury than the testimony of a crowd of approvers
swearing for their necks. But he had the royal word of honour
that he should not be a witness without his own consent; and he
was fully determined not to be a witness unless he were assured
of Porter's safety. Porter was now safe; and Pendergrass had no
longer any scruple about relating the whole truth.

Charnock, King and Keyes were set first to the bar. The Chiefs of
the three 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 the
procedure in cases of high treason was not to come into force
till the twenty-fifth. The culprits urged that, as the
Legislature had, by passing that Act, recognised the justice of
allowing them to see their indictment, and to avail themselves of
the assistance of an advocate, the tribunal ought either to grant
them what the highest authority had declared to be a reasonable
indulgence, or to defer the trial for a fortnight. The judges,
however, would consent to no delay. They have therefore been
accused by later writers of using the mere letter of the law in
order to destroy men who, if that law had been construed
according to its spirit, might have had some chance of escape.
This accusation is unjust. The judges undoubtedly carried the
real intention of the Legislature into effect; and, for whatever
injustice was committed, the Legislature, and not the judges,
ought to be held accountable. The words, "twenty-fifth of March,"
had not slipped into the Act by mere inadvertence. All parties in
Parliament had long been agreed as to the principle of the new
regulations. The only matter about which there was any dispute
was the time at which those regulations should take effect. After
debates extending through several sessions, after repeated
divisions with various results, a compromise had been made; and
it was surely not for the Courts to alter the terms of that
compromise. It may indeed be confidently affirmed that, if the
Houses had foreseen the Assassination Plot, they would have
fixed, not an earlier, but a later day for the commencement of
the new system. Undoubtedly the Parliament, and especially the
Whig party, deserved serious blame. For, if the old rules of
procedure gave no unfair advantage to the Crown, there was no
reason for altering them; and if, as was generally admitted, they
did give an unfair advantage to the Crown, and that against a
defendant on trial for his life, they ought not to have been
suffered to continue in force a single day. But no blame is due
to the tribunals for not acting in direct opposition both to the
letter and to the spirit of the law.

The government might indeed have postponed the trials till the
new Act came into force; and it would have been wise, as well as
right, to do so; for the prisoners would have gained nothing by
the delay. The case against them was one on which all the
ingenuity of the Inns of Court could have made no impression.
Porter, Pendergrass, De la Rue and others gave evidence which
admitted of no answer. Charnock said the very little that he had
to say with readiness and presence of mind. The jury found all
the defendants guilty. It is not much to the honour of that age
that the announcement of the verdict was received with loud
huzzas by the crowd which surrounded the Courthouse. Those huzzas
were renewed when the three unhappy men, having heard their doom,
were brought forth under a guard.676

Charnock had hitherto shown no sign of flinching; but when he was
again in his cell his fortitude gave way. He begged hard for
mercy. He would be content, he said, to pass the rest of his days
in an easy confinement. He asked only for his life. In return for
his life, he promised to discover all that he knew of the schemes
of the Jacobites against the government. If it should appear that
he prevaricated or that he suppressed any thing, he was willing
to undergo the utmost rigour of the law. This offer produced much
excitement, and some difference of opinion, among the councillors
of William. But the King decided, as in such cases he seldom
failed to decide, wisely and magnanimously. He saw that the
discovery of the Assassination Plot had changed the whole posture
of affairs. His throne, lately tottering, was fixed on an
immovable basis. His popularity had risen impetuously to as great
a height as when he was on his march from Torbay to London. Many
who had been out of humour with his administration, and who had,
in their spleen, held some communication with Saint Germains,
were shocked to find that they had been, in some sense, leagued
with murderers. He would not drive such persons to despair. He
would not even put them to the blush. Not only should they not be
punished; they should not undergo the humiliation 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 chance of being received as
a deserter, he assumed the dignity of a martyr, and played his
part resolutely to the close. That he might bid farewell to the
world with a better grace, he ordered a fine new coat to be
hanged in, and was very particular on his last day about the
powdering and curling of his wig.678 Just before he was turned
off, he delivered to the Sheriffs a paper in which he avowed that
he had conspired against the life of the Prince of Orange, but
solemnly denied that James had given any commission authorising
assassination. The denial was doubtless literally correct; but
Charnock did not deny, and assuredly could not with truth have
denied, that he had seen a commission written and signed by
James, and containing words which might without any violence be
construed, and which were, by all to whom they were shown,
actually construed, to authorise the murderous ambuscade of
Turnham Green.

Indeed Charnock, in another paper, which is still in existence,
but has never been printed, held very different language. He
plainly said that, for reasons too obvious to be mentioned, he
could not tell the whole truth in the paper which be had
delivered to the Sheriffs. He acknowledged that the plot in which
he had been engaged seemed, even to many loyal subjects, highly
criminal. They called him assassin and murderer. Yet what had he
done more than had been done by Mucius Scaevola? Nay, what had he
done more than had been done by every body who bore arms against
the Prince of Orange? If an array of twenty thousand men had
suddenly landed in England and surprised the usurper, this would
have been called legitimate war. Did the difference between war
and assassination depend merely on the number of persons engaged?
What then was the smallest number which could lawfully surprise
an enemy? Was it five thousand, or a thousand, or a hundred?
Jonathan and his armourbearer were only two. Yet they made a
great slaughter of the Philistines. Was that assassination? It
cannot, said Charnock, be the mere act, it must be the cause,
that makes killing assassination. It followed that it was not
assassination to kill one,--and here the dying man gave a loose to
all his hatred,--who had declared a war of extermination against
loyal subjects, who hung, drew and quartered every man who stood
up for the right, and who had laid waste England to enrich the
Dutch. Charnock admitted that his enterprise would have been
unjustifiable if it had not been authorised by James; but he
maintained that it had been authorised, not indeed expressly, but
by implication. His Majesty had indeed formerly prohibited
similar attempts; but had prohibited them, not as in themselves
criminal, but merely as inexpedient at this or that conjuncture
of affairs. Circumstances had changed. The prohibition might
therefore reasonably be considered as withdrawn. His Majesty's
faithful subjects had then only to look to the words of his
commission; and those words, beyond all doubt, fully warranted an
attack on the person of the usurper.679

King and Keyes suffered with Charnock. King behaved with
firmness and decency. He acknowledged his crime, and said that he
repented of it. He thought it due to the Church of which he was a
member, and on which his conduct had brought reproach, to declare
that he had been misled, not by any casuistry about tyrannicide,
but merely by the violence of his own evil passions. Poor Keyes
was in an agony of terror. His tears and lamentations moved the
pity of some of the spectators. It was said at the time, and it
has often since been repeated, that a servant drawn into crime by
a master was a proper object of royal clemency. But those who
have blamed the severity with which Keyes was treated have
altogether omitted to notice the important circumstance which
distinguished his case from that of every other conspirator. He
had been one of the Blues. He had kept up to the last an
intercourse with his old comrades. On the very day fixed for the
murder he had contrived to mingle with them and to pick up
intelligence from them. The regiment had been so deeply infected
with disloyalty that it had been found necessary to confine some
men and to dismiss many more. Surely, if any example was to be
made, it was proper to make an example of the agent by whose
instrumentality the men who meant to shoot the King communicated
with the men whose business was to guard him.

Friend was tried next. His crime was not of so black a dye as
that of the three conspirators who had just suffered. He had
indeed invited foreign enemies to invade the realm, and had made
preparations for joining them. But, though he had been privy to
the design of assassination, 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 out as 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 proceedings of that day
furnish a strong argument in favour of the Act from the benefit
of which Friend was excluded. It is impossible to read them over
at this distance of time without feeling compassion for a silly
ill educated man, unnerved by extreme danger, and opposed to
cool, astute and experienced antagonists. Charnock had defended
himself and those who were tried with him as well as any
professional advocate could have done. But poor Friend was as
helpless as a child. He could do little more than exclaim that he
was a Protestant, and that the witnesses against him were
Papists, who had dispensations from their priests for perjury,
and who believed that to swear away the lives of heretics was a
meritorious work. He was so grossly ignorant of law and history
as to imagine that the statute of treasons, passed in the reign
of Edward the Third, at a time when there was only one religion
in Western Europe, contained a clause providing that no Papist
should be a witness, and actually forced the Clerk of the Court
to read the whole Act from beginning to end. About his guilt it
was impossible that there could be a doubt in any rational mind.
He was convicted; and he would have been convicted if he had been
allowed the privileges for which he asked.

Parkyns came next. He had been deeply concerned in the worst part
of the plot, and was, in one respect, less excusable than any of
his accomplices; for they were all nonjurors; and he had taken
the oaths to the existing government. He too insisted that he
ought to be tried according to the provisions of the new Act. But
the counsel for the Crown stood on their extreme right; and his
request was denied. As he was a man of considerable abilities,
and had been bred to the bar, he probably said for himself all
that counsel could have said for him; and that all amounted to
very little. He was found guilty, and received sentence of death
on the evening of the twenty-fourth of March, within six hours of
the time when the law of which he had vainly demanded the benefit
was to come into force.680

The execution of the two knights was eagerly expected by the
population of 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 of Friend and Parkyns excited the
greatest interest. The multitude had been incensed against Friend
by reports touching the exceeding badness of the beer which he
brewed. It was even rumoured that he had, in his zeal for the
Jacobite cause, poisoned all the casks which he had furnished to
the navy. An innumerable crowd accordingly assembled at Tyburn.
Scaffolding had been put up which formed an immense amphitheatre
round the gallows. On this scaffolding the wealthier spectators
stood, row above row; and expectation was at the height when it
was announced that the show was deferred. The mob broke up in bad
humour, and not without many fights between those who had given
money for their places and those who refused to return it.681

The cause of this severe disappointment was a resolution suddenly
passed by the Commons. A member had proposed that a Committee
should be sent to the Tower with authority to examine the
prisoners, and to hold out to them the hope that they might, by a
full and ingenuous confession, obtain the intercession of the
House. The debate appears, from the scanty information which has
come down to us, to have been a very curious one. Parties seemed
to have changed characters. It might have been expected that the
Whigs would have been inexorably severe, and that, if there was
any tenderness for the unhappy men, that tenderness would have
been found among the Tories. But in truth many of the Whigs hoped
that they might, by sparing two criminals who had no power to do
mischief, be able to detect and destroy numerous criminals high
in rank and office. On the other hand, every man who had ever had
any dealings direct or indirect with Saint Germains, or who took
an interest in any person likely to have had such dealings,
looked forward with dread to the disclosures which the captives
might, under the strong terrors of death, be induced to make.
Seymour, simply because he had gone further in treason than
almost any other member of the House, was louder than any other
member of the House in exclaiming against all indulgence to his
brother traitors. Would the Commons usurp the most sacred
prerogative of the Crown? It was for His Majesty, and not for
them, to judge whether lives justly forfeited could be without
danger spared. The Whigs however carried their point. A
Committee, consisting of all the Privy Councillors in the House,
set off instantly for Newgate. Friend and Parkyns were
interrogated, but to no purpose. They had, after sentence had
been passed on them, shown at first some symptoms of weakness;
but their courage had been fortified by the exhortations of
nonjuring divines who had been admitted to the prison. The rumour
was that Parkyns would have given way but for the entreaties of
his daughter, who adjured him to suffer like a man for the good
cause. The criminals acknowledged that they had done the acts of
which they had been convicted, but, with a resolution which is
the more respectable because it seems to have sprung, not from
constitutional hardihood, but from sentiments of honour and
religion, refused to say any thing which could compromise
others.682

In a few hours the crowd again assembled at Tyburn; and this time
the sightseers were not defrauded of their amusement. They saw
indeed one sight which they had not expected, and which produced
a greater sensation than the execution itself. Jeremy Collier and
two other nonjuring divines of less celebrity, named Cook and
Snatt, had attended the prisoners in Newgate, and were in the
cart under the gallows. When the prayers were over, and just
before the hangman did his office, the three schismatical priests
stood up, and laid their hands on the heads of the dying men who
continued to kneel. Collier pronounced a form of absolution taken
from the service for the Visitation of the Sick, and his brethren
exclaimed "Amen!"

This ceremony raised a great outcry; and the outcry became louder
when, a few hours after the execution, the papers delivered by
the two traitors to the Sheriffs were made public. It had been
supposed that Parkyns at least would express some repentance for
the crime which had brought him to the gallows. Indeed he had,
before the Committee of the Commons, owned that the Assassination
Plot could not be justified. But, in his last declaration, he
avowed his share in that plot, not only without a word indicating
remorse, but with something which resembled exultation. Was this
a man to be absolved by Christian divines, absolved before the
eyes of tens of thousands, absolved with rites evidently intended
to attract public attention, with rites of which there was no
trace in the Book of Common Prayer or in the practice of the
Church of England?

In journals, pamphlets and broadsides, the insolence of the three
Levites, as they were called, was sharply reprehended. Warrants
were soon out. Cook and Snatt were taken and imprisoned; but
Collier was able to conceal himself, and, by the help of one of
the presses which were at the service of his party, sent forth
from his hiding place a defence of his conduct. He declared that
he abhorred assassination as much as any of those who railed
against him; and his general character warrants us in believing
that this declaration was perfectly sincere. But the rash act
into which he had been hurried by party spirit furnished his
adversaries with very plausible reasons for questioning his
sincerity. A crowd of answers to his defence appeared. Preeminent
among them in importance was a solemn manifesto signed by the two
Archbishops and by all the Bishops who were then in London,
twelve in number. Even Crewe of Durham and Sprat of Rochester set
their names to this document. They condemned the proceedings of
the three nonjuring divines, as in form irregular and in
substance impious. To remit the sins of impenitent sinners was a
profane abuse of the power which Christ had delegated to his
ministers. It was not denied that Parkyns had planned an
assassination. It was not pretended that he had professed any
repentance for planning an assassination. The plain inference was
that the divines who absolved him did not think it sinful to
assassinate King William. Collier rejoined; but, though a
pugnacious controversialist, he on this occasion shrank from
close conflict, and made his escape as well as he could under a
cloud of quotations from Tertullian, Cyprian and Jerome,
Albaspinaeus and Hammond, the Council of Carthage and the Council
of Toledo. The public feeling was strongly against the three
absolvers. The government however wisely determined not to confer
on them the honour of martyrdom. 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 liberty after a short detention; and
Collier would have been treated with equal lenity if he would
have consented to put in bail. But he was determined to do no act
which could be construed into a recognition of the usurping
government. He was therefore outlawed; and when he died, more
than thirty years later, his outlawry had not been reversed.683

Parkyns was the last Englishman who was tried for high treason
under the old system of procedure. The first who was tried under
the new system was Rockwood. He was defended by Sir Bartholomew
Shower, who in the preceding reign had made himself unenviably
conspicuous as a servile and cruel sycophant, who had obtained
from James the Recordership of London when Holt honourably
resigned it, and who had, as Recorder, sent soldiers to the
gibbet for breaches of military discipline. By his servile
cruelty he had earned the nickname of the Manhunter. Shower
deserved, if any offender deserved, to be excepted from the Act
of Indemnity, and left to the utmost rigour of those laws which
he had so shamelessly 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 towards Jacobitism that he was
employed on this occasion. He raised some technical objections
which the Court overruled. On the merits of the case he could
make no defence. The jury returned a verdict of guilty. Cranburne
and Lowick were then tried and convicted. They suffered with
Rookwood; and there the executions stopped.685

The temper of the nation was such that the government might have
shed much more blood without incurring the reproach of cruelty.
The feeling which had been called forth by the discovery of the
plot continued during several weeks to increase day by day. Of
that feeling the able men who were at the head of the Whig party
made a singularly skilful use. They saw that the public
enthusiasm, if left without guidance, would exhaust itself in
huzzas, healths and bonfires, but might, if wisely guided, be the
means of producing a great and lasting effect. The Association,
into which the Commons had entered while the King's speech was
still in their ears, furnished the means of combining four fifths
of the nation in one vast club for the defence of the order of
succession with which were inseparably combined the dearest
liberties of the English people, and of establishing a test which
would distinguish those who were zealous for that order of
succession from those who sullenly and reluctantly acquiesced in
it. Of the five hundred and thirty members of the Lower House
about four hundred and twenty voluntarily subscribed the
instrument which recognised William as rightful and lawful King
of England. It was moved in the Upper House that the same form
should be adopted; but objections were raised by the Tories.
Nottingham, ever conscientious, honourable and narrow minded,
declared that he could not assent to the words "rightful and
lawful." He still held, as he had held from the first, that a
prince who had taken the Crown, not by birthright, but by the
gift of the Convention, could not properly be so described.
William was doubtless King in fact, and, as King in fact, was
entitled to the obedience of Christians. "No man," said
Nottingham, "has served or will serve His Majesty more faithfully
than I. But to this document I cannot set my hand." Rochester and
Normanby held similar language. Monmouth, in a speech of two
hours and a half, earnestly exhorted the Lords to agree with the
Commons. Burnet was vehement on the same side. Wharton, whose
father had lately died, and who was now Lord Wharton, appeared in
the foremost rank of the Whig peers. But no man distinguished
himself more in the debate than one whose life, both public and
private, had been one long series of faults and disasters, the
incestuous lover of Henrietta Berkeley, the unfortunate
lieutenant of Monmouth. He had recently ceased to be called by
the tarnished name of Grey of Wark, and was now Earl of
Tankerville. He spoke on that day with great force and eloquence
for the words, "rightful and lawful." Leeds, after expressing his
regret that a question about a mere phrase should have produced
dissension among noble persons who were all equally attached to
the reigning Sovereign, undertook the office of mediator. He
proposed that their Lordships, instead of recognising William as
rightful and lawful King, should declare that William had the
right by law to the English Crown, and that no other person had
any right whatever to that Crown. Strange to say, almost all the
Tory peers were perfectly satisfied with what Leeds had
suggested. Among the Whigs there was some unwillingness to
consent to a change which, slight as it was, might be thought to
indicate a difference of opinion between the two Houses on a
subject of grave importance. But Devonshire and Portland declared
themselves content; their authority prevailed; and the alteration
was made. How a rightful and lawful possessor is to be
distinguished from a possessor who has the exclusive right by law
is a question which a Whig may, without any painful sense of
shame, acknowledge to be beyond the reach of his faculties, and
leave to be discussed by High Churchmen. Eighty-three peers
immediately affixed their names to the amended form of
association; and Rochester was among them. 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 the Association had been published under the
direction of the Speaker it was subscribed by the Lord Mayor, by
the Aldermen, and by almost all the members of the Common
Council. The municipal corporations all over the kingdom followed
the example. The spring assizes were just beginning; and at every
county town the grand jurors and the justices of the peace put
down their names. Soon shopkeepers, artisans, yeomen, farmers,
husbandmen, came by thousands to the tables where the parchments
were laid out. In Westminster there were thirty-seven thousand
associators, in the Tower Hamlets eight thousand, in Southwark
eighteen thousand. The rural parts of Surrey furnished seventeen
thousand. At Ipswich all the freemen signed except two. At
Warwick all the male inhabitants who had attained the age of
sixteen signed, except two Papists and two Quakers. At Taunton,
where the memory of the Bloody Circuit was fresh, every man who
could write gave in his adhesion to the government. All the
churches and all the meeting houses in the town were crowded, as
they had never been crowded before, with people who came to thank
God for having preserved him whom they fondly called William the
Deliverer. Of all the counties of England Lancashire was the most
Jacobitical. Yet Lancashire furnished fifty thousand signatures.
Of all the great towns of England Norwich was the most
Jacobitical. The magistrates of that city were supposed to be in
the interest of the exiled dynasty. The nonjurors were numerous,
and had, just before the discovery of the plot, seemed to be in
unusual spirits and ventured to take unusual liberties. One of
the chief divines of the schism had preached a sermon there which
gave rise to strange suspicions. He had taken for his text the
verse in which the Prophet Jeremiah announced that the day of
vengeance was come, that the sword would be drunk with blood,
that the Lord God of Hosts had a sacrifice in the north country
by the river Euphrates. Very soon it was known that, at the time
when this discourse was delivered, swords had actually been
sharpening, under the direction of Barclay and Parkyns, for a
bloody sacrifice on the north bank of the river Thames. The
indignation of the common people of Norwich was not to be
restrained. They came in multitudes, though discouraged by the
municipal authorities, to plight faith to William, rightful and
lawful King. In Norfolk the number of signatures amounted to
forty-eight thousand, in Suffolk to seventy thousand. Upwards of
five hundred rolls went up to London from every part of England.
The number of names attached to twenty-seven of those rolls
appears from the London Gazette to have been three hundred and
fourteen thousand. After making the largest allowance for fraud,
it seems certain that the Association included the great majority
of the adult male inhabitants of England who were able to sign
their names. The tide of popular feeling was so strong that a man
who was known not to have signed ran considerable risk of being
publicly affronted. In many places nobody appeared without
wearing in his hat a red riband on which were embroidered the
words, "General Association for King William." Once a party of
Jacobites had the courage to parade a street in London with an
emblematic device which seemed to indicate their contempt for the
new Solemn League and Covenant. They were instantly put to rout
by the mob, and their leader was well ducked. The enthusiasm
spread to secluded isles, to factories in foreign countries, to
remote colonies. The Association was signed by the rude fishermen
of the Scilly Rocks, by the English merchants of Malaga, by the
English merchants of Genoa, by the citizens of New York, by the
tobacco planters of Virginia and by the sugar planters of
Barbadoes.687

Emboldened by success, the Whig leaders ventured to proceed a
step further. They brought into the Lower House a bill for the
securing of the King's person and government. By this bill it was
provided that whoever, while the war lasted, should come from
France into England without the royal license should incur the
penalties of treason, that the suspension of the Habeas Corpus
Act should continue to the end of the year 1696, and that all
functionaries appointed by William should retain their offices,
notwithstanding his death, till his successor should be pleased
to dismiss them. The form of Association which the House of
Commons had adopted was solemnly ratified; and it was provided
that no person should sit in that House or should hold any
office, civil or military, without signing. The Lords were
indulged in the use of their own form; and nothing was said about
the clergy.

The Tories, headed by Finch and Seymour, complained bitterly of
this new test, and ventured once to divide, but were defeated.
Finch seems to have been heard patiently; but, notwithstanding
all Seymour's eloquence, the contemptuous manner in which he
spoke of the Association raised a storm against which he could
not stand. Loud cries of "the Tower, the Tower," were heard.
Haughty and imperious as he was, he was forced to explain away
his words, and could scarcely, by apologizing in a manner to
which he was little accustomed, save himself from the humiliation
of being called to the bar and reprimanded on his knees. The bill
went up to the Lords, and passed with great speed in spite of the
opposition of Rochester and Nottingham.688

The nature and extent of the change which the discovery of the
Assassination Plot had produced in the temper of the House of
Commons and of the nation is strikingly illustrated by the
history of a bill entitled a Bill for the further Regulation of
Elections of Members of Parliament. The moneyed interest was
almost entirely Whig, and was therefore an object of dislike to
the Tories. The rapidly growing power of that interest was
generally regarded with jealousy by landowners whether they were
Whigs or Tories. It was something new and monstrous to see a
trader from Lombard Street, who had no tie to the soil of our
island, and whose wealth was entirely personal and movable, post
down to Devonshire or Sussex with a portmanteau full of guineas,
offer himself as candidate for a borough in opposition to a
neighbouring gentleman whose ancestors had been regularly
returned ever since the Wars of the Roses, and come in at the
head of the poll. Yet even this was not the worst. More than one
seat in Parliament, it was said, had been bought and sold over a
dish of coffee at Garraway's. The purchaser had not been required
even to go through the form of showing himself to the electors.
Without leaving his counting house in Cheapside, he had been
chosen to represent a place which he had never seen. Such things
were intolerable. No man, it was said, ought to sit in the
English legislature who was not master of some hundreds of acres
of English ground.689 A bill was accordingly brought in which
provided that every member of the House of Commons must have a
certain estate in land. For a knight of a shire the qualification
was fixed at five hundred a year; for a burgess at two hundred a
year. Early in February this bill was read a second time and
referred to a Select Committee. A motion was made that the
Committee should be instructed to add a clause enacting that all
elections should be by ballot. Whether this motion proceeded from
a Whig or a Tory, by what arguments it was supported and on what
grounds it was opposed, we have now no means of discovering. We
know only that it was rejected without a division.

Before the bill came back from the Committee, some of the most
respectable constituent bodies in the kingdom had raised their
voices against the new restriction to which it was proposed to
subject them. There had in general been little sympathy between
the commercial towns and the Universities. For the commercial
towns were the chief seats of Whiggism and Non conformity; and
the Universities were zealous for the Crown and the Church. Now,
however, Oxford and Cambridge made common cause with London and
Bristol. It was hard, said the Academics, that a grave and
learned man, sent by a large body of grave and learned men to the
Great Council of the nation, should be thought less fit to sit in
that Council than a boozing clown who had scarcely literature
enough to 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 first city in the world, whose name on the back
of a bill commanded entire confidence at Smyrna and at Genoa, at
Hamburg and at Amsterdam, who had at sea ships every one of which
was worth a manor, and who had repeatedly, when the liberty and
religion of the kingdom were in peril, advanced to the
government, at an hour's notice, five or ten thousand pounds,
should be supposed to have a less stake in the prosperity of the
commonwealth than a squire who sold his own bullocks and hops
over a pot of ale at the nearest market town. On the report, it
was moved that the Universities should be excepted; but the
motion was lost by a hundred and fifty-one votes to a hundred and
forty-three. On the third reading it was moved that the City of
London should be excepted; but it was not thought advisable to
divide. The final question that the bill do pass, was carried by
a hundred and seventy-three votes to a hundred and fifty on the
day which preceded the discovery of the Assassination Plot. The
Lords 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 him many times from great embarrassments, implored
his protection. It was represented to him that the Commons were
far indeed from being unanimous on this subject; that, in the
last stage, the majority had been only twenty-three in a full
House; that the motion to except the Universities had been lost
by a majority of only eight. On full consideration he resolved
not to pass the bill. Nobody, he said, could accuse him of acting
selfishly on this occasion; his prerogative was not concerned in
the matter; and he could have no objection to the proposed law
except that it would be mischievous to his people.

On the tenth of April 1696, therefore, the Clerk of the
Parliament was commanded to inform the Houses that the King would
consider of the Bill for the further Regulation of Elections.
Some violent Tories in the House of Commons flattered themselves
that they might be able to carry a resolution reflecting on the
King. They moved that whoever had advised His Majesty to refuse
his assent to their bill was an enemy to him and to the nation.
Never was a greater blunder committed. The temper of the House
was very different from what it had been on the day when the
address against Portland's grant had been voted by acclamation.
The detection of a murderous conspiracy, the apprehension of a
French invasion, had changed every thing. The King was popular.
Every day ten or twelve bales of parchment covered with the
signatures of associators were laid at his feet. Nothing could be
more imprudent than to propose, at such a time, a thinly
disguised vote of censure on him. The moderate Tories accordingly
separated themselves from their angry and unreasonable brethren.
The motion was rejected by two hundred and nineteen votes to
seventy; and the House ordered the question and the numbers on
both sides to be published, in order that the world might know
how completely the attempt to produce a quarrel between the King
and the Parliament had failed.690

The country gentlemen might perhaps have been more inclined to
resent the loss of their bill, had they not been put into high
goodhumour by another bill which they considered as even more
important. The project of a Land Bank had been revived; not in
the form in which it had, two years before, been brought under
the consideration of the House of Commons, but in a form much
less shocking to common sense and less open to ridicule.
Chamberlayne indeed protested loudly against all modifications of
his plan, and proclaimed, with undiminished confidence, that he
would make all his countrymen rich if they would only let him. He
was not, he said, the first great discoverer whom princes and
statesmen had regarded as a dreamer. Henry the Seventh had, in an
evil hour, refused to listen to Christopher Columbus; the
consequence had been that England had lost the mines of Mexico
and Peru; yet what were the mines of Mexico and Peru to the
riches of a nation blessed with an unlimited paper currency? But
the united force of reason and ridicule had reduced the once
numerous sect which followed Chamberlayne to a small and select
company of incorrigible fools. Few even of the squires now
believed in his two great doctrines; the doctrine that the State
can, by merely calling a bundle of old rags ten millions
sterling, add ten millions sterling to the riches of the nation;
and the doctrine that a lease of land for a term of years may be
worth many times the fee simple. But it was still the general
opinion of the country gentlemen that a bank, of which it should
be the special business to advance money on the security of land,
might be a great blessing to the nation. Harley and the Speaker
Foley now proposed that such a bank should be established by Act
of Parliament, and promised that, if their plan was adopted, the
King should be amply supplied with money for the next campaign.

The Whig leaders, and especially Montague, saw that the scheme
was a delusion, that it must speedily fail, and that, before it
failed, it might not improbably ruin their own favourite
institution, the Bank of England. But on this point they had
against them, not only the whole Tory party, but also their
master and many of their followers. The necessities of the State
were pressing. The offers of the projectors were tempting. The
Bank of England had, in return for its charter, advanced to the
State only one million at eight per cent. The Land Bank 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 the year, was little inclined to find fault with any source
from which two millions and a half could be obtained. Sunderland,
who generally exerted his influence in favour of the Whig
leaders, failed them on this occasion. The Whig country gentlemen
were delighted by the prospect of being able to repair their
stables, replenish their cellars, and give portions to their
daughters. It was impossible to contend against such a
combination of force. A bill was passed which authorised the
government to borrow two million five hundred and sixty-four
thousand pounds at seven per cent. A fund, arising chiefly from a
new tax on salt, was set apart 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 the Exchequer, the
subscribers were to become a corporate body, under the name of
the National Land Bank. As this bank was expressly intended to
accommodate country gentlemen, it was strictly interdicted from
lending money on any private security other than a mortgage of
land, and was bound to lend on mortgage at least half a million
annually. The interest on this half million was not to exceed
three and a half per cent., if the payments were quarterly, or
four per cent., if the payments were half yearly. At that time
the market rate of interest on the best mortgages was full six
per cent. The shrewd observers at the Dutch Embassy therefore
thought that capitalists would eschew all connection with what
must necessarily be a losing concern, and that the subscription
would never be half filled up; and it seems strange that any sane
person should have thought otherwise.691

It was vain however to reason against the general infatuation.
The Tories exultingly predicted that the Bank of Robert Harley
would completely eclipse the Bank of Charles Montague. The bill
passed both Houses. On the twenty-seventh of April it received
the royal assent; and the 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 Governments731--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
he proceeded to Flanders, and took the command of the allied
forces, which were collected in the neighbourhood of Ghent.
Villeroy and Boufflers were already in the field. All Europe
waited impatiently for great news from the Netherlands, but
waited in vain. No aggressive movement was made. The object of
the generals on both sides was to keep their troops from 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
gigantic magazine at Givet on the frontier of his kingdom. The
buildings were commodious and of vast extent. The quantity of
provender laid up in them for horses was immense. The number of
rations for men was commonly estimated at from three to four
millions. But early in the spring Athlone 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 a
loss. Sieges such as those of Mons and Namur were operations too
costly for her means. The business of her army now was, not to
conquer, but to subsist.

The army of William was reduced to straits not less painful. The
material wealth of England, indeed, had not been very seriously
impaired by the drain which the war had caused; but she was
suffering severely from the defective state of that instrument by
which her material wealth was distributed.

Saturday, the second of May, had been fixed by Parliament as the
last day on which the clipped crowns, halfcrowns and shillings
were to be received by tale in payment of taxes.694 The Exchequer
was besieged from dawn till midnight by an immense multitude. It
was necessary to call in the guards for the purpose of keeping
order. On the following Monday began a cruel agony of a few
months, which was destined to be succeeded by many years of
almost unbroken prosperity.695

Most of the old silver had vanished. The new silver had scarcely
made its appearance. About four millions sterling, in ingots and
hammered coin, were lying in the vaults of the Exchequer; and the
milled money as yet came forth very slowly from the Mint.696
Alarmists predicted that the wealthiest and most enlightened
kingdom in Europe would be reduced to the state of those
barbarous societies in which a mat is bought with a 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 of silver, which, with the help of gold,
was to carry the nation through the summer.697 The manufacturers
generally contrived, though with extreme difficulty, to pay their
workmen in coin.698 The upper classes seem to have lived to a
great extent on credit. Even an opulent man seldom had the means
of discharging the weekly bills of his baker and butcher.699 A
promissory note, however, subscribed by such a man, was readily
taken in the district where his means and character were well
known. The notes of the wealthy moneychangers of Lombard Street
circulated widely.700 The paper of the Bank of England did much
service, and would have done more, but for the unhappy error into
which the Parliament had recently been led by Harley and Foley.
The confidence which the public had felt in that powerful and
opulent Company had been shaken by the Act which established the
Land Bank. It might well be doubted whether there would be room
for the two rival institutions; and of the two, the younger
seemed to be the favourite of the government and of the
legislature. The stock of the Bank of England had gone rapidly
down from a hundred and ten to eighty-three. Meanwhile the
goldsmiths, who had from the first been hostile to that great
corporation, were plotting against it. They collected its paper
from every quarter; and on the fourth of May, when the Exchequer
had just swallowed up most of the old money, and when scarcely
any of the new money had been issued, they flocked to Grocers'
Hall, and insisted on immediate payment. A single goldsmith
demanded thirty thousand pounds. The Directors, in this
extremity, acted wisely and firmly. They refused to cash the
notes which had been thus maliciously presented, and left the
holders to seek a remedy in Westminster Hall. Other creditors,
who came in good faith to ask for their due, were paid. The
conspirators affected to triumph over the powerful body, which
they hated and dreaded. The bank which had recently begun to
exist under such splendid auspices, which had seemed destined to
make a revolution in commerce and in finance, which had been the
boast of London and the envy of Amsterdam, was already insolvent,
ruined, dishonoured. Wretched pasquinades were published, the
Trial of the Land Bank for murdering the Bank of England, the
last Will and Testament 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 clamour and 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 meet every claim which was made on them in good faith. They
then bethought them of a new expedient. They made a call of
twenty per cent. on the proprietors, and thus raised a sum which
enabled them to give every applicant fifteen per cent. in milled
money on what was due to him. They returned him his note, after
making a minute upon it that part had been paid.702 A few notes
thus marked are still preserved among the archives of the Bank,
as memorials of that terrible year. The paper of the Corporation
continued to circulate, but the value fluctuated violently from day to day, and
indeed from hour to hour; for the public mind was in so excitable a state that
the most absurd lie which a stockjobber could invent sufficed to send the price
up or down. At one time the discount
was only six per cent., at another time twenty-four per cent. A
tenpound note, which had been taken in the morning as worth more
than nine pounds, was often worth less than eight pounds before
night.703

Another, and, at that conjuncture, a more effectual substitute
for a metallic currency, owed its existence to the ingenuity of
Charles Montague. He had succeeded in engrafting on Harley's Land
Bank Bill a clause which empowered the government to issue
negotiable paper bearing interest at the rate of threepence a day
on a hundred pounds. In the midst of the general distress and
confusion appeared the first Exchequer Bills, drawn for various
amounts from a hundred pounds down to five pounds. These
instruments were rapidly distributed over the kingdom by the
post, and were every where welcome. The Jacobites talked
violently against them in every coffeehouse, and wrote much
detestable verse against 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 it does not appear that this
resolution was carried into effect.704

It is difficult to imagine how, without the Exchequer Bills, the
government 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 the means of defraying more than half
the charge of the war, had yielded not a single farthing.

The sum expected from the Land Bank was near two million six
hundred thousand pounds. Of this sum one half was to be
subscribed, and one quarter paid up by the first of August. The
King, just before his departure, had signed a warrant appointing
certain commissioners, among whom Harley and Foley were the most
eminent, to receive the names of the contributors.705 A great
meeting of persons interested in the scheme was held in the Hall
of the Middle Temple. One office was opened at Exeter Change,
another at Mercers' Hall. Forty agents went down into the
country, and announced to the landed gentry of every shire the
approach of the golden age of high rents and low interest. The
Council of Regency, in order to set an example to the nation, put
down the King's name for five thousand pounds; and the newspapers
assured the world that the subscription would speedily be
filled.706 But when three weeks had passed away, it was found
that only fifteen hundred pounds had been added to the five
thousand contributed by the King. Many wondered at this; yet
there was little cause for wonder. The sum which the friends of
the project had undertaken to raise was a sum which only the
enemies of the project could furnish. The country gentlemen
wished well to Harley's scheme; but they wished well to it
because they wanted to borrow money on easy terms; and, wanting
to borrow money, they of course were not able to lend it. The
moneyed class alone could supply what was necessary to the
existence of the Land Bank; and the Land Bank was avowedly
intended to diminish the profits, to destroy the political
influence and to lower the social position of the moneyed class.
As the usurers did not choose to take on themselves the expense
of putting down usury, the whole plan failed in a manner which,
if the aspect of public affairs had been less alarming, would
have been exquisitely ludicrous. The day drew near. The neatly
ruled pages of the subscription book at Mercers' Hall were still
blank. The Commissioners stood aghast. In their distress they
applied to the government for indulgence. Many great capitalists,
they said, were desirous to subscribe, but stood aloof because
the terms were too hard. There ought to be some relaxation. Would
the Council of Regency consent to an abatement of three hundred
thousand pounds? The finances were in such a state, and the
letters in which the King represented his wants were so urgent,
that the Council of Regency hesitated. The Commissioners were
asked whether they would engage to raise the whole sum, with this
abatement. Their answer was unsatisfactory. They did not venture
to say that they could command more than eight hundred thousand
pounds. The negotiation was, therefore, broken off. The first of
August came; and the whole amount contributed by the whole nation
to the magnificent undertaking from which so much had been
expected was two thousand one hundred pounds.707

Just at this conjuncture Portland arrived from the Continent. He
had been sent by William with charge to obtain money, at whatever
cost and from whatever quarter. The King had strained his private
credit in Holland to procure bread for his army. But all was
insufficient. He wrote 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 during his absence. But, if
no other resource could be devised, that hazard must be run.708
The Council of Regency, in extreme embarrassment, began to wish
that the terms, hard as they were, which had been offered by the
Commissioners at Mercers' Hall had been accepted. The negotiation
was renewed. Shrewsbury, Godolphin and Portland, as agents for
the King, had several conferences with Harley and Foley, who had
recently pretended that eight hundred thousand pounds were ready
to be subscribed to the Land Bank. The Ministers gave assurances,
that, if, at this conjuncture, even half that sum were advanced,
those who had done this service to the State should, in the next
session, be incorporated as a National Land Bank. Harley and
Foley at first promised, with an air of confidence, to raise what
was required. But they soon went back from their word; they
showed a great inclination to be punctilious and quarrelsome
about trifles; at length the eight hundred thousand pounds
dwindled to forty thousand; and even the forty thousand could be
had only on hard conditions.709 So ended the great delusion of
the Land Bank. The commission expired; and the offices were
closed.

And now the Council of Regency, almost in despair, had recourse
to the Bank of England. Two hundred thousand pounds was the very
smallest sum which would suffice to meet the King's most pressing
wants. Would the Bank of England advance that sum? The
capitalists who lead the chief sway in that corporation were in
bad humour, and not without reason. But fair words, earnest
entreaties and large promises were not spared; all the influence
of Montague, which was justly great, was exerted; the Directors
promised to do their best; but they apprehended that it would be
impossible for them to raise the money without making a second
call of twenty per cent. on their constituents. It was necessary
that the question should be submitted to a General Court; in such
a court more than six hundred persons were entitled to vote; and
the result might well be doubted. The proprietors were summoned
to meet on the fifteenth of August at Grocers' Hall. During the
painful interval of suspense, Shrewsbury wrote to his master in
language more tragic than is often found in official letters. "If
this should not succeed, God knows what can be done. Any thing
must be tried and ventured rather than lie down and die."710 On
the fifteenth of August, a great epoch in the history of the
Bank, the General Court was held. In the chair sate Sir John
Houblon, the Governor, who was also Lord Mayor of London, and,
what would 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 been carefully considered by the Directors,
explained the case, and implored the assembly to stand by King
William. There was at first a little murmuring. "If our notes
would do," it was said, "we should be most willing to assist His
Majesty; but two hundred thousand pounds in hard money at a time
like this." The Governor announced explicitly that nothing but
gold or silver would supply the necessities of the army in
Flanders. At length the question was put to the vote; and every
hand in the Hall was held up for sending the money. The letters
from the Dutch Embassy informed the States General that the
events of that day had bound the Bank and the government together
in close alliance, and that several of the ministers had,
immediately after the meeting, purchased stock merely in order to
give a pledge of their attachment to the body which had rendered
so great a service to the State.711

Meanwhile strenuous exertions were making to hasten the
recoinage. Since the Restoration the Mint had, like every other
public establishment in the kingdom, been a nest of idlers and
jobbers. The important office of Warden, worth between six and
seven hundred a year, had become a mere sinecure, and had been
filled by a succession of fine gentlemen, who were well known at
the hazard table of Whitehall, but who never condescended to come
near the Tower. This office had just become vacant, and Montague
had obtained it for Newton.712 The ability, the industry and the
strict uprightness of the great philosopher speedily produced a
complete revolution throughout the department which was under his
direction.713 He devoted himself to his task with an activity
which left him no time to spare for those pursuits in which he I
had surpassed Archimedes and Galileo. Till the great work was
completely done, he resisted firmly, and almost angrily, every
attempt that was made by men of science, here or on the
Continent, to draw him away from his official duties.714 The old
officers of the Mint had thought it a great feat to coin silver
to the amount of fifteen thousand pounds in a week. When Montague
talked of thirty or forty thousand, these men of form and
precedent pronounced the thing impracticable. But the energy of
the young Chancellor of the Exchequer and of his friend the
Warden accomplished far greater wonders. Soon nineteen mills were
going at once in 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. Mints were established at Bristol, York, Exeter,
Norwich and Chester. This arrangement was in the highest degree
popular. The machinery and the workmen were welcomed to the new
stations with the ringing of bells and the firing of guns. The
weekly issue increased to sixty thousand pounds, to eighty
thousand, to a hundred thousand, and at length to a hundred and
twenty thousand.715 Yet even this issue, though great, not only
beyond precedent, but beyond hope, was scanty when compared with
the demands of the nation. Nor did all the newly stamped silver
pass into circulation; for during the summer and autumn those
politicians who were for raising the denomination of the coin
were active and clamorous; and it was generally expected that, as
soon as the Parliament should reassemble, the standard would be
lowered. Of course no person who thought it probable that he
should, at a day not far distant, be able to pay a debt of a
pound with three crown pieces instead of four, was willing to
part with a crown piece, till that day arrived. Most of the
milled pieces were therefore hoarded.716 May, June and July
passed away without any perceptible increase in the quantity of
good money. It was not till August that the keenest observer
could discern the first faint signs of returning prosperity.717

The distress of the common people was severe, and was aggravated
by the follies of magistrates and by the arts of malecontents. A
squire who was one of the quorum would sometimes think it his
duty to administer to his neighbours, at this trying conjuncture,
what seemed to him to be equity; and as no two of these rural
praetors had exactly the same notion of what was equitable, their
edicts added confusion to confusion. In one parish people were,
in outrageous violation of the law, threatened with the stocks,
if they refused to take clipped shillings by tale. In the next
parish it was dangerous to pay such shillings except by
weight.718 The enemies of the government, at the same time,
laboured indefatigably in their vocation. They harangued in every
place of public resort, from the Chocolate House in Saint James's
Street to the sanded kitchen of the alehouse on the village
green. In verse and prose they incited the suffering multitude to
rise up in arms. Of the tracts which they published at this time,
the most remarkable was written by a deprived priest named
Grascombe, of whose ferocity and scurrility the most respectable
nonjurors had long been ashamed. He now did his best to persuade
the rabble to tear in pieces those members of Parliament who had
voted for the restoration of the currency.719 It would be too
much to say that the malignant industry of this man and of men
like him produced no effect on a population which was doubtless
severely tried. There were riots in several parts of the country,
but riots which were suppressed with little difficulty, and, as
far as can be discovered, without the shedding of a drop of
blood.720 In one place a crowd of poor ignorant creatures,
excited by some knavish agitator, besieged the house of a Whig
member of Parliament, and clamorously insisted on having their
short money changed. The gentleman consented, and desired to know
how much they had brought. After some delay they were able to
produce a single clipped halfcrown.721 Such tumults as this were
at a distance exaggerated into rebellions and massacres. At Paris
it was gravely asserted in print that, in an English town which
was not named, a soldier and a butcher had quarrelled about a
piece of money, that the soldier had killed the butcher, that the
butcher's man had snatched up a cleaver and killed the soldier,
that a great fight had followed, and that fifty dead bodies had
been left on the ground.722 The truth was, that the behaviour of
the great body of the people was beyond all praise. The judges
when, in September, they returned from their circuits, 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 mutual
help and mutual forbearance could prevent the dissolution of
society. A hard creditor, who sternly demanded payment to the day
in milled money, was pointed at in the streets, and was beset by
his own creditors with demands which soon brought him to reason.
Much uneasiness had been felt about the troops. It was scarcely
possible to pay them regularly; if they were not paid regularly,
it might well be apprehended that they would supply their wants
by rapine; and such rapine it was certain that the nation,
altogether unaccustomed to military exaction and oppression,
would not tamely endure. But, strange to say, there was, through
this trying year, a better understanding than had ever been known
between the soldiers and the rest of the community. The gentry,
the farmers, the shopkeepers supplied the redcoats with
necessaries in a manner so 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 the spirit of the country is. No
person, however favourable his opinion of the English may have
been, could have expected that a time of such suffering would
have been a time of such tranquillity.724

Men who loved to trace, in the strangely complicated maze of
human affairs, the marks of more than human wisdom, were of
opinion that, but for the interference of a gracious Providence,
the plan so elaborately devised by great statesmen and great
philosophers would have failed completely and ignominiously.
Often, since the Revolution, the English had been sullen and
querulous, unreasonably jealous of the Dutch, and disposed to put
the worst construction on every act of the King. Had the fourth
of May found our ancestors in such a mood, it can scarcely be
doubted that sharp distress, irritating minds already irritable,
would have caused an outbreak which must have shaken and might
have subverted the throne of William. Happily, at the moment at
which the loyalty of the nation was put to the most severe test,
the King was more popular than he had ever been since the day on
which the Crown was tendered to him in the Banqueting House. The
plot which had been laid against his life had excited general
disgust and horror. His reserved manners, his foreign attachments
were forgotten. He had become an object of personal interest and
of personal affection to his people. They were every where coming
in crowds to sign the instrument which bound them to defend and
to avenge him. They were every where carrying about in their hats
the badges of their loyalty to him. They could hardly be
restrained from inflicting summary punishment on the few who
still dared openly to question his title. Jacobite was now a
synonyme for cutthroat. Noted Jacobite laymen had just planned a
foul murder. Noted Jacobite priests had, in the face of day, and
in the administration of a solemn ordinance of religion,
indicated their approbation of that murder. Many honest and pious
men, who thought that their allegiance was still due to James,
had indignantly relinquished all connection with zealots who
seemed to think that a righteous end justified the most
unrighteous means. Such was the state of public feeling during
the summer and autumn of 1696; and therefore it was that
hardships which, in any of the seven preceding years, would
certainly have produced a rebellion, and might perhaps have
produced a counterrevolution, did not produce a single tumult too
serious to be suppressed by the constable's staff.

Nevertheless, the effect of the commercial and financial crisis
in England was felt through all the fleets and armies of the
coalition. The great source of subsidies was dry. No important
military operation could any where be attempted. Meanwhile
overtures tending to peace had been made, and a negotiation had
been opened. Callieres, one of the ablest of the many able envoys
in the service of France, had been sent to the Netherlands, and
had held many conferences with Dykvelt. Those conferences might
perhaps have come to a speedy and satisfactory close, had not
France, at this time, won a great diplomatic victory in another
quarter. Lewis had, during seven years, been scheming and
labouring in vain to break the great array of potentates whom the
dread of his might and of his ambition had brought together and
kept together. But, during seven years, all his arts had been
baffled by the skill of William; and, when the eighth campaign
opened, the confederacy had not been weakened by a single
desertion. Soon however it began to be suspected that the Duke of
Savoy was secretly treating with the enemy. He solemnly assured
Galway, who represented England at the Court of Turin, that there
was not the slightest ground for such suspicions, and sent to
William letters filled with professions of zeal for the common
cause, and with earnest entreaties for more money. This
dissimulation continued till a French army, commanded by Catinat,
appeared in Piedmont. Then the Duke threw off his disguise,
concluded peace with France, joined his troops to those of
Catinat, marched into the Milanese, and informed the allies whom
he had just abandoned that, unless they wished to have him for an
enemy, they must declare Italy neutral ground. The Courts of
Vienna and Madrid, in great dismay, submitted to the terms which
he dictated. William expostulated and protested in vain. His
influence was no longer what it had been. The general opinion of
Europe was, that the riches and the credit of England were
completely exhausted; and both her confederates and her enemies
imagined that they might safely treat her with indignity. Spain,
true to her invariable maxim that every thing ought to be done
for her and nothing by her, had the effrontery to reproach the
Prince to whom she owed it that she had not lost the Netherlands
and Catalonia, because he had not sent troops and ships to defend
her possessions in Italy. The Imperial ministers formed and
executed resolutions gravely affecting the interests of the
coalition without consulting him who had been the author and the
soul of the coalition.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. But the defection of Savoy,
the neutrality of Italy, the disunion among the allies, and,
above all, the distresses of England, exaggerated as they were in
all the letters which the Jacobites of Saint Germains received
from the Jacobites of London, produced a change. The tone of
Callieres became high and arrogant; he went back from his word,
and refused to give any pledge that his master would acknowledge
the Prince of Orange as King of Great Britain. The joy was great
among the nonjurors. They had always, they said, been certain
that the Great Monarch would not be so unmindful of his own glory
and of the common interest of Sovereigns as to abandon the cause
of his unfortunate guests, and to call an usurper his brother.
They knew from the best authority that His Most Christian Majesty
had lately, at Fontainebleau, given satisfactory assurances on
this subject to King James. Indeed, there is reason to believe
that the project of an invasion of our island was again seriously
discussed at Versailles.726 Catinat's army was now at liberty.
France, relieved from all apprehension on the side of Savoy,
might spare twenty thousand men for a descent on England; and, if
the misery and discontent here were such as was generally
reported, the nation might be disposed to receive foreign
deliverers with open arms.

So gloomy was the prospect which lay before William, when, in the
autumn of 1696, he quitted his camp in the Netherlands for
England. His servants here meanwhile were looking forward to his
arrival with very strong and very various emotions. The whole
political world had been thrown into confusion by a cause which
did not at first appear commensurate to such an effect.

During his absence, the search for the Jacobites who had been
concerned in the plots of the preceding winter had not been
intermitted; and of these Jacobites none was in greater peril
than Sir John Fenwick. His birth, his connections, the high
situations which he had filled, the indefatigable activity with
which he had, during several years, laboured to subvert the
government, and the personal insolence with which he had treated
the deceased Queen, marked him out as a man fit to be made an
example. He succeeded, however, in concealing himself from the
officers of justice till the first heat of pursuit was over. In
his hiding place he thought of an ingenious device which might,
as he conceived, save him from the fate of his friends Charnock
and Parkyns. Two witnesses were necessary to convict him. It
appeared from what had passed on the trials of his accomplices,
that there were only two witnesses who could prove his guilt,
Porter and Goodman. His life was safe if either of these men
could be persuaded to abscond.

Fenwick was not the only person who had strong reason to wish
that Porter or Goodman, or both, might be induced to leave
England. Aylesbury had been arrested, and committed to the Tower;
and he well knew that, if these men appeared against him, his
head would be in serious danger. His friends and Fenwick's raised
what was thought a sufficient sum; and two Irishmen, or, in the
phrase of the newspapers of that day, bogtrotters, a barber named
Clancy, and a disbanded captain named Donelagh, undertook the
work of corruption.

The first attempt was made on Porter. Clancy contrived to fall in
with him at a tavern, threw out significant hints, and, finding
that those hints were favourably received, opened a regular
negotiation. The terms offered were alluring; three hundred
guineas down, three hundred more as soon as the witness should be
beyond sea, a handsome annuity for life, a free pardon from King
James, and a secure retreat in France. Porter seemed inclined,
and perhaps was really inclined, to consent. He said that he
still was what he had been, that he was at heart attached to the
good cause, but that he had been tried beyond his strength. Life
was sweet. It was easy for men who had never been in danger to
say that none but a villain would save himself by hanging his
associates; but a few hours in Newgate, with the near prospect of
a journey on a sledge to Tyburn, would teach such boasters to be
more charitable. After repeatedly conferring with Clancy, Porter
was introduced to Fenwick's wife, Lady Mary, a sister of the Earl
of Carlisle. Every thing was soon settled. Donelagh made the
arrangements for the flight. A boat was in waiting. The letters
which were to secure to the fugitive the protection of King James
were prepared by Fenwick. The hour and place were fixed at which
Porter was to receive the first instalment of the promised
reward. But his heart misgave him. He had, in truth, gone such
lengths that it would have been madness in him to turn back. He
had sent Charnock, King, Keyes, Friend, Parkyns, Rookwood,
Cranburne, to the gallows. It was impossible that such a Judas
could ever be really forgiven. In France, among the friends and
comrades of those whom he had destroyed, his life would not be
worth one day's purchase. No pardon under the Great Seal would
avert the stroke of the avenger of blood. Nay, who could say that
the bribe now offered was not a bait intended to lure the victim
to the place where a terrible doom awaited him? Porter resolved
to be true to that government under which alone he could be safe;
he carried to Whitehall information of the whole intrigue; and he
received full instructions from the ministers. On the eve of the
day fixed for his departure he had a farewell meeting with Clancy
at a tavern. Three hundred guineas were counted out on the table.
Porter pocketed them, and gave a signal. Instantly several
messengers from the office of the Secretary 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
the next sessions for the City of London a bill of indictment
against him, for high treason, was laid before the grand jury.
Porter and Goodman appeared as witnesses for the Crown; and the
bill was found. Fenwick now thought that it was high time to
steal away to the Continent. Arrangements were made for his
passage. He quitted his hiding place, and repaired to Romney
Marsh. There he hoped to find shelter till the vessel which was
to convey him across the Channel should arrive. For, though
Hunt's establishment had been broken up, there were still in that
dreary region smugglers who carried on more than one lawless
trade. It chanced that two of these men had just been arrested on
a charge of harbouring traitors. The messenger who had taken them
into custody was returning to London 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, my good fellows, and,
I warrant you, you will have your pardons, and a bag of guineas
besides." The offer was too tempting to be refused; but Fenwick
was better mounted than his assailants; he dashed through them,
pistol in hand, and was soon out of sight. They pursued him; the
hue and cry was raised; the bells of all the parish churches of
the Marsh rang out the alarm; the whole country was up; every
path was guarded; every thicket was beaten; every hut was
searched; and at length the fugitive was found in bed. Just then
a bark, of very suspicious appearance, came in sight; she soon
approached the shore, and showed English colours; but to the
practised eyes of the Kentish fishermen she looked much like a
French privateer. It was not difficult to guess her errand. After
waiting 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
vigilance of those who had charge of him as to scrawl with a lead
pencil a short letter to his wife. Every line contained evidence
of his guilt. All, he wrote, was over; he was a dead man, unless,
indeed, his friends could, by dint of solicitation, obtain a
pardon for him. Perhaps the united entreaties of all the Howards
might succeed. He would go abroad; he would solemnly promise
never again to set foot on English ground, and never to draw
sword against the government. Or would it be possible to bribe a
juryman or two to starve out the rest? "That," he wrote, "or
nothing can save me." This billet was intercepted in its way to
the post, and sent up to Whitehall. Fenwick was soon carried to
London and brought before the Lords Justices. At first he held
high language and bade defiance to his accusers. He was told that
he had not always been so confident; and his letter to his wife
was laid before him. He had not till then been aware that it had
fallen into hands for which it was not intended. His distress and
confusion became great. He felt that, if he were instantly sent
before a jury, a conviction was inevitable. One chance remained.
If he could delay his trial for a short time, the judges 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, with whom he had formerly had some connection of a
friendly kind. The unhappy man declared that he threw himself
entirely on the royal mercy, and offered to disclose all that he
knew touching the plots of the Jacobites. That he knew much
nobody could doubt. Devonshire advised his colleagues to postpone
the trial till the pleasure of William could be known. This
advice was taken. The King was informed of what had passed; and
he soon sent an answer directing Devonshire to receive the
prisoner's confession in writing, and to send it over to the
Netherlands with all speed.729

Fenwick had now to consider what he should confess. Had he,
according to his promise, revealed all that he knew, there can be
no doubt that his evidence would have seriously affected many
Jacobite noblemen, gentlemen and clergymen. But, though he was
very unwilling to die, attachment to his 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 might possibly be
considered as sufficient to earn his pardon, which would at least
put off his trial some months, yet which would not injure a
single sincere adherent of the banished dynasty, nay, which would
cause distress and embarrassment to the enemies of that dynasty,
and which would fill the Court, the Council, and the Parliament
of William with fears and animosities. He would divulge nothing
that could affect those true Jacobites who had repeatedly
awaited, with pistols loaded and horses saddled, the landing of
the rightful King accompanied by a French army. But if there were
false Jacobites who had mocked their banished Sovereign year
after year with professions of attachment and promises of
service, and yet had, at every great crisis, found some excuse
for disappointing him, and who were at that moment among the
chief supports of the usurper's throne, why should they be
spared? That there were such false Jacobites, high in political
office and in military command, Fenwick had good reason to
believe. He could indeed say nothing against them to which a
Court of Justice would have listened; for none of them had ever
entrusted him with any message or letter for France; and all that
he knew about their treachery he had learned at second hand and
third hand. But of their guilt he had no doubt. One of them was
Marlborough. He had, after betraying James to William, promised
to make reparation by betraying William to James, and had, at
last, after much shuffling, again betrayed James and made peace
with William. Godolphin had practised similar deception. He had
long been sending fair words to Saint Germains; in return for
those fair words he had received a pardon; and, with this pardon
in his secret drawer, he had continued to administer the finances
of the existing government. To ruin such a man would be a just
punishment for his baseness, and a great service to King James.
Still more desirable was it to blast the fame and to destroy the
influence of Russell and Shrewsbury. Both were distinguished
members of that party which had, under different names, been,
during three generations, implacably hostile to the Kings of the
House of Stuart. Both had taken a great part in the Revolution.
The names of both were subscribed to the instrument which had
invited the Prince of Orange to England. One of them was now his
Minister for Maritime Affairs; the other his Principal Secretary
of State; but neither had been constantly faithful to him. Both
had, soon after his accession, bitterly resented his wise and
magnanimous impartiality, which, to their minds, disordered by
party spirit, seemed to be unjust and ungrateful partiality for
the Tory faction; and both had, in their spleen, listened to
agents from Saint Germains. Russell had vowed by all that was
most sacred that he would himself bring back his exiled
Sovereign. But the vow was broken as soon as it had been uttered;
and he to whom the royal family had looked as 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 humour with
William, had tampered with the agents of James. With the power
and reputation of these two great men was closely connected the
power and reputation of the whole Whig party. That party, after
some quarrels, which were in truth quarrels of lovers, was now
cordially reconciled to William, and bound to him by the
strongest ties. If those ties could be dissolved, if he could be
induced to regard with distrust and aversion the only set of men
which was on principle and with enthusiasm devoted to his
interests, his enemies would indeed have reason to rejoice.

With such views as these Fenwick delivered to Devonshire a paper
so cunningly composed that it would probably have brought some
severe calamity on the Prince to whom it was addressed, had not
that Prince been a man of singularly clear judgment and
singularly lofty spirit. The paper contained scarcely any thing
respecting those Jacobite plots in which the writer had been
himself concerned, and of which he intimately knew all the
details. It contained nothing which could be of the smallest
prejudice to any person who was really hostile to the existing
order of things. The whole narrative was made up of stories, too
true for 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 hearty in support of William. Godolphin,
Fenwick averred, had accepted a seat at the Board of Treasury,
with the sanction and for the benefit of King James. Marlborough
had promised to carry over the army, Russell to carry over the
fleet. Shrewsbury, while out of office, had plotted with
Middleton against the government and King. Indeed the Whigs were
now the favourites at Saint Germains. Many old friends of
hereditary right were moved to jealousy by the preference which
James gave to the new converts. Nay, he had been heard to express
his confident hope that the monarchy would be set up again by the
very hands which had pulled it down.

Such was Fenwick's confession. Devonshire received it and sent it
by express to the Netherlands, without intimating to any of his
fellow councillors what it contained. The accused ministers
afterwards complained bitterly of this proceeding. Devonshire
defended himself by saying that he had been specially deputed by
the King to take the prisoner'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 the confession, and saw at once with what objects it had
been drawn up. It contained little more than what he had long
known, and had long, with politic and generous dissimulation,
affected not to know. If he spared, employed and promoted men who
had been false to him, it was not because he was their dupe. His
observation was quick and just; his intelligence was good; and he
had, during some years, had in his hands proofs of much that
Fenwick had only gathered from wandering reports. It has seemed
strange to many that a Prince of high spirit and acrimonious
temper should have treated servants, who had so deeply wronged
him, with a kindness hardly to be expected from the meekest of
human beings. But William was emphatically a statesman. Ill
humour, the natural and pardonable effect of much bodily and much
mental suffering, might sometimes impel him to give a tart
answer. But never did he on any important occasion indulge his
angry passions at the expense of the great interests of which he
was the guardian. For the sake of those interests, proud and
imperious as he was by nature, he submitted patiently to galling
restraints, bore cruel indignities and disappointments with the
outward show of serenity, and not only forgave, but often
pretended not to see, offences which might well have moved him to
bitter resentment. He knew that he must work with such tools as
he had. If he was to govern England he must employ the public men
of England; and in his age, the public men of England, with much
of a peculiar kind of ability, were, as a class, lowminded and
immoral. There were doubtless exceptions. Such was Nottingham
among the Tories, and Somers among the Whigs. But the majority,
both of the Tory and of the Whig ministers of William, were men
whose characters had taken the ply in the days of the Antipuritan
reaction. They had been formed in two evil schools, in the most
unprincipled of courts, and the most unprincipled of oppositions,
a court which took its character from Charles, an opposition
headed by Shaftesbury. From men so trained it would have been
unreasonable to expect disinterested and stedfast fidelity to any
cause. But though they could not be trusted, they might be used
and they might be useful. No reliance could be placed on their
principles but much reliance might be placed on their hopes and on their fears;
and of the two Kings who laid claim to the English crown,
the King from whom there was most to hope and most to fear was
the King in possession. If therefore William had little reason to
esteem these politicians his hearty friends, he had still less
reason to number them among his hearty foes. Their conduct
towards him, reprehensible as it was, might be called upright
when compared with their conduct towards James. To the reigning
Sovereign they had given valuable service; to the banished
Sovereign little more than promises and professions. Shrewsbury
might, in a moment of resentment or of weakness, have trafficked
with Jacobite agents; but his general conduct had proved that he
was as far as ever from being a Jacobite. Godolphin had been
lavish of fair words to the dynasty which was out; but he had
thriftily and skilfully managed the revenues of the dynasty which
was in. Russell had sworn that he would desert with the English
fleet; but he had burned the French fleet. Even Marlborough's
known treasons,--for his share in the disaster of Brest and the
death of Talmash was unsuspected--, had not done so much harm as
his exertions at Walcourt, at Cork and at Kinsale had done good.
William had therefore wisely resolved to shut his eyes to
perfidy, which, however disgraceful it might be, had not injured
him, and still to avail himself, with proper precautions, of the
eminent talents which some of his unfaithful counsellors
possessed, Having determined on this course, and having long
followed it with happy effect, he could not but be annoyed and
provoked by Fenwick's confession. Sir John, it was plain, thought
himself a Machiavel. If his trick succeeded, the Princess, whom
it was most important to keep in good humour, would be alienated
from the government by the disgrace of Marlborough. The whole
Whig party, the firmest support of the throne, would be alienated
by the disgrace of Russell and Shrewsbury. In the meantime not
one of those plotters whom Fenwick knew to have been deeply
concerned in plans of insurrection, invasion, assassination,
would be molested. This cunning schemer should find that he had
not to do with a novice. William, instead of turning his accused
servants out of their places, sent the confession to Shrewsbury,
and desired that it might be laid before the Lords Justices. "I
am astonished," the King wrote, "at the fellow's effrontery. You
know me too well to think that such stories as his can make any
impression on me. Observe this honest man's sincerity. He has
nothing to say except against my friends. Not a word about the
plans of his brother Jacobites." The King concluded by directing
the Lords justices to send Fenwick before a jury with all
speed.730

The effect produced by William's letter was remarkable. Every one
of the accused 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 criminal than Marlborough, went into a towering
passion, and breathed nothing but vengeance 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
utterly overwhelmed. He wrote in extreme distress to William,
acknowledged with warm expressions of gratitude the King's rare
generosity, and protested that Fenwick had malignantly
exaggerated and distorted mere trifles into enormous crimes. "My
Lord Middleton,"--such was the substance of the letter,--"was
certainly in communication with me about the time of the battle
of La Hogue. We are relations; we frequently met; we supped
together just before he returned to France; I promised to take
care of his 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 that I would not stoop to ask forgiveness."
This, Shrewsbury averred, was the whole extent of his offence.731
It is but too fully proved that this confession was by no means
ingenuous; nor is it likely that William was deceived. But he was
determined to spare the repentant traitor the humiliation of
owning a fault and accepting a pardon. "I can see," the King
wrote, "no crime at all in what you have acknowledged. Be assured
that 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 an acquittal so complete, announced in language so
gracious. But Shrewsbury was quite unnerved by a tenderness which
he was conscious that he had not merited. He shrank from the
thought of meeting the master whom he had wronged, and by whom he
had been forgiven, and of sustaining the gaze of the peers, among
whom his birth and his abilities had gained for him a station of
which he felt that he was unworthy. The campaign in the
Netherlands was over. The session of Parliament was approaching.
The King was expected with the first fair wind. Shrewsbury left
town and retired to the Wolds of Gloucestershire. In that
district, then one of the wildest in the south of the island, he
had a small country seat, surrounded by pleasant gardens and
fish-ponds. William had, in his progress a year before, visited
this dwelling, which lay far from the nearest high road and from
the nearest market town, and had been much struck by the silence
and loneliness of the retreat in which he found the most graceful
and splendid of English courtiers.

At one in the morning of the sixth of October, the King landed at
Margate. Late in the evening he reached Kensington. The following
morning a brilliant crowd of ministers and nobles pressed to kiss
his hand; but he missed one face which ought to have been there,
and asked where the Duke of Shrewsbury was, and when he was
expected in town. The next day came a letter from the Duke,
averring that he had just had a bad 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 had fallen and hurt
himself was true; but even those who felt most kindly towards him
suspected, and not without strong reason, that he made the most
of his convenient misfortune, and, that if he had not shrunk from
appearing in public, he would have performed the journey with
little difficulty. His correspondents told him that, if he was
really as ill as he thought himself, he would do well to consult
the physicians and surgeons of the capital. Somers, especially,
implored him in the most earnest manner to come up to London.
Every hour's delay was mischievous. His Grace must conquer his
sensibility. He had only to face calumny courageously, and it
would vanish.734 The King, in a few kind lines, expressed his
sorrow for the accident. "You are much wanted here," he wrote: "I
am impatient to embrace you, and to assure you that my esteem for
you is undiminished."735 Shrewsbury answered that he had resolved
to resign the seals.736 Somers adjured him not to commit so fatal
an error. If at that moment His Grace should quit office, what
could the world think, except that he was condemned by his own
conscience? He would, 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 no longer 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 can scarce be
temperate in this matter."737 A few hours later William himself
wrote to the same effect. "I have so much regard for you, that,
if I could, I would positively interdict you from doing what must
bring such grave suspicions on you. At any time, I should
consider your resignation as a misfortune to myself but I protest
to you that, at this time, it is on your account more than on
mine that I wish you to remain in my service."738 Sunderland,
Portland, Russell and Wharton joined their entreaties to their
master's; and Shrewsbury consented to remain Secretary in name.
But nothing could induce him to face the Parliament which was
about to meet. A litter was sent down to him from London, but to
no purpose. He set out, but declared that he found it impossible
to proceed, and took refuge again in his lonely mansion among the
hills.739

While these things were passing, the members of both Houses were
from every part of the kingdom going up to Westminster. To the
opening of the session, not only England, but all Europe, looked
forward with intense anxiety. Public credit had been deeply
injured by the failure of the Land Bank. The restoration of the
currency was not yet half accomplished. The scarcity of money was
still distressing. Much of the milled silver was buried in
private repositories as fast as it came forth from the Mint.
Those politicians who were bent on raising the denomination of
the coin had found too ready audience from a population suffering
under severe pressure; and, at one time, the general voice of the
nation had seemed to be on their side.740 Of course every person
who thought it likely that the standard would be lowered, hoarded
as much money as he could hoard; and thus the cry for little
shillings aggravated the pressure from which it had sprung.741
Both the allies and the enemies of England imagined that her
resources were spent, that her spirit was broken, that the
Commons, so often querulous and parsimonious even in tranquil and
prosperous times, would now positively refuse to bear any
additional burden, and would, with an importunity not to be
withstood, insist on having peace at any price.

But all these prognostications were confounded by the firmness
and ability of the Whig leaders, and by the steadiness of the
Whig majority. On the twentieth of October the Houses met.
William addressed to them a speech remarkable even among all the
remarkable speeches in which his own high thoughts and purposes
were expressed in the dignified and judicious language of Somers.
There was, the King said, great reason for congratulation. It was
true that the funds voted in the preceding session for the
support of the war had failed, and that the recoinage had
produced great distress. Yet the enemy had obtained no advantage
abroad; the State had been torn by no convulsion at home; the
loyalty shown by the army and by the nation under severe trials
had disappointed all the hopes of those who wished evil to
England. Overtures tending to peace had been made. What might be
the result of those overtures, was uncertain; but this was
certain, that there could be no safe or honourable peace for a
nation which was not prepared to wage vigorous war. "I am sure we
shall all agree in opinion that the only way of treating with
France is with our swords in our hands."

The Commons returned to their chamber; and Foley read the speech
from the chair. A debate followed which resounded through all
Christendom. That was the proudest day of Montague's life, and
one of the proudest days in the history of the English
Parliament. In 1798, Burke held up the proceedings of that day as
an example to the statesmen whose hearts had failed them in the
conflict with the gigantic power of the French republic. In 1822,
Huskisson held up the proceedings of that day as an example to a
legislature which, under the pressure of severe distress, was
tempted to alter the standard of value and to break faith with
the public creditor. Before the House rose the young Chancellor
of the Exchequer, whose ascendency, since the ludicrous failure
of the Tory scheme of finance, was undisputed, proposed and
carried three memorable resolutions. The first, which passed with
only one muttered No, declared that the Commons would support the
King against all foreign and domestic enemies, and would enable
him to prosecute the war with vigour. The second, 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 opponent of
the government dared to raise his voice, pledged the House to
make good all the deficiencies of all parliamentary fund's
established since the King's accession. The task of framing an
answer to the royal speech was entrusted to a Committee
exclusively composed of Whigs. Montague was chairman; and the
eloquent and animated address which he drew up may still be read
in the journals with interest and pride.742

Within a fortnight two millions and a half were granted for the
military expenditure of the approaching year, and nearly as much
for the maritime expenditure. Provision was made without any
dispute for forty thousand seamen. About the amount of the land
force there was a division. The King asked for eighty-seven
thousand soldiers; and the Tories thought that number too large.
The vote was carried by two hundred and twenty-three to sixty-
seven.

The malecontents flattered themselves, during a short time, that
the vigorous resolutions of the Commons would be nothing more
than resolutions, that it would be found impossible to restore
public credit, to obtain advances from capitalists, or to wring
taxes out of the distressed population, and that therefore the
forty thousand seamen and the 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 the session, attempted, a week
later, to make a stand against the Ministry. "The King," he said,
"must have been misinformed; or His Majesty never would have
felicitated Parliament on the tranquil state of the country. I
come from Gloucestershire. I know that part of the kingdom well.
The people are all living on alms, or ruined by paying alms. The
soldier helps himself, sword in hand, to what he wants. There
have been serious riots already; and still more serious riots are
to be apprehended." The disapprobation of the House was strongly
expressed. Several members declared that in their counties every
thing was quiet. If Gloucestershire were in a more disturbed
state than the rest of England, might not the cause be that
Gloucestershire was cursed with a more malignant and unprincipled
agitator than all the rest of England could show? Some
Gloucestershire gentlemen took issue with Howe on the facts.
There was no such distress, they said, no such discontent, no
such rioting as he had described. In that county, as in every
other county, the great body of the population was fully
determined to support the King 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 the
Commons notified their fixed determination not to raise the
denomination of the coin, the milled money began to come forth
from a thousand strong boxes and private drawers. There was still
pressure; but that pressure was 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, has at last made up
his mind to submit to the surgeon's knife, who has gone through a
cruel operation with safety, and who, though still smarting from
the steel, sees before him many years of health and enjoyment,
and thanks God that the worst is over. Within four days after the
meeting of Parliament there was a perceptible improvement in
trade. The discount on bank notes had diminished by one third.
The price of those wooden tallies, which, according to an usage
handed to us from a rude age, were given as receipts for sums
paid into the Exchequer, had risen. The exchanges, which had
during many months been greatly against England, had begun to
turn.744 Soon the effect of the magnanimous firmness of the House
of Commons was felt at every Court in Europe. So high indeed was
the spirit of that assembly that the King had some difficulty in
preventing the Whigs from moving and carrying a resolution that
an address should be presented to him, requesting him to enter
into no negotiation with France, till she should have
acknowledged him as King of England.745 Such an address was
unnecessary. The votes of the Parliament had already forced on
Lewis the conviction that there was no chance of a
counterrevolution. There was as little chance that he would be
able to effect that compromise of which he had, in the course of
the negotiations, thrown out hints. It was not to be hoped that
either William or the English nation would ever consent to make
the settlement of the English crown a matter of bargain with
France. And even had William and the English nation been disposed
to purchase peace by such a sacrifice of dignity, there would
have been insuperable difficulties in another quarter. James
could not endure to hear of the expedient which Lewis had
suggested. "I can bear," the exile said to his benefactor, "I can
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 again mentioned the subject. Callieres received
orders to make the concession on which the peace of the civilised
world depended. He and Dykvelt came together at the Hague before
Baron Lilienroth, the representative of the 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 Prince of
Orange as King of Great Britain, and added, with a very
intelligible allusion to the compromise proposed by France, that
the recognition would be without restriction, condition or
reserve. Callieres then declared that he confirmed, in the name
of his master, what Dykvelt had said.746 A letter from Prior,
containing the good news, was delivered to James Vernon, the
Under Secretary of State, in the House of Commons. The tidings
ran along the benches--such is Vernon's expression--like fire 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 well
congratulate each other. For it was to the wisdom and resolution
which they had shown, in a moment of extreme danger and distress,
that their country was indebted for the near prospect of an
honourable peace.

Meanwhile public credit, which had, in the autumn, sunk to the
lowest point, was fast reviving. Ordinary financiers stood aghast
when they learned that more than five millions were required to
make good the deficiencies of past years. But Montague was not an
ordinary financier. A bold and simple plan proposed by him, and
popularly called the General Mortgage, restored confidence. New
taxes were imposed; old taxes were augmented or continued; and
thus a consolidated fund was formed sufficient to meet every just
claim on the State. The Bank of England was at the same time
enlarged by a new subscription; and the regulations for the
payment of the subscription were framed in such a manner as to
raise the value both of the notes of the corporation and of the
public securities.

Meanwhile the mints were pouring forth the new silver faster than
ever. The distress which began on the fourth of May 1696, which
was almost insupportable during the five succeeding months, and
which became lighter from the day on which the Commons declared
their immutable resolution to maintain the old standard, ceased
to be painfully felt in March 1697. Some months were still to
elapse before credit completely recovered from the most
tremendous shock that it has ever sustained. But already the deep
and solid foundation had been laid on which was to rise the most
gigantic fabric of commercial prosperity that the world had ever
seen. The great body of the Whigs attributed the restoration of
the health of the State to the genius and firmness of their
leader Montague. His enemies were forced to confess, sulkily and
sneeringly, that every one of his schemes had succeeded, the
first Bank subscription, the second Bank subscription, the
Recoinage, the General Mortgage, the Exchequer Bills. But some
Tories muttered that he deserved no more praise than a prodigal
who stakes his whole estate at hazard, and has a run of good
luck. England had indeed passed safely through a terrible crisis,
and was the stronger for having passed through it. But she had
been in imminent danger of perishing; and the minister who had
exposed her to that danger deserved, not to be praised, but to be
hanged. Others admitted that the plans which were popularly
attributed to Montague were excellent, but denied that those
plans were Montague's. The voice of detraction, however, was for
a time drowned by the loud applauses of the Parliament and the
City. The authority which the Chancellor of the Exchequer
exercised in the House of Commons was unprecedented and
unrivalled. In the Cabinet his influence was daily increasing. He
had no longer a superior at the Board of Treasury. In consequence
of Fenwick's confession, the last Tory who held a great and
efficient office in the State had been removed, and there was at
length a purely Whig Ministry.

It had been impossible to prevent reports about that confession
from getting abroad. The prisoner, indeed, had found means of
communicating with his friends, and had doubtless given them to
understand that he had said nothing against them, and much
against the creatures of the usurper. William wished the matter
to be left to the ordinary tribunals, and was most unwilling that
it should be debated elsewhere. But his counsellors, better
acquainted than himself with the temper of large and divided
assemblies, were of opinion that a parliamentary discussion,
though perhaps undesirable, was inevitable. It was in the power
of a single member of either House to force on such a discussion;
and in both Houses there were members who, some from a sense of
duty, some from mere love of mischief, were determined to know
whether the prisoner had, as it was rumoured, brought grave
charges against some of the most distinguished men in the
kingdom. If there must be an inquiry, it was surely desirable
that the accused statesmen should be the first to demand it.
There was, however, one great difficulty. The Whigs, who formed
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 to put a stigma on Marlborough, who was not in place, and
therefore excited little jealousy. But a strong body of honest
gentlemen, as Wharton called them, could not, by any management,
be induced to join in a resolution acquitting Godolphin. To them
Godolphin was an eyesore. All the other Tories who, in the
earlier years of William's reign, had borne a chief part in the
direction of affairs, had, one by one, been dismissed.
Nottingham, Trevor, Leeds, were no longer in power. Pembroke
could hardly be called a Tory, and had never been really in
power. But Godolphin still retained his post at Whitehall; and to
the men of the Revolution it seemed intolerable that
one who had sate at the Council Board of Charles and James, and
who had voted for a Regency, should be the principal minister of
finance. Those who felt thus had learned with malicious delight
that the First Lord of the Treasury was named in the confession
about which all the world was talking; and they were determined
not to let slip so good an opportunity of ejecting him from
office. On the other hand, every body who had seen Fenwick's
paper, and who had not, in the drunkenness of factious animosity,
lost all sense of reason and justice, must have felt that it was
impossible to make a distinction between two parts of that paper,
and to treat all that related to Shrewsbury and Russell as false,
and all that related to Godolphin as true. This was acknowledged
even by Wharton, who of all public men was the least troubled by
scruples or by shame.748 If Godolphin had stedfastly refused to
quit his place, the Whig leaders would have been in a most
embarrassing position. But a politician of no common dexterity
undertook to extricate them from their difficulties. In the art
of reading and managing the minds of men Sunderland had no equal;
and he was, as he had been during several years, desirous to see
all the great posts in the kingdom filled by Whigs. By his
skilful management Godolphin was induced to go into the royal
closet, and to request permission to retire from office; and
William granted that permission with a readiness by which
Godolphin was much more surprised than pleased.749

One of the methods employed by the Whig junto, for the purpose of
instituting and maintaining through all the ranks of the Whig
party a discipline never before known, was the frequent holding
of meetings of members of the House of Commons. Some of those
meetings were numerous; others were select. The larger were held
at the Rose, a tavern frequently mentioned in the political
pasquinades of that time;750 the smaller at Russell's in Covent
Garden, or at Somers's in Lincoln's Inn Fields.

On the day on which Godolphin resigned his great office two
select meetings were called. In the morning the place of assembly
was Russell's house. In the afternoon there was a fuller muster
at the Lord Keeper's. Fenwick's confession,  which, till that
time, had probably been known only by rumour to most of those who
were present, was read. The indignation of the hearers was
strongly excited, particularly by one passage, of which the sense
seemed to be that not only Russell, not only Shrewsbury, but the
great body of the Whig party was, and had long been, at heart
Jacobite. "The fellow insinuates," it was said, "that the
Assassination Plot itself was a Whig scheme." The general opinion
was that such a charge could not be lightly passed over. There
must be a solemn debate and decision in Parliament. The best
course would be that the King should himself see and examine the
prisoner, and that Russell should then request the royal
permission to bring the subject before the House of Commons. As
Fenwick did not pretend that he had any authority for the stories
which he had told except mere hearsay, there could be no
difficulty in carrying a resolution branding him as a slanderer,
and an address to the throne requesting that he might be
forthwith brought to trial 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 of the great officers of state and the Crown
lawyers were present. "Your papers, Sir John," said the King,
"are altogether unsatisfactory. Instead of giving me an account
of the plots formed by you and your accomplices, plots of which
all the details must be exactly known to you, you tell me
stories, without authority, without date, without place, about
noblemen and gentlemen with whom you do not pretend to have had
any intercourse. In short your confession appears to be a
contrivance intended to screen those who are really engaged in
designs against me, and to make me suspect and discard those in
whom I have good reason to place confidence. If you look for any
favour from me, give me, this moment and on this spot, a full and
straightforward account of what you know of your own knowledge."
Fenwick said that he was taken by surprise, and asked for time.
"No, Sir," said the King. "For what purpose can you want time?
You may indeed want time if you mean to draw up another paper
like this. But what I require is a plain narrative of what you
have yourself done and seen; and such a narrative you can give,
if you will, without pen and ink." Then Fenwick positively
refused to say any thing. "Be it so," said William. "I will
neither hear you nor hear from you any more."752  Fenwick was
carried back to his prison. He had at this audience shown a
boldness and determination which surprised those who had observed
his demeanour. He had, ever since he had been in confinement,
appeared to be anxious and dejected; yet now, at the very crisis
of his fate, he had braved the displeasure of the Prince whose
clemency he had, a short time before, submissively implored. In a
very few hours the mystery was explained. Just before he had been
summoned to Kensington, he had received from his wife
intelligence that his life was in no danger, that there was only
one witness against him, that she and her friends had succeeded
in corrupting Goodman.753

Goodman had been allowed a liberty which was afterwards, with
some reason, made matter of charge against the government. For
his testimony was most important; his character was notoriously
bad; the attempts which had been made to seduce Porter proved
that, if money could save Fenwick's life, money would not be
spared; and Goodman had not, like Porter, been instrumental in
sending Jacobites to the gallows, and therefore was not, like
Porter, bound to the cause of William by an indissoluble tie. The
families of the imprisoned conspirators employed the agency of a
cunning and daring adventurer named O'Brien. This man knew
Goodman well. Indeed they had belonged to the same gang of
highwaymen. They met at the Dog in Drury Lane, a tavern which was
frequented by lawless and desperate men. O'Brien was accompanied
by another Jacobite of determined character. A simple choice was
offered to Goodman, to abscond and to be rewarded with an annuity
of five hundred a year, or to have his throat cut on the spot. He
consented, half from cupidity, half from fear. O'Brien was not a
man to be tricked as Clancy had been. He never parted company
with Goodman from the moment when the bargain was struck till
they were at Saint Germains.754

On the afternoon of the day on which Fenwick was examined by the
King at Kensington it began to be noised abroad that Goodman was
missing. He had been many hours absent from his house. He had not
been seen at his usual haunts. At first a suspicion arose that he
had been murdered by the Jacobites; and this suspicion was
strengthened by a singular circumstance. Just after his
disappearance, a human head was found severed from the body to
which it belonged, and so frightfully mangled that no feature
could be recognised. The multitude, possessed by the notion that
there was no crime which an Irish Papist might not be found to
commit, was inclined to believe that the fate of Godfrey had
befallen another victim. On inquiry however it seemed certain
that Goodman had designedly withdrawn himself. A proclamation
appeared promising a reward of a thousand pounds to any person
who should stop the runaway; but it was too late.755

This event exasperated the Whigs beyond measure. No jury could
now find Fenwick guilty of high treason. Was he then to escape?
Was a long series of offences against the State to go unpunished
merely because to those offences had now been added the offence
of bribing a witness to suppress his evidence and to desert his
bail? Was there no extraordinary method by which justice might
strike a criminal who, solely because he was worse than other
criminals, was beyond the reach of the ordinary law? Such a
method there was, a method authorised by numerous precedents, a
method used both by Papists and by Protestants during the
troubles of the sixteenth century, a method used both by
Roundheads and by Cavaliers during the troubles of the
seventeenth century, a method which scarcely any leader of the
Tory party could condemn without condemning himself, a method of
which Fenwick could not decently complain, since he had, a few
years before, been eager to employ it against the unfortunate
Monmouth. To that method the party which was now supreme in the
State determined to 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 he had undertaken required courage not of the most
respectable kind; but to him no kind of courage was wanting. Sir
John Fenwick, he said, had sent to the King a paper in which
grave accusations were brought against some of His Majesty's
servants; and His Majesty had, at the request of his accused
servants, graciously given orders that this paper should be laid
before the House. The confession was produced and read. The
Admiral then, with spirit and dignity worthy of a better man,
demanded justice for himself and Shrewsbury. "If we are innocent,
clear us. If we are guilty, 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 the
bar with all speed. Cutts, who sate in the House as member for
Cambridgeshire, was directed to provide a sufficient escort, and
was especially enjoined to take care that the prisoner should
have no opportunity of making or receiving any communication,
oral or written, on the road from Newgate to Westminster. The
House then adjourned till the 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 of strangers. Fenwick was in attendance under a
strong guard. He was called in, and exhorted from the chair to
make a full and ingenuous confession. He hesitated and evaded. "I
cannot say any thing without the King's permission. His Majesty
may be displeased if what ought to be known only to him should be
divulged to others." He was told that his apprehensions were
groundless. The King well knew that it was the right and the duty
of his faithful Commons to inquire into whatever concerned the
safety of his person and of his government. "I may be tried in a
few days," said the prisoner. "I ought not to be asked to say any
thing which may rise up in judgment against me." "You have
nothing to fear," replied the Speaker, "if you will only make a
full and free discovery. No man ever had reason to repent of
having dealt candidly with the Commons of England." Then Fenwick
begged for delay. He was not a ready orator; his memory was bad;
he must have time to prepare himself. He was told, as he had been
told a few days before in the royal closet, that, prepared or
unprepared, he could not but remember the principal plots in
which he had been engaged, and the names of his chief
accomplices. If he would honestly relate what it was quite
impossible that he could have forgotten, the House would make all
fair allowances, and would grant him time to recollect
subordinate details. Thrice he was removed from the bar; and
thrice he was brought back. He was solemnly informed that the
opportunity then given him of earning the favour of the Commons
would probably be the last. He persisted in his refusal, and was
sent back to Newgate.

It was then moved that his confession was false and scandalous.
Coningsby proposed to add that it was a contrivance to create
jealousies between the King and good subjects for the purpose of
screening real traitors. A few implacable and unmanageable Whigs,
whose hatred of Godolphin had not been mitigated by his
resignation, hinted their doubts whether the whole paper ought to
be condemned. But after a debate in which Montague particularly
distinguished himself the motion was carried. One or two voices
cried "No;" but nobody ventured to demand a division.

Thus far all had gone smoothly; but in a few minutes the storm
broke forth. The terrible words, Bill of Attainder, were
pronounced; and all the fiercest passions of both the great
factions were instantly roused. The Tories had been taken by
surprise, and many of them had left the house. Those who remained
were loud in declaring that they never would consent to such a
violation of the first principles of justice. The spirit of the
Whigs was not less ardent, and their ranks were unbroken. The
motion for leave to bring in a bill attainting Sir John Fenwick
was carried very late at night by one hundred and seventy-nine
votes to sixty-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
both sides there was doubtless much honest zeal; and on both
sides an observant eye might have detected fear, hatred, and
cupidity disguised under specious pretences of justice and public
good. The baleful heat of faction rapidly warmed into life
poisonous creeping things which had long been lying torpid,
discarded spies and convicted false witnesses, the leavings of
the scourge, the branding iron and the shears. Even Fuller hoped
that he might again find dupes to listen to him. The world had
forgotten him since his pillorying. He now had the effrontery to
write to the Speaker, begging to be heard at the bar and
promising much important information about Fenwick and others. On
the ninth of November the Speaker informed the House that he had
received this communication; but the House very properly refused
even to suffer the letter of so notorious a villain to be read.

On the same day the Bill of Attainder, having been prepared by
the Attorney and Solicitor General, was brought in and read a
first time. The House was full and the debate sharp. John Manley,
member for Bossiney, one of those stanch Tories who, in the
preceding session, had long refused to sign the Association,
accused the majority, in no measured terms, of fawning on the
Court and betraying the liberties of the people. His words were
taken down; and, though he tried to explain them away, he was
sent to the Tower. Seymour spoke strongly against the bill, and
quoted the speech which Caesar made in the Roman Senate against
the motion that the accomplices of Catiline should be put to
death in an irregular manner. A Whig orator keenly remarked that
the worthy Baron had forgotten that Caesar was grievously
suspected of having been himself concerned in Catiline's plot.757
In this stage a hundred and ninety-six members voted for the
bill, a hundred and four against it. A copy was sent to Fenwick,
in order that he might be prepared to defend himself. He begged
to be heard by counsel; his request was granted; and the
thirteenth was fixed for the hearing.

Never within the memory of the oldest member had there been such
a stir round the House as on the morning of the thirteenth. The
approaches were with some difficulty cleared; and no strangers,
except peers, were suffered to come within the doors. Of peers
the throng was so great that their presence had a perceptible
influence on the debate. Even Seymour, who, having formerly been
Speaker, ought to have been peculiarly mindful of the dignity of
the Commons, so strangely forgot himself as once to say "My
Lords." Fenwick, having been formally given up by the Sheriffs of
London to the Serjeant at Arms, was put to the bar, attended by
two barristers who were generally employed by Jacobite culprits,
Sir Thomas Powis and Sir Bartholomew Shower. Counsel appointed by
the House appeared in support of the bill.

The examination of the witnesses and the arguments of the
advocates occupied three days. Porter was called in and
interrogated. It was established, not indeed by legal proof, but
by such moral proof as determines the conduct of men in the
affairs of common life, that Goodman's absence was to be
attributed to a scheme planned and executed by Fenwick's friends
with Fenwick's privity. Secondary evidence of what Goodman, if he
had been present, would have been able to prove, was, after a
warm debate, admitted. His confession, made on oath and
subscribed by his hand, was put in. Some of the grand jurymen who
had found the bill against Sir John gave an account of what
Goodman had sworn before them; and their testimony was confirmed
by some of the petty jurymen who had convicted another
conspirator. No evidence was produced in behalf of the prisoner.
After counsel for him and against him had been heard, he was sent
back to his cell.758 Then the real struggle began. It was long
and violent. The House repeatedly sate from daybreak till near
midnight. Once the Speaker was in the chair fifteen hours without
intermission. Strangers were freely admitted; for it was felt
that, since the House chose to take on itself the functions of a
court of justice, it ought, like a court of justice, to sit with
open doors.759 The substance of the debates has consequently been
preserved in a report, meagre, indeed, when compared with the
reports of our time, but for that age unusually full. Every man
of note in the House took part in the discussion. The bill was
opposed by Finch with that fluent and sonorous rhetoric which had
gained him the name of Silvertongue, and by Howe with all the
sharpness both of his wit and of his temper, by Seymour with
characteristic energy, and by Harley with characteristic
solemnity. On the other side Montague displayed the powers of a
consummate debater, and was zealously supported by Littleton.
Conspicuous in the front ranks of the hostile parties were two
distinguished lawyers, Simon Harcourt and William Cowper.

Both were gentlemen of honourable descent; both were
distinguished by their fine persons and graceful manners; both
were renowned for eloquence; and both loved learning and learned
men. It may be added that both had early in life been noted for
prodigality and love of pleasure. Dissipation had made them poor;
poverty had made them industrious; and though they were still, as
age is reckoned at the Inns of Court, very young men, Harcourt
only thirty-six, Cowper only thirty-two, they already had the
first practice at the bar. They were destined to rise still
higher, to be the bearers of the great seal of the realm, and the
founders of patrician houses. In politics they were diametrically
opposed to each other. Harcourt had seen the Revolution with
disgust, had not chosen to sit in the Convention, had with
difficulty reconciled his conscience to the oaths, and had
tardily and unwillingly signed the Association. Cowper had been
in arms for the Prince of Orange and a free Parliament, and had,
in the short and tumultuary campaign which preceded the flight of
James, distinguished himself by intelligence and courage. Since
Somers had been removed to the Woolsack, the law officers of the
Crown had not made a very distinguished figure in the Lower
House, or indeed any where else; and their deficiencies had been
more than once supplied by Cowper. His skill had, at the trial of
Parkyns, recovered the verdict which the mismanagement of the
Solicitor General had, for a moment, put in jeopardy. He had been
chosen member for Hertford at the general election of 1695, and
had scarcely taken his seat when he attained a high place among
parliamentary speakers. Chesterfield many years later, in one of
his letters to his son, described Cowper as an orator who never
spoke without applause, but who reasoned feebly, and who owed the
influence which he long exercised over great assemblies to the
singular charm of his style, his voice and his action.
Chesterfield was, beyond all doubt, intellectually qualified to
form a correct judgment on such a subject. But it must be
remembered that the object of his letters was to exalt good taste
and politeness in opposition to much higher qualities. He
therefore constantly and systematically attributed the success of
the most eminent persons of his age to their superiority, not in
solid abilities and acquirements, but in superficial graces of
diction and manner. He represented even Marlborough as a man of
very ordinary capacity, who, solely because he was extremely well
bred and well spoken, had risen from poverty and obscurity to the
height of power and glory. It may confidently be pronounced that
both to Marlborough and to Cowper Chesterfield was unjust. The
general who saved the Empire and conquered the Low Countries was
assuredly something more than a fine gentleman; and the judge who
presided during nine years in the Court of Chancery with the
approbation of all parties must have been something more than a
fine declaimer.

Whoever attentively and impartially studies the report of the
debates will be of opinion that, on many points which were
discussed at great length and with great animation, the Whigs had
a decided superiority in argument, 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
Fenwick by proofs which could leave no doubt on the mind of any
man of common sense, and would have been brought home to him
according to the strict rules of law, if he had not, by
committing another crime, eluded the justice of the ordinary
tribunals. It was true that he had, in the very act of professing
repentance and imploring mercy, added a new offence to his former
offences, that, while pretending to make a perfectly ingenuous
confession, he had, with cunning malice, concealed every thing
which it was for the interest of the government that he should
divulge, and proclaimed every thing which it was for the interest
of the government to bury in silence. It was a great evil that he
should be beyond the reach of punishment; it was plain that he
could be reached only 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 ever passed 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
which requires two witnesses in cases of high treason. The truth
is that the rule is absurd. It is impossible to understand why
the evidence which would be sufficient to prove that a man has
fired at one of his fellow subjects should not be sufficient to
prove that he has fired at his Sovereign. It can by no means be
laid down as a general maxim that the assertion of two witnesses
is more convincing to the mind than the assertion of one witness.
The story told by one witness may be in itself probable. The
story told by two witnesses may be extravagant. The story told by
one witness may be uncontradicted. The story told by two
witnesses may be contradicted by four witnesses. The story told
by one witness may be corroborated by a crowd of circumstances.
The story told by two witnesses may have no such corroboration.
The one witness may be Tillotson or Ken. The two witnesses may be
Oates and Bedloe.

The chiefs of the Tory party, however, vehemently maintained that
the law which required two witnesses was of universal and eternal
obligation, part of the law of nature, part of the law of God.
Seymour quoted the book of Numbers and the book of Deuteronomy to
prove that no 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 up the plea of expediency for a
violation of justice; they said,--and we have heard such things
said,--'We must slay this man, or the Romans will come and take
away our place and nation.' Yet even Caiaphas and his Sanhedrim,
in that foulest act of judicial murder, did not venture to set
aside the sacred law which required two witnesses." "Even
Jezebel," said another orator, "did not dare to take Naboth's
vineyard from him till she had suborned two men of Belial to
swear falsely." "If the testimony of one grave elder had been
sufficient," it was asked, "what would have become of the
virtuous Susannah?" This last allusion called forth a cry of
"Apocrypha, Apocrypha," from the ranks of the Low Churchmen.760

Over these arguments, which in truth can scarcely have imposed on
those who condescended to use them, Montague obtained a complete
and easy victory. "An eternal law! Where was this eternal law
before the reign of Edward the Sixth? Where is it now, except in
statutes which relate only to one very small class of offences.
If these texts from the Pentateuch and these precedents from the
practice of the Sanhedrim prove any thing, they prove the whole
criminal jurisprudence of the realm to be a mass of injustice and
impiety. One witness is sufficient to convict a murderer, a
burglar, a highwayman, an incendiary, a ravisher. Nay, there are
cases of high treason in which only one witness is required. One
witness can send to Tyburn a gang of clippers and comers. Are
you, then, prepared to say that the whole law of evidence,
according to which men have during ages 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 divine
ordinance of universal and perpetual obligation, but simply with
an English rule of procedure, which applies to not more than two
or three crimes, which has not been in force a hundred and fifty
years, which derives all its authority from an Act of Parliament,
and which may therefore be by another, Act abrogated or suspended
without offence to God or men."

It was much less easy to answer the chiefs of the opposition when
they set forth the danger of breaking down the partition which
separates the functions of the legislator from those of the
judge. "This man," it was said, "may be a bad Englishman; and yet
his cause may be the cause of all good Englishmen. Only last year
we passed an Act to regulate the procedure of the ordinary courts
in cases of treason. We passed that Act because we thought that,
in those courts, the life of a subject obnoxious to the
government was not then sufficiently secured. Yet the life of a
subject obnoxious to the government was then far more secure than
it will be if this House takes on itself to be the supreme
criminal judicature in political cases." Warm eulogies were
pronounced on the ancient national mode of trial by twelve good
men and true; and indeed the advantages of that mode of trial in
political cases are obvious. The prisoner is allowed to challenge
any number of jurors with cause, and a considerable number
without cause. The twelve, from the moment at which they are
invested with their short magistracy, till the moment when they
lay it down, are kept separate from the rest of the community.
Every precaution is taken to prevent any agent of power from
soliciting or corrupting them. Every one of them must hear every
word of the evidence and every argument used on either side. The
case is then summed up by a judge who knows that, if he is guilty
of partiality, he may be called to account by the great inquest
of the nation. In the trial of Fenwick at the bar of the House of
Commons all these securities were wanting. Some hundreds of
gentlemen, every one of whom had much more than half made up his
mind before the case was opened, performed the functions both of
judge and jury. They were not restrained, as a judge is
restrained, by the sense of responsibility; for who was to punish
a Parliament? They were not selected, as a jury is selected, in a
manner which enables the culprit to exclude his personal and
political enemies. The arbiters of his fate came in and went out
as they chose. They heard a fragment here and there of what was
said against him, and a fragment here and there of what was said
in his favour. During the progress of the bill they were exposed
to every species of influence. One member was threatened by the
electors of his borough with the loss of his seat; another might
obtain a frigate for his brother from Russell; the vote of a
third might be secured by the caresses and Burgundy of Wharton.
In the debates arts were practised and passions excited which are
unknown to well constituted tribunals, but from which no great
popular assembly divided into parties ever was or ever will be
free. The rhetoric of one orator called forth loud cries of "Hear
him." Another was coughed and scraped down. A third spoke against
time in order that his friends who were supping might come in to
divide.761 If the life of the most worthless man could be sported
with thus, was the life of the most virtuous man secure?

The opponents of the bill did not, indeed, venture to say that
there could be no public danger sufficient to justify an Act of
Attainder. They admitted that there might be cases in which the
general rule must bend to an overpowering necessity. But was this
such a case? Even if it were granted, for the sake of argument,
that Strafford and Monmouth were justly attainted, was Fenwick,
like Strafford, a great minister who had long ruled England north
of Trent, and all Ireland, with absolute power, who was high in
the royal favour, and whose capacity, eloquence and resolution
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
common people? Were all the finest youths of three counties
crowding to enlist under his banners? What was he but a
subordinate plotter? He had indeed once had good employments; but
he had long lost them. He had once had a good estate; but he had
wasted it. Eminent abilities and weight of character he had never
had. He was, no doubt, connected by marriage with a very noble
family; but that family did not share his political prejudices.
What importance, then, had he, except that importance which his
persecutors were most unwisely giving him by breaking through all
the 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 Jacobite coffeehouses, squeeze oranges, and drink the
health of King James and the Prince of Wales? If, however, the
government, supported by the Lords and the Commons, by the fleet
and the army, by a militia one hundred and sixty thousand strong,
and by the half million of men who had signed the Association,
did really apprehend danger from this poor ruined baronet, the
benefit of the Habeas Corpus Act might be withheld from him. He
might be kept within four walls as long as there was the least
chance of his doing mischief. It could hardly be contended that
he was an enemy so terrible that the State could be safe only
when he was in the grave.

It was acknowledged that precedents might be found for this bill,
or even for a bill far more objectionable. But it was said that
whoever reviewed our history would be disposed to regard such
precedents rather as warnings than as examples. It had many times
happened that an Act of Attainder, passed in a fit of servility
or animosity, had, when fortune had changed, or when passion had
cooled, been repealed and solemnly stigmatized as unjust. Thus,
in old times, the Act which was passed against Roger Mortimer, in
the paroxysm of a resentment not unprovoked, had been, at a
calmer moment, rescinded on the ground that, however guilty he
might have been, he had not had fair play for his life. Thus,
within the memory of the existing generation, the law which
attainted Strafford had been annulled, without one dissentient
voice. Nor, it was added, ought it to be left unnoticed that,
whether by virtue of the ordinary law of cause and effect, or by
the extraordinary judgment of God, persons who had been eager to
pass bills of pains and penalties, had repeatedly perished by
such bills. No man had ever made a more unscrupulous use of the
legislative power for the destruction of his enemies than Thomas
Cromwell; and it was by an unscrupulous use of the legislative
power that he was himself destroyed. If it were true that the
unhappy gentleman whose fate was now trembling in the balance had
himself formerly borne a part in a proceeding similar to that
which was now instituted against him, was not this a fact which
ought to suggest very serious reflections? Those who tauntingly
reminded Fenwick that he had supported the bill which attainted
Monmouth might perhaps themselves be tauntingly reminded, in some
dark and terrible hour, that they had supported the bill which
had attainted Fenwick. "Let us remember what vicissitudes we have
seen. Let us, from so many signal examples of the inconstancy of
fortune, learn moderation in prosperity. How little we thought,
when we saw this man a favourite courtier at Whitehall, a general
surrounded with military pomp at Hounslow, that we should live to
see him standing at our bar, and awaiting his doom from our lips!
And how far is it from certain that we may not one day, in the
bitterness of our souls, vainly invoke the protection of those
mild laws which we now treat so lightly! God forbid that we
should ever again be subject to tyranny! But God forbid, above
all, that our tyrants should ever be able to 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 many
moderate Whigs. Montague did his best to rally his followers. We
still possess the rude outline of what must have been a most
effective peroration. "Gentlemen warn us"--this, or very nearly
this, seems to have been what he said--"not to furnish King James
with a precedent which, if ever he should be restored, he may use
against ourselves. Do they really believe that, if that evil day
shall ever come, this just and 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 deserved retribution on a
single guilty head; but his own bill, which, without a defence,
without an investigation, without an accusation, doomed near
three thousand people, whose only crimes were their English blood
and their Protestant faith, the men to the gallows and the women
to the stake. 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 fear of a righteous punishment may restrain
those enemies of our country who wish to see him ruling in London
as he ruled at Dublin, I give my vote for this bill."

In spite of all the eloquence and influence of the ministry, the
minority grew stronger and stronger as the debates proceeded. The
question that leave should be given to bring in the bill had been
carried by nearly three to one. On the question that the bill
should be committed, the Ayes were a hundred and eighty-six, the
Noes a hundred and twenty-eight. On the question that the bill
should pass, the Ayes were 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. Every peer who was absent from town had been summoned
up: every peer who disobeyed the summons and was unable to give a
satisfactory explanation of his disobedience was taken into
custody by Black Rod. On the day fixed for the first reading, the
crowd on the benches was unprecedented. The whole number of
temporal Lords, exclusive of minors, Roman Catholics and
nonjurors, was about a hundred and forty. Of these a hundred and
five were in their places. Many thought that the Bishops ought to
have been permitted, if not required, to withdraw; for, by an
ancient canon, those who ministered at the altars of God were
forbidden to take any part in the infliction of capital
punishment. On the trial of a peer impeached of high treason, the
prelates always retire, and leave the culprit to be absolved or
condemned by laymen. And surely, if it be unseemly that a divine
should doom his fellow creatures to death as a judge, it must be
still more unseemly that he should doom them to death as a
legislator. In the latter case, as in the former, he contracts
that stain of blood which the Church regards with horror; and it
will scarcely be denied that there are some grave objections to
the shedding of blood by Act of Attainder which do not apply to
the shedding of blood in the ordinary course of justice. In fact,
when the bill for taking away the life of Strafford was under
consideration, all the spiritual peers withdrew. Now, however,
the example of Cranmer, who had voted for some of the most
infamous acts of attainder that ever passed, was thought more
worthy of imitation; and there was a great muster of lawn
sleeves. It was very properly resolved that, on this occasion,
the privilege of voting by proxy should be suspended, that the
House should be called over at the beginning and at the end of
every sitting, and that every member who did not answer to his
name should be taken into custody.762

Meanwhile the unquiet brain of Monmouth was teeming with strange
designs. He had now reached a time of life at which youth could
no longer be pleaded as an excuse for his faults; but he was more
wayward and eccentric than ever. Both in his intellectual and in
his moral character there was an abundance of those fine
qualities which may be called luxuries, and a lamentable
deficiency of those solid qualities which are of the first
necessity. He had brilliant wit and ready invention without
common sense, and chivalrous generosity and delicacy without
common honesty. He was capable of rising to the part of the Black
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 the dishonourable actions of politicians are to be
ascribed. He valued power little and money less. Of fear he was
utterly insensible. If he sometimes stooped to be a villain,--for
no milder word will come up to the truth,--it was merely to amuse
himself and to astonish other people. In civil as in military
affairs, he loved ambuscades, surprises, night attacks. He now
imagined that he had a glorious opportunity of making a
sensation, of producing a great commotion; and the temptation was
irresistible to a spirit so restless as his.

He knew, or at least strongly suspected, that the stories which
Fenwick had told on hearsay, and which King, Lords and Commons,
Whigs and Tories, had agreed to treat as calumnies, were, in the
main, true. Was it impossible to prove that they were true, to
cross the wise policy of William, to bring disgrace at once on
some of the most eminent men of both parties, to throw the whole
political world into inextricable confusion?

Nothing could be done without the help of the prisoner; and with
the prisoner it was impossible to communicate directly. It was
necessary to employ the intervention of more than one female
agent. The Duchess of Norfolk was a Mordaunt, and Monmouth's
first cousin. Her gallantries were notorious; and her husband
had, some years before, tried to induce his brother nobles to
pass a bill for dissolving his marriage; but the attempt had been
defeated, in consequence partly of the zeal with which Monmouth
had fought the battle of his kinswoman. The lady, though
separated from her lord, lived in a style suitable to her rank,
and associated with many women of fashion, among others, with
Lady Mary Fenwick, and with a relation of Lady Mary, named
Elizabeth Lawson. By the instrumentality of the Duchess, Monmouth
conveyed to the prisoner several papers containing suggestions
framed with much art. Let Sir John,--such was the substance of
these suggestions,--boldly affirm that his confession is true,
that he has brought accusations, on hearsay indeed, but not on
common hearsay, that he has derived his knowledge of the facts
which he has asserted from the highest quarters; and let him
point out a mode in which his veracity may be easily brought to
the test. Let him pray that the Earls of Portland and Romney, who
are well known to enjoy the royal confidence, may be called upon
to declare whether they are not in possession of information
agreeing with what he has related. Let him pray that the King may
be requested to lay before Parliament the evidence which caused
the sudden disgrace of Lord Marlborough, and any letters which
may have been intercepted while passing between Saint Germains
and Lord Godolphin. "Unless," said Monmouth to his female agents,
"Sir John is under a fate, unless he is out of his mind, he will
take my counsel. If he does, his life and honour are safe. If he
does not, he is a dead man." Then this strange intriguer, with
his usual license of speech, reviled William for what was in
truth one of William's best titles to glory. "He is the worst of
men. He has acted basely. He pretends not to believe these
charges against Shrewsbury, Russell, Marlborough, Godolphin. And
yet he knows,"--and Monmouth confirmed the assertion by a
tremendous oath,--"he knows that every word of the charges is
true."

The papers written by Monmouth were delivered by Lady Mary to her
husband. If the advice which they contained had been followed,
there can be little doubt that the object of the adviser would
have been attained. The King would have been bitterly mortified;
there would have been a general panic among public men of every
party; even Marlborough's serene fortitude would have been
severely tried; and Shrewsbury would probably have shot himself.
But that Fenwick would have put himself in a better situation is
by no means clear. Such was his own opinion. He saw that the step
which he was urged to take was hazardous. He knew that he was
urged to take that step, not because it was likely to save
himself, but because it was certain to annoy others; and he was
resolved not to be Monmouth's tool.

On the first of December the bill went through the earliest stage
without a division. Then Fenwick's confession, which had, by the
royal command, been laid on the table, was read; and then
Marlborough stood up. "Nobody can wonder," he said, "that a man
whose head is in danger should try to save himself by accusing
others. I assure Your Lordships that, since the accession of his
present Majesty, I have had no intercourse with Sir John on any
subject whatever; and this I declare on my word of honour."763
Marlborough's assertion may have been true; but it was perfectly
compatible with the truth of all that Fenwick had said. Godolphin
went further. "I certainly did," he said, "continue to the last
in the service of King James and of his Queen. I was esteemed by
them both. But I cannot think that a crime. It is possible that
they and those who are about them may imagine that I am still
attached to their interest. That I cannot help. But it is utterly
false that I have had any such dealings with the Court of Saint
Germains as are described in the paper which Your Lordships have
heard read."764

Fenwick was then brought in, and asked whether he had any further
confession to make. Several peers interrogated him, but to no
purpose. Monmouth, who could not believe that the papers which he
had sent to Newgate had produced no effect, put, in a friendly
and encouraging manner, several questions intended to bring out
answers which would have been by no means agreeable to the
accused Lords. No such answer however was to be extracted from
Fenwick. Monmouth saw that his ingenious machinations had failed.
Enraged and disappointed, he suddenly turned round, and became
more zealous for the bill than any other peer in the House. Every
body noticed the rapid change in his temper and manner; but that
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. Several distinguished Tories,
particularly Nottingham, Rochester, Normanby and Leeds, said
that, in their opinion, it was idle to inquire whether the
prisoner was guilty or not guilty, unless the House was of
opinion that he was a person so formidable that, if guilty, he
ought to be attainted by Act of Parliament. They did not wish,
they said, to hear any evidence. For, even on the supposition
that the evidence left no doubt of his criminality, they should
still think it better to leave him unpunished than to make a law
for punishing him. The general sense, however, was decidedly for
proceeding.765 The prisoner and his counsel 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
the largest, the protests were the most numerously signed that
had ever been known in the whole history of the House of Peers.
Repeatedly the benches continued to be filled from ten in the
morning till past midnight.766 The health of many lords suffered
severely; for the winter was bitterly cold; but the majority was
not disposed to be indulgent. One evening Devonshire was unwell;
he stole away and went to bed; but Black Rod was soon sent to
bring him back. Leeds, whose constitution was extremely infirm,
complained loudly. "It is very well," he said, "for young
gentlemen to sit down to their suppers and their wine at two
o'clock in the morning; but some of us old men are likely to be
of as much use here as they; and we shall soon be in our graves
if we are forced to keep such hours at such a season.767 So
strongly was party spirit excited that this appeal was
disregarded, and the House continued to sit fourteen or fifteen
hours a day. The chief opponents of the bill were Rochester,
Nottingham, Normanby and Leeds. The chief orators on the other
side were Tankerville, who, in spite of the deep stains which a
life singularly unfortunate had left on his public and private
character, always spoke with an eloquence which riveted the
attention of his hearers; Burnet, who made a great display of
historical learning; Wharton, whose lively and familiar style of
speaking, acquired in the House of Commons, sometimes shocked the
formality of the Lords; and Monmouth, who had always carried the
liberty of debate to the verge of licentiousness, and who now
never opened his lips without inflicting a wound on the feelings
of some adversary. A very few nobles of great weight, Devonshire,
Dorset, Pembroke and Ormond, formed a third party. They were
willing to use the Bill of Attainder as an instrument of torture
for the purpose of wringing a full confession out of the
prisoner. But they were determined not to give a final vote for
sending him to the scaffold.

The first division was on the question whether secondary evidence
of what Goodman could have proved should be admitted. On this
occasion Burnet closed the debate by a powerful speech which none
of the Tory orators could undertake to answer without
premeditation. A hundred and twenty-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
bill should be read a second time. The debate was diversified by
a curious episode. Monmouth, in a vehement declamation, threw
some severe and well merited reflections on the memory of the
late Lord Jeffreys. The title and 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 in the House. The
young man fired at hearing his father reviled. The House was
forced to interfere, and to make both the disputants promise that
the matter should go no further. On this day a hundred and
twenty-eight peers were present. The second reading was carried
by seventy-three to fifty-five; and forty-nine of the fifty-five
protested.769

It was now thought by many that Fenwick's courage would give way.
It was known that he was very unwilling to die. Hitherto he might
have flattered himself with hopes that the bill would miscarry.
But now that it had passed one House, and seemed certain to pass
the other, it was probable that he would save himself by
disclosing all that he knew. He was again put to the bar and
interrogated. He refused to answer, on the ground that his
answers might be used against him by the Crown at the Old Bailey.
He was assured that the House would protect him; but he pretended
that this assurance was not sufficient; the House was not always
sitting; he might be brought to trial during a recess, and hanged
before their Lordships met again. The royal word alone, he said,
would be a complete guarantee. The Peers ordered him to be
removed, and immediately resolved that Wharton should go to
Kensington, and should entreat His Majesty to give the pledge
which the prisoner required. Wharton hastened to Kensington, and
hastened back with a gracious answer. Fenwick was again placed at
the bar. The royal word, he was told, had been passed that
nothing which he might say there should be used against him in
any other place. Still he made difficulties. He might confess all
that he knew, and yet might be told that he was still keeping
something back. In short, he would say nothing till he had a
pardon. He was then, for the last time, solemnly cautioned from
the Woolsack. He was assured that, if he would deal ingenuously
with the Lords, they would be intercessors for him at the foot of
the throne, and that their intercession would not be
unsuccessful. If he continued obstinate, they would proceed with
the bill. A short interval was allowed him for consideration; and
he was then required to give his final 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 his cell; and the
Peers separated, having sate far into the night.770

At noon they met again. The third reading was moved. Tenison
spoke for the bill with more ability than was expected from him,
and Monmouth with as much sharpness as in the previous debates.
But Devonshire declared that he could go no further. He had hoped
that fear would induce Fenwick to make a frank confession; that
hope was at an end; the question now was simply whether this man
should be put to death by an Act of Parliament; and to that
question Devonshire said that he must answer, "Not Content." It
is not easy to understand on what principle he can have thought
himself justified in threatening to do what he did not think
himself justified in doing. He was, however, followed by Dorset,
Ormond, Pembroke, and two or three others. Devonshire, in the
name of his little party, and Rochester, in the name of the
Tories, offered to waive all objections to the mode of
proceeding, if the penalty were reduced from death to perpetual
imprisonment. But the majority, though weakened by the defection
of some considerable men, was still a majority, and would hear of
no terms of compromise. The third reading was carried by only
sixty-eight votes to sixty-one. Fifty-three Lords recorded their
dissent; and forty-one subscribed a protest, in which the
arguments against the bill were ably summed up.771 The peers whom
Fenwick had accused took different sides. Marlborough steadily
voted with the majority, and induced Prince George to do the
same. Godolphin as steadily voted with the minority, but, with
characteristic wariness, abstained from giving any reasons for
his votes. No part of his life warrants us in ascribing his
conduct to any exalted motive. It is probable that, having been
driven from office by the Whigs and forced to take refuge among
the Tories, he thought it advisable to go with his party.772

As soon as the bill had been read a third time, the attention of
the Peers was called to a matter which deeply concerned the
honour of their order. Lady Mary Fenwick had been, not
unnaturally, moved to the highest resentment by the conduct of
Monmouth. He had, after professing a great desire to save her
husband, suddenly turned round, and become the most merciless of
her husband's persecutors; and all this solely because the
unfortunate prisoner would not suffer himself to be used as an
instrument for the accomplishing of a wild scheme of mischief.
She might be excused for thinking that revenge would be sweet. In
her rage she showed to her kinsman the Earl of Carlisle the
papers which she had received from the Duchess of Norfolk.
Carlisle brought the subject before the Lords. The papers were
produced. Lady Mary declared that she had received them from the
Duchess. The Duchess declared that she had received them from
Monmouth. Elizabeth Lawson confirmed the evidence of her two
friends. All the bitter things which the petulant Earl had said
about William were repeated. The rage of both the great factions
broke forth with ungovernable violence. The Whigs were
exasperated by discovering that Monmouth had been secretly
labouring to bring to shame and ruin two eminent men with whose
reputation the reputation of the whole party was bound up. The
Tories accused him of dealing treacherously and cruelly by the
prisoner and the prisoner's wife. Both among the Whigs and among
the Tories Monmouth had, by his sneers and invectives, made
numerous personal enemies, whom fear of his wit and of his sword
had hitherto kept in awe.773 All these enemies were now
openmouthed against him. There was great curiosity to know what
he would be able to say in his defence. His eloquence, the
correspondent of the States General wrote, had often annoyed
others. He would now want it all to protect himself.774 That
eloquence indeed was of a kind much better suited to attack than
to defence. Monmouth spoke near three hours in a confused and
rambling manner, boasted extravagantly of his services and
sacrifices, told the House that he had borne a great part in the
Revolution, that he had made four voyages to Holland in the evil
times, that he had since refused great places, that he had always
held lucre in contempt. "I," he said, turning significantly to
Nottingham, "have bought no great estate; I have built no palace; I am twenty
thousand pounds poorer than when I entered public
life. My old hereditary mansion is ready to fall about my ears.
Who that remembers what I have done and suffered for His Majesty
will believe that I would speak disrespectfully of him?" He
solemnly declared,--and this was the most serious of the many
serious faults of his long and unquiet life,--that he had nothing
to 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 ungrateful kinswoman had consented to be their implement, and
had requited the strenuous efforts which he had made in defence
of her honour by trying to blast his. When he concluded there was
a long silence. He asked whether their Lordships wished him to
withdraw. Then Leeds, to whom he had once professed a strong
attachment, but whom he had deserted with characteristic
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
withdraw at present. The question which we have now to decide is
merely whether these papers do or do not deserve our censure. Who
wrote them is a question which may be considered hereafter." It
was then moved and unanimously resolved that the papers were
scandalous, and that the author had been guilty of a high crime
and misdemeanour. Monmouth himself was, by these dexterous
tactics, forced to join in condemning his own compositions.775
Then the House proceeded to consider the charge against him. The
character of his cousin the Duchess did not stand high; but her
testimony was confirmed both by direct and by circumstantial
evidence. Her husband said, with sour pleasantry, that he gave
entire faith to what she had deposed. "My Lord Monmouth thought
her good enough to be wife to me; and, if she is good enough to
be wife to me, I am sure that she is good enough to be a witness
against him." In a House of near eighty peers only eight or ten
seemed inclined to show any favour 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 sent to the Tower; he was
turned out of all his places; and his name was struck out of the
Council Book.776 It might well have been thought that the ruin of
his fame and of his fortunes was irreparable. But there was about
his nature an elasticity which nothing could subdue. In his
prison, indeed, he was as violent as a falcon just caged, and
would, if he had been long detained, have died of mere
impatience. His only solace was to contrive wild and romantic
schemes for extricating himself from his difficulties and
avenging himself on his enemies. When he regained his liberty, he
stood alone in the world, a dishonoured man, more hated by the
Whigs than any Tory, and by the Tories than any Whig, and reduced
to such poverty that he talked of retiring to the country, living
like a farmer, and putting his Countess into the dairy to churn
and to make cheeses. Yet even after this fall, that mounting
spirit rose again, and rose higher than ever. When he next
appeared before the world, he had inherited the earldom of the
head of his family; he had ceased to be called by the tarnished
name of Monmouth; and he soon added new lustre to the name of
Peterborough. He was still all air and fire. His ready wit and
his dauntless courage made him formidable; some amiable qualities
which contrasted strangely with his vices, and some great
exploits of which the effect was heightened by the careless
levity with which they were performed, made him popular; and his
countrymen were willing to forget that a hero of whose
achievements they were proud, and who was not more distinguished
by parts and valour than by courtesy and generosity, had stooped
to tricks worthy of the pillory.

It is interesting and instructive to compare the fate of
Shrewsbury with the fate of Peterborough. The honour of
Shrewsbury was safe. He had been triumphantly acquitted of the
charges contained in Fenwick's confession. He was soon afterwards
still more triumphantly acquitted of a still more odious charge.
A wretched spy named Matthew Smith, who thought that he had not
been sufficiently rewarded, and was bent on being revenged,
affirmed that Shrewsbury had received early information of the
Assassination Plot, but had suppressed that information, and had
taken no measures to prevent the conspirators from accomplishing
their design. That this was a foul calumny no person who has
examined the evidence can doubt. The King declared that he could
himself prove his minister's innocence; and the Peers, after
examining Smith, pronounced the accusation unfounded. Shrewsbury
was cleared as far as it was in the power of the Crown and of the
Parliament to clear him. He had power and wealth, the favour of
the King and the favour of the people. No man had a greater
number of devoted friends. He was the idol of the Whigs; yet he
was not personally disliked by the Tories. It should seem that
his situation was one which Peterborough might well have envied.
But happiness and misery are from within. Peterborough had one of
those minds of which the deepest wounds heal and leave no scar.
Shrewsbury had one of those minds in which the slightest scratch
may fester to the death. He had been publicly accused of
corresponding with Saint Germains; and, though King, Lords and
Commons had pronounced him innocent, his conscience told him that
he was guilty. The praises which he knew that he had not deserved
sounded to him like reproaches. He never regained his lost peace
of mind. He left office; but one cruel recollection accompanied
him into retirement. He left England; but one cruel recollection
pursued him over the Alps and the Apennines. On a memorable day,
indeed, big with the fate of his country, he again, after many
inactive and inglorious years, stood forth the Shrewsbury of
1688. Scarcely any thing in history is more melancholy than that
late and solitary gleam, lighting up the close of a life which
had dawned so splendidly, and which had so early become
hopelessly troubled and gloomy.

On the day on which the Lords passed the Bill of Attainder, they
adjourned over the Christmas holidays. The fate of Fenwick
consequently remained during more than a fortnight in suspense.
In the interval plans of escape were formed; and it was thought
necessary to place a strong military guard round Newgate.777 Some
Jacobites knew William so little as to send him anonymous
letters, threatening that he should be 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. He at the same
time passed a bill which authorised the government to detain
Bernardi and some other conspirators in custody during twelve
months. On the evening of that day a deeply mournful event was
the talk of all London. The Countess of Aylesbury had watched
with intense anxiety the proceedings against Sir John. Her lord
had been as deep as Sir John in treason, was, like Sir John, in
confinement, and had, like Sir John, been a party to Goodman's
flight. She had learned with dismay that there was a method by
which a criminal who was beyond the reach of the ordinary law
might be punished. Her terror had increased at every stage in the
progress of the Bill of Attainder. On the day on which the royal
assent was to be given, her agitation became greater than her
frame could support. When she heard the sound of the guns which
announced that the King was on his way to Westminster, she fell
into fits, and died in a few hours.779

Even after the bill had become law, strenuous efforts were made
to save Fenwick. His wife threw herself at William's feet, and
offered him a petition. He took the petition, and said, very
gently, that it should be considered, but that the matter was one
of public concern, and that he must deliberate with his ministers
before he decided.780 She then addressed herself to the Lords.
She told them that her husband had not expected his doom, that he
had not had time to prepare himself for death, that he had not,
during his long imprisonment, seen a divine. They were easily
induced to request that he might be respited for a week. A
respite was granted; but, forty-eight hours before it expired,
Lady Mary presented to the Lords another petition, imploring them
to intercede with the King that her husband's punishment might be
commuted to banishment. The House was taken by surprise; and a
motion to adjourn was with difficulty carried by two votes.781 On
the morrow, the last day of Fenwick's life, a similar petition
was presented to the Commons. But the Whig leaders were on their
guard; the attendance was full; and a motion for reading the
Orders of the Day was carried by a hundred and fifty-two to a
hundred and seven.782 In truth, neither branch of the legislature
could, without condemning itself, request William to spare
Fenwick's life. Jurymen, who have, in the discharge of a painful
duty, pronounced a culprit guilty, may, with perfect consistency,
recommend him to the favourable consideration of the Crown. But
the Houses ought not to have passed the Bill of Attainder unless
they were convinced, not merely that Sir John had committed high
treason, but also that he could not, without serious danger to
the Commonwealth, be suffered to live. He could not be at once a
proper object of such a bill and a proper object of the royal
mercy.

On the twenty-eighth of January the execution took place. In
compliment to the noble families with which Fenwick was
connected, orders were given that the ceremonial should be in all
respects the same as when a peer of the realm suffers death. A
scaffold was erected on Tower Hill and hung with black. The
prisoner was brought from Newgate in the coach of his kinsman the
Earl of Carlisle, which was surrounded by a troop of the Life
Guards. Though the day was cold and stormy, the crowd of
spectators was immense; but there was no disturbance, and no sign
that the multitude sympathized with the criminal. He behaved with
a firmness which had not been expected from him. He ascended the
scaffold with steady steps, and bowed courteously to the persons
who were assembled on it, but spoke to none, except White, the
deprived Bishop of Peterborough. White prayed with him during
about half an hour. In the prayer the King was commended to the
Divine protection; but no name which could give offence was
pronounced. Fenwick then delivered a sealed paper to the
Sheriffs, took leave of the Bishop, knelt down, laid his neck on
the block, and exclaimed, "Lord Jesus, receive my soul." His head
was severed from his body at a single blow. His remains were
placed in a rich coffin, and buried that night, by torchlight,
under the 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
much excited, had been under discussion. As soon as the
Parliament met, a Bill for Regulating Elections, differing little
in substance from the bill which the King had refused to pass in
the preceding session, was brought into the House of Commons, was
eagerly welcomed by the country gentlemen, and was pushed through
every stage. On the report it was moved that five thousand pounds
in personal estate should be a sufficient qualification for the
representative of a city or borough. But this amendment was
rejected. On the third reading a rider was added, which permitted
a merchant possessed of five thousand pounds to represent the
town in which he resided; but it was provided that no person
should be considered as a merchant because he was a proprietor of
Bank Stock or East India Stock. The fight was hard. Cowper
distinguished himself among the opponents of the bill. His
sarcastic remarks on the hunting, hawking boors, who wished to
keep in their own hands the whole business of legislation, called
forth some sharp rustic retorts. A plain squire, he was told, was
as likely to serve the country well as the most fluent gownsman,
who was ready, for a guinea, to prove that black was white. On
the question whether the bill should pass, the Ayes were two
hundred, 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 of Commons to possess an estate of some hundreds of
pounds a year in land could have been strictly enforced, such a
law would have been very advantageous to country gentlemen of
moderate property, but would have been by no means advantageous
to the grandees of the realm. A lord of a small manor would have
stood for the town in the neighbourhood of which his family had
resided during centuries, without any apprehension that he should
be opposed by some alderman of London, whom the electors had
never seen before the day of nomination, and whose chief title to
their favour was a pocketbook full of bank notes. But a great
nobleman, who had an estate of fifteen or twenty thousand pounds
a year, and who commanded two or three boroughs, would no longer
be able to put his younger 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 a Lord of the Treasury or an
Attorney General. On this occasion therefore the interest of the
chiefs of the aristocracy, Norfolk and Somerset, Newcastle and
Bedford, Pembroke and Dorset, coincided with that of the wealthy
traders of the City and of the clever young aspirants of the
Temple, and was diametrically opposed to the interest of a squire
of a thousand or twelve hundred a year. On the day fixed for the
second reading the attendance of lords was great. Several
petitions from constituent bodies, which thought it hard that a
new restriction should be imposed on the exercise of the elective
franchise, were presented and read. After a debate of some hours
the bill was rejected by sixty-two votes to thirty-seven.785 Only
three days later, a strong party in the Commons, burning with
resentment, proposed to tack the bill which the Peers had just
rejected to the Land Tax Bill. This motion would probably have
been carried, had not Foley gone somewhat beyond the duties of
his place, and, under pretence of speaking to order, shown that
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 was believed that they were the majority; but on a
division they proved to be only a hundred and thirty-five. The
Noes were a hundred and sixty-three.786

Other parliamentary proceedings of this session deserve mention.
While the Commons were busily engaged in the great work of
restoring the finances, an incident took place which seemed,
during a short time, likely to be fatal to the infant liberty of
the press, but which eventually proved the means of confirming
that liberty. Among the many newspapers which had been
established since the expiration of the censorship, was one
called the Flying Post. The editor, John Salisbury, was the tool
of a band of stockjobbers in the City, whose interest it happened
to be to cry down the public securities. He one day published a
false and malicious paragraph, evidently intended to throw
suspicion on the Exchequer Bills. On the credit of the Exchequer
Bills depended, at that moment, the political greatness and the
commercial prosperity of the realm. The House of Commons was in a
flame. The Speaker issued his warrant against Salisbury. It was
resolved without a division that a bill should be brought in to
prohibit the publishing of news without a license. Forty-eight
hours later the bill was presented and read. But the members had
now had time to cool. There was scarcely one of them whose
residence in the country had not, during the preceding summer,
been made more agreeable by the London journals. Meagre as those
journals may seem to a person who has the Times daily on his
breakfast table, they were to that generation a new and abundant
source of pleasure. No Devonshire or Yorkshire gentleman, Whig or
Tory, could bear the 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 expected twice a week at
every country seat in the kingdom, would contain nothing but 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 the London Gazette might be utterly ignorant of the most
important events of his time. A few voices, however, were raised
in favour of a censorship. "These papers," it was said,
"frequently contain mischievous matter." "Then why are they not
prosecuted?" was the answer. "Has the Attorney-General filed an
information against any one of them? And is it not absurd to ask
us to give a new remedy by statute, when the old remedy afforded
by the common law has never been tried?" On the question whether
the bill should be read a second time, the Ayes were only
sixteen, the Noes two hundred.787

Another bill, which fared better, ought to be noticed as an
instance of the slow, but steady progress of civilisation. The
ancient immunities enjoyed by some districts of the capital, of
which the largest and the most infamous was Whitefriars, had
produced abuses which could no longer be endured. The Templars on
one side of Alsatia, and the citizens on the other, had long been
calling on the government and the legislature to put down so
monstrous a nuisance. Yet still, bounded on the west by the great
school of English jurisprudence, and on the east by the great
mart of English trade, stood this labyrinth of squalid, tottering
houses, close packed, every one, from cellar to cockloft, with
outcasts whose life was one long war with society. The best part
of the population consisted of debtors who were in fear of
bailiffs. The rest were attorneys struck off the roll, witnesses
who carried straw in their shoes as a sign to inform the public
where a false oath might be procured for half a crown, sharpers,
receivers of stolen goods, clippers of coin, forgers of bank
notes, and tawdry women, blooming with paint and brandy, who, in
their anger, made free use of their nails and their scissors, yet
whose anger was less to be dreaded than their kindness. With
these wretches the narrow alleys of the sanctuary swarmed. The
rattling of dice, the call for more punch and more wine, and the
noise of blasphemy and ribald song never ceased during the whole
night. The benchers of the Inner Temple could bear the scandal
and the annoyance no longer. They ordered the gate leading into
Whitefriars to be bricked up. The Alsatians mustered in great
force, attacked the workmen, killed one of them, pulled down the
wall, knocked down the Sheriff who came to keep the peace, and
carried off his gold chain, which, no doubt, was soon in the
melting pot. The riot was not suppressed till a company of the
Foot Guards arrived. This outrage excited general indignation.
The City, indignant at the outrage offered to the Sheriff, cried
loudly for justice. Yet, so difficult was it to execute any
process in the dens of Whitefriars, that near two years elapsed
before a single ringleader was apprehended.788

The Savoy was another place of the same kind, smaller indeed, and
less renowned, but inhabited by a not less lawless population. An
unfortunate tailor, who ventured to go thither for the purpose of
demanding payment of a debt, was set upon by the whole mob of
cheats, ruffians and courtesans. He offered to give a full
discharge to his debtor and a treat 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 naked up and down
the streets amidst yells of "A bailiff! A bailiff!" Finally he
was compelled to kneel down and to curse his father and mother.
Having performed this ceremony he was permitted,--and the
permission was blamed 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 more unsafe than this small knot of lanes,
surrounded by the mansions of the greatest nobles of a
flourishing and enlightened kingdom.

At length, in 1697, a bill for abolishing the franchises of these
places passed both Houses, and received the royal assent. The
Alsatians and Savoyards were furious. Anonymous letters,
containing menaces of assassination, were received by members of
Parliament who had made themselves conspicuous by the zeal with
which they had supported the bill; but such threats only
strengthened the general conviction that it was high time to
destroy these nests of knaves and ruffians. A fortnight's grace
was allowed; and it was made known that, when that time had
expired, the vermin who had been the curse of London would be
unearthed and hunted without mercy. There was a tumultuous flight
to Ireland, to France, to the Colonies, to vaults and garrets in
less notorious parts of the capital; and when, on the prescribed
day, the Sheriff's officers ventured to cross the boundary, they
found those streets where, a few weeks before, the cry of "A
writ!" would have drawn together a thousand raging bullies and
vixens, as quiet as the cloister of 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 the firmness and wisdom which had rescued the nation
from commercial and financial difficulties unprecedented in our
history. Before he set out for the Continent, he conferred some
new honours, and made some new ministerial arrangements. Every
member of the Whig junto was distinguished by some conspicuous
mark of royal favour. Somers delivered up the seal, of which he
was Keeper; he received it back again with the higher title of
Chancellor, and was immediately commanded to affix it to a
patent, by which he was created Baron Somers of Evesham.791
Russell became Earl of Orford and Viscount Barfleur. No English
title had ever before been taken from a place of battle lying
within a foreign territory. But the precedent then set has been
repeatedly followed; and the names of Saint Vincent, Trafalgar,
Camperdown, and Douro are now borne by the successors of great
commanders. Russell seems to have accepted his earldom, after his
fashion, not only without gratitude, but grumblingly, and as if
some great wrong had been done him. What was a coronet to him? He
had no child to inherit it. The only distinction which he should
have prized was the garter; and the garter had been given to
Portland. Of course, such things were for the Dutch; and it was
strange presumption in an Englishman, though he might have won a
victory which had saved the State, to expect that his pretensions
would be considered 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 new commission of Treasury was issued till after the
prorogation. Who should be First Commissioner was a question long
and fiercely disputed. For Montague'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, showed quick parts in debate,
but who had already been raised far higher than his services
merited or than his brain would bear. It would be absurd to place
such a young coxcomb, merely because he could talk fluently and
cleverly, in an office on which the wellbeing of the kingdom
depended. Surely Sir Stephen Fox was, of all the Lords of the
Treasury, the fittest 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 his life. The King hesitated during a
considerable time between the two candidates; but time was all in
Montague's favour; for, from the first to the last day of the
session, his fame was constantly rising. The voice of the House
of Commons and of the City loudly designated him as preeminently
qualified to be the chief minister of finance. At length Sir
Stephen Fox withdrew from the competition, though not with a very
good grace. He wished it to be notified in the London Gazette
that the place of First Lord had been offered to him, and
declined by him. Such a notification would have been an affront
to Montague; and Montague, flushed with prosperity and glory, was
not in a mood to put up with affronts. The dispute was
compromised. Montague became First Lord of the Treasury; and the
vacant seat at the Board was filled by Sir Thomas Littleton, one
of the ablest and most consistent Whigs in the House of Commons.
But, from tenderness to Fox, these promotions were not announced
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
by Sunderland, who was also appointed one of the Lords Justices,
not without much murmuring from various quarters.795 To the
Tories Sunderland was an object of unmixed detestation. Some of
the Whig leaders had been unable to resist his insinuating
address; and others were grateful for the services which he had
lately rendered to the party. But the leaders could not restrain
their followers. Plain men, who were zealous for civil liberty
and for the Protestant religion, who were beyond the range of
Sunderland's irresistible fascination, and who knew that he had
sate in the High Commission, concurred in the Declaration of
Indulgence, borne witness against the Seven Bishops, and received
the host from a Popish priest, could not, without indignation and
shame, see him standing, with the staff in his hand, close to the
throne. Still more monstrous was it that such a man should be
entrusted with the administration of the government during the
absence of the Sovereign. William did not understand these
feelings. Sunderland was able; he was useful; he was unprincipled
indeed; but so were all the English politicians of the generation
which had learned, under the sullen tyranny of the Saints, to
disbelieve in virtue, and which had, during the wild jubilee of
the Restoration, been utterly dissolved in vice. He was a fair
specimen of his class, a little worse, perhaps, than Leeds or
Godolphin, and about as bad as Russell or Marlborough. Why he was
to be hunted from the herd the King could not imagine.

Notwithstanding the discontent which was caused by Sunderland's
elevation, England was, during this summer, perfectly quiet and
in excellent temper. All but the fanatical Jacobites were elated
by the rapid revival of trade and by the near prospect of peace.
Nor were Ireland and Scotland less tranquil.

In Ireland nothing deserving to be minutely related had taken
place since Sidney had ceased to be Lord Lieutenant. The
government had suffered the colonists to domineer unchecked over
the native population; and the colonists had in return been
profoundly obsequious to the government. The proceedings of the
local legislature which sate at Dublin had been in no respect
more important or more interesting than the proceedings of the
Assembly of Barbadoes. Perhaps the most momentous event in the
parliamentary history of Ireland at this time was a dispute
between the two Houses which was caused by a collision between
the coach of the Speaker and the coach of the Chancellor. There
were, indeed, factions, but factions which sprang merely from
personal pretensions and animosities. The names of Whig and Tory
had been carried across Saint George's Channel, but had in the
passage lost all their meaning. A man who was called a Tory at
Dublin would have passed at Westminster for as stanch a Whig as
Wharton. The highest Churchmen in Ireland abhorred and dreaded
Popery so much that they were disposed to consider every
Protestant as a brother. They remembered the tyranny of James,
the robberies, the burnings, the confiscations, the brass money,
the Act of Attainder, with bitter resentment. They honoured
William as their deliverer and preserver. Nay, they could not
help feeling a certain respect even for the memory of Cromwell;
for, whatever else he might have been, he had been the champion
and the avenger of their race. Between the divisions of England,
therefore, and the divisions of Ireland, there was scarcely any
thing in common. In England there were two parties, of the same
race and religion, contending with each other. In Ireland there
were two castes, of different races and religions, one trampling
on the other.

Scotland too was quiet. The harvest of the last year had indeed
been scanty; and there was consequently much suffering. But the
spirit of the nation was buoyed up by wild hopes, destined to end
in cruel disappointment. A magnificent daydream of wealth and
empire so completely occupied the minds of men that they hardly
felt the present distress. How that dream originated, and by how
terrible an awakening it was broken, will be related hereafter.

In the autumn of 1696 the Estates of Scotland met at Edinburgh.
The attendance was thin; and the session lasted only five weeks.
A supply amounting to little more than a hundred thousand pounds
sterling was voted. Two Acts for the securing of the government
were passed. One of those Acts required all persons in public
trust to sign an Association similar to the Association which had
been so generally subscribed in the south of the island. The
other Act provided that the Parliament of Scotland should not be
dissolved by the death of the King. But by far the most important
event of this short session was the passing of the Act for the
settling of Schools. By this memorable law it was, in the Scotch
phrase, statuted and ordained that every parish in the realm
should provide a commodious schoolhouse and should pay a moderate
stipend to a schoolmaster. The effect could not be immediately
felt. But, before one generation had passed away, it began to be
evident that the common people of Scotland were superior in
intelligence to the common people of any other country in Europe.
To whatever land the Scotchman might wander, to whatever calling
he might betake himself, in America or in India, in trade or in
war, the advantage which he derived from his early training
raised him above his competitors. If he was taken into a
warehouse as a porter, he soon became foreman. If he enlisted 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, in letters, in science, in all that constitutes
civilisation, as the Old World had never seen equalled, and as
even the New World has scarcely seen surpassed.

This wonderful change is to be attributed, not indeed solely, but
principally, to the national system of education. But to the men
by whom that system was established posterity owes no gratitude.
They knew not what they were doing. They were the unconscious
instruments of enlightening the understandings and humanising the
hearts of millions. But their own understandings were as dark and
their own hearts as obdurate as those of the Familiars of the
Inquisition at Lisbon. In the very month in which the Act for the
settling of Schools
was touched with the sceptre, the rulers of the Church and State
in Scotland began to carry on with vigour two persecutions worthy
of the tenth century, a persecution of witches and a persecution
of infidels. A crowd of wretches, guilty only of being old and
miserable, were accused of trafficking with the devil. The Privy
Council was not ashamed to issue a Commission for the trial of
twenty-two of these poor creatures.796 The shops of the
booksellers of Edinburgh were strictly searched for heretical
works. Impious books, among which the sages of the Presbytery
ranked Thomas Burnet's Sacred Theory of the Earth, were strictly
suppressed.797 But the destruction of mere paper and sheepskin
would not satisfy the bigots. Their hatred required victims who
could feel, and was not appeased till they had perpetrated a
crime such as has never since polluted the island.

A student of eighteen, named Thomas Aikenhead, whose habits were
studious and whose morals were irreproachable, had, in the course
of his reading, met with some of the ordinary arguments against
the Bible. He fancied that he had lighted on a mine of wisdom
which had been hidden from the rest of mankind, and, with the
conceit from which half educated lads of quick parts are seldom
free, proclaimed his discoveries to four or five of his
companions. Trinity in unity, he said, was as much a
contradiction 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 which would not last till the year
1800. For this wild talk, of which, in all probability, he would
himself have been ashamed long before he was five and twenty, he
was prosecuted by the Lord Advocate. The Lord Advocate was that
James Stewart who had been so often a Whig and so often a
Jacobite that it is difficult to keep an account of his
apostasies. He was now a Whig for the third if not for the fourth
time. Aikenhead might undoubtedly have been, by the law of
Scotland, punished with imprisonment till he should retract his
errors and do penance before the congregation of his parish; and
every man of sense and humanity would have thought this a
sufficient punishment for the prate of a forward boy. But
Stewart, as cruel as he was base, called for blood. There was
among the Scottish statutes one which made it a capital crime to
revile or curse the Supreme Being or any person of the Trinity.
Nothing that Aikenhead had said could, without the most violent
straining, be brought within the scope of this statute. But the
Lord Advocate exerted all his subtlety. The poor youth at the bar
had no counsel. He was altogether unable to do justice to his own
cause. He was convicted, and sentenced to be hanged and buried at
the foot of the gallows. It was in vain that he with tears
abjured his errors and begged piteously for mercy. Some of those
who saw him in his dungeon believed that his recantation was
sincere; and indeed it is by no means improbable that in him, as
in many other pretenders to philosophy who imagine that they have
completely emancipated themselves from the religion of their
childhood, the near prospect of death may have produced an entire
change of sentiment. He petitioned the Privy Council that, if his
life could not be spared, he might be allowed a short respite to
make his peace with the God whom he had offended. Some of the
Councillors were for granting this small indulgence. Others
thought that it ought not to be granted unless the ministers of
Edinburgh would intercede. The two parties were evenly balanced;
and the question was decided against the prisoner by the casting
vote of the Chancellor. The Chancellor was a man who has been
often mentioned in the course of this history, and never
mentioned with honour. He was that Sir Patrick Hume whose
disputatious and factious temper had brought ruin on the
expedition of Argyle, and had caused not a little annoyance to
the government of William. In the Club which had braved the King
and domineered over the Parliament there had been no more noisy
republican. But a title and a place had produced a wonderful
conversion. Sir Patrick was now Lord Polwarth; he had the custody
of the Great Seal of Scotland; he presided in the Privy Council;
and thus he had 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.
That divines should be deaf to the entreaties of a penitent who
asks, not for pardon, but for a little more time to receive their
instructions and to pray to Heaven for the mercy which cannot be
extended to him on earth, seems almost incredible. Yet so it was.
The ministers demanded, not only the poor boy's death, but his
speedy death, though it should be his eternal death. Even from
their pulpits they cried out for cutting him off. It is probable
that their real reason for refusing him a respite of a few days
was their apprehension that the circumstances of his case might
be reported at Kensington, and that the King, who, while reciting
the Coronation Oath, had declared from the throne that he would
not be a persecutor, might send down positive orders that the
sentence should not be executed. Aikenhead was hanged between
Edinburgh and Leith. He professed deep repentance, and suffered
with the Bible in his hand. The people of Edinburgh, though
assuredly not disposed to think lightly of his 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. It seems
that there was some apprehension of a rescue; for a strong body
of fusileers was under arms to support the civil power. The
preachers who were the boy's murderers crowded round him at the
gallows, and, while he was struggling in the last agony, insulted
Heaven with prayers more blasphemous than any thing that he had
ever uttered. Wodrow has told no blacker story of Dundee.798

On the whole, the British islands had not, during ten years, been
so free 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 French generals opened the campaign by taking
the small town of Aeth. They then meditated a far more important
conquest. They made a sudden push for Brussels, and would
probably have succeeded in their design but for the activity of
William. He was encamped on ground which lies within sight of the
Lion of Waterloo, when he received, late in the evening,
intelligence that the capital of the Netherlands was in danger.
He instantly put his forces in motion, marched all night, and,
having traversed the field destined to acquire, a hundred and
eighteen years later, a terrible renown, and threaded the long
defiles of the Forest of Soignies, he was at ten in the morning
on the spot from which Brussels had been bombarded two years
before, and would, if he had been only three hours later, have
been bombarded again. Here he surrounded himself with
entrenchments which the enemy did not venture to attack. This was
the most important military event which, during that summer, took
place in the Low Countries. In both camps there was an
unwillingness to run any great risk on the eve of a general
pacification.

Lewis had, early in the spring, for the first time during his
long reign, spontaneously offered equitable and honourable
conditions to his foes. He had declared himself willing to
relinquish the conquests which he 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 Empire and to acknowledge
the existing government of England.799

Those who remembered the great woes which his faithless and
merciless ambition had brought on Europe might well suspect that
this unwonted moderation was not to be ascribed to sentiments of
justice or humanity. But, whatever might be his motive for
proposing such terms, it was plainly the interest and the duty of
the Confederacy to accept them. For there was little hope indeed
of wringing from him by war concessions larger than those which
he now tendered as the price of peace. The most sanguine of his
enemies could hardly expect a long series of campaigns as
successful as the campaign of 1695. Yet in a long series of
campaigns, as successful as that of 1695, the allies would hardly
be able to retake all that he now professed himself ready to
restore. William, who took, as usual, a clear and statesmanlike
view of the whole situation, now gave his voice as decidedly for
concluding peace as he had in former years given it for
vigorously prosecuting the war; and he was backed by the public
opinion both of England and of Holland. But, unhappily, just at
the time when the two powers which alone, among the members of
the coalition, had manfully done their duty in the long struggle,
were beginning to rejoice in the near prospect of repose, some of
those governments which had never furnished their full
contingents, which had never been ready in time, which had been
constantly sending excuses in return for subsidies, began to
raise difficulties such as seemed likely to make the miseries of
Europe eternal.

Spain had, as William, in the bitterness of his spirit, wrote to
Heinsius, contributed nothing to the common cause but
rodomontades. She had made no vigorous effort even to defend her
own territories against invasion. She would have lost Flanders
and Brabant but for the English and Dutch armies. She would have
lost Catalonia but for the English and Dutch fleets. The Milanese
she had saved, not by arms, but by concluding, in spite of the
remonstrances of the English and Dutch governments, an
ignominious treaty of neutrality. She had not a ship of war able
to weather a gale. She had not a regiment that was not ill paid
and ill disciplined, ragged and famished. Yet repeatedly, within
the last two years, she had treated both William and the States
General with an impertinence which showed that she was altogether
ignorant of her place among states. She now became punctilious,
demanded from Lewis concessions which the events of the war gave
her no right to expect, and seemed to think it hard that allies,
whom she was constantly treating with indignity, were not willing
to lavish their blood and treasure for her 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 fairest terms of accommodation was the effect of selfish
ambition. The Catholic King was childless; he was sickly; his
life was not worth three years' purchase; and when he died, his
dominions would be left to be struggled for by a crowd of
competitors. Both the House of Austria and the House of Bourbon
had claims to that immense heritage. It was plainly for the
interest of the House of Austria that the important day, come
when it might, should find a great European coalition in arms
against the House of Bourbon. The object of the Emperor therefore
was that the war should continue to be carried on, as it had
hitherto been carried on, at a light charge to him and a heavy
charge to England and Holland, not till just conditions of peace
could be obtained, but simply till the King of Spain should die.
"The ministers of the Emperor," William wrote to Heinsius, "ought
to be ashamed of their conduct. It is intolerable that a
government which is doing every thing in its power to make the
negotiations fail, should contribute nothing to the common
defence."800

It is not strange that in such circumstances the work of
pacification should have made little progress. International law,
like other law, has its chicanery, its subtle pleadings, its
technical forms, which may too easily be so employed as to make
its substance inefficient. Those litigants therefore who did not
wish the litigation to come to a speedy close had no difficulty
in interposing delays. There was a long dispute about the place
where the conferences should be held. The Emperor proposed Aix la
Chapelle. The French objected, and proposed the Hague. Then the
Emperor objected in his turn. At last it was arranged that the
ministers of the Allied Powers should meet at the Hague, and that
the French plenipotentiaries should take up their abode five
miles off at Delft.801 To Delft accordingly repaired Harlay, a
man of distinguished wit and good breeding, sprung from one of
the great families of the robe; Crecy, a shrewd, patient and
laborious diplomatist; and Cailleres, who, though he was named
only third in the credentials, was much better informed than
either of his colleagues touching all the points which were
likely to be debated.802 At the Hague were the Earl of Pembroke
and Edward, Viscount Villiers, who represented England. Prior
accompanied them with the rank of Secretary. At the head of the
Imperial Legation was Count Kaunitz; at the head of the Spanish
Legation was Don Francisco Bernardo de Quiros; the ministers of
inferior rank it would be tedious to enumerate.803

Half way between Delft and the Hague is a village named Ryswick;
and near it then stood, in a rectangular garden, which was
bounded by straight canals, and divided into formal woods, flower
beds and melon beds, a seat of the Princes of Orange. The house
seemed to have been built expressly for the accommodation of such
a set of diplomatists as were 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 to each other. Each wing
was accessible by its own bridge, its own gate and its own
avenue. One wing was assigned to the Allies, the other to the
French, the hall in the centre to the mediator.804 Some
preliminary questions of etiquette were, not without difficulty,
adjusted; and at length, on the ninth of May, many coaches and
six, attended by harbingers, footmen and pages, approached the
mansion by different roads. The Swedish Minister alighted at the
grand entrance. The procession from the Hague came up the side
alley on the right. The procession from Delft came up the side
alley on the left. At the first meeting, the full powers of the
representatives of the belligerent governments were delivered to
the mediator. At the second meeting, forty-eight hours later, the
mediator performed the ceremony of exchanging these full powers.
Then several meetings were spent in settling how many carriages,
how many horses, how many lacqueys, how many pages, each minister
should be entitled to bring to Ryswick; whether the serving men
should carry canes; whether they should wear swords; whether they
should have pistols in their holsters; who should take the upper
hand in the public walks, and whose carriage should break the way
in the streets. It soon appeared that the mediator would have to
mediate, not only between the coalition and the French, but also
between the different members of the coalition. The Imperial
Ambassadors claimed a right to sit at the head of the table. The
Spanish Ambassador would not admit this pretension, and tried to
thrust himself in between two of them. The Imperial Ambassadors
refused to call the Ambassadors of Electors and Commonwealths by
the title of Excellency. "If I am not called Excellency," said
the Minister of the Elector of Brandenburg, "my master will
withdraw his troops from Hungary." The Imperial Ambassadors
insisted on having a room to themselves in the building, and on
having a special place assigned to their carriages in the court.
All the other Ministers of the Confederacy pronounced this a most
unjustifiable demand, and a whole sitting was wasted in this
childish dispute. It may easily be supposed that allies who were
so punctilious in their dealings with each other were not likely
to be very easy in their intercourse with the common enemy. The
chief business of Earlay and Kaunitz was to watch each other's
legs. Neither of them thought it consistent with the dignity of
the Crown which he served to advance towards the other faster
than the other advanced towards him. If therefore one of them
perceived that he had inadvertently stepped forward too quick, he
went back to the door, and the stately minuet began again. The
ministers of Lewis drew up a paper in their own language. The
German statesmen protested against this innovation, this insult
to the dignity of the Holy Roman Empire, this encroachment on the
rights of independent nations, and would not know any thing about
the paper till it had been translated from good French into bad
Latin. In the middle of April it was known to every body at the
Hague that Charles the Eleventh, King of Sweden, was dead, and
had been succeeded by his son; but it was contrary to etiquette
that any of the assembled envoys should appear to be acquainted
with this fact till Lilienroth had made a formal announcement; it
was not less contrary to etiquette that Lilienroth should make
such an announcement till his equipages and his household had
been put into mourning; and some weeks elapsed before his
coachmakers and tailors had completed their task. At length, on
the twelfth of June, he came to Ryswick in a carriage lined with
black and attended by servants in black liveries, and there, in
full congress, proclaimed that it had pleased God to take to
himself the most puissant King Charles the Eleventh. All the
Ambassadors then condoled with him on the sad and unexpected
news, and went home to put off their embroidery and to dress
themselves in the garb of sorrow. In such solemn trifling week
after week passed away. No real progress was made. Lilienroth had
no wish to accelerate matters. While the congress lasted, his
position was one of great dignity. He would willingly have gone
on mediating for ever; and he could not go on mediating, unless
the parties on his right and on his left went on wrangling.805

In June the hope of peace began to grow faint. Men remembered
that the last war had continued to rage, year after year, while a
congress was sitting at Nimeguen. The mediators had made their
entrance into that town in February 1676. The treaty had not been
signed till February 1679. Yet the negotiation of Nimeguen had
not proceeded more slowly than the negotiation of Ryswick. It
seemed but too probable that the eighteenth century would find
great armies still confronting each other on the Meuse and the
Rhine, industrious populations still ground down by taxation,
fertile provinces still lying waste, the ocean still made
impassable by corsairs, and the plenipotentiaries still
exchanging notes, drawing up protocols, and wrangling about the
place where this minister should sit, and the title by which that
minister should be called.

But William was fully determined to bring this mummery to a
speedy close. He would have either peace or war. Either was, in
his view, better than this intermediate state which united the
disadvantages of both. While the negotiation was pending there
could be no diminution of the burdens which pressed on his
people; and yet he could expect no energetic action from his
allies. If France was really disposed to conclude a treaty on
fair terms, that treaty should be concluded in spite of the
imbecility of the Catholic King and in spite of the selfish
cunning of the Emperor. If France was insecure, the sooner the
truth was known, the sooner the farce which was acting at Ryswick
was over, the sooner the people of England and Holland,--for on
them every thing depended,--were told that they must make up
their minds to great exertions and sacrifices, the better.

Pembroke and Villiers, though they had now the help of a veteran
diplomatist, Sir Joseph Williamson, could do little or nothing to
accelerate the proceedings of the Congress. For, though France
had promised that, whenever peace should be made, she would
recognise the Prince of Orange as King of Great Britain and
Ireland, she had not yet recognised him. His ministers had
therefore had no direct intercourse with Harlay, Crecy and
Cailleres. William, with the judgment and decision of a true
statesman, determined to open a communication with Lewis through
one of the French Marshals who commanded in the Netherlands. Of
those Marshals Villeroy was the highest in rank. But Villeroy was
weak, rash, haughty, irritable. Such a negotiator was far more
likely to embroil matters than to bring them to an amicable
settlement. Boufflers was a man of sense and temper; and
fortunately he had, during the few days which he had passed at
Huy after the fall of Namur, been under the care of Portland, by
whom he had been treated with the greatest courtesy and kindness.
A friendship had sprung up between the prisoner and his keeper.
They were both brave soldiers, honourable gentlemen, trusty
servants. William justly thought that they were far more likely
to come to an understanding than Harlay and Kaunitz even with the
aid of Lilienroth. Portland indeed had all the essential
qualities of an excellent diplomatist. In England, the people
were prejudiced against him as a foreigner; his earldom, his
garter, his lucrative places,
his rapidly growing wealth, excited envy; his dialect was not
understood; his manners were not those of the men of fashion who
had been formed at Whitehall; his abilities were therefore
greatly underrated; and it was the fashion to call him a
blockhead, fit only to carry messages. But, on the Continent,
where he was judged without malevolence, he made a very different
impression. It is a remarkable fact that this man, who in the
drawingrooms and coffeehouses of London was described as an
awkward, stupid, Hogan Mogan,--such was the phrase at that
time,--was considered at Versailles as an eminently polished courtier
and an eminently expert negotiator.806 His chief recommendation
however was his incorruptible integrity. It was certain that the
interests which were committed to his care would be as dear to
him as his own life, and that every report which he made to his
master would 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 off an express to Lewis, and received an answer in
the shortest time in which it was possible for a courier to ride
post to Versailles and back again. Lewis directed the Marshal to
comply with Portland's request, to say as little as possible, and
to learn as much as possible.807

On the twenty-eighth of June, according to the Old Style, the
meeting took place in the neighbourhood of Hal, a town which lies
about ten miles from Brussels, on the road to Mons. After the
first civilities had been exchanged, Boufflers and Portland
dismounted; their attendants retired; and the two negotiators
were left alone in an orchard. Here they walked up and down
during two hours, and, in that time, did much more business than
the plenipotentiaries at Ryswick were able to despatch in as many
months.808

Till this time the French government had entertained a suspicion,
natural indeed, but altogether erroneous, that William was bent
on protracting the war, that he had consented to treat merely
because he could not venture to oppose himself to the public
opinion both of England and of Holland, but that he wished the
negotiation to be abortive, and that the perverse conduct of the
House of Austria and the difficulties which had arisen at Ryswick
were to be chiefly ascribed to his machinations. That suspicion
was now removed. Compliments, cold, austere and full of dignity,
yet respectful, were exchanged between the two great princes
whose enmity had, during a quarter of a century, kept Europe in
constant agitation. The negotiation between Boufflers and
Portland proceeded as fast as the necessity of frequent reference
to Versailles would permit. Their first five conferences were
held in the open air; but, at their sixth meeting, they retired
into a small house in 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.
William had at first demanded two concessions from Lewis; and
Lewis had demanded two concessions from William.

William's first demand was that France should bind herself to
give no help or countenance, directly or indirectly, to any
attempt which might be made by James, or by James's adherents, to
disturb the existing order of things in England.

William's second demand was that James should no longer be
suffered to reside at a place so dangerously near to England as
Saint Germains.

To the first of these demands Lewis replied that he was perfectly
ready to bind himself by the most solemn engagements not to
assist or countenance, in any manner, any attempt to disturb the
existing order of things in England; but that it was inconsistent
with his honour that the name of his kinsman and guest should
appear in the treaty.

To the second demand Lewis replied that he could not refuse his
hospitality to an unfortunate king who had taken refuge in his
dominions, and that he could not promise even to indicate a wish
that James would quit Saint Germains. But Boufflers, as if
speaking his own thoughts, though doubtless saying nothing but
what he knew to be in conformity to his master's wishes, hinted
that the matter would probably be managed, and named Avignon as a
place where the banished family might reside without giving any
umbrage to the English government.

Lewis, on the other side, demanded, first, that a general amnesty
should be granted to the Jacobites; and secondly, that Mary of
Modena should receive 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 offences of men who showed a disposition to live
quietly for the future under his government; but he could not
consent to make the exercise of his prerogative of mercy a matter
of stipulation with any foreign power. The annuity claimed by
Mary of Modena he would willingly pay, if he could only be
satisfied that it would not be expended in machinations against
his throne and his person, in supporting, on the coast of Kent,
another establishment like that of Hunt, or in buying horses and
arms for another enterprise like that of Turnham Green. Boufflers
had mentioned Avignon. If James and his Queen would take up their
abode there, no difficulties would be made about the jointure.

At length all the questions in dispute were settled. After much
discussion an article was framed by which Lewis pledged his word
of honour that he would not favour, in any manner, any attempt to
subvert or disturb the existing government of England. William,
in return, gave his promise not to countenance any attempt
against the government of France. This promise Lewis had not
asked, and at first seemed inclined to consider as an affront.
His throne, he said, was perfectly secure, his title undisputed.
There were in his dominions no nonjurors, no conspirators; and he
did not think it consistent with his dignity to enter into a
compact which seemed to imply that he was in fear of plots and
insurrections such as a dynasty sprung from a revolution might
naturally apprehend. On this point, however, he gave way; and it
was agreed that the covenants should be strictly reciprocal.
William ceased to demand that James should be mentioned by name;
and Lewis ceased to demand that an amnesty should be granted to
James's adherents. It was determined that nothing should be said
in the treaty, either about the place where the banished King of
England should reside, or about the jointure of his Queen. But
William authorised his plenipotentiaries at the Congress to
declare that Mary of Modena should have whatever, on examination,
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 have
puzzled all Westminster Hall to answer. But it was well
understood that she would receive, without any contest, the
utmost that she could have any pretence for asking as soon as she
and her husband should retire to Provence or to Italy.809

Before the end of July every thing was settled, as far as France
and England were concerned. Meanwhile it was known to the
ministers assembled at Ryswick that Boufflers and Portland had
repeatedly met in Brabant, and that they were negotiating in a
most irregular and indecorous manner, without credentials, or
mediation, or notes, or protocols, without counting each other's
steps, and without calling each other Excellency. So barbarously
ignorant were they of the rudiments of the noble science of
diplomacy that they had very nearly accomplished the work of
restoring peace to Christendom while walking up and down an alley
under some apple trees. The English and Dutch loudly applauded
William's prudence and decision. He had cut the knot which the
Congress had only twisted and tangled. He had done in a month
what all the formalists and pedants assembled at the Hague would
not have done in ten years. Nor were the French plenipotentiaries
ill pleased. "It is curious," said Harlay, a man of wit and
sense, "that, while the Ambassadors are making war, the generals
should be making peace."810 But Spain preserved the same air of
arrogant listlessness; and the ministers of the Emperor,
forgetting apparently that their master had, a few months before,
concluded a treaty of neutrality for Italy without consulting
William, seemed to think it most extraordinary that William
should presume to negotiate without consulting their master. It
became daily more evident that the Court of Vienna was bent on
prolonging the war. On the tenth of July the French ministers
again proposed fair and honourable terms of peace, but added
that, if those terms were not accepted by the twenty-first of
August, the Most Christian King would not consider himself bound
by his offer.811 William in vain exhorted his allies to be
reasonable. The senseless pride of one branch of the House of
Austria and the selfish policy of the other were proof to all
argument. The twenty-first of August came and passed; the treaty
had not been signed.

France was at liberty to raise her demands; and she did so. For
just at this 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 by Vendome, had taken Barcelona. A French
squadron had stolen out of Brest, had eluded the allied fleets,
had crossed the Atlantic, had sacked Carthagena, and had returned
to France laden with treasure.812 The Spanish government passed
at once from haughty apathy to abject terror, and was ready to
accept any conditions which the conqueror might dictate. The
French plenipotentiaries announced to the Congress that their
master was determined to keep Strasburg, and that, unless the
terms which he had offered, thus modified, were accepted by the
tenth of September, he should hold himself at liberty to insist
on further modifications. Never had the temper of William been
more severely tried. He was provoked by the perverseness of his
allies; he was provoked by the imperious language of the enemy.
It was not without a hard struggle and a sharp pang that he made
up his mind to consent to what France now proposed. But he felt
that it would be utterly impossible, even if it were desirable,
to prevail on the House of Commons and on the States General to
continue the war for the purpose of wresting from France a single
fortress, a fortress in the fate of which neither England nor
Holland had any immediate interest, a fortress, too, which had
been lost to the Empire solely in consequence of the unreasonable
obstinacy of the Imperial Court. He determined to accept the
modified terms, and directed his Ambassadors at Ryswick to sign
on the prescribed day. The Ambassadors of Spain and Holland
received similar instructions. There was no doubt that the
Emperor, though he murmured and protested, would soon follow the
example of his confederates. That he might have time to make up
his mind, it was stipulated that he should be included in the
treaty if he notified his adhesion by the first of November.

Meanwhile James was moving the mirth and pity of all Europe by
his lamentations 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 the Confederacy a memorial in which he
adjured them to join with France in a crusade against England for
the purpose of restoring him to his inheritance, and of annulling
that impious Bill of Rights which excluded members of the true
Church from the throne.814 When he found that this appeal was
disregarded, he put forth a solemn protest against the validity
of all treaties to which the existing government of England
should be a party. He pronounced all the engagements into which
his kingdom had entered since the Revolution null and void. He
gave notice that he should not, if he should regain his power,
think himself bound by any of those engagements. He admitted that
he might, by breaking those engagements, bring great calamities
both on his own dominions and on all Christendom. But for those
calamities he declared that he should not think himself
answerable either before God or before man. It seems almost
incredible that even a Stuart, and the worst and dullest of the
Stuarts, should
have thought that the first duty, not merely of his own subjects,
but of all mankind, was to support his rights; that Frenchmen,
Germans, Italians, Spaniards, were guilty of a crime if they did
not shed their blood and lavish their wealth, year after year, in
his cause; that the interests of the sixty millions of human
beings to whom peace would be a blessing were of absolutely no
account when compared with the interests of one man.815

In spite of his protests the day of peace drew nigh. On the tenth
of September the Ambassadors of France, England, Spain and the
United Provinces, met at Ryswick. Three treaties were to be
signed, and there was a long dispute on the momentous question
which should be signed first. It was one in the morning before it
was settled that the treaty between France and the States
General should have precedence; and the day was breaking before
all the instruments had been executed. Then the
plenipotentiaries, with many bows, congratulated each other on
having had the honour of contributing to so great a work.816

A sloop was in waiting for Prior. He hastened on board, and on
the third day, after weathering an equinoctial gale, landed on
the coast of Suffolk.817

Very seldom had there been greater excitement in London than
during the month which preceded his arrival. When the west wind
kept back the Dutch packets, the anxiety of the people became
intense. Every morning hundreds of thousands rose up hoping to
hear that the treaty was signed; and every mail which came in
without bringing the good news caused bitter disappointment. The
malecontents, indeed, loudly asserted that there would be no
peace, and that the negotiation would, even at this late hour, be
broken off. One of them had seen a person just arrived from Saint
Germains; another had had the privilege of reading a letter in
the handwriting of Her Majesty; and all were confident that Lewis
would never acknowledge the usurper. Many of those who held this
language were under so strong a delusion that they backed their
opinion by large wagers. When the intelligence of the fall of
Barcelona arrived, all the treason taverns were in a ferment with
nonjuring priests laughing, talking loud, and shaking each other
by the hand.818

At length, in the afternoon of the thirteenth of September, some
speculators in the City received, by a private channel, certain
intelligence that the treaty had been signed before dawn on the
morning of the eleventh. They kept their own secret, and hastened
to make a profitable use of it; but their eagerness to obtain
Bank stock, and the high prices which they offered, excited
suspicion; and there was a general belief that on the next day
something important would be announced. On the next day Prior,
with the treaty, presented himself before the Lords justices at
Whitehall. Instantly a flag was hoisted on the Abbey, another on
Saint Martin's Church. The Tower guns proclaimed the glad
tidings. All the spires and towers from Greenwich to Chelsea made
answer. It was not one of the days on which the newspapers
ordinarily appeared; but extraordinary numbers, with headings in
large capitals, were, for the first time, cried about the
streets. The price of Bank stock rose fast from eighty-four to
ninety-seven. In a few hours triumphal arches began to rise in
some places. Huge bonfires were blazing in others. The Dutch
ambassador informed the States General that he should try to show
his joy by a bonfire worthy of the commonwealth which he
represented; and he kept his word; for no such pyre had ever been
seen in London. A hundred and forty barrels of pitch roared and
blazed before his house in Saint James's Square, and sent up a
flame which made Pall Mall and Piccadilly as bright as at
noonday.819

Among the Jacobites the dismay was great. Some of those who had
betted deep on the constancy of Lewis took flight. One
unfortunate zealot of divine right drowned himself. But soon the
party again took heart. The treaty had been signed; but it surely
would never be ratified. In a short time the ratification came;
the peace was solemnly proclaimed by the heralds; and the most
obstinate nonjurors began to despair. Some divines, who had
during eight years continued true to James, now swore allegiance
to William. They were probably men who held, with Sherlock, that
a settled government, though illegitimate in its origin, is
entitled to the obedience of Christians, but who had thought that
the government of William could not properly be said to be
settled while the greatest power in Europe not only refused to
recognise him, but strenuously supported his competitor.820 The
fiercer and more determined adherents of the banished family were
furious against Lewis. He had deceived, he had betrayed his
suppliants. It was idle to talk about the misery of his people.
It was idle to say that he had drained every source of revenue
dry, and that, in all the provinces of his kingdom, the peasantry
were clothed in rags, and were unable to eat their fill even of
the coarsest and blackest bread. His first duty was that which he
owed to the royal family of England. The Jacobites talked against
him, and wrote against him, as absurdly, and almost as
scurrilously, as they had long talked and written against
William. One of their libels was so indecent that the Lords
justices ordered the author 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 signs of public gladness. In every part of the kingdom
where the peace was proclaimed, the general sentiment was
manifested by banquets, pageants, loyal healths, salutes, beating
of drums, blowing of trumpets, breaking up 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 inscribed
with "God bless King William." At every county town a long
cavalcade of the principal gentlemen, from a circle of many
miles, escorted the mayor to the market cross. Nor was one
holiday enough for the expression of so much joy. On the fourth
of November, the anniversary of the King's birth, and on the
fifth, the anniversary of his landing at Torbay, the bellringing,
the shouting, and the illuminations were renewed both in London
and all over the country.822 On the day on which he returned to
his capital no work was done, no shop was opened, in the two
thousand streets of that immense mart. For that day the chiefs
streets had, mile after mile, been covered with gravel; all the
Companies had provided new banners; all the magistrates new
robes. Twelve thousand pounds had been expended in preparing
fireworks. Great multitudes of people from all the neighbouring
shires had come up to see the show. Never had the City been in a
more loyal or more joyous mood. The evil days were past. The
guinea had fallen to twenty-one shillings and sixpence. The bank
note had risen to par. The new crowns and halfcrowns, broad,
heavy and sharply milled, were ringing on all the counters. After
some days of impatient expectation it was known, on the
fourteenth of November, that His Majesty had landed at Margate.
Late on the fifteenth he reached Greenwich, and rested in the
stately building which, under his auspices, was turning from a
palace into a hospital. On the next morning, a bright and soft
morning, eighty coaches and six, filled with nobles, prelates,
privy councillors and judges, came to swell his train. In
Southwark he was 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 Surrey militia; the way from the bridge to Walbrook
by three regiments of the militia of the City. All along
Cheapside, on the right hand and on the left, the livery were
marshalled under the standards of their trades. At the east end
of Saint Paul's churchyard stood the boys of the school of Edward
the Sixth, wearing, as they still wear, the garb of the sixteenth
century. Round the Cathedral, down Ludgate Hill and along Fleet
Street, were drawn up three more regiments of Londoners. From
Temple Bar to Whitehall gate the trainbands of Middlesex and the
Foot Guards were under arms. The windows along the whole route
were gay with tapestry, ribands and flags. But the finest part of
the show was the innumerable crowd of spectators, all in their
Sunday clothing, and such clothing as only the upper classes of
other countries could afford to wear. "I never," William wrote
that evening to Heinsius, "I never saw such a multitude of
welldressed people." Nor was the King less struck by the
indications of joy and affection with which he was greeted from
the beginning to the end of his triumph. His coach, from the
moment when he entered it at Greenwich till he alighted from it
in the court of Whitehall, was accompanied by one long huzza.
Scarcely had he reached his palace when addresses of
congratulation, from all the great corporations of his kingdom,
were presented to him. It was remarked that the 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 vexation by the nonjurors, and with exultation by the
Whigs.823

The rejoicings were not yet over. At a council which was held a
few hours after the King's public entry, the second of December
was appointed to be the day of thanksgiving for the peace. The
Chapter of Saint Paul's resolved that, on that day, their noble
Cathedral, which had been long slowly rising on the ruins of a
succession of pagan and Christian temples, should be opened for
public worship. William announced his intention of being one of
the congregation. But it was represented to him that, if he
persisted in that intention, three hundred thousand people would
assemble to see him pass, and all the parish churches of London
would be left empty. He therefore attended the service in his own
chapel at Whitehall, and heard Burnet preach a sermon, somewhat
too eulogistic for the place.824 At Saint Paul's the magistrates
of the City appeared in all their state. Compton ascended, for
the first time, a throne rich with the sculpture of Gibbons, and
thence exhorted a numerous and splendid assembly. His discourse
has not been preserved; but its purport may be easily guessed;
for he preached on that noble Psalm: "I was glad when they said
unto me, Let us go into the house of the Lord." He doubtless
reminded his hearers that, in addition to the debt which was
common to them with all Englishmen, they owed as Londoners a
peculiar debt of gratitude to the divine goodness, which had
permitted them to efface the last trace of the ravages of the
great fire, and to assemble once more, for prayer and praise,
after so many years, on that spot consecrated by the devotions of
thirty generations. Throughout London, and in every part of the
realm, even to the remotest parishes of Cumberland and Cornwall,
the churches were filled on the morning of that day; and the
evening was an evening of festivity.825

These was indeed reason for joy and thankfulness. England had
passed through severe trials, and had come forth renewed in
health and vigour. Ten years before, it had seemed that both her
liberty and her independence were no more. Her liberty she had
vindicated by a just and necessary revolution. Her independence
she had reconquered by a not less just and necessary war. She had
successfully defended the order of things established by the Bill
of Rights against the mighty monarchy of France, against the
aboriginal population of Ireland, against the avowed hostility of
the nonjurors, against the more dangerous hostility of traitors
who were ready to take any oath, and whom no oath could bind. Her
open enemies had been victorious on many fields of battle. Her
secret enemies had commanded her fleets and armies, had been in
charge of her arsenals, had ministered at her altars, had taught
at her Universities, had swarmed in her public offices, had sate
in her Parliament, had bowed and fawned in the bedchamber of her
King. More than once it had seemed impossible that any thing
could avert a restoration which would inevitably have been
followed, first by proscriptions and confiscations, by the
violation of fundamental laws, and the persecution of the
established religion, and then by a third rising up of the nation
against that House which two depositions and two banishments had
only made more obstinate in evil. To the dangers of war and the
dangers of treason had recently been added the dangers of a
terrible financial and commercial crisis. But all those dangers
were over. There was peace abroad and at home. The kingdom, after
many years of ignominious vassalage, had resumed its ancient
place in the first rank of European powers. Many signs justified
the hope that the Revolution of 1688 would be our last
Revolution. The ancient constitution was adapting itself, by a
natural, a gradual, a peaceful development, to the wants of a
modern society. Already freedom of conscience and freedom of
discussion existed to an extent unknown in any preceding age. The
currency had been restored. Public credit had been reestablished.
Trade had revived. The Exchequer was overflowing. There was a
sense of relief every where, from the Royal Exchange to the most
secluded hamlets among the mountains of Wales and the fens of
Lincolnshire. The ploughmen, the shepherds, the miners of the
Northumbrian coalpits, the artisans who toiled at the looms of
Norwich and the anvils of Birmingham, felt the change, without
understanding it; and the cheerful bustle in every seaport and
every market town indicated, not obscurely, the commencement of a
happier age.

FN 1 Relation de la Voyage de Sa Majeste Britannique en Hollande,
enrichie de planches tres curieuses, 1692; Wagenaar; London
Gazette, Jan. 29. 1693; Burnet, ii. 71

FN 2 The names of these two great scholars are associated in a
very 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 hujus aevi Dioscuros, lucida literarum sidera, semper
praedicaverim, semper veneratus sim."

FN 3 Relation de la Voyage de Sa Majeste Britannique en Hollande
1692; London Gazette, Feb. 2. 1691,; Le Triomphe Royal ou l'on
voit descrits les Arcs de Triomphe, Pyramides, Tableaux et
Devises an Nombre de 65, erigez a la Haye a l'hounneur de
Guillaume Trois, 1692; Le Carnaval de la Haye, 1691. This last
work is a savage pasquinade on William.

FN 4 London Gazette, Feb. 5. 1693; His Majesty's Speech to the
Assembly of the States General of the United Provinces at the
Hague the 7th of February N.S., together with the Answer of their
High and Mighty Lordships, as both are extracted out of the
Register of the Resolutions of the States General, 1691.

FN 5 Relation de la Voyage de Sa Majeste Britannique en Hollande;
Burnet, ii. 72.; London Gazette, Feb. 12. 19. 23. 1690/1;
Memoires du Comte de Dohna; William Fuller's Memoirs.

FN 6 Wagenaar, lxii.; Le Carnaval de la Haye, Mars 1691; Le
Tabouret des Electeurs, April 1691; Ceremonial de ce qui s'est
passe a la Haye entre le Roi Guillaume et les Electeurs de
Baviere et de Brandebourg. This last tract is a MS. presented to
the British Museum by George IV,

FN 7 London Gazette, Feb. 23. 1691.

FN 8 The secret article by which the Duke of Savoy bound himself
to grant toleration to the Waldenses is in Dumont's collection.
It was signed Feb. 8, 1691.

FN 9 London Gazette from March 26. to April 13. 1691; Monthly
Mercuries of March and April; William's Letters to Heinsius of
March 18. and 29., April 7. 9.; Dangeau's Memoirs; The Siege of
Mons, a tragi-comedy, 1691. In this drama the clergy, who are in
the interest of France, persuade the burghers to deliver up the
town. This treason calls forth an indignant exclamation

"Oh priestcraft, shopcraft, how do ye effeminate
The minds of men!"

FN 10 Trial of Preston in the Collection of State Trials. A
person who was present gives the following account of Somers's
opening speech: "In the opening the evidence, there was no
affected exaggeration of matters, nor ostentation of a putid
eloquence, one after another, as in former trials, like so many
geese cackling in a row. Here was nothing besides fair matter of
fact, or natural and just reflections from thence arising." The
pamphlet from which I quote these words is entitled, An Account
of the late horrid Conspiracy by a Person who was present at the
Trials, 1691.

FN 11 State Trials.

FN 12 Paper delivered by Mr. Ashton, at his execution, to Sir
Francis Child, Sheriff of London; Answer to the Paper delivered
by Mr. Ashton. The Answer was written by Dr. Edward Fowler,
afterwards Bishop of Gloucester. Burnet, ii. 70.; Letter from
Bishop Lloyd to Dodwell, in the second volume of Gutch's
Collectanea Curiosa.

FN 13 Narcissus Luttrell's Diary.

FN 14 Narcissus Luttrell's Diary; Burnet, ii. 71.

FN 15 Letter of Collier and Cook to Sancroft among the Tanner
MSS.

FN 16 Caermarthen to William, February 3. 1690/1; Life of James,
ii. 443.

FN 17 That this account of what passed is true in substance is
sufficiently proved by the Life of James, ii. 443. I have taken
one or two slight circumstances from Dalrymple, who, I believe,
took them from papers, now irrecoverably lost, which he had seen
in the Scotch College at Paris.

FN 18 The success of William's "seeming clemency" is admitted by
the compiler of the Life of James. The Prince of Orange's method,
it is acknowledged, "succeeded so well that, whatever sentiments
those Lords which Mr. Penn had named night have had at that time,
they proved in effect most bitter enemies to His Majesty's cause
afterwards."-ii. 443.

FN 19 See his Diary; Evelyn's Diary, Mar. 25., April 22., July
11. 1691; Burnet, ii. 71.; Letters of Rochester to Burnet, March
21. and April 2. 1691.

FN 20 Life of James, ii. 443. 450.; Legge Papers in the
Mackintosh Collection.

FN 21 Burnet, ii. 71; Evelyn's Diary, Jan. 4. and 18. 1690,;
Letter from Turner to Sancroft, Jan. 19. 1690/1; Letter from
Sancroft to Lloyd of Norwich April 2. 1692. These two letters are
among the Tanner MSS. 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 Diary for February 1690. See also a
Dialogue between the Bishop of Ely and his Conscience, 16th
February 1690/1. The dialogue is interrupted by the sound of
trumpets. The Bishop hears himself proclaimed a traitor, and
cries out,

"Come, brother Pen, 'tis time we both were gone."

FN 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
of 1765.

FN 23 Journal, page 4

FN 24 Ibid. page 7.

FN 25 What they know, they know naturally, who turn from the
command and err from the spirit, whose fruit withers, who saith
that Hebrew, Greek, and Latine is the original: before Babell
was, the earth was of one language; and Nimrod the cunning
hunter, before the Lord which came out of cursed Ham's stock, the
original and builder of Babell, whom God confounded with many
languages, and this they say is the original who erred from the
spirit and command; and Pilate had his original Hebrew, Greek and
Latine, which crucified Christ and set over him."--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 put by the
editor into a little better English. "Dost thou think to make
ministers of Christ by these natural confused languages which
sprung from Babell, are admired in Babylon, and set atop of
Christ, the Life, by a persecutor?"-Page 64.

FN 26 His journal, before it was published, was revised by men of
more sense and knowledge than himself, and therefore, absurd as
it is, gives us no notion of his genuine style. The following is
a fair specimen. It is the exordium of one of his manifestoes.
"Them which the world who are without the fear of God calls
Quakers in scorn do deny all opinions, and they do deny all
conceivings, and they do deny all sects, and they do deny all
imaginations, and notions, and judgments which riseth out of the
will and the thoughts, and do deny witchcraft and all oaths, and
the world and the works of it, and their worships and their
customs with the light, and do deny false ways and false
worships, seducers and deceivers which are now seen to be in the
world with the light, and with it they are condemned, which light
leadeth to peace and life 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 and know the chaff
from the wheat, and doth see that which must be shaken with that
which cannot be shaken nor moved, what gives to see that which is
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 removed walks in peace not seen and
discerned by them who walks in those things unremoved and not
shaken."--A Warning to the World that are Groping in the Dark, by
G. Fox, 1655.

FN 27 See the piece entitled, Concerning Good morrow and Good
even, the World's Customs, but by the Light which into the World
is come by it made manifest to all who be in the Darkness, by G.
Fox, 1657.

FN 28 Journal, page 166.

FN 29 Epistle from Harlingen, 11th of 6th month, 1677.

FN 30 Of Bowings, by G. Fox, 1657.

FN 31 See, for example, the Journal, pages 24. 26. and 51.

FN 32 See, for example, the Epistle to Sawkey, a justice of the
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 Priest Tatham, page 92.

FN 33 Journal, page 55.

FN 34 Ibid. Page 300.

FN 35 Ibid. page 323.

FN 36 Ibid. page 48.

FN 37 "Especially of late," says Leslie, the keenest of all the
enemies of the sect, "some of them have made nearer advances
towards Christianity than ever before; and among them the
ingenious Mr. Penn has of late refined some of their gross
notions, and brought them into some form, and has made them speak
sense and English, of both which George Fox, their first and
great apostle, was totally ignorant . . . . . They endeavour all
they can to make it appear that their doctrine was uniform from
the beginning, and that there has been no alteration; and
therefore they take upon them to defend all the writings of
George Fox, and others of the first Quakers, and turn and wind
them to make them (but it is impossible) agree with what they
teach now at this day." (The Snake in the Grass, 3rd ed. 1698.
Introduction.) Leslie was always more civil to his brother
Jacobite Penn than to any other Quaker. Penn himself says of his
master, "As abruptly and brokenly as sometimes his sentences
would fall from him about divine things; it is well known they
were often as texts to many fairer declarations." That is to say,
George Fox talked nonsense and some of his friends paraphrased it
into sense.

FN 38 In the Life of Penn which is prefixed to his works, we are
told that the warrants were issued on the 16th of January 1690,
in consequence of an accusation backed by the oath of William
Fuller, who is truly designated as a wretch, a cheat and. an
impostor; and this story is repeated by Mr. Clarkson. It is,
however, certainly false. Caermarthen, writing to William on the
3rd of February, says that there was then only one witness
against Penn, and that Preston was that one witness. It is
therefore evident that Fuller was not the informer on whose oath
the warrant against Penn was issued. In fact Fuller appears from
his Life of himself, to have been then at the Hague. When
Nottingham wrote to William on the 26th of June, another witness
had come forward.

FN 39 Sidney to William, Feb. 27. 1690,. The letter is in
Dalrymple's Appendix, Part II. book vi. Narcissus Luttrell in his
Diary for September 1691, mentions Penn's escape from Shoreham to
France. On the 5th of December 1693 Narcissus made the following
entry: "William Penn the Quaker, having for some time absconded,
and having compromised the 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 paper containing a passage
of which the following is a translation

"Mr. Penn says that Your Majesty has had several occasions, but
never any so favourable, as the present; and he hopes that Your
Majesty will be earnest with the most Christian King not to
neglect it: that a descent with thirty thousand men will not only
reestablish Your Majesty, but according to all appearance break
the league." This paper is among the Nairne MSS., and was
translated by Macpherson.

FN 40 Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, April 11. 1691.

FN 41 Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, August í691; Letter from Vernon
to Wharton, Oct. 17. 1691, in the Bodleian.

FN 42 The opinion of the Jacobites appears from a letter which is
among the archives of the French War Office. It was written in
London on the 25th of June 1691.

FN 43 Welwood's Mercurius Reformatus, April 11. 24. 1691;
Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, April 1691; L'Hermitage to the States
General, June 19/29 1696; Calamy's Life. The story of Fenwick's
rudeness to Mary is told in different ways. I have followed what
seems to me the most authentic, and what is certainly the last
disgraceful, version.

FN 44 Burnet, ii. 71.

FN 45 Lloyd to Sancroft, Jan. 24. 1691. The letter is among the
Tanner MSS., and is printed in the Life of Ken by a Layman.

FN 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 to Wharton are in the Bodleian Library, and form part of
a highly curious collection, which was kindly pointed out to me
by Dr. Bandinel.

FN 47 Birch's Life of Tillotson; Leslie's Charge of Socinianism
against Dr. Tillotson considered, by a True Son of the Church
1695; Hickes's Discourses upon Dr. Burnet and Dr. Tillotson,
1695; Catalogue of Books of the Newest Fashion to be Sold by
Auction at the Whigs Coffee House, evidently printed in 1693.
Afore than sixty years later Johnson described a sturdy Jacobite
as firmly convinced that Tillotson died an Atheist; Idler, No,
10.

FN 48 Tillotson to Lady Russell, June 23. 1691.

FN 49 Birch's Life of Tillotson; Memorials of Tillotson by his
pupil John Beardmore; Sherlock's sermon preached in the Temple
Church on the death of Queen Mary, 1694/5.

FN 50 Wharton's Collectanea quoted in Birch's Life of Tillotson.

FN 51 Wharton's Collectanea quoted in D'Oyly's Life of Sancroft;
Narcissus Luttrell's Diary.

FN 52 The Lambeth MS. quoted in D'Oyly's Life of Sancroft;
Narcissus Luttrell's Diary; Vernon to Wharton, June 9. 11. 1691.

FN 53 See a letter of R. Nelson, dated Feb. 21. 1709/10, in the
appendix to N. Marshall's Defence of our Constitution in Church
and State, 1717; Hawkins's Life of Ken; Life of Ken by a Layman.

FN 54 See a paper dictated by him on the 15th Nov. 1693, in
Wagstaffe's letter from Suffolk.

FN 55 Kettlewell's Life, iii. 59.

FN 56 See D'Oyly's Life of Sancroft, Hallam's Constitutional
History, and Dr. Lathbury's History of the Nonjurors.

FN 57 See the autobiography of his descendant and namesake the
dramatist. See also Onslow's note on Burnet, ii. 76.

FN 58 A vindication of their Majesties' authority to fill the
sees of the deprived Bishops, May 20. 1691; London Gazette, April
27. and June 15. 1691; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, May 1691.
Among the Tanner MSS. are two letters from Jacobites to
Beveridge, one mild and decent, the other scurrilous even beyond
the ordinary scurrility of the nonjurors. The former will be
found in the Life of Ken by a Layman.

FN 59 It does not seem quite clear whether Sharp's scruple about
the deprived prelates was a scruple of conscience or merely a
scruple of delicacy. See his Life by his Son.

FN 60 See Overall's Convocation Book, chapter 28. Nothing can be
clearer or more to the purpose than his language

"When, having attained their ungodly desires, whether ambitious
kings by bringing any country into their subjection, or disloyal
subjects by rebellious rising against their natural sovereigns,
they have established any of the said degenerate governments
among their people, the authority either so unjustly established,
or wrung by force from the true and lawful possessor, being
always God's authority, and therefore receiving no impeachment by
the wickedness of those that have it, is ever, when such
alterations are thoroughly settled, to be reverenced and obeyed;
and the people of all sorts, as well of the clergy as of the
laity, are to be subject unto it, not only for fear, but likewise
for conscience 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 them is not of God, or that any who live within the
territories of any such new governments are not bound to be
subject to God's authority which is there executed, but may rebel
against the same, he doth greatly err."

FN 61 A list of all the pieces which I have read relating to
Sherlock's apostasy would fatigue the reader. I will mention a
few of different kinds. Parkinson's Examination of Dr. Sherlock's
Case of Allegiance, 1691; Answer to Dr. Sherlock's Case of
Allegiance, by a London Apprentice, 1691; the Reasons of the New
Converts taking the Oaths to the present Government, 1691; Utrum
horum? or God's ways of disposing of Kingdoms and some
Clergymen's ways of disposing of them, 1691; Sherlock and
Xanthippe 1691; Saint Paul's Triumph in his Sufferings for
Christ, by Matthew Bryan, LL.D., dedicated Ecclesim sub cruce
gementi; A Word to a wavering Levite; The Trimming Court Divine;
Proteus Ecclesiasticus, or observations on Dr. Sh--'s late Case
of Allegiance; the Weasil Uncased; A Whip for the Weasil; the
Anti-Weasils. Numerous allusions to Sherlock and his wife will be
found in the ribald writings of Tom Brown, Tom Durfey, and Ned
Ward. See Life of James, ii. 318. Several curious letters about
Sherlock's apostasy are among the Tanner MSS. I will give two or
three specimens of the rhymes which the Case 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."

FN 62 The chief authority for this part of my history is the Life
of James, particularly the highly important and interesting
passage which begins at page 444. and ends at page 450. of the
second volume.

FN 63 Russell to William, May 10 1691, in Dalrymple's Appendix,
Part II. Book vii. See also the Memoirs of Sir John Leake.

FN 64 Commons' Journals, Mar. 21. 24. 1679; Grey's Debates;
Observator.

FN 65 London Gazette, July 21. 1690.

FN 66 Life of James, ii. 449.

FN 67 Shadwell's Volunteers.

FN 68 Story's Continuation; Proclamation of February 21. 1690/1;
the London Gazette of March 12.

FN 69 Story's Continuation.

FN 70 Story's Impartial History; London Gazette, Nov. 17. 1690.

FN 71 Story's Impartial History. The year 1684 had been
considered as a time of remarkable prosperity, and the revenue
from the Customs had been unusually large. But the receipt from
all the ports of Ireland, during the whole year, was only a
hundred and twenty-seven thousand pounds. See Clarendon's
Memoirs.

FN 72 Story's History and Continuation; London Gazettes of
September 29. 1690, and Jan. 8. and Mar. 12. 1690/1.

FN 73 See the Lords' Journals of March 2. and 4. 1692/3 and the
Commons' Journals of Dec. 16. 1693, and Jan. 29. 1695/4. The
story, bad enough at best, was told by the personal and political
enemies of the Lords justices with additions which the House of
Commons evidently considered as calumnious, and which I really
believe to have been so. See the Gallienus Redivivus. The
narrative which Colonel Robert Fitzgerald, a Privy Councillor and
an eyewitness delivered in writing to the House of Lords, under
the sanction of an oath, seems to me perfectly trustworthy. It is
strange that Story, though he mentions the murder of the
soldiers, says nothing about Gafney.

FN 74 Burnet, ii. 66.; Leslie's Answer to King.

FN 75 Macariae Excidium; Fumeron to Louvois Jan 31/Feb 10 1691.
It is to be observed that Kelly, the author of the Macariae
Excidium and Fumeron, the French intendant, are most
unexceptionable witnesses. They were both, at this time, within
the walls of Limerick. There is no reason to doubt the
impartiality of the Frenchman; and the Irishman was partial to
his own countrymen.

FN 76 Story's Impartial History and Continuation and the London
Gazettes of December, January, February, and March 1690/1.

FN 77 It is remarkable that Avaux, though a very shrewd judge of
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 est brave de sa personne, a ce que l'on dit mais que
c'est un aussy mechant officie, qu'il en ayt, et qu'il n'a pas le
sens commun."

FN 78 Leslie's Answer to King, Macariae Excidium.

FN 79 Macariae Excidium.

FN 80 Macariae Excidium; Life of James, ii. 422.; Memoirs of
Berwick.

FN 81 Macariae Excidium.

FN 82 Life of James, ii. 422, 423.; Memoires de Berwick.

FN 83 Life of James, ii. 433- 457.; Story's Continuation.

FN 84 Life of James, ii. 438.; Light to the Blind; Fumeron to
Louvois, April 22/May 2 1691.

FN 85 Macariae Excidium; Memoires de Berwick; Life of James, ii.
451, 452.

FN 86 Macariae Excidium; Burnet, ii. 78.; Dangeau; The Mercurius
Reformatus, June 5. 1691.

FN 87 An exact journal of the victorious progress of their
Majesties' forces under the command of General Ginckle this
summer in Ireland, 1691; Story's Continuation; Mackay's Memoirs.

FN 88 London Gazette, June 18. 22. 1691; Story's Continuation;
Life of James, ii. 452. The author of the Life accuses the
Governor of treachery or cowardice.

FN 89 London Gazette, June 22. 25. July 2. 1691; Story's
Continuation; Exact Journal.

FN 90 Life of James, ii. 373. 376. 377

FN 91 Macariae Excidium. I may observe that this is one of the
many passages which lead me to believe the Latin text to be the
original. The Latin is: "Oppidum ad Salaminium amnis latus
recentibus ac sumptuosioribus aedificiis attollebatur; antiquius
et ipsa vetustate in cultius quod in Paphiis finibus exstructum
erat." The English version is: "The town on Salaminia side was
better built than that in Paphia." Surely there is in the Latin
the particularity which we might expect from a person who had
known Athlone before the war. The English version is contemptibly
bad, I need hardly say that the Paphian side is Connaught, and
the Salaminian side Leinster.

FN 92 I have consulted several contemporary maps of Athlone. One
will be found in Story's Continuation.

FN 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 absurd romance. It does not appear to have
been taken from the King's original Memoirs.

FN 94 Macariae Excidium. Here again I think that I see clear
proof that the English version of this curious work is only a bad
translation from the Latin. The English merely says: "Lysander,"-
-Sarsfield,--"accused him, a few days before, in the general's
presence," without intimating what the accusation was. The Latin
original runs thus: "Acriter Lysander, paucos ante dies, coram
praefecto copiarum illi exprobraverat nescio quid, quod in aula
Syriaca in Cypriorum opprobrium effutivisse dicebatur." The
English translator has, by omitting the most important words, and
by using the aorist instead of the preterpluperfect tense, made
the whole passage unmeaning.

FN 95 Story's Continuation; Macariae Excidium; Daniel Macneal to
Sir Arthur Rawdon, June 28. 1691, in the Rawdon Papers.

FN 96 London Gazette, July 6. 1691; Story's Continuation;
Macariae Excidium; Light to the Blind.

FN 97 Macariae Excidium; Light to the Blind.

FN 98 Life of James, ii. 460.; Life of William, 1702.

FN 99 Story's Continuation; Mackay's Memoirs; Exact Journal;
Diary of the Siege of Athlone.

FN 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.

FN 101 Story's Continuation; Life of James, ii. 455. Fumeron to
Louvois June 30/July 10 1691; London Gazette, July 13.

FN 102 The story, as told by the enemies of Tyrconnel, will be
found in the Macariae Excidium, and in a letter written by Felix
O'Neill to the Countess of Antrim on the 10th of July 1691. The
letter was found on the corpse of Felix O'Neill after the battle
of Aghrim. It is printed in the Rawdon Papers. The other story is
told in Berwick's Memoirs and in the Light to the Blind.

FN 103 Macariae Excidium; Life of James, ii 456.; Light to the
Blind.

FN 104 Macariae Excidium.

FN 105 Story's Continuation.

FN 106 Burnet, ii. 79.; Story's Continuation.

FN 107 "They maintained their ground much longer than they had
been accustomed to do," says Burnet. "They behaved themselves
like men of another nation," says Story. "The Irish were never
known to fight with more resolution," says the London Gazette.

FN 108 Story's Continuation; London Gazette, July 20. 23. 1691;
Memoires de Berwick; Life of James, ii. 456.; Burnet, ii. 79.;
Macariae Excidium; Light to the Blind; Letter from the English
camp to Sir Arthur Rawdon, in the Rawdon Papers; History of
William the Third, 1702.

The narratives to which I have referred differ very widely from
each other. Nor can the difference be ascribed solely or chiefly
to partiality. For no two narratives differ more widely than that
which will be found in the Life of James, and that which will be
found in the memoirs of his son.

In consequence, I suppose, of the fall of Saint Ruth, and of the
absence of D'Usson, there is at the French War Office no despatch
containing a detailed account of the battle.

FN 109 Story's Continuation.

FN 110 Story's Continuation; Macariae Excidium; Life of James,
ii. 464.; London Gazette, July 30., Aug. 17. 1691; Light to the
Blind.

FN 111 Story's Continuation; Macariae Excidium; Life of James,
ii. 459; London Gazette, July 30., Aug. 3. 1691.

FN 112 He held this language in a letter to Louis XIV., dated the
5/15th of August. This letter, written in a hand which it is not
easy to decipher, is in the French War Office. Macariae Excidium;
Light to the Blind.

FN 113 Macariae Excidium; Life of James, ii. 461, 462.

FN 114 Macariae Excidium; Life of James, ii. 459. 462.; London
Gazette, Aug. 31  1691; Light to the Blind; D'Usson and Tesse to
Barbesieux, Aug. 13/23.

FN 115 Story's Continuation; D'Usson and Tesse to Barbesieux Aug.
169r. An unpublished letter from Nagle to Lord Merion of Auk. 15.
This letter is quoted by Mr. O'Callaghan in a note on Macariae
Excidium.

FN 116 Macariae Excidium; Story's Continuation.

FN 117 Story's Continuation; London Gazette, Sept. 28. 1691; Life
of James, ii. 463.; Diary of the Siege of Lymerick, 1692; Light
to the Blind. In the account of the siege which is among the
archives of the French War Office, it is said that the Irish
cavalry behaved worse than the infantry.

FN 118 Story's Continuation; Macariae Excidium; R. Douglas to Sir
A. Rawdon, Sept. 2S. 1691, in the Rawdon Papers; London Gazette,
October 8.; Diary of the Siege of Lymerick; Light to the Blind;
Account of 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 to be noticed merely for its preeminent absurdity. The
writer tells us that seven hundred of the Irish held out some
time against a much larger force, and warmly praises their
heroism. He did not know, or did not choose to mention, one fact
which is essential to the right understanding of the story;
namely, that these seven hundred men were in a fort. That a
garrison should defend a fort during a few hours against superior
numbers is surely not strange. Forts are built because they can
be defended by few against many.

FN 119 Account of the Siege of Limerick in the archives of the
French War Office; Story's Continuation.

FN 120 D'Usson to Barbesieux, Oct. 4/14. 1691.

FN 121 Macariae Excidium.

FN 122 Story's Continuation; Diary of the Siege of Lymerick.

FN 123 London Gazette, Oct. S. 1691; Story's Continuation; Diary
of the Siege of Lymerick.

FN 124 Life of James, 464, 465.

FN 125 Story's Continuation.

FN 126 Story's Continuation; Diary of the Siege of Lymerick;
Burnet, ii. 81.; London Gazette, Oct. 12. 1691.

FN 127 Story's Continuation; Diary of the Siege of Lymerick;
London Gazette, Oct. 15. 1691.

FN 128 The articles of the civil treaty have often been
reprinted.

FN 129 Story's Continuation; Diary of the Siege of Lymerick.

FN 130 Story's Continuation; Diary of the Siege of Lymerick.

FN 131 Story's Continuation. His narrative is confirmed by the
testimony which an Irish Captain who was present has left us in
bad Latin. "Hic apud sacrum omnes advertizantur a capellanis ire
potius in Galliam."

FN 132 D'Usson and Tesse to Barbesieux, Oct. 17. 1691.

FN 133 That there was little sympathy between the Celts of Ulster
and those of the Southern Provinces is evident from the curious
memorial which the agent of Baldearg O'Donnel delivered to Avaux.

FN 134 Treasury Letter Book, June 19. 1696; Journals of the Irish
House of Commons Nov. 7. 1717.

FN 135 This I relate on Mr. O'Callaghan's authority. History of
the Irish Brigades Note 47.

FN 136 There is, Junius wrote eighty years after the capitulation
of Limerick, "a certain family in this country on which nature
seems to have entailed a hereditary baseness of disposition. As
far as their history has been known, the son has regularly
improved upon the vices of the father, and has taken care to
transmit them pure and undiminished into the bosom of his
successors." Elsewhere he says of the member for Middlesex, "He
has degraded even the name of Luttrell." He exclaims, in allusion
to the marriage of the Duke of Cumberland and Mrs. Horton who was
born a Luttrell: "Let Parliament look to it. A Luttrell shall
never succeed to the Crown of England." It is certain that very
few Englishmen can have sympathized with Junius's abhorrence of
the Luttrells, or can even have understood it. Why then did he
use expressions which to the great majority of his readers must
have been unintelligible? My answer is that Philip Francis was
born, and passed the first ten years of his life, within a walk
of Luttrellstown.

FN 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.

FN 138 Story's Continuation; London Gazette Jan. 4. 1691/2

FN 139 Story's Continuation; Macariae Excidium, and Mr.
O'Callaghan's note; London Gazette, Jan. 4. 1691/2.

FN 140 Some interesting facts relating to Wall, who was minister
of Ferdinand the Sixth and Charles the Third, will be found in
the letters of Sir Benjamin Keene and Lord Bristol, published in
Coxe's Memoirs of Spain.

FN 141 This is Swift's language, language held not once, but
repeatedly and at long intervals. In the Letter on the
Sacramental Test, written in 1708, he says: "If we (the clergy)
were under any real fear of the Papists in this kingdom, it would
be hard to think us so stupid as not to be equally apprehensive
with others, since we are likely to be the greater and more
immediate sufferers; but, on the contrary, we look upon them to
be altogether as inconsiderable as the women and children . . . .
The common people without leaders, without discipline, or natural
courage, being little better than hewers of wood and drawers of
water, are out of all capacity of doing any mischief, if they
were ever so well inclined." In the Drapier's Sixth Letter,
written in 1724, he says: "As to the people of this kingdom, they
consist either of Irish Papists, who are as inconsiderable, in
point of power, as the women and children, or of English
Protestants." Again, in the Presbyterian's Plea of Merit written
in 1731, he says

"The estates of Papists are very few, crumbling into small
parcels, and daily diminishing; their common people are sunk in
poverty, ignorance and cowardice, and of as little consequence as
women and children. Their nobility and gentry are at least one
half ruined, banished or converted. They all soundly feel the
smart of what they suffered in the last Irish war. Some of them
are already retired into foreign countries; others, as I am told,
intend to follow them; and the rest, I believe to a man, who
still possess any lands, are absolutely resolved never to hazard
them again for the sake of establishing their superstition."

I may observe that, to the best of my belief, Swift never, in any
thing that he wrote, used the word Irishman to denote a person of
Anglosaxon race born in Ireland. He no more considered himself as
an Irishman than an Englishman born at Calcutta considers himself
as a Hindoo.

FN 142 In 1749 Lucas was the idol of the democracy of his own
caste. It is curious to see what was thought of him by those who
were not of his own caste. One of the chief Pariah, Charles
O'Connor, wrote thus: "I am by no means interested, nor is any of
our unfortunate population, in this affair of Lucas. A true
patriot would not have betrayed such malice to such unfortunate
slaves as we." He adds, with too much truth, that those boasters
the Whigs wished to have liberty all to themselves.

FN 143 On this subject Johnson was the most liberal politician of
his time. "The Irish," he said with great warmth, "are in a most
unnatural state for we see there the minority prevailing over the
majority." I suspect that Alderman Beckford and Alderman
Sawbridge would have been far from sympathizing with him. Charles
O'Connor, whose unfavourable opinion of the Whig Lucas I have
quoted, pays, in the Preface to the Dissertations on Irish
History, a high compliment to the liberality of the Tory Johnson.

FN 144 London Gazette, Oct. 22. 1691.

FN 145 Burnet, ii. 78, 79.; Burchett's Memoirs of Transactions at
Sea; Journal of the English and Dutch fleet in a Letter from an
Officer on board the Lennox, at Torbay, licensed August 21. 1691.
The writer says: "We attribute our health, under God, to the
extraordinary care taken in the well ordering of our provisions,
both meat and drink."

FN 146 Lords' and Commons' Journals, Oct. 22. 1691.

FN 147 This appears from a letter written by Lowther, after he
became Lord Lonsdale, to his son. A copy of this letter is among
the Mackintosh MSS.

FN 148 See Commons' Journals, Dec. 3. 1691; and Grey's Debates.
It is to be regretted that the Report of the Commissioners of
Accounts has not been preserved. Lowther, in his letter to his
son, alludes to the badgering of this day with great bitterness.
"What man," he asks, "that hath bread to eat, can endure, after
having served with all the diligence and application mankind is
capable of, and after having given satisfaction to the King from
whom all officers of State derive their authoritie, after acting
rightly by all men, to be hated by men who do it to all people in
authoritie?"

FN 149 Commons' Journals, Dec. 12. 1691.

FN 150 Commons' Journals, Feb. 15. 1690/1; Baden to the States
General, Jan 26/Feb 5

FN 151 Stat. 3 W. & M. c. 2., Lords' Journals; Lords' Journals,
16 Nov. 1691; Commons' Journals, Dec. 1. 9. 5.

FN 152 The Irish Roman Catholics complained, and with but too
much reason, that, at a later period, the Treaty of Limerick was
violated; 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 Light to the Blind speaking of the first article,
says: "This article, in seven years after, was broken by a
Parliament in Ireland summoned by the Prince of Orange, wherein a
law was passed for banishing the Catholic bishops, dignitaries,
and regular clergy." Surely he never would have written thus, if
the article really had, only two months after it was signed, been
broken by the English Parliament. The Abbe Mac Geoghegan, too,
complains that the Treaty was violated some years after it was
made. But he does not pretend that it was violated by Stat. 3 W.
& M. c. 2.

FN 153 Stat. 21 Jac. 1. c. 3.

FN 154 See particularly Two Letters by a Barrister concerning the
East India Company (1676), and an Answer to the Two Letters
published in the same year. See also the judgment of Lord
Jeffreys concerning the Great Case of Monopolies. This judgment
was published in 1689, after the downfall of Jeffreys. It was
thought necessary to apologize in the preface for printing
anything that bore so odious a name. "To commend this argument,"
says the editor, "I'll not undertake because of the author. But
yet I may tell you what is told me, that it is worthy any
gentleman's perusal." The language of Jeffreys is most offensive,
sometimes scurrilous, sometimes basely adulatory; but his
reasoning as to the mere point of law is certainly able, if not
conclusive.

FN 155 Addison's Clarinda, in the week of which she kept a
journal, read nothing but Aurengzebe; Spectator, 323. She dreamed
that Mr. Froth lay at her feet, and called her Indamora. Her
friend Miss Kitty repeated, without book, the eight best lines of
the play; those, no doubt, which begin, "Trust on, and think to-
morrow will repay." There are not eight finer lines in Lucretius.

FN 156 A curious engraving of the India House of the seventeenth
century will be found in the Gentleman's Magazine for December
1784.

FN 157 See Davenant's Letter to Mulgrave.

FN 158 Answer to Two Letters concerning the East India Company,
1676.

FN 159 Anderson's Dictionary; G. White's Account of the Trade to
the East Indies, 1691; Treatise on the East India Trade by
Philopatris, 1681.

FN 160 Reasons for constituting a New East India Company in
London, 1681; Some Remarks upon the Present State of the East
India Company's Affairs, 1690.

FN 161 Evelyn, March 16. 1683

FN 162 See the State Trials.

FN 163 Pepys's Diary, April 2. and May 10 1669.

FN 164 Tench's Modest and Just Apology for the East India
Company, 1690.

FN 165 Some Remarks on the Present State of the East India
Company's Affairs, 1690; Hamilton's New Account of the East
Indies.

FN 166 White's Account of the East India Trade, 1691; Pierce
Butler's Tale, 1691.

FN 167 White's Account of the Trade to the East Indies, 1691;
Hamilton's New Account of the East Indies; Sir John Wyborne to
Pepys from Bombay, Jan. 7. 1688.

FN 168 London Gazette, Feb. 16/26 1684.

FN 169 Hamilton's New Account of the East Indies.

FN 170 Papillon was of course reproached with his inconsistency.
Among the pamphlets of that time is one entitled "A Treatise
concerning the East India Trade, wrote at the instance of Thomas
Papillon, Esquire, and in his House, and printed in the year
1680, and now reprinted for the better Satisfaction of himself
and others."

FN 171 Commons' Journals, June 8. 1689.

FN 172 Among the pamphlets in which Child is most fiercely
attacked are Some Remarks on the Present State of the East India
Company's Affairs, 1690; fierce Butler's Tale, 1691; and White's
Account of the Trade to the East Indies, 1691.

FN 173 Discourse concerning the East India Trade, showing it to
be unprofitable to the Kingdom, by Mr. Cary; pierce Butler's
Tale, representing the State of the Wool Case, or the East India
Case truly stated, 1691. Several petitions to the same effect
will be found in the Journals of the House of Commons.

FN 174 Reasons against establishing an East India Company with a
joint Stock, exclusive to all others, 1691.

FN 175 The engagement was printed, and has been several times
reprinted. As to Skinners' Hall, see Seymour's History of London,
1734

FN 176 London Gazette, May 11. 1691; White's Account of the East
India Trade.

FN 177 Commons' Journals, Oct. 28. 1691.

FN 178 Ibid. Oct. 29. 1691.

FN 179 Rowe, in the Biter, which was damned, and deserved to be
so, introduced an old gentleman haranguing his daughter thus:
"Thou hast been bred up like a virtuous and a sober maiden; and
wouldest thou take the part of a profane wretch who sold his
stock out of the Old East India Company?"

FN 180 Hop to the States General, Oct 30/Nov. 9 1691.

FN 181 Hop mentions the length and warmth of the debates; Nov.
12/22. 1691. See the Commons' Journals, Dec. 17. and 18.

FN 182 Commons' Journals, Feb 4. and 6. 1691.

FN 183 Ibid. Feb. 11. 1691.

FN 184 The history of this bill is to be collected from the bill
itself, which is among the Archives of the Upper House, from the
Journals of the two Houses during November and December 1690, and
January 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.

FN 185 The letter, dated December 1. 1691, is in the Life of
James, ii. 477.

FN 186 Burnet, ii. 85.; and Burnet MS. Harl. 6584. See also a
memorial signed by Holmes, but consisting of intelligence
furnished by Ferguson, among the extracts from the Nairne Papers,
printed by Macpherson. It bears date October 1691. "The Prince of
Orange," says Holmes, "is mortally hated by the English. They see
very fairly that he hath no love for them; neither doth he
confide in them, but all in his Dutch. . . It's not doubted but
the Parliament will not be for foreigners to ride them with a
caveson."

FN 187 Evelyn's Diary, Jan. 24.; Hop to States General, Jan
22/Feb 1 1691; Bader to States General, Feb. 16/26

FN 188 The words of James are these; they were written in
November 1692:- Mes amis, l'annee passee, avoient dessein de me
rappeler par le Parlement. La maniere etoit concertee; et Milord
Churchill devoit proposer dans le Parlement de chasser tous les
etrangers tant des conseils et de l'armee que du royaume. Si le
Prince d'Orange avoit consenti a cette proposition ils l'auroient
eu entre leurs mains. S'il l'avoit refusee, il auroit fait
declarer le Parlement contre lui; et en meme temps Milord
Churchill devoir se declarer avec l'armee pour le Parlement; et
la flotte devoit faire de meme; et l'on devoit me rappeler. L'on
avoit deja commence d'agir dans ce projet; et on avoit gagne un
gros parti, quand quelques fideles sujets indiscrets, croyant me
servir, et s'imaginant que ce que Milord Churchill faisoit
n'etoit pas pour moi, mais pour la Princesse de Danemarck, eurent
l'imprudence de decouvrir le tout a Benthing, et detournerent
ainsi le coup."

A translation of this most remarkable passage, which at once
solves many interesting and perplexing problems, was published
eighty years ago by Macpherson. 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
strongly confirmed by the Burnet MS. Harl. 6584. "Marleburrough,"
Burnet wrote in September 1693, "set himself to decry the King's
conduct and to lessen him in all his discourses, and to possess
the English with an aversion to the Dutch, who, as he pretended,
had a much larger share of the King'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 all other nations, and to
overvalue themselves, were easily enough inflamed. So it grew to
be the universal subject of discourse, and was the constant
entertainment at Marleburrough's, where there was a constant
randivous of the English officers." About the dismission of
Marlborough, Burnet wrote at the same time: "The King said to
myself upon it that he had very good reason to believe that he
had made his peace with King James and was engaged in a
correspondence with France. It is certain he was doing all he
could to set on a faction in the army and the nation against the
Dutch."

It is curious to compare this plain tale, told while the facts
were recent, with the shuffling narrative which Burnet prepared
for the public eye many years later, when Marlborough was closely
united to the Whigs, and was rendering great and splendid
services to the country. Burnet, ii. 90.

The Duchess of Marlborough, in her Vindication, had the
effrontery to declare that she "could never learn what cause the
King assigned for his displeasure." She suggests that Young's
forgery may have been the cause. Now she must have known that
Young's forgery was not committed till some months after her
husband's disgrace. She was indeed lamentably deficient in
memory, a faculty which is proverbially said to be necessary to
persons of the class to which she belonged. Her own volume
convicts her of falsehood. She gives us a letter from Mary to
Anne, in which Mary says, "I need not repeat the cause my Lord
Marlborough has given the King to do what he has done." These
words plainly imply that Anne had been apprised of the cause. If
she had not been apprised of the cause would she not have said so
in her answer? But we have her answer; and it contains 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 adored
Mrs. Freeman?

FN 189 My account of these transactions I have been forced to
take from the narrative of the Duchess of Marlborough, a
narrative which is to be read with constant suspicion, except
when, as is often the case, she relates some instance of her own
malignity and insolence.

FN 190 The Duchess of Marlborough's Vindication; Dartmouth's Note
on Burnet, ii. 92.; Verses of the Night Bellman of Piccadilly and
my Lord Nottingham's Order thereupon, 1691. There is a bitter
lampoon on Lady Marlborough of the same date, entitled The
Universal Health, a true Union to the Queen and Princess.

FN 191 It must not be supposed that Anne was a reader of
Shakspeare. She had no doubt, often seen the Enchanted Island.
That miserable rifacimento of the Tempest was then a favourite
with the town, on account of the machinery and the decorations.

FN 192 Burnet MS. Harl. 6584.

FN 193 The history of an abortive attempt to legislate on this
subject may be studied in the Commons' Journals of 1692/3.

FN 194 North's Examen,

FN 195 North's Examen; Ward's London Spy; Crosby's English
Baptists, vol. iii. chap. 2.

FN 196 The history of this part of Fuller's life I have taken
from his own narrative.

FN 197 Commons' Journals, Dec. 2. and 9. 1691; Grey's Debates.

FN 198 Commons' Journals, Jan. 4. 1691/2 Grey's Debates.

FN 199 Commons' Journals, Feb. 22, 23, and 24. 1691/2.

FN 200 Fuller's Original Letters of the late King James and
others to his greatest Friends in England.

FN 201 Burnet, ii. 86. Burnet had evidently forgotten what the
bill contained. Ralph knew nothing about it but what he had
learned from Burnet. I have scarcely seen any allusion to the
subject in any of the numerous Jacobite lampoons of that day. But
there is a remarkable passage in a pamphlet which appeared
towards the close of William's reign, and which is entitled The
Art of Governing by Parties. The writer says, "We still want an
Act to ascertain some fund for the salaries of the judges; and
there was a bill, since the Revolution, past both Houses of
Parliament to this purpose; but whether it was for being any way
defective or otherwise that His Majesty refused to assent to it,
I cannot remember. But I know the reason satisfied me at that
time. And I make 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 to some grave objection which did not appear in
the title, and which no historian had noticed. I found among the
archives of the House of Lords the original parchment, endorsed
with the words "Le Roy et La Royne s'aviseront." And it was clear
at the first glance what the objection was.

There is a hiatus in that part of Narcissus Luttrell's Diary
which relates to this matter. "The King," he wrote, "passed ten
public bills and thirty-four private ones, and rejected that of
the--"

As to the present practice of the House of Commons in such cases,
see Hatsell's valuable work, ii. 356. I quote the edition of
1818. Hatsell says that many bills which affect the interest of
the Crown may be brought in without any signification of the
royal consent, and that it is enough if the consent be signified
on the second reading, or even later; but that, in a proceeding
which affects the hereditary revenue, the consent must be
signified in the earliest stage.

FN 202 The history of these ministerial arrangements I have taken
chiefly from the London Gazette of March 3. and March 7. 1691/2
and from Narcissus Luttrell's Diary for that month. Two or three
slight touches are from contemporary pamphlets.

FN 203 William to Melville, May 22. 1690.

FN 204 See the preface to the Leven and Melville Papers. I have
given what I believe to be a true explanation of Burnet's
hostility to Melville. Melville's descendant who has deserved
well of all students of history by the diligence and fidelity
with which he has performed his editorial duties, thinks that
Burnet's judgment was blinded by zeal for Prelacy and hatred of
Presbyterianism. This accusation will surprise and amuse English
High Churchmen.

FN 205 Life of James, ii. 468, 469.

FN 206 Burnet, ii. 88.; Master of Stair to Breadalbane, Dee. 2.
1691.

FN 207 Burnet, i. 418.

FN 208 Crawford to Melville, July 23. 1689; The Master of Stair
to Melville, Aug. 16. 1689; Cardross to Melville, Sept. 9. 1689;
Balcarras's Memoirs; Annandale's Confession, Aug. i4. 1690.

FN 209 Breadalbane to Melville, Sept. 17. 1690.

FN 210 The Master of Stair to Hamilton, Aug. 17/27. 1691; Hill to
Melville, June 26. 1691; The Master of Stair to Breadalbane, Aug.
24. 1691.

FN 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, or sorners as we call it, and much of a piece
with your highwaymen in England. Several governments desired to
bring them to justice; but their country was inaccessible to
small parties." See An impartial Account of some of the
Transactions in Scotland concerning the Earl of Breadalbane,
Viscount and Master of Stair, Glenco Men, &c., London, 1695.

FN 212 Report of the Commissioners, signed at Holyrood, June 20.
1695.

FN 213 Gallienus Redivivus; Burnet, ii. 88.; Report of the
Commission of 1695.

FN 214 Report of the Glencoe Commission, 1695.

FN 215 Hill to Melville, May 15. 1691.

FN 216 Ibid. June 3. 1691.

FN 217 Burnet, ii. 8, 9.; Report of the Glencoe Commission. The
authorities quoted in this part of the Report were the
depositions of Hill, of Campbell of Ardkinglass, and of Mac Ian's
two sons.

FN 218 Johnson's Tour to the Hebrides.

FN 219 Proclamation of the Privy Council of Scotland, Feb. q.
1589. I give this reference on the authority of Sir Walter Scott.
See the preface to the Legend of Montrose.

FN 220 Johnson's Tour to the Hebrides.

FN 221 Lockhart's Memoirs.

FN 222 "What under heaven was the Master's byass in this matter?
I can imagine none." Impartial Account, 1695. "Nor can any man of
candour and ingenuity imagine that the Earl of Stair, who had
neither estate, friendship nor enmity in that country, nor so
much as knowledge of these persons, and who was never noted for
cruelty in his temper, should have thirsted after the blood of
these wretches." Complete History of Europe, 1707.

FN 223 Dalrymple, in his Memoirs, relates this story, without
referring to any authority. His authority probably was family
tradition. That reports were current in 1692 of horrible crimes
committed by the Macdonalds of Glencoe, is certain from the
Burnet MS. Marl. 6584. "They had indeed been guilty of many black
murthers," were Burnet's words, written in 1693. He afterwards
softened down this expression.

FN 224 That the plan originally framed by the Master of Stair was
such as I have represented it, is clear from parts of his letters
which are quoted in the Report of 1695; and from his letters to
Breadalbane of October 27., December 2., and December 3. 1691. Of
these letters to Breadalbane the last two are in Dalrymple's
Appendix. The first is in the Appendix to the first volume of Mr.
Burtons valuable History of Scotland. "It appeared," says Burnet
(ii. 157.), "that a black design was laid, not only to cut off
the men of Glencoe, but a great many more clans, reckoned to be
in all above six thousand persons."

FN 225 This letter is in the Report of 1695.

FN 226 London Gazette, January 14and 18. 1691.

FN 227 "I could have wished the Macdonalds had not divided; and I
am sorry that Keppoch and Mackian of Glenco are safe."--Letter of
the Master of Stair to Levingstone, Jan. 9. 1691/2 quoted in the
Report of 1695.

FN 228 Letter of the Master of Stair to Levingstone, Jan. 11
1692, quoted in the Report of 1695.

FN 229 Burnet, in 1693, wrote thus about William:--"He suffers
matters to run till there is a great heap of papers; and then he
signs them as much too fast as he was before too slow in
despatching them." Burnet MS. Harl. 6584. There is no sign either
of procrastination or of undue haste in William's correspondence
with Heinsius. The truth is, that the King understood Continental
politics thoroughly, and gave his whole mind to them. To English
business he attended less, and to Scotch business least of all.

FN 230 Impartial Account, 1695.

FN 231 See his letters quoted in the Report of 1695, and in the
Memoirs of the Massacre of Glencoe.

FN 232 Report of 1695.

FN 233 Deposition of Ronald Macdonald in the Report of 1695;
Letters from the Mountains, May 17. I773. I quote Mrs. Grant's
authority only for what she herself heard and saw. Her account of
the massacre was written apparently without the assistance of
books, and is grossly incorrect. Indeed she makes a mistake of
two years as to the date.

FN 234 I have taken the account of the Massacre of Glencoe
chiefly from the Report of 1695, and from the Gallienus
Redivivus. An unlearned, and indeed a learned, reader may be at a
loss to guess why the Jacobites should have selected so strange a
title for a pamphlet on the massacre of Glencoe. The explanation
will be found in a letter of the Emperor Gallienus, preserved by
Trebellius Pollio in the Life of Ingenuus. Ingenuus had raised a
rebellion in Moesia. He was defeated and killed. Gallienus
ordered the whole province to be laid waste, and wrote to one of
his lieutenants in language to which that of the Master of Stair
bore but too much resemblance. "Non mihi satisfacies si tantum
armatos occideris, quos et fors belli interimere potuisset.
Perimendus est omnis sexus virilis. Occidendus est quicunque
maledixit. Occidendus est quicunque male voluit. Lacera. Occide.
Concide."

FN 235 What I have called the Whig version of the story is given,
as well as the Jacobite version, in the Paris Gazette of April 7.
1692.

FN 236 I believe that the circumstances which give so peculiar a
character of atrocity to the Massacre of Glencoe were first
published in print by Charles Leslie in the Appendix to his
answer to King. The date of Leslie's answer is 1692. But it must
be remembered that the date of 1692 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 which was not printed till
November 1692. The Gallienus Redivivus speedily followed.

FN 237 Gallienus Redivivus.

FN 238 Hickes on Burnet and Tillotson, 1695.

FN 239 Report of 1695.

FN 240 Gallienus Redivivus.

FN 241 Report of 1695.

FN 242 London Gazette, Mar. 7. 1691/2

FN 243 Burnet (ii. 93.) says that the King was not at this time
informed of the intentions of the French Government. Ralph
contradicts Burnet with great asperity. But that Burnet was in
the right is proved beyond dispute, by William's correspondence
with Heinsius. So late as April 24/May 4 William wrote thus: "Je
ne puis vous dissimuler que je commence a apprehender une
descente en Angleterre, quoique je n'aye pu le croire d'abord:
mais les avis sont si multiplies de tous les cotes, et
accompagnes de tant de particularites, qu'il n'est plus guere
possible d'en douter." I quote from the French translation among
the Mackintosh MSS.

FN 244 Burnet, ii. 95. and Onslow's note; Memoires de Saint
Simon; Memoires de Dangeau.

FN 245 Life of James ii. 411, 412.

FN 246 Memoires de Dangeau; Memoires de Saint Simon. Saint Simon
was on the terrace and, young as he was, observed this singular
scene with an eye which nothing escaped.

FN 247 Memoires de Saint Simon; Burnet, ii. 95.; Guardian No. 48.
See the excellent letter of Lewis to the Archbishop of Rheims,
which is quoted by Voltaire in the Siecle de Louis XIV.

FN 248 In the Nairne papers printed by Macpherson are two
memorials from James urging Lewis to invade England. Both were
written in January 1692.

FN 249 London Gazette, Feb. 15. 1691/2

FN 250 Memoires de Berwick; Burnet, ii. 92.; Life of James, ii.
478. 491.

FN 251 History of the late Conspiracy, 1693.

FN 252 Life of James, ii. 479. 524. Memorials furnished by
Ferguson to Holmes in the Nairne Papers.

FN 253 Life of James, ii. 474.

FN 254 See the Monthly Mercuries of the spring of 1692.

FN 255 Narcissus Luttrell's Diary for April and May 1692; London
Gazette, May 9. and 12.

FN 256 Sheridan MS.; Life of James, ii. 492.

FN 257 Life of James, ii. 488.

FN 258 James told Sheridan that the Declaration was written by
Melfort. Sheridan MS.

FN 259 A Letter to a Friend concerning a French Invasion to
restore the late King James to his Throne, and what may be
expected from him should he be successful in it, 1692; A second
Letter to a Friend concerning a French Invasion, in which the
Declaration lately dispersed under the Title of His Majesty's
most gracious Declaration to all his loving Subjects, commanding
their Assistance against the P. of O. and his Adherents, is
entirely and exactly published according to the dispersed Copies,
with some short Observations upon it, 1692; The Pretences of the
French Invasion examined, 1692; Reflections on the late King
James's Declaration, 1692. The two Letters were written, I
believe, by Lloyd Bishop of Saint Asaph. Sheridan says, "The
King's Declaration pleas'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 be found in any Jacobite
tract. A virulent Jacobite writer, in a reply to Dr. Welwood,
printed in 1693, says, "As for the Declaration that was printed
last year. . . I assure you that it was as much misliked by many,
almost all, of the King's friends, as it can be exposed by his
enemies."

FN 260 Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, April 1692.

FN 261 Sheridan MS.; Memoires de Dangeau.

FN 262 London Gazette, May 12. 16. 1692; Gazette de Paris, May
31. 1692.

FN 263 London Gazette, April 28. 1692

FN 264 Ibid. May 2. 5. 12. 16.

FN 265 London Gazette, May 16. 1692; Burchett.

FN 266 Narcissus Luttrell's Diary; London Gazette, May 19. 1692.

FN 267 Russell's Letter to Nottingham, May 20. 1692, in the
London Gazette of May 23.; Particulars of Another Letter from the
Fleet published by authority; Burchett; Burnet, ii. 93.; Life of
James, ii. 493, 494.; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary; Memoires de
Berwick. See also the contemporary ballad on the battle one of
the best specimens of English street poetry, and the Advice to a
Painter, 1692.

FN 268 See Delaval's Letter to Nottingham, dated Cherburg, May
22., in the London Gazette of May 26.

FN 269 London Gaz., May 26. 1692; Burchett's Memoirs of
Transactions at Sea; Baden to the States General, May 24/June 3;
Life of James, ii. 494; Russell's Letters in the Commons'
Journals of Nov. 28. 1692; An Account of the Great Victory, 1692;
Monthly Mercuries for June and July 1692; Paris Gazette, May
28/June 7; Van Almonde's despatch to the States General, dated
May 24/June 3. 1692. The French official account will be found in
the Monthly Mercury for July. A report drawn up by Foucault,
Intendant of the province of Normandy, will be found in M.
Capefigue's Louis XIV.

FN 270 An Account of the late Great Victory, 1692; Monthly
Mercury for June; Baden to the States General, May 24/ June 3;
Narcissus Luttrell's Diary.

FN 271 London Gazette, June 2. 1692; Monthly Mercury; Baden to
the States General, June 14/24. Narcissus Luttrell's Diary.

FN 272 Narcissus Luttrell's Diary; Monthly Mercury.

FN 273 London Gazette, June 9.; Baden to the States General, June
7/17

FN 274 Baden to the States General, June. 3/13

FN 275 Baden to the States General, May 24/June 3; Narcissus
Luttrell's Diary.

FN 276 An Account of the late Great Victory, 1692; Narcissus
Luttrell's Diary.

FN 277 Baden to the States General, June 7/17. 1692.

FN 278 Narcissus Luttrell's Diary.

FN 279 I give one short sentence as a specimen: "O fie that ever
it should be said that a clergyman have committed such durty
actions!"

FN 280 Gutch, Collectanea Curiosa.

FN 281 My account of this plot is chiefly taken from Sprat's
Relation of the late Wicked Contrivance of Stephen Blackhead and
Robert Young, 1692. There are very few better narratives in the
language.

FN 282 Baden to the States General, Feb. 14/24 1693.

FN 283 Postman, April 13. and 20. 1700; Postboy, April 18.;
Flying Post, April 20.

FN 284 London Gazette, March 14. 1692.

FN 285 The Swedes came, it is true, but not till the campaign was
over. London Gazette, Sept, 10 1691,

FN 286 William to Heinsius March 14/24. 1692.

FN 287 William to Heinsius, Feb. 2/12 1692.

FN 288 Ibid. Jan 12/22 1692.

FN 289 Ibid. Jan. 19/29. 1692.

FN 290 Burnet, ii. 82 83.; Correspondence of William and
Heinsius, passim.

FN 291 Memoires de Torcy.

FN 292 William to Heinsius, Oct 28/Nov 8 1691.

FN 293 Ibid. Jan. 19/29. 1692.

FN 294 His letters to Heinsius are full of this subject.

FN 295 See the Letters from Rome among the Nairne Papers. Those
in 1692 are from Lytcott; those in 1693 from Cardinal Howard;
those in 1694 from Bishop Ellis; those in 1695 from Lord Perth.
They all tell the same story.

FN 296 William's correspondence with Heinsius; London Gazette,
Feb. 4. 1691. In a pasquinade published in 1693, and entitled "La
Foire d'Ausbourg, Ballet Allegorique," the Elector of Saxony is
introduced saying

"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."

FN 297 William's correspondence with Heinsius. There is a curious
account of Schoening in the Memoirs of Count Dohna.

FN 298 Burnet, ii. 84.

FN 299 Narcissus Luttrell's Diary.

FN 300 Monthly Mercuries of January and April 1693; Burnet, ii.
84. In the Burnet MS. Hail. 6584, is a warm eulogy on the Elector
of Bavaria. When the MS. was written he was allied with England
against France. In the History, which was prepared for
publication when he was allied with France against England, the
eulogy is omitted.

FN 301 "Nec pluribus impar."

FN 302 Memoires de Saint Simon; Dangeau; Racine's Letters, and
Narrative entitled Relation de ce qui s'est passe au Siege de
Namur; Monthly Mercury, May 1692.

FN 303 Memoires de Saint Simon; Racine to Boileau , May 21. 1692.

FN 304 Monthly Mercury for June; William to Heinsius May 26/ June
5 1692.

FN 305 William to Heinsius, May 26/June 5 1692.

FN 306 Monthly Mercuries of June and July 1692; London Gazettes
of 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's Letters to Colt, printed in Tindal's History; Racine's
Narrative, and Letters to Boileau of June 15. and 24.

FN 307 Memoires de Saint Simon.

FN 308 London Gazette, May 30. 1692; Memoires de Saint Simon;
Journal de Dangeau; Boyer's History of William III.

FN 309 Memoires de Saint Simon; Voltaire, Siecle de Louis XIV.
Voltaire speaks with a contempt which is probably just of the
account of this affair in the Causes Celebres. See also the
Letters of Madame de Sevigne during the months of January and
February 1680. In several English lampoons Luxemburg is nicknamed
Aesop, from his deformity, and called a wizard, in allusion to
his dealings with La Voisin. In one Jacobite allegory he is the
necromancer Grandorsio. In Narcissus Luttrell's Diary for June
1692 he is called a conjuror. I have seen two or three English
caricatures of Luxemburg's figure.

FN 310 Memoires de Saint Simon; Memoires de Villars; Racine to
Boileau, May 21. 1692.

FN 311 Narcissus Luttrell, April 28. 1692.

FN 312 London Gazette Aug. 4. 8. 11. 1692; Gazette de Paris, Aug.
9. 16.; Voltaire, Siecle de Louis XIV.; Burnet, ii. 97; Memoires
de Berwick; Dykvelt's Letter to the States General dated August
4. 1692. See also the very interesting debate which took place in
the House of Commons on Nov. 21. 1692. An English translation of
Luxemburg's very elaborate and artful despatch will be found in
the Monthly Mercury for September 1692. The original has recently
been printed in the new edition of Dangeau. Lewis pronounced it
the best despatch that he had ever seen. The editor of the
Monthly Mercury maintains that it was manufactured 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 behaved
themselves." In the Monthly Mercury will be found also the French
official list of killed and wounded. Of all the accounts of the
battle that which seems to me the best is in the Memoirs of
Feuquieres. It is illustrated by a map. Feuquieres divides his
praise and blame very fairly between the generals. The traditions
of the English mess tables have been preserved by Sterne, who was
brought up at the knees of old 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 English Lifeguards too, had it
not been for some regiments on the right, who marched up boldly
to their relief, and received the enemy's fire in their faces
before any one of their own platoons discharged a musket. They'll
go to heaven for it,' added Trim."

FN 313 Voltaire, Siecle de Louis XIV.

FN 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.

FN 315 I have taken the history of Grandval's plot chiefly from
Grandval's own confession. I have not mentioned Madame de
Maintenon, because Grandval, in his confession, did not mention
her. The accusation brought against her rests solely on the
authority of Dumont. See also a True Account of the horrid
Conspiracy against the Life of His most Sacred Majesty William
III. 1692; Reflections upon the late horrid Conspiracy contrived
by some of the French Court to murder His Majesty in Flanders
1692: Burnet, ii. 92.; Vernon's letters from the camp to Colt,
published by Tindal; the London Gazette, Aug, 11. The Paris
Gazette contains not one word on the subject,--a most significant
silence.

FN 316 London Gazette, Oct. 20. 24. 1692.

FN 317 See his report in Burchett.

FN 318 London Gazette, July 28. 1692. See the resolutions of the
Council of War in Burchett. In a letter to Nottingham, dated July
10, Russell says, "Six weeks will near conclude what we call
summer." Lords Journals, Dec. 19. 1692.

FN 319 Monthly Mercury, Aug. and Sept. 1692.

FN 320 Evelyn's Diary, July 25. 1692; Burnet, ii. 94, 95., and
Lord Dartmouth's Note. The history of the quarrel between Russell
and Nottingham will be best learned from the Parliamentary
Journals and Debates of the Session of 1692/3.

FN 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.

FN 322 See Bart's Letters of Nobility, and the Paris Gazettes of
the autumn of 1692.

FN 323 Memoires de Du Guay Trouin.

FN 324 London Gazette, Aug. 11. 1692; Evelyn's Diary, Aug. 10.;
Monthly Mercury for September; A Full Account of the late
dreadful Earthquake at Port Royal in Jamaica, licensed Sept. 9.
1692.

FN 325 Evelyn's Diary, June 25. Oct. 1. 1690; Narcissus
Luttrell's Diary, June 1692, May 1693; Monthly Mercury, April,
May, and June 1693; Tom Brown's Description of a Country Life,
1692.

FN 326 Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, Nov. 1692.

FN 327 See, for example, the London Gazette of Jan. 12. 1692

FN 328 Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, Dec. 1692.

FN 329 Ibid. Jan. 1693.

FN 330 Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, July 1692.

FN 331 Evelyn's Diary, Nov. 20. 1692: Narcissus Luttrell's Diary;
London Gazette, Nov. 24.; Hop to the Greffier of the States
General, Nov. 18/28

FN 332 London Gazette, Dec. 19. 1692.

FN 333 Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, Dec. 1692.

FN 334 Ibid. Nov. 1692.

FN 335 Ibid. August 1692.

FN 336 Hop to the Greffier of the States General, Dec 23/Jan 2
1693. The Dutch despatches of this year are filled with stories
of robberies.

FN 337 Hop to the Greffier of the States General, Dec 23/Jan 2
1693; Historical Records of the Queen's Bays, published by
authority; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, Nov. 15.

FN 338 Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, Dee. 22.

FN 339 Ibid. Dec. 1692; Hop, Jan. 3/13 Hop calls Whitney, "den
befaamsten roover in Engelandt."

FN 340 London Gazette January 2. 1692/3.

FN 341 Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, Jan. 1692/3.

FN 342 Ibid. Dec. 1692.

FN 343 Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, January and February; Hop Jan
31/Feb 10 and Feb 3/13 1693; Letter to Secretary Trenchard, 1694;
New Court Contrivances or more Sham Plots still, 1693.

FN 344 Lords' and Commons' Journals, Nov. 4., Jan. 1692.

FN 345 Commons' Journals, Nov. 10 1692.

FN 346 See the Lords' Journals from Nov. 7. to Nov. 18. 1692;
Burnet, ii. 102. Tindall's account of these proceedings was taken
from letters addressed by Warre, Under Secretary of State, to
Colt, envoy at Hanover. Letter to Mr. Secretary Trenchard, 1694.

FN 347 Lords' Journals, Dec. 7.; Tindal, from the Colt Papers;
Burnet, ii. 105.

FN 348 Grey's Debates, Nov. 21. and 23. 1692.

FN 349 Grey's Debates, Nov. 21. 1692; Colt Papers in Tindal.

FN 350 Tindal, Colt Papers; Commons' Journals, Jan. 11. 1693.

FN 351 Colt Papers in Tindal; Lords' Journals from Dec. 6. to
Dec. 19. 1692; inclusive,

FN 352 As to the proceedings of this day in the House of Commons,
see the Journals, Dec. 20, and the letter of Robert Wilmot, M.P.
for Derby, to his colleague Anchitel Grey, in Grey's Debates.

FN 353 Commons' Journals, Jan. 4. 1692/3.

FN 354 Colt Papers in Tindal; Commons' Journals, Dec. 16. 1692,
Jan. 11 1692; Burnet ii. 104.

FN 355 The peculiar antipathy of the English nobles to the Dutch
favourites is mentioned in a highly interesting note written by
Renaudot in 1698, and preserved among the Archives of the French
Foreign Office.

FN 356 Colt Papers in Tindal; Lords' Journals, Nov. 28. and 29.
1692, Feb. 18. and 24. 1692/3.

FN 357 Grey's Debates, Nov 18. 1692; Commons' Journals, Nov. 18.,
Dec. 1. 1692.

FN 358 See Cibber's Apology, and Mountford's Greenwich Park.

FN 359 See Cibber's Apology, Tom Brown's Works, and indeed the
works of every man of wit and pleasure about town.

FN 360 The chief source of information about this case is the
report of the trial, which will be found in Howell's Collection.
See Evelyn's Diary, February 4. 1692/3. I have taken some
circumstances from Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, from a letter to
Sancroft which is among the Tanner MSS in the Bodleian Library,
and from two letters addressed by Brewer to Wharton, which are
also in the Bodleian Library.

FN 361 Commons' Journals, Nov. 14. 1692.

FN 362 Commons' Journals of the Session, particularly of Nov.
17., Dec. 10., Feb. 25., March 3.; Colt Papers in Tindal.

FN 363 Commons' Journals, Dec. 10.; Tindal, Colt Papers.

FN 364 See Coke's Institutes, part iv. chapter 1. In 1566 a
subsidy was 120,000L.; in 1598, 78,000L.; when Coke wrote his
Institutes, about the end of the reign of James I. 70,000L.
Clarendon tells us that, in 1640, twelve subsidies were estimated
at about 600,000L.

FN 365 See the old Land Tax Acts, and the debates on the Land Tax
Redemption Bill of 1798.

FN 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 the Lords should tax themselves. The Lords
did not claim any right to alter the 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 the ordinary
commissioners, but by special commissioners of higher rank.

FN 367 Commons' Journals, Dec. 2/12. 1692,

FN 368 For this account of the origin of stockjobbing in the City
of London I am chiefly indebted to a most curious periodical
paper, entitled, "Collection for the Improvement of Husbandry and
Trade, by J. Houghton, F.R.S." It is in fact a weekly history of
the commercial speculations of that time. I have looked through
the files of several years. In No. 33., March 17. 1693, Houghton
says: "The buying and selling of Actions is one of the great
trades now on foot. I find a great 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 same year he makes
the first mention of time bargains. Whoever is desirous to know
more about the companies mentioned in the text may consult
Houghton's Collection and a pamphlet entitled Anglia Tutamen,
published in 1695.

FN 369 Commons' Journals; Stat. 4 W. & M. c. 3.

FN 370 See a very remarkable note in Hume's History of England,
Appendix III.

FN 371 Wealth of Nations, book v. chap. iii.

FN 372 Wesley was struck with this anomaly in 1745. See his
Journal.

FN 373 Pepys, June 10. 1668.

FN 374 See the Politics, iv. 13.

FN 375 The bill will be found among the archives of the House of
Lords.

FN 376 Lords' Journals, Jan. 3. 1692/3.

FN 377 Introduction to the Copies and Extracts of some Letters
written to and from the Earl of Danby, now Duke of Leeds,
published by His Grace's Direction, 1710.

FN 378 Commons' Journals; Grey's Debates. The bill itself is
among the archives of the House of Lords.

FN 379 Dunton's Life and Errors; Autobiography of Edmund Bohun,
privately printed in 1853. This autobiography is, in the highest
degree, curious and interesting.

FN 380 Vox Cleri, 1689.

FN 381 Bohun was the author of the History of the Desertion,
published immediately after the Revolution. In that work he
propounded his favourite theory. "For my part," he says, "I am
amazed to see men scruple the submitting to the present King;
for, if ever man had a just cause of war, he had; and that
creates a right to the thing gained by it. The King by
withdrawing and disbanding his army yielded him the throne; and
if he had, without any more ceremony, ascended it, he had done no
more than all other princes do on the like occasions."

FN 382 Character of Edmund Bohun, 1692.

FN 383 Dryden, in his Life of Lucian, speaks in too high terms of
Blount's abilities. But Dryden's judgment was biassed; for
Blount's first work was a pamphlet in defence of the Conquest of
Granada.

FN 384 See his Appeal from the Country to the City for the
Preservation of His Majesty's Person, Liberty, Property, and the
Protestant Religion.

FN 385 See the article on Apollonius in Bayle's Dictionary. I say
that Blount made his translation from the Latin; for his works
contain abundant proofs that he was not competent to translate
from the Greek.

FN 386 See Gildon's edition of Blount's Works, 1695.

FN 387 Wood's Athenae Oxonienses under the name Henry Blount
(Charles Blount's father); Lestrange's Observator, No. 290.

FN 388 This piece was reprinted by Gildon in 1695 among Blount's
Works.

FN 389 That the plagiarism of Blount should have been detected by
few of his contemporaries is not wonderful. But it is wonderful
that in the Biographia Britannica his just Vindication should be
warmly extolled, without the slightest hint that every thing good
in it is stolen. The Areopagitica is not the only work which he
pillaged on this occasion. He took a noble passage from Bacon
without acknowledgment.

FN 390 I unhesitatingly attribute this pamphlet to Blount, though
it was not reprinted among his works by Gildon. If Blount did not
actually write it he must certainly have superintended the
writing. That two men of letters, acting without concert, should
bring out within a very short time two treatises, one made out of
one half of the Areopagitica and the other made out of the other
half, is incredible. Why Gildon did not choose to reprint the
second pamphlet will appear hereafter.

FN 391 Bohun's Autobiography.

FN 392 Bohun's Autobiography; Commons' Journals, Jan. 20. 1692/3.

FN 393 Ibid. Jan. 20, 21. 1692/3

FN 394 Oldmixon; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, Nov. and Dec. 1692;
Burnet, ii. 334; Bohun's Autobiography.

FN 395 Grey's Debates; Commons' Journals Jan. 21. 23. 1692/3.;
Bohun's Autobiography; Kennet's Life and Reign of King William
and Queen Mary.

FN 396 "Most men pitying the Bishop."--Bohun's Autobiography.

FN 397 The vote of the Commons is mentioned, with much feeling in
the memoirs which Burnet wrote at the time. "It look'd," he says,
"somewhat extraordinary that I, who perhaps was the greatest
assertor of 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 the Toryes never liked me, and the Whiggs
hated me because I went not into their notions and passions. But
even this, and worse things that may happen to me shall not, I
hope, be able to make me depart from moderate principles and the
just asserting the liberty of mankind."--Burnet MS. Harl. 6584.

FN 398 Commons' Journals, Feb. 27. 1692/3; Lords' Journals, Mar.
4.

FN 399 Lords' Journals, March 8. 1692/3.

FN 400 In the article on Blount in the Biographia Britannica he
is extolled as having borne a principal share in the emancipation
of the press. But the writer was very imperfectly informed as to
the facts.

It is strange that the circumstances of Blount's death should be
so uncertain. That he died of a wound inflicted by his own hand,
and that he languished long, are undisputed facts. The common
story was that he shot himself; and Narcissus Luttrell at the
time, made an entry to this effect in his Diary. On the other
hand, Pope, who had the very best opportunities of obtaining
accurate information, asserts that Blount, "being in love with a
near kinswoman of his, and rejected, gave himself a stab in the
arm, as pretending to kill himself, of the consequence of which
he really died."--Note on the Epilogue to the Satires, Dialogue
I. Warburton, who had lived first with the heroes of the Dunciad,
and then with the most eminent men of letters of his time ought
to have known the truth; and Warburton, by his silence, confirms
Pope's assertion. Gildon's rhapsody about the death of his friend
will suit either story equally.

FN 401 The charges brought against Coningsby will be found in the
journals of the two Houses of the English Parliament. Those
charges were, after the lapse of a quarter of a century,
versified by Prior, whom Coningsby had treated with great
insolence and harshness. I will quote a few stanzas.

It will be seen that the poet condescended to imitate the style
of the street 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
are described 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."

FN 402 An Account of the Sessions of Parliament in Ireland, 1692,
London, 1693.

FN 403 The Poynings Act is 10 H. 7. c. 4. It was explained by
another Act, 3&4P.and M.c.4.

FN 404 The history of this session I have taken from the journals
of the Irish Lords and Commons, from the narratives laid in
writing before the English Lords and Commons by members of the
Parliament of Ireland and from a pamphlet entitled a Short
Account of the Sessions of Parliament in Ireland, 1692, London,
1693. Burnet seems to me to have taken a correct view of the
dispute, ii. 118. "The English in Ireland thought the government
favoured the Irish too much; some said this was the effect of
bribery, whereas others thought it was necessary to keep them
safe from the prosecutions of the English, who hated them, and
were much sharpened against them . . . . There were also great
complaints of an ill administration, chiefly in the revenue, in
the pay of the army, and in the embezzling of stores."

FN 405 As to Swift's extraction and early life, see the Anecdotes
written by himself.

FN 406 Journal to Stella, Letter liii.

FN 407 See Swift's Letter to Temple of Oct. 6. 1694.

FN 408 Journal to Stella, Letter xix.;

FN 409 Swift's Anecdotes.

FN 410 London Gazette, March 27. 1693.

FN 411 Burnet, ii. 108, and Speaker Onslow's Note; Sprat's True
Account of the Horrid Conspiracy; Letter to Trenchard, 1694.

FN 412 Burnett, ii. 107.

FN 413 These rumours are more than once mentioned in Narcissus
Luttrell's Diary.

FN 414 London Gazette, March 27. 1693; Narcissus Luttrell's
Diary:

FN 415 Burnett, ii, 123.; Carstairs Papers.

FN 416 Register of the Actings or Proceedings of the General
Assembly of the Church of Scotland held at Edinburgh, Jan. 15.
1692, collected and extracted from the Records by the Clerk
thereof. This interesting record was printed for the first time
in 1852.

FN 417 Act. Parl. Scot., June 12. 1693.

FN 418 Ibid. June 15. 1693.

FN 419 The editor of the Carstairs Papers was evidently very
desirous, from whatever motive, to disguise this most certain and
obvious truth. He has therefore prefixed to some of Johnstone's
letters descriptions which may possibly impose on careless
readers. For example Johnstone wrote to Carstairs on the 18th of
April, before it was known that the session would be a quiet one,
"All arts have been used and will be used to embroil matters."
The editor's account of the contents of this 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,
complained that the liberality and obsequiousness of the Estates
had not been duly appreciated." Nothing, he says, "is to be done
to gratify the Parliament, 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 into the massacre of Glencoe."

FN 420 Life of James, ii. 479.

FN 421 Hamilton's Zeneyde.

FN 422 A View of the Court of St. Germains from the Year 1690 to
1695, 1696; Ratio Ultima, 1697. In the Nairne Papers is a letter
in which the nonjuring bishops are ordered to send a Protestant
divine to Saint Germains. This letter was speedily followed by
another letter revoking the order. Both letters will he found in
Macpherson's collection. They both bear date Oct. 16. 1693. I
suppose that the first letter was dated according to the New
Style and the letter of revocation according to the Old Style.

FN 423 Ratio Ultima, 1697; History of the late Parliament, 1699.

FN 424 View of the Court of Saint Germains from 1690 to 1695.
That Dunfermline was grossly ill used is plain even from the
Memoirs of Dundee, 1714.

FN 425 So early as the year 1690, that conclave of the leading
Jacobites which  gave Preston his instructions made a strong
representation to James on this subject. "He must overrule the
bigotry of Saint Germains; and dispose their minds to think of
those methods that are more likely to gain the nation. For there
is one silly thing or another daily done there, that comes to our
notice here which prolongs what they so passionately desire." See
also A Short and True Relation of Intrigues transacted both at
Home and Abroad to restore the late King James, 1694.

FN 426 View of the Court of Saint Germains. The account given in
this View is confirmed by a remarkable paper, which is among the
Nairne MSS. Some of the heads of the Jacobite party in England
made a representation to James, one article of which is as
follows: "They beg that Your Majesty would be pleased to admit of
the Chancellor of England into 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 to express the just
value and esteem he has for his Lord Chancellor."

FN 427 A short and true Relation of Intrigues, 1694.

FN 428 See the paper headed "For my Son the Prince of Wales,
1692." It is printed at the end of the Life of James.

FN 429 Burnet, i. 683.

FN 430 As to this change of ministry at Saint Germains see the
very curious but very confused narrative in the Life of James,
ii. 498-575.; Burnet, ii. 219.; Memoires de Saint Simon; A French
Conquest neither desirable nor practicable, 1693; and the Letters
from the Nairne MSS. printed by Macpherson.

FN 431 Life of James, ii. 509. Bossuet's opinion will be found in
the Appendix to M. Mazure's history. The Bishop sums up his
arguments thus "Je dirai done volontiers aux Catholiques, s'il y
en a qui n'approuvent point la declaration dont il s'agit; Noli
esse justus multum; neque plus sapias quam necesse est, ne
obstupescas." In the Life of James it is asserted that the French
Doctors changed their opinion, and that Bossuet, though he held
out longer than the rest, saw at last that he had been in error,
but did not choose formally to retract. I think much too highly
of Bossuet's understanding to believe this.

FN 432 Life of James, ii. 505.

FN 433 "En fin celle cy--j'entends la declaration--n'est que pour
rentrer: et l'on peut beaucoup mieux disputer des affaires des
Catholiques a Whythall qu'a Saint Germain."--Mazure, Appendix.

FN 434 Baden to the States General, June 2/12 1693. Four thousand
copies, wet from the press, were found in this house.

FN 435 Baden's Letters to the States General of May and June
1693; An Answer to the Late King James's Declaration published at
Saint Germains, 1693.

FN 436 James, ii. 514. I am unwilling to believe that Ken was
among those who blamed the Declaration of 1693 as too merciful.

FN 437 Among the Nairne Papers is a letter sent on this occasion
by Middleton to Macarthy, who was then serving in Germany.
Middleton tries to soothe Macarthy and to induce Macarthy to
soothe others. Nothing more disingenuous was ever written by a
Minister of State. "The King," says the Secretary, "promises in
the foresaid Declaration to restore the Settlement, but at the
same time, declares that he will recompense all those who may
suffer by it by giving them equivalents." Now James did not
declare that he would recompense any body, but merely that he
would advise with his Parliament on the subject. He did not
declare that he would even advise with his Parliament about
recompensing all who might suffer, but merely about recompensing
such as had followed him to the last. Finally he said nothing
about equivalents. Indeed the notion of giving an equivalent to
every body who suffered by the Act of Settlement, in other words,
of giving an equivalent for the fee simple of half the soil of
Ireland, was obviously absurd. Middleton's letter will be found
in Macpherson's collection. I will give a sample of the language
held by the Whigs on this occasion. "The Roman Catholics of
Ireland," says one writer, "although in point of interest and
profession different from us yet, to do them right, have deserved
well from the late King, though ill from us; and for the late
King to leave them and exclude them in such an instance of
uncommon ingratitude that Protestants have no reason to stand by
a Prince that deserts his own party, and a people that have been
faithful to him and his interest to the very last."--A short and
true Relation of the Intrigues, &c., 1694.

FN 438 The edict of creation was registered by the Parliament of
Paris on the 10th of April 1693.

FN 439 The letter is dated the 19th of April 1693. It is among
the Nairne MSS., and was printed by Macpherson.

FN 440 "Il ne me plait nullement que M. Middleton est alle en
France. Ce n'est pas un homme qui voudroit faire un tel pas sans
quelque chose d'importance, et de bien concerte, sur quoy j'ay
fait beaucoup de reflections que je reserve a vous dire avostre
heureuse arrivee."--William to Portland from Loo. April 18/28
1693.

FN 441 The best account of William's labours and anxieties at
this time is contained in his letters to Heinsius--particularly
the letters of May 1. 9. and 30. 1693.

FN 442 He speaks very despondingly in his letter to Heinsius of
the 30th of May, Saint Simon says: "On a su depuis que le Prince
d'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 pût echapper."

FN 443 Saint Simon; Monthly Mercury, June 1693; Burnet, ii. 111.

FN 444 Memoires de Saint Simon; Burnet, i. 404.

FN 445 William to Heinsius, July. 1693.

FN 446 Saint Simon's words are remarkable. "Leur cavalerie," he
says, "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, et deux regimens Anglais en eurent l'honneur."

FN 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 of England's Dragoon Guards, Aug. 1.;
Dykvelt's Letter to the States General dated July 30. at noon.
The last four papers will be found in the Monthly Mercuries of
July and August 1693. See also the History of the Last Campaign
in the Spanish Netherlands by Edward D'Auvergne, dedicated to the
Duke of Ormond, 1693. The French did justice to William. "Le
Prince d'Orange," Racine wrote to Boileau, "pensa etre pris,
apres avoir fait des merveilles." See also the glowing
description of Sterne, who, no doubt, had many times heard the
battle fought over by old soldiers. It was on this occasion that
Corporal Trim was left wounded on the field, and was nursed by
the Beguine.

FN 448 Letter from Lord Perth to his sister, June 17. 1694.

FN 449 Saint Simon mentions the reflections thrown on the
Marshal. Feuquieres, a very good judge, tells us that Luxemburg
was unjustly blamed, and that the French army was really too much
crippled by its losses to improve the victory.

FN 450 This account of what would have taken place, if Luxemburg
had been able and willing to improve his victory, I have taken
from what seems to have been a very manly and sensible speech
made by Talmash in the House of Commons on the 11th of December
following. See Grey's Debates.

FN 451 William to Heinsius, July 20/30. 1693.

FN 452 William to Portland, July 21/31. 1693.

FN 453 London Gazette, April 24., May 15. 1693.

FN 454 Burchett's Memoirs of Transactions at Sea; Burnet, ii.
114, 115, 116.; the London Gazette, July 17. 1693; Monthly
Mercury of July; Letter from Cadiz, dated July 4.

FN 455 Narcissus Luttrell's Diary; Baden to the States General,
Jul 14/24, July 25/Aug 4. Among the Tanner MSS. in the Bodleian
Library are letters describing the agitation in the City. "I
wish," says one of Sancroft's Jacobite correspondents, "it may
open our eyes and change our minds. But by the accounts I have
seen, the Turkey Company went from the Queen and Council full of
satisfaction and good humour."

FN 456 London Gazette, August 21 1693; L'Hermitage to the States
General, 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 say something about him. He was a French refugee,
and resided in London as agent for the Waldenses. One of his
employments had been to send newsletters to Heinsius. Some
interesting extracts from those newsletters will be found in the
work of the Baron Sirtema de Grovestins. It was probably in
consequence of the Pensionary's recommendation that the States
General, by a resolution dated July 24/Aug 3 1693, desired
L'Hermitage to collect and transmit to them intelligence of what
was passing in England. His letters abound with curious and
valuable information which is nowhere else to be found. His
accounts of parliamentary proceedings are of peculiar value, and
seem to have been so considered by his employers.

Copies of the despatches of L'Hermitage, and, indeed of the
despatches of all the ministers and agents employed by the States
General in England from the time of Elizabeth downward, now are
or will soon be in the library of the British Museum. For this
valuable addition to the great national storehouse of knowledge,
the country is chiefly indebted to Lord Palmerston. But it would
be unjust not to add that his instructions were most zealously
carried into effect by the late Sir Edward Disbrowe, with the
cordial cooperation of the enlightened men who have charge of the
noble collection of Archives at the Hague.

FN 457 It is strange that the indictment should not have been
printed in Howell's State Trials. The copy which is before me was
made for Sir James Mackintosh.

FN 458 Most of the information which has come down to us about
Anderton's case will be found in Howell's State Trials.

FN 459 The Remarks are extant, and deserve to be read.

FN 460 Narcissus Luttrell's Diary.

FN 461 Narcissus Luttrell's Diary.

FN 462 There are still extant a handbill addressed to All
Gentlemen Seamen that are weary of their Lives; and a ballad
accusing the 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.

FN 463 L'Hermitage, Sept. 5/15. 1693; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary.

FN 464 Narcissus Luttrell's Diary.

FN 465 Narcissus Luttrell's Diary. In a pamphlet published at
this time, and entitled A Dialogue between Whig and Tory, the
Whig alludes to "the public insolences at the Bath upon the late
defeat in Flanders." The Tory answers, "I know not what some
hotheaded drunken men may have said and done at the Bath or
elsewhere." In the folio Collection of State Tracts, this
Dialogue is erroneously said to have been printed about November
1692.

FN 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 rare with him. He says that the name of Caermarthen is
perpetually mentioned among those whom James reckoned as his
friends. I believe that the evidence against Caermarthen will be
found to begin and to end with the letter of Melfort which I have
mentioned. There is indeed, among the Nairne MSS, which
Macpherson printed, an undated and anonymous letter in which
Caermarthen is reckoned among the friends of James. But this
letter is altogether undeserving of consideration. The writer was
evidently a silly hotheaded Jacobite, who knew nothing about the
situation or character of any of the public men who m he
mentioned. He blunders grossly about Marlborough, Godolphin,
Russell, Shrewsbury and the Beaufort family. Indeed the whole
composition is a tissue of absurdities.

It ought to be remarked that, in the Life of James compiled from
his own Papers, the assurances of support which he received from
Marlborough, Russell, Godolphin Shrewsbury, and other men of note
are mentioned with very copious details. But there is not a word
indicating that any such assurances were ever received from
Caermarthen.

FN 467 A Journal of several Remarkable Passages relating to the
East India Trade, 1693.

FN 468 See the Monthly Mercuries and London Gazettes of
September, October, November and December 1693; Dangeau, Sept. 5.
27., Oct. 21., Nov. 21.; the Price of the Abdication, 1693.

FN 469 Correspondence of William and Heinsius; Danish Note, dated
Dec 11/21 1693. The note delivered by Avaux to the Swedish
government at this time will be found in Lamberty's Collection
and in the Memoires et Negotiations de la Paix de Ryswick.

FN 470 "Sir John Lowther says, nobody can know one day what a
House of Commons would do the next; in which all agreed with
him." These remarkable words were written by Caermarthen on the
margin of a paper drawn up by Rochester in August 1692.
Dalrymple, Appendix to part ii. chap. 7.

FN 471 See Sunderland's celebrated Narrative which has often been
printed, and his wife's letters, which are among the Sidney
papers, published by the late Serjeant Blencowe.

FN 472 Van Citters, May 6/16. 1690.

FN 473 Evelyn, April 24. 1691.

FN 474 Lords' Journals, April 28. 1693.

FN 475 L'Hermitage, Sept. 19/29, Oct 2/12 1693.

FN 476 It is amusing to see how Johnson's Toryism breaks out
where we should hardly expect to find it. Hastings says, in the
Third Part of Henry the Sixth,

"Let us be back'd with God and with the seas
Which He hath given for fence 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."

FN 477 Swift, in his Inquiry into the Behaviour of the Queen's
last Ministry, mentions Somers as a person of great abilities,
who used to talk in so frank a manner that he seemed to discover
the bottom of his heart. In the Memoirs relating to the Change in
the Queen's Ministry, Swift says that Somers had one and only one
unconversable fault, formality. It is not very easy to understand
how the same man can be the most unreserved of companions and yet
err on the side of formality. Yet there may be truth in both the
descriptions. It is well known that Swift loved to take rude
liberties with men of high rank and fancied that, by doing so, he
asserted his own independence. He has been justly blamed for this
fault by his two illustrious biographers, both of them men of
spirit at least as independent as his, Samuel Johnson and Walter
Scott. I suspect that he showed a disposition to behave with
offensive familiarity to Somers, and that Somers, not choosing to
submit to impertinence, and not wishing to be forced to resent
it, resorted, in selfdefence, to a ceremonious politeness which
he never would have practised towards Locke or Addison.

FN 478 The eulogies on Somers and the invectives against him are
innumerable. Perhaps the best way to come to a just judgment
would be to collect all that has been said about him by Swift and
by Addison. They were the two keenest observers of their time;
and they both knew him well. But it ought to be remarked that,
till Swift turned Tory, he always extolled Somers not only as the
most accomplished, but as the most virtuous of men. In the
dedication of the Tale of a Tub are these words, "There is no
virtue, either of a public or private life, which some
circumstances of your own have not often produced upon the stage
of the world;" and again, "I should be very loth the bright
example of your Lordship's virtues should be lost to other eyes,
both for their sake and your own." In the Discourse of the
Contests and Dissensions at Athens and Rome, Somers is the just
Aristides. After Swift had ratted he described Somers as a man
who "possessed all excellent qualifications except virtue."

FN 479 See Whiston's Autobiography.

FN 480 Swift's note on Mackay's Character of Wharton.

FN 481 This account of Montague and Wharton I have collected from
innumerable sources. I ought, however, to mention particularly
the very curious Life of Wharton published immediately after his
death.

FN 482 Much of my information about the Harleys I have derived
from unpublished memoirs written by Edward Harley, younger
brother of Robert. A copy of these memoirs is among the
Mackintosh MSS.

FN 483 The only writer who has praised Harley's oratory, as far
as I remember, is Mackay, who calls him eloquent. Swift scribbled
in the margin, "A great lie." And certainly Swift was inclined to
do more than justice to Harley. "That lord," said Pope, "talked
of business in so confused a manner that you did not know what he
was about; and every thing he went to tell you was in the epic
way; for he always began in the middle."--Spence's Anecdotes.

FN 484 "He used," said Pope, "to send trifling verses from Court
to the Scriblerus Club almost every day, and would come and talk
idly with them almost every night even when his all was at
stake." Some specimens of Harley's poetry are in print. The best,
I think, is a stanza 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."

FN 485 The character of Harley is to be collected from
innumerable panegyrics and lampoons; from the works and the
private correspondence of Swift, Pope, Arbuthnot, Prior and
Bolingbroke, and from multitudes of such works as Ox and Bull,
the High German Doctor, and The History of Robert Powell the
Puppet Showman.

FN 486 In a letter dated Sept. 12. 1709 a short time before he
was 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 are spears and arrows, and their tongues sharp
swords. But I learn how good it is to wait on the Lord, and to
possess one's soul in peace." The letter was to Carstairs. I
doubt whether Harley would have canted thus if he had been
writing to Atterbury.

FN 487 The anomalous position which Harley and Foley at this time
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 arms under the General of the West Saxons. The two Har-
ys, father and son, are engineers under the late Lieutenant of
the Ordnance, and bomb any bill which he hath once resolv'd to
reduce to ashes." Seymour is the General of the West Saxons.
Musgrave had been Lieutenant of the Ordnance in the reign of
Charles the Second.

FN 488 Lords' and Commons' Journals, Nov. 7. 1693.

FN 489 Commons' Journals, Nov. 13. 1693; Grey's Debates.

FN 490 Commons' Journals, Nov. 17. 1693.

FN 491 Ibid. Nov. 22. 27. 1693; Grey's Debates.

FN 492 Commons' Journals, Nov. 29. Dec. 6. 1693; L'Hermitage,
Dec. 1/11 1693.

FN 493 L'Hermitage, Sept. 1/11. Nov. 7/17 1693.

FN 494 See the Journal to Stella, lii. liii. lix. lxi.; and Lady
Orkney's Letters to Swift.

FN 495 See the letters written at this time by Elizabeth
Villiers, Wharton, Russell and Shrewsbury, in the Shrewsbury
Correspondence.

FN 496 Commons' Journals, Jan. 6. 8. 1693/4.

FN 497 Ibid. Jan. 19. 1693/4

FN 498 Hamilton's New Account.

FN 499 The bill I found in the Archives of the Lords. Its history
I learned from the journals of the two Houses, from a passage in
the Diary of Narcissus Luttrell, and from two letters to the
States General, both dated on Feb 27/March 9 1694 the day after
the debate in the Lords. One of these letters is from Van
Citters; the other, which contains fuller information, is from
L'Hermitage.

FN 500 Commons' Journals, Nov. 28. 1693; Grey's Debates.
L'Hermitage  expected that the bill would pas;, and that the
royal assent would not be  withheld. On November. he wrote to the
States General, "Il paroist dans toute la chambre beaucoup de
passion a faire passer ce bil." On Nov 28/Dec 8 he says that the
division on the passing "n'a pas cause une petite surprise. Il
est difficile d'avoir un point fixe sur les idees qu'on peut se
former des emotions du parlement, car il paroist quelquefois de
grander chaleurs qui semblent devoir tout enflammer, et qui, peu
de tems apres, s'evaporent." That Seymour was the chief manager
of the opposition to the bill is asserted in the once celebrated
Hush Money pamphlet of that year.

FN 501 Commons' Journals; Grey's Debates. The engrossed copy of
this Bill went down to the House of Commons and is lost. The
original draught on paper is among the Archives of the Lords.
That Monmouth brought in the bill I learned from a letter of
L'Hermitage to the States General Dec. 13. 1693. As to the
numbers on the division, I have followed the journals. But in
Grey's Debates and in the letters of Van Citters and L'Hermitage,
the minority is said to have been 172.

502 The bill is in the Archives of the Lords. Its history I have
collected from the journals, from Grey's Debates, and from the
highly interesting letters of Van Citters and L'Hermitage. I
think it clear from Grey's Debates that a speech which
L'Hermitage attributes to a nameless "quelq'un" was made by Sir
Thomas Littleton.

FN 503 Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, September 1691.

FN 504 Commons' Journals, Jan. 4. 1693/4.

FN 505 Of the Naturalisation Bill no copy, I believe exists. The
history of that bill will be found in the Journals. From Van
Citters and L'Hermitage we learn less than might have been
expected on a subject which must have been interesting to Dutch
statesmen. Knight's speech will be found among the Somers Papers.
He is described by his brother Jacobite, Roger North, as "a
gentleman of as eminent integrity and loyalty as ever the city of
Bristol was honoured with."

FN 506 Commons' Journals, Dec 5. 1694.

FN 507 Commons' Journals, Dec. 20. and 22. 1693/4. The journals
did not then contain any notice of the divisions which took place
when the House was in committee. There was only one division on
the army estimates of this year, when the mace was on the table.
That division was on the question whether 60,000L. or 147,000L.
should be granted for hospitals and contingencies. The Whigs
carried the larger sum by 184 votes to 120. Wharton was a teller
for the majority, Foley for the minority.

FN 508 Commons' Journals, Nov. 25. 1694.

FN 509 Stat. 5 W. & M. c. I.

FN 510 Stat. 5 & 6 W.& M. c. 14.

FN 511 Stat. 5 & 6 W. & M. c. 21.; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary.

FN 512 Stat. 5 & 6 W. & M. c. 22.; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary.

FN 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's State of England. His name frequently appears in
the London Gazette, as, for example, on July 28. 1684.

FN 514 See, for example, the Mystery of the Newfashioned
Goldsmiths 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 in the great Improvement by Banking and Trade,
1694.

FN 515 See the Life of Dudley North, by his brother Roger.

FN 516 See a pamphlet entitled Corporation Credit; or a Bank of
Credit, made Current by Common Consent in London, more Useful and
Safe than Money.

FN 517 A proposal by Dr. Hugh Chamberlayne, in Essex Street, for
a Bank, of Secure Current Credit to be founded upon Land, in
order to the General Good of Landed Men, to the great Increase in
the Value of Land, and the no less Benefit of Trade and Commerce,
1695; Proposals for the supplying their Majesties with Money on
Easy Terms, exempting the Nobility, Gentry, &c., from Taxes
enlarging their Yearly Estates, and enriching all the Subjects of
the Kingdom by a National Land Bank; by John Briscoe. "O
fortunatos nimium bona si sua norint Anglicanos." Third Edition,
1696. Briscoe seems to have been as much versed in Latin
literature as in political economy.

FN 518 In confirmation of what is said in the text, I extract a
single paragraph from Briscoe's proposals. "Admit a gentleman
hath barely 100L. per annum estate to live on, and hath a wife
and four children to provide for; this person, supposing no taxes
were upon his estates must be a great husband to be able to keep
his charge, but cannot think of laying up anything to place out
his children in the world; but according to this proposed method
he may give his- children 500l. a piece and have 90l. per annum
left for himself and his wife to live upon, the which he may also
leave to such of his children as he pleases after his and his
wife's decease. For first having settled his estate of 100l. per
annum, as in proposals 1. 3., he may have bills of credit for
2000L. for his own proper use, for 10s per cent. per annum as in
proposal 22., which is but 10L. per annum for the 2000L., which
being deducted out of his estate of 100L. per annum, there
remains 90L. per annum clear to himself." It ought to be observed
that this nonsense reached a third edition.

FN 519 See Chamberlayne's Proposal, his Positions supported by
the Reasons explaining the Office of Land Credit, and his Bank
Dialogue. See also an excellent little tract on the other side
entitled "A Bank Dialogue between Dr. H. C. and a Country
Gentleman, 1696," and "Some Remarks upon a nameless and
scurrilous Libel entitled a Bank Dialogue between Dr. H. C. and a
Country Gentleman, in a Letter to a Person of Quality."

FN 520 Commons' Journals Dec. 7. 1693. I am afraid that I may be
suspected of exaggerating the absurdity of this scheme. I
therefore transcribe the most important part of the petition. "In
consideration of the freeholders bringing their lands into this
bank, for a fund of current credit, to be established by Act of
Parliament, it is now proposed that, for every 150L per annum,
secured for 150 years, for but one hundred yearly payments of
100L per annum, free from all manner of taxes and deductions
whatsoever, every such freeholder shall receive 4000L in the said
current credit, and shall have 2000L more put into the fishery
stock for his proper benefit; and there may be further 2000L
reserved at the Parliament's disposal towards the carrying on
this present war . . . . . The free holder is never to quit the
possession of his said estate unless the yearly rent happens to
be in arrear."

FN 521 Commons' Journals, Feb. 5. 1693/4.

FN 522 Account of the Intended Bank of England, 1694.

FN 523 See the Lords' Journals of April 23, 24, 25. 1694, and the
letter of L'Hermitage to the States General dated April 24/May 4

FN 524 Narcissus Luttrell's. Diary, June 1694.

FN 525 Heath's Account of the Worshipful Company of Grocers;
Francis's History of the Bank of England.

FN 526 Spectator, No. 3.

FN 527 Proceedings of the Wednesday Club in Friday Street.

FN 528 Lords' Journals, April 25. 1694; London Gazette, May 7.
1694.

FN 529 Life of James ii. 520.; Floyd's (Lloyd's) Account in the
Nairne Papers, under the date of May 1. 1694; London Gazette,
April 26. 30. 1694.

FN 530 London Gazette, May 3. 1694.

FN 531 London Gazette, April 30. May 7. 1694; Shrewsbury to
William, May 11/21; William to Shrewsbury, May 22?June 1;
L'Hermitage, April 27/Nay 7

FN 532 L'Hermitage, May 15/25. After mentioning the various
reports, he says, "De tous ces divers projets qu'on s'imagine
aucun n'est venu a la cognoissance du public." This is important;
for it has often been said, in excuse for Marlborough, that he
communicated to the Court of Saint Germains only what was the
talk of all the coffeehouses, and must have been known without
his instrumentality.

FN 533 London Gazette, June 14. 18. 1694; Paris Gazette June
16/July 3; Burchett; Journal of Lord Caermarthen; Baden, June
15/25; L'Hermitage, June 15/25. 19/29

FN 534 Shrewsbury to William, June 15/25. 1694. William to
Shrewsbury, July 1; Shrewsbury to William, June 22/July 2

FN 535 This account of Russell's expedition to the Mediterranean
I have taken chiefly from Burchett.

FN 536 Letter to Trenchard, 1694.

FN 537 Burnet, ii. 141, 142.; and Onslow's note; Kingston's True
History, 1697.

FN 538 See the Life of James, ii. 524.,

FN 539 Kingston; Burnet, ii. 142.

FN 540 Kingston. For the fact that a bribe was given to Taaffe,
Kingston cites the evidence taken on oath by the Lords.

FN 541 Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, Oct. 6. 1694.

FN 542 As to Dyer's newsletter, see Narcissus Luttrell's Diary
for June and August 1693, and September 1694.

FN 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 some Account of the late Trials, 1694.

FN 544 Birch's Life of Tillotson; the Funeral Sermon preached by
Burnet; William to Heinsius, Nov 23/Dec 3 1694.

FN 545 See the Journals of the two Houses. The only account that
we have of the debates is in the letters of L'Hermitage.

FN 546 Commons' Journals, Feb. 20. 1693/4 As this bill never
reached the Lords, it is not to be found among their archives. I
have therefore no means of discovering whether it differed in any
respect from the bill of the preceding year.

FN 547 The history of this bill may be read in the Journals of
the Houses. The contest, not a very vehement one, lasted till the
20th of April.

FN 548 "The Commons," says Narcissus Luttrell, "gave a great
hum." "Le murmure qui est la marque d'applaudissement fut si
grand qu'on pent dire qu'il estoit universel. "--L'Hermitage,
Dec. 25/Jan. 4.

FN 549 L'Hermitage says this in his despatch of Nov. 20/30.

FN 550 Burnet, ii. 137.; Van Citters, Dec 25/Jan 4.

FN 551 Burnet, ii. 136. 138.; Narcissus Luttrell's Dairy; Van
Citters, Dec 28/Jan 7 1694/5; L'Hermitage, Dec 25/Jan 4,   Dec
28/Jan 7 Jan. 1/11; Vernon to Lord Lexington, Dec. 21. 25. 28.,
Jan. 1.; Tenison's Funeral Sermon.

FN 552 Evelyn's Dairy; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary; Commons'
Journals, Dec. 28. 1694; Shrewsbury to Lexington, of the same
date; Van Citters of the same date; L'Hermitage, Jan. 1/11 1695.
Among the sermons on Mary's death, that of Sherlock, preached in
the Temple Church, and those of Howe and Bates, preached to great
Presbyterian congregations, deserve notice.

FN 553 Narcissus Luttrell's Diary.

FN 554 Remarks on some late Sermons, 1695; A Defence of the
Archbishop's Sermon, 1695.

FN 555 Narcissus Luttrell's Diary.

FN 556 L'Hermitage, March 1/11, 6/16 1695; London Gazette, March
7,; Tenison's Funeral Sermon; Evelyn's Diary.

FN 557 See Claude's Sermon on Mary's death.

FN 558 Prior to Lord and Lady Lexington, Jan. 14/24 1695. The
letter is among the Lexington papers, a valuable collection, and
well edited.

FN 559 Monthly Mercury for January 1695. An orator who pronounced
an eulogium on the Queen at Utrecht was so absurd as to say that
she spent her last breath in prayers for the prosperity of the
United Provinces:--"Valeant et Batavi;"--these are her last
words--"sint incolumes; sint florentes; sint beati; stet in
sternum, stet immota praeclarissima illorum civitas hospitium
aliquando mihi gratissimum, optime de me meritum." See also the
orations of Peter Francius of Amsterdam, and of John Ortwinius of
Delft.

FN 560 Journal de Dangeau; Memoires de Saint Simon.

FN 561 Saint Simon; Dangeau; Monthly Mercury for January 1695.

FN 562 L'Hermitage, Jan. 1/11. 1695; Vernon to Lord Lexington
Jan. I. 4.; Portland to Lord Lexington, Jan 15/25; William to
Heinsius, Jan 22/Feb 1

FN 563 See the Commons' Journals of Feb. 11, April 12. and April
27., and the Lords' Journals of April 8. and April is. 1695.
Unfortunately there is a hiatus in the Commons' Journal of the
12th of April, so that it is now impossible to discover whether
there was a division on the question to agree with the amendment
made by the Lords.

FN 564 L'Hermitage, April 10/20. 1695; Burnet, ii. 149.

FN 565 An Essay upon Taxes, calculated for the present Juncture
of Affairs, 1693.

FN 566 Commons' Journals, Jan. 12 Feb. 26. Mar. 6.; A Collection
of the Debates and Proceedings in Parliament in 1694 and 1695
upon the Inquiry into the late Briberies and Corrupt Practices,
1695; L'Hermitage to the States General, March 8/18; Van Citters,
Mar. 15/25; L'Hermitage says

"Si par cette recherche la chambre pouvoit remedier au desordre
qui regne, elle rendroit un service tres utile et tres agreable
au Roy."

FN 567 Commons' Journals, Feb. 16, 1695; Collection of the
Debates and Proceedings in Parliament in 1694 and 1695; Life of
Wharton; Burnet, ii. 144.

FN 568 Speaker Onslow's note on Burnet ii. 583.; Commons'
Journals, Mar 6, 7. 1695. The history of the terrible end of this
man will be found in the pamphlets of the South Sea year.

FN 569 Commons' Journals, March 8. 1695; Exact Collection of
Debates and Proceedings in Parliament in 1694 and 1695;
L'Hermitage, March 8/18

FN 570 Exact Collection of Debates.

FN 571 L'Hermitage, March 8/18. 1695. L'Hermitage's narrative is
confirmed by the journals, March 7. 1694/5. It appears that just
before the committee was appointed, the House resolved that
letters should not be delivered out to members during a sitting.

FN 572 L'Hermitage, March 19/29 1695.

FN 573 Birch's Life of Tillotson.

FN 574 Commons' Journals, March 12 13, 14 15, 16, 1694/5; Vernon
to Lexington, March 15.; L'Hermitage, March 15/25.

FN 575 On vit qu'il etoit impossible de le poursuivre en justice,
chacun toutefois demeurant convaincu que c'etoit un marche fait a
la main pour lui faire present de la somme de 10,000l et qu'il
avoit ete plus habile que les autres novices que n'avoient pas su
faire si finement leure affaires.-- L'Hermitage, March 29/April
8; Commons' Journals, March 12.; Vernon to Lexington, April 26.;
Burnet, ii. 145.

FN 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."

FN 577 Commons' Journals from March 26. to April 8. 1695.

FN 578 L'Hermitage, April 10/20 1695.

FN 579 Exact Collection of Debates and Proceedings.

FN 580 L'Hermitage, April 30/May 10 1695; Portland to Lexington,
April 23/May 3

FN 581 L'Hermitage (April 30/May 10 1695) justly remarks, that
the way in which the money was sent back strengthened the case
against Leeds.

FN 582 There can, I think, be no doubt, that the member who is
called D in the Exact Collection was Wharton.

FN 583 As to the proceedings of this eventful day, April 27.
1695, see the Journals of the two Houses, and the Exact
Collection.

FN 584 Exact Collection; Lords' Journals, May 3. 1695; Commons'
Journals, May 2, 3.; L'Hermitage, May 3/13.; London Gazette, May
13.

FN 585 L'Hermitage, May 10/20. 1695; Vernon to Shrewsbury, June
22. 1697.

FN 586 London Gazette, May 6. 1695.

FN 587 Letter from Mrs. Burnet to the Duchess of Marlborough,
1704, quoted by Coxe; Shrewsbury to Russell, January 24. 1695;
Burnett, ii. 149.

FN 588 London Gazette April 8. 15. 29. 1695.

FN 589 Shrewsbury to Russell, January 24. 1695; Narcissus
Luttrell's Diary,

FN 590 De Thou, liii. xcvi.

FN 591 Life of James ii. 545., Orig. Mem. Of course James does
not use the word assassination. He talks of the seizing and
carrying away of the Prince of Orange.

FN 592 Every thing bad that was known or rumoured about Porter
came out on the State Trials of 1696.

FN 593 As to Goodman see the evidence on the trial of Peter Cook;
Cleverskirke, Feb 28/March 9 1696; L'Hermitage, April 10/20 1696;
and a pasquinade entitled the Duchess of Cleveland's Memorial.

FN 594 See the preamble to the Commission of 1695.

FN 595 The Commission will be found in the Minutes of the
Parliament.

FN 596 Act. Parl. Scot., May 21. 1695; London Gazette, May 30.

FN 597 Act. Parl. Scot. May 23. 1695.

FN 598 Ibid. June 14. 18. 20. 1695; London Gazette, June 27.

FN 599 Burnet, ii. 157.; Act. Parl., June 10 1695.

FN 600 Act. Parl., June 26. 1695; London Gazette, July 4.

FN 601 There is an excellent portrait of Villeroy in St. Simon's
Memoirs.

FN 602 Some curious traits of Trumball's character will be found
in Pepys's Tangier Diary.

FN 603 Postboy, June 13., July 9. 11., 1695; Intelligence
Domestic and Foreign, June 14.; Pacquet Boat from Holland and
Flanders, July 9.

FN 604 Vaudemont's Despatch and William's Answer are in the
Monthly Mercury for July 1695.

FN 605 See Saint Simon's Memoirs and his note upon Dangeau.

FN 606 London Gazette July 22. 1695; Monthly Mercury of August,
1695. Swift ten years later, wrote a lampoon on Cutts, so dull
and so nauseously scurrilous that Ward or Gildon would have been
ashamed of it, entitled the Description of a Salamander.

FN 607 London Gazette, July 29. 1695; Monthly Mercury for August
1695; Stepney to Lord Lexington, Aug. 16/26; Robert Fleming's
Character of King William, 1702. It was in the attack of July
17/27 that Captain Shandy received the memorable wound in his
groin.

FN 608 London Gazette, Aug. r. 5. 1695; Monthly Mercury of August
1695,  containing the Letters of William and Dykvelt to the
States General.

FN 609 Monthly Mercury for August 1695; Stepney to Lord
Lexington, Aug. 16/26

FN 610 Monthly Mercury for August 1695; Letter from Paris, Aug
26/Sept 5 1695, among the Lexington Papers.

FN 611 L'Hermitage, Aug. 13/23 1695.

FN 612 London Gazette, Aug. 26. 1695; Monthly Mercury, Stepney to
Lexington, Aug. 20/30.

FN 613 Boyer's History of King William III, 1703; London Gazette,
Aug. 29. 1695; Stepney to Lexington, Aug. 20/30.; Blathwayt to
Lexington, Sept. 2.

FN 614 Postscript to the Monthly Mercury for August 1695; London
Gazette, Sept. 9.; Saint Simon; Dangeau.

FN 615 Boyer, History of King William III, 2703; Postscript to
the Monthly Mercury, Aug. 1695; London Gazette, Sept. 9. 12.;
Blathwayt to Lexington, Sept. 6.; Saint Simon; Dangeau.

FN 616 There is a noble, and I suppose, unique Collection of the
newspapers of William's reign in the British Museum. I have
turned over every page of that Collection. It is strange that
neither Luttrell nor Evelyn should have noticed the first
appearance of the new journals. The earliest mention of those
journals which I have found, is in a despatch of L'Hermitage,
dated July 12/22, 1695. I will transcribe his words:--"Depuis
quelque tems on imprime ici plusieurs feuilles volantes en 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
bill ou projet d'acte qui avoit ete porte dans la Chambre des
Communes pour regler 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 eut le pouvoir de faire des gazettes: mais
aujourdhui il s'en fait plusieurs sons d'autres noms."
L'Hermitage mentions the paragraph reflecting on the Princess,
and the submission of the libeller.

FN 617 L'Hermitage, Oct. 15/25., Nov. 15/25. 1695.

FN 618 London Gazette, Oct. 24. 1695. See Evelyn's Account of
Newmarket in 1671, and Pepys, July 18. 1668. From Tallard's
despatches written after the Peace of Ryswick it appears that the
autumn meetings were not less numerous or splendid in the days of
William than in those of his uncles.

FN 619 I have taken this account of William's progress chiefly
from the London Gazettes, from the despatches of L'Hermitage,
from Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, and from the letters of Vernon,
Yard and Cartwright among the Lexington Papers.

FN 620 See the letter of Yard to Lexington, November 8. 1695, and
the note by the editor of the Lexington Papers.

FN 621 L'Hermitage, Nov. 15/25. 1695.

FN 622 L'Hermitage Oct 25/Nov 4 Oct 29/Nov 8 1695.

FN 623 Ibid. Nov. 5/15 1695.

FN 624 L'Hermitage, Nov. 15/25 1695; Sir James Forbes to Lady
Russell, Oct. 3. 1695; Lady Russell to Lord Edward Russell; The
Postman, Nov. 1695.

FN 625 There is a highly curious account of this contest in the
despatches of L'Hermitage.

FN 626 Postman, Dec. 15. 17. 1696; Vernon to Shrewsbury, Dec. 13.
15.; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary; Burnet, i. 647.; Saint
Evremond's Verses to Hampden.

FN 627 L'Hermitage, Nov. 13/23. 1695.

FN 628 I have derived much valuable information on this subject
from a MS. in the British Museum, Lansdowne Collection, No. 801.
It is entitled Brief Memoires relating to the Silver and Gold
Coins of England, with an Account of the Corruption of the
Hammered Money, and of the Reform by the late Grand Coinage at
the Tower and the Country Mints, by Hopton Haynes, Assay Master
of the Mint.

FN 629 Stat. 5 Eliz. c. ii., and 18 Eliz. c. 1

FN 630 Pepys's Diary, November 23. 1663.

FN 631 The first writer who noticed the fact that, where good
money and bad money are thown into circulation together, the bad
money drives out the good money, was Aristophanes. He seems to
have thought that the preference which his fellow citizens gave
to light coins was to be attributed to a depraved taste such as
led them to entrust men like Cleon and Hyperbolus with the
conduct of great affairs. But, though his political 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.

FN 632 Narcissus Luttrell's Diary is filled with accounts of
these executions. "Le metier de rogneur de monnoye," says
L'Hermitage, "est si lucratif et paroit si facile que, quelque
chose qu'on fasse pour les detruire, il s'en trouve toujours
d'autres pour prendre leur place. Oct 1/11. 1695."

FN 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 "a soft pernicious tenderness slackened the care of
magistrates, kept back the under officers, corrupted the juries,
and withheld the evidence." He mentions the difficulty of
convincing the criminals themselves that they had done wrong. See
also a Sermon preached at York Castle by George Halley, a
clergyman of the Cathedral, to some clippers who were to be
hanged the next day. He mentions the impenitent ends which
clippers generally made, and does his best to awaken the
consciences of his bearers. He dwells on one aggravation of their
crime which I should not have thought of. "If," says he, "the
same question were to be put in this age, as of old, 'Whose is
this image and superscription?' we could not answer the whole. We
may guess at the image; but we cannot tell whose it is by the
superscription; for that is all gone." The testimony of these two
divines is confirmed by that of Tom Brown, who tells a facetious
story, which I do not venture to quote, about a conversation
between the ordinary of Newgate and a clipper.

FN 634 Lowndes's Essay for the Amendment of the Silver Coins,
1695.

FN 635 L'Hermitage, Nov 29/Dec 9 1695.

FN 636 The Memoirs of this Lancashire Quaker were printed a few
years ago in a most respectable newspaper, the Manchester
Guardian.

FN 637 Lowndes's Essay.

FN 638 L'Hermitage, Dec 24/Jan 3 1695.

FN 639 It ought always to be remembered, to Adam Smith's honour,
that he was entirely converted by Bentham's Defence of Usury, and
acknowledged, with candour worthy of a true philosopher, that the
doctrine laid down in the Wealth of Nations was erroneous.

FN 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.

FN 641 Burnet, ii. 147.

FN 642 Commons' Journals, Nov. 22, 23. 26. 1695; L'Hermitage, Nov
26/Dec 6

FN 643 Commons' Journals, Nov. 26, 27, 28, 29. 1695; L'Hermitage,
Nov 26./Dec 6 Nov. 29/Dec 9 Dec 3/13

FN 644 Commons' Journals, Nov. 28, 29. 1695; L'Hermitage, Dec.
3/13

FN 645 L'Hermitage, Nov 22/Dec 2, Dec 6/16 1695; An Abstract of
the Consultations and Debates between the French King and his
Council concerning the new Coin that is intended to be made in
England, privately sent by a Friend of the Confederates from the
French Court to his Brother at Brussels, Dec. 12. 1695; A
Discourse of the General Notions of Money, Trade and Exchanges,
by Mr. Clement of Bristol; A Letter from an English Merchant at
Amsterdam to his Friend in London; A Fund for preserving and
supplying our Coin; An Essay for regulating the Coin, by A. V.; A
Proposal for supplying His Majesty with 1,200,000L, by mending
the Coin, and yet preserving the ancient Standard of the Kingdom.
These are a few of the tracts which were distributed among
members of Parliament at this conjuncture.

FN 646 Commons' Journals, Dec. 10. 1695; L'Hermitage, Dec. 3/13
6/16 10/20

FN 647 Commons' Journals, Dec. 13. 1695.

FN 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'Hermitage
describes in strong language the extreme inconvenience caused by
the dispute between the Houses:--"La longueur qu'il y a dans
cette affaire est d'autant plus desagreable qu'il n'y a point (le
sujet sur lequel le peuple en general puisse souffrir plus
d'incommodite, puisqu'il n'y a personne qui, a tous moments,
n'aye occasion de l'esprouver.

FN 649 That Locke was not a party to the attempt to make gold
cheaper by penal laws, I infer from a passage in which he notices
Lowndes's complaints about the high price of guineas. "The only
remedy," says Locke, "for that mischief, as well as a great many
others, is the putting an end to the passing of clipp'd money by
tale." Locke's Further Considerations. That the penalty proved,
as might have been expected, inefficacious, appears from several
passages in the despatches of L'Hermitage, and even from Haynes's
Brief Memoires, though Haynes was a devoted adherent of Montague.

FN 650 L'Hermitage, Jan 14/24 1696.

FN 651 Commons' Journals, Jan. 14. 17. 23. 1696; L'Hermitage,
Jan. 14/24; Gloria Cambriae, or Speech of a Bold Briton against a
Dutch Prince 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
called bold, if he had published his impertinence while William
was living. The Life of Price is a miserable performance, full of
blunders and anachronisms.

FN 652 L'Hermitage mentions the unfavourable change in the temper
of the Commons; and William alludes to it repeatedly in his
letters to Heinsius, Jan 21/31 1696, Jan 28/Feb 7.

FN 653 The gaiety of the Jacobites is said by Van Cleverskirke to
have been noticed during some time; Feb 25/March 6 1696.

FN 654 Harris's deposition, March 28. 1696.

FN 655 Hunt's deposition.

FN 656 Fisher's and Harris's depositions.

FN 657 Barclay's narrative, in the Life of James, ii. 548.; Paper
by Charnock among the MSS. in the Bodleian Library.

FN 658 Harris's deposition.

FN 659 Ibid. Bernardi's autobiography is not at all to be
trusted.

FN 660 See his trial.

FN 661 Fisher's deposition; Knightley's deposition; Cranburne's
trial; De la Rue's deposition.

FN 662 See the trials and depositions.

FN 663 L'Hermitage, March 3/13

FN 664 See Berwick's Memoirs.

FN 665 Van Cleverskirke, Feb 25/March 6 1696. I am confident that
no sensible and impartial person, after attentively reading
Berwick's narrative of these transactions and comparing it with
the narrative in the Life of James (ii. 544.) which is taken,
word for word, from the Original Memoirs, can doubt that James
was accessory to the design of assassination.

FN 666 L'Hermitage, March Feb 25/March 6

FN 667 My account of these events is taken chiefly from the
trials and depositions. See also Burnet, ii. 165, 166, 167, and
Blackmore's True and Impartial History, compiled under the
direction of Shrewsbury and Somers, and Boyer's History of King
William III., 1703.

FN 668 Portland to Lexington, March 3/13. 1696; Van Cleverskirke,
Feb 25/Mar 6 L'Hermitage, same date.

FN 669 Commons' Journals, Feb. 24 1695.

FN 670 England's Enemies Exposed, 1701.

FN 671 Commons' Journals, Feb. 24. 1695/6.

FN 672 Ibid. Feb. 25. 1695/6; Van Cleverskirke,  Feb 28/March 9;
L'Hermitage, of the same date.

FN 673 According to L'Hermitage, Feb 27/Mar 8,there were two of
these fortunate hackney coachmen. A shrewd and vigilant hackney
coachman indeed was from the nature of his calling, very likely
to be successful in this sort of chase. The newspapers abound
with proofs of the general enthusiasm.

FN 674 Postman March 5. 1695/6

FN 675 Ibid. Feb. 29., March 2., March 12., March 14. 1695/6.

FN 676 Postman, March 12. 1696; Vernon to Lexington, March 13;
Van Cleverskirke, March 13/23 The proceedings are fully reported
in the Collection of State Trials.

FN 677 Burnet, ii. 171.; The Present Disposition of England
considered; The answer entitled England's Enemies Exposed, 1701;
L'Hermitage, March 17/27. 1696. L'Hermitage says, "Charnock a
fait des grandes instances pour avoir sa grace, et a offert de
tout declarer: mais elle lui a este refusee."

FN 678 L'Hermitage, March 17/27

FN 679 This most curious paper is among the Nairne MSS. in the
Bodleian Library. A short, and not perfectly ingenuous abstract
of it will be found in the Life of James, ii. 555. Why
Macpherson, who has printed many less interesting documents did
not choose to print this document, it is easy to guess. I will
transcribe two or three important sentences. "It may reasonably
be presumed that what, in one juncture His Majesty had rejected
he might in another accept, when his own and the public good
necessarily required it. For I could not understand it in such a
manner as if he had given a general prohibition that at no time
the Prince of Orange should be touched. . . Nobody that believes
His Majesty to be lawful King of England can doubt but that in
virtue of his commission to levy war against the Prince of Orange
and his adherents, the setting upon his person is justifiable, as
well by the laws of the land duly interpreted and explained as by
the law of God."

FN 680 The trials of Friend and Parkyns will be found,
excellently reported, among the State Trials.

FN 681 L'Hermitage, April 3/13 1696.

FN 682 Commons' Journals, April 1, 2. 1696; L'Hermitage, April
3/13. 1696; Van Cleverskirke, of the same date.

FN 683 L'Hermitage, April 7/17. 1696. The Declaration of the
Bishops, Collier's Defence, and Further Defence, and a long legal
argument for Cook and Snatt will be found in the Collection of
State Trials.

FN 684 See the Manhunter, 1690.

FN 685 State Trials.

FN 686 The best, indeed the only good, account of these debates
is given by L'Hermitage, Feb 28/March 9 1696. He says, very
truly; "La difference n'est qu'une dispute de mots, le droit
qu'on a a une chose selon les loix estant aussy bon qu'il puisse
estre."

FN 687 See the London Gazettes during several weeks; L'Hermitage,
March 24/April 3 April 14/24. 1696; Postman, April 9 25 30

FN 688 Journals of the Commons and Lords; L'Hermitage, April 7/17
10/20 1696.

FN 689 See the Freeholder's Plea against Stockjobbing Elections
of Parliament Men, and the Considerations upon Corrupt Elections
of Members to serve in Parliament. Both these pamphlets were
published in 1701.

FN 690 The history of this bill will be found in the Journals of
the Commons, and in a very interesting despatch of L'Hermitage,
April 14/24 1696.

FN 691 The Act is 7 & 8 Will. 3. c. 31. Its history maybe traced
in the Journals.

FN 692 London Gazette, May 4. 1696

FN 693 Ibid. March 12. 16. 1696; Monthly Mercury for March, 1696.

FN 694 The Act provided that the clipped money must be brought in
before the fourth of May. As the third was a Sunday, the second
was practically the last day.

FN 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
so much taken notice of for the universal concern people had in
it."

FN 696 London Newsletter, May 21. 1696; Old Postmaster, June 25.;
L'Hermitage, May 19/29.

FN 697 Haynes's Brief Memoirs, Lansdowne MSS. 801.

FN 698 See the petition from Birmingham in the Commons' Journals,
Nov. 12. 1696; and the petition from Leicester, Nov. 21

FN 699 "Money exceeding scarce, so that none was paid or
received; but all was on trust."--Evelyn, May 13. And again, on
June 11.: "Want of current money to carry on the smallest
concerns, even for daily provisions in the markets."

FN 700 L'Hermitage, May 22/June 1; See a Letter of Dryden to
Tonson, which Malone, with great probability, supposes to have
been written at this time.

FN 701 L'Hermitage to the States General May 8/18.; Paris
Gazette, June 2/12.; Trial and Condemnation of the Land Bank at
Exeter Change for murdering the Bank of England at Grocers' Hall,
1696. The Will and the Epitaph will be found in the Trial.

FN 702 L'Hermitage, June 12/22. 1696.

FN 703 On this subject see the Short History of the Last
Parliament, 1699; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary; the newspapers of
1696 passim, and the letters of L'Hermitage passim. See also the
petition of the Clothiers of Gloucester in the Commons' Journal,
Nov. 27. 1696. Oldmixon, who had been himself a sufferer, writes
on this subject with even more than his usual acrimony.

FN 704 See L'Hermitage, June 12/22, June 23/July, 3 June 30/July
10, Aug 1/11 Aug 28/Sept 7 1696. The Postman of August 15.
mentions the great 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 from hand to hand; 'tis observed
that such as cry them down are ill affected to the government."
"They are found by experience," says the Postman of the seventh
of May following, "to be of extraordinary use to the merchants
and traders of the City of London, and all other parts of the
kingdom." I will give one specimen of the unmetrical and almost
unintelligible doggrel which the Jacobite poets published on this
subject:--

"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."

FN 705 Commons' Journals, Nov. 25. 1696.

FN 706 L'Hermitage, June 2/12. 1696; Commons' Journals, Nov. 25.;
Post-man, May 5., June 4., July 2.

FN 707 L'Hermitage, July.3/13 10/20 1696; Commons' Journals, Nov.
25.; Paris Gazette, June 30., Aug. 25.; Old Postmaster, July 9.

FN 708 William to Heinsius, July 30. 1696; William to Shrewsbury,
July 23. 30. 31.

FN 709 Shrewsbury to William, July 28. 31., Aug. 4. 1696;
L'Hermitage, Aug. 1/11

FN 710 Shrewsbury to William, Aug 7. 1696; L'Hermitage, Aug
14/24.; London Gazette, Aug. 13.

FN 711 L'Hermitage, Aug.18/28. 1696. Among the records of the
Bank is a  resolution of the Directors prescribing the very words
which Sir John Houblon was to use. William's sense of the service
done by the Bank on this occasion is expressed in his letter to
Shrewsbury, of Aug. 24/Sept 3. One of the Directors, in a letter
concerning the Bank, printed in 1697, says: "The  Directors could
not have answered it to their members, had it been for any less
occasion than the preservation of the kingdom."

FN 712 Haynes's Brief Memoires; Lansdowne MSS. 801. Montague's
friendly letter to Newton, announcing the appointment, has been
repeatedly printed. It bears date March 19. 1695/6.

FN 713 I have very great pleasure in quoting the words of Haynes,
an able, experienced and practical man, who had been in the habit
of transacting business with Newton. They have never I believe,
been printed. "Mr. Isaac Newton, public Professor of the
Mathematicks in Cambridge, the greatest philosopher, and one of
the best men of this age, was, by a great and wise statesman,
recommended to the favour of the late King for Warden of the
King's Mint and Exchanges, for which he was peculiarly qualified,
because of his extraordinary skill in numbers, and his great
integrity, by the first of which he could judge correctly of the
Mint accounts and transactions as soon as he entered upon his
office; and by the latter--I mean his integrity--he set a
standard to the conduct and behaviour of every officer and clerk
in the Mint. Well had it been for the publick, had he acted a few
years sooner in that situation." It is interesting to compare
this testimony, borne by a man who thoroughly understood the
business of the Mint, with the childish talk of Pope. "Sir Isaac
Newton," said Pope, "though so deep in algebra and fluxions,
could not readily make up a common account; and, whilst he was
Master of the Mint, used to get somebody to make up the accounts
for him." Some of the statesmen with whom Pope lived might have
told him that it is not always from ignorance of arithmetic that
persons at the head of great departments leave to clerks the
business of casting up pounds, shillings and pence.

FN 714 "I do not love, he wrote to Flamsteed, "to be printed on
every occasion, much less to be dunned and teased by foreigners
about mathematical things, or to be thought by our own people to
be trifling away my time about them, when I am about the King's
business."

FN 715 Hopton Haynes's Brief Memoires; Lansdowne MSS. 801.; the
Old Postmaster, July 4. 1696; the Postman May 30., July 4 ,
September 12. 19., October 8,; L'Hermitage's despatches of this
summer and autumn, passim.

FN 716 Paris Gazette, Aug. 11. 1696.

FN 717 On the 7th of August L'Hermitage remarked for the first
time that money seemed to be more abundant.

FN 718 Compare Edmund Bohn's Letter to Carey of the 31st of July
1696 with the Paris Gazette of the same date. Bohn's description
of the state of Norfolk is coloured, no doubt, by his
constitutionally gloomy temper, and by the feeling with which he,
not unnaturally, regarded the House of Commons. His statistics
are not to be trusted; and his predictions were signally
falsified. But he may be believed as to plain facts which
happened in his immediate neighbourhood.

FN 719 As to Grascombe's character, and the opinion entertained
of him by the most estimable Jacobites, see the Life of
Kettlewell, part iii., section 55. Lee the compiler of the Life
of Kettlewell mentions with just censure some of Grascombe's
writings, but makes no allusion to the worst of them, the Account
of the Proceedings in the House of Commons in relation to the
Recoining of the Clipped Money, and falling the price of Guineas.
That Grascombe was the author, was proved before a Committee of
the House of Commons. See the Journals, Nov. 3o. 1696.

FN 720 L'Hermitage, June 12/22., July 7/17. 1696.

FN 721 See the Answer to Grascombe, entitled Reflections on a
Scandalous Libel.

FN 722 Paris Gazette, Sept. 15. 1696,

FN 723 L'Hermitage, Oct. 2/12 1696.

FN 724 L'Hermitage, July 20/30., Oct. 2/12 9/10 1696.

FN 725 The Monthly Mercuries; Correspondence between Shrewsbury
and Galway; William to Heinsius, July 23. 30. 1696; Memoir of the
Marquess of Leganes.

FN 726 William to Heinsius, Aug 27/Sept 6, Nov 15/25 Nov. 17/27
1696; Prior to Lexington, Nov. 17/27; Villiers to Shrewsbury,
Nov. 13/23

FN 727 My account of the attempt to corrupt Porter is taken from
his examination before the House of Commons on Nov. 16. 1696, and
from the following sources: Burnet, ii. 183.; L'Hermitage to the
States General, May 8/18. 12/22 1696; the Postboy, May 9.; the
Postman, May 9.; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary; London Gazette, Oct.
19. 1696.

FN 728 London Gazette; Narcissus Luttrell; L'Hermitage, June
12/22; Postman, June 11.

FN 729 Life of William III. 1703; Vernon's evidence given in his
place in the House of Commons, Nov. 16. 1696.

FN 730 William to Shrewsbury from Loo, Sept. 10. 1696.

FN 731 Shrewsbury to William, Sept. 18. 1696.

FN 732 William to Shrewsbury, Sept. 25. 1696.

FN 733 London Gazette, Oct. 8. 1696; Vernon to Shrewsbury,
October 8. Shrewsbury to Portland, Oct. 11.

FN 734 Vernon to Shrewsbury, Oct. 13. 1696; Somers to Shrewsbury,
Oct. 15.

FN 735 William to Shrewsbury, Oct. 9. 1696.

FN 736 Shrewsbury to William, Oct. 11. 1696.

FN 737 Somers to Shrewsbury, Oct. 19. 1696.

FN 738 William to Shrewsbury, Oct. 20. 1696.

FN 739 Vernon to Shrewsbury, Oct. 13. 15.; Portland to
Shrewsbury, Oct, 20, 1696.

FN 740 L'Hermitage, July 10/20 1696.

FN 741 Lansdowne MS. 801.

FN 742 I take my account of these proceedings from the Commons'
Journals, from the despatches of Van Cleverskirke and L'Hermitage
to the States General, and from Vernon's letter to Shrewsbury of
the 27th of October 1696. "I don't know," says Vernon "that the
House of Commons ever acted with greater concert than they do at
present."

FN 743 Vernon to Shrewsbury, Oct. 29. 1696; L'Hermitage, Oct
30/Nov 9 L'Hermitage calls Howe Jaques Haut. No doubt the
Frenchman had always heard Howe spoken of as Jack.

FN 744 Postman, October 24. 1696; L'Hermitage, Oct 23/Nov 2.
L'Hermitage says: "On commence deja a ressentir des effets
avantageux des promptes et favorables resolutions que la Chambre
des Communes prit Mardy. Le discomte des billets de banque, qui
estoit le jour auparavant a 18, est revenu a douze, et les
actions ont aussy augmente, aussy bien que les taillis."

FN 745 William to Heinsius, Nov. 13/23 1696.

FN 746 Actes et Memoires des Negociations de la Paix de Ryswick,
1707; Villiers to Shrewsbury Dec. 1.11. 4/14. 1696; Letter of
Heinsius quoted by M. Sirtema de Grovestins. Of this letter I
have not a copy.

FN 747 Vernon to Shrewsbury, Dec. 8. 1696.

FN 748 Wharton to Shrewsbury, Oct. 27. 1696.

FN 749 Somers to Shrewsbury, Oct. 27. 31. 1696; Vernon to
Shrewsbury, Oct. 31.; Wharton to Shrewsbury, Nov. 10. "I am apt
to think," says Wharton, "there never was more management than in
bringing that about."

FN 750 See for example a poem on the last Treasury day at
Kensington, March 1696/7.

FN 751 Somers to Shrewsbury, Oct 31. 1696; Wharton to Shrewsbury,
of the same date.

FN 752 Somers to Shrewsbury, Nov. 3. 1696. The King's
unwillingness to see Fenwick is mentioned in Somers's letter of
the 15th of October.

FN 753 Vernon to Shrewsbury, Nov. 3. 1696.

FN 754 The circumstances of Goodman's flight were ascertained
three 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.

FN 755 London Gazette Nov. 9. 1696; Vernon to Shrewsbury, Nov.
3.; Van Cleverskirke and L'Hermitage of the same date.

FN 756 The account of the events of this day I have taken from
the Commons' Journals; the valuable work entitled Proceedings in
Parliament against Sir John Fenwick, Bart. upon a Bill of
Attainder for High Treason, 1696; Vernon's Letter to Shrewsbury,
November 6. 1696, and Somers's Letter to Shrewsbury, November 7.
From both these letters it is plain that the Whig leaders had
much difficulty in obtaining the absolution of Godolphin.

FN 757 Commons' Journals, Nov. 9. 1696 - Vernon to Shrewsbury,
Nov. 10. The editor of the State Trials is mistaken in supposing
that the quotation from Caesar's speech was made in the debate of
the 13th.

FN 758 Commons' Journals, Nov. 13. 16, 17.; Proceedings against
Sir John Fenwick.

FN 759 A Letter to a Friend in Vindication of the Proceedings
against Sir John Fenwick, 1697.

FN 760 This incident is mentioned by L'Hermitage.

FN 761 L'Hermitage tells us that such things took place in these
debates.

FN 762 See the Lords' Journals, Nov. 14., Nov. 30., Dec. 1. 1696.

FN 763 Wharton to Shrewsbury, Dec. 1. 1696; L'Hermitage, of same
date.

FN 764 L'Hermitage, Dec. 4/14. 1696; Wharton to Shrewsbury, Dec.
1.

FN 765 Lords' Journals Dec. 8. 1696; L'Hermitage, of the same
date.

FN 766 L'Hermitage, Dec. 15/25 18/28 1696.

FN 767 Ibid. Dec. 18/28 1696.

FN 768 Lords' Journals, Dec. 15. 1696; L'Hermitage, Dec.18/28;
Vernon to Shrewsbury, Dec. 15. About the numbers there is a
slight difference between Vernon and L'Hermitage. I have followed
Vernon.

FN 769 Lords' Journals, Dec. 18. 1696; Vernon to Shrewsbury, Dec.
19.; L'Hermitage, Dec 22/Jan 1. I take the numbers from Vernon.

FN 770 Lords' Journals, Dec. 25 1696; L'Hermitage, Dec 26/Jan 4.
In the Vernon Correspondence there is a letter from Vernon to
Shrewsbury giving an account of the transactions of this day; but
it is erroneously dated Dec. 2., and is placed according to that
date. This is not the only blunder of the kind. A letter from
Vernon to Shrewsbury, evidently written on the 7th of November
1696, is dated and placed as a letter of the 7th of January 1697.
A letter of June 14. 1700 is dated and placed as a letter of June
15. 1698. The Vernon Correspondence is of great value; but it is
so ill edited that it cannot be safely used without much caution,
and constant reference to other authorities.

FN 771 Lords' Journals, Dec. 23. 1696; Vernon to Shrewsbury, Dec.
24; L'Hermitage, Dec 25/Jan 4.

FN 772 Vernon to Shrewsbury, Dec, 24 1696.

FN 773 Dohna, who knew Monmouth well, describes him thus: "Il
avoit de l'esprit infiniment, et meme du plus agreable; mais il y
avoir un peu trop de haut et de bas dans son fait. Il ne savoit
ce que c'etoit que de menager les gens; et il turlupinoit a
l'outrance ceux qui ne lui plaisoient pas."

FN 774 L'Hermitage, Jan. 12/22 1697.

FN 775 Lords' Journals, Jan. 9. 1696/7; Vernon to Shrewsbury, of
the same date; L'Hermitage, Jan. 12/22.

FN 776 Lords' Journals, Jan. 15. 1691; Vernon to Shrewsbury, of
the same date; L'Hermitage, of the same date.

FN 777 Postman, Dec. 29. 31. 1696.

FN 778 L'Hermitage, Jan. 12/22. 1697.

FN 779 Van Cleverskirke, Jan. 12/22. 1697; L'Hermitage, Jan.
15/25.

FN 780 L'Hermitage, Jan. 15/25. 1697.

FN 781 Lords' Journals, Jan. 22. 26. 1696/7; Vernon to
Shrewsbury, Jan. 26.

FN 782 Commons' Journals, Jan. 27. 169. The entry in the
journals, which might easily escape notice, is explained by a
letter of L'Hermitage, written Jan 29/Feb 8

FN 783 L'Hermitage, Jan 29/Feb 8; 1697; London Gazette, Feb. 1.;
Paris Gazette; Vernon to Shrewsbury; Jan. 28.; Burnet, ii. 193.

FN 784 Commons' Journals, December 19. 1696; Vernon to
Shrewsbury, Nov. 28. 1696.

FN 785 Lords' Journals, Jan. 23. 1696/7; Vernon to Shrewsbury,
Jan. 23.; L'Hermitage, Jan 26/Feb 5.

FN 786 Commons' Journals, Jan. 26. 1696/7; Vernon to Shrewsbury
and Van Cleverskirke to the States General of the same date. It
is curious that the King and the Lords should have made so
strenuous a fight against the Commons in defence of one of the
five points of the Peoples Charter.

FN 787 Commons' Journals, April1. 3. 1697; Narcissus Luttrell's
Diary; L'Hermitage, April 2/12 As L'Hermitage says, "La plupart
des membres, lorsqu'ils sont a la campagne, estant bien aises
d'estre informez par plus d'un endroit de ce qui se passe, et
s'imaginant que la Gazette qui se fait sous la direction d'un des
Secretaires d'Etat, ne contiendroit pas autant de choses que fait
celle-cy, ne sont pas fichez que d'autres les instruisent." The
numbers on the division I take from L'Hermitage. They are not to
be found in the Journals. But the Journals were not then so
accurately kept as at present.

FN 788 Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, June 1691, May 1693.

FN 789 Commons' Journals, Dec 30. 1696; Postman, July 4. 1696.

FN 790 Postman April 22. 1696; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary.

FN 791 London Gazette, April 26. 29. 1697,

FN 792 London Gazette, April 29. 1697; L'Hermitage, April 23/May
3

FN 793 London Gazette, April 26. 29 1697 L'Hermitage, April
23/May 3

FN 794 What the opinion of the public was we learn from a letter
written by L'Hermitage immediately after Godolphin's resignation,
Nov 3/13. 1696, "Le public tourne plus la veue sur le Sieur
Montegu, qui a la seconde charge de la Tresorerie que sur aucun
autre." The strange silence of the London Gazette is explained by
a letter of Vernon to Shrewsbury, dated May 1. 1697.

FN 795 London Gazette, April 22. 26: 1697.

FN 796 Postman, Jan. 26; Mar. 7. 11. 1696/7; April 8. 1697.

FN 797 Ibid. Oct. 29. 1696.

FN 798 Howell's State Trials; Postman, Jan. 9/19 1696/7.

FN 799 See the Protocol of February 10 1697, in the Actes et
Memoires des Negociations de la Paix de Ryswick, 1707.

FN 800 William to Heinsius, Dec. 11/21 1696. There are similar
expressions in other letters written by the King about the same
time.

FN 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 Memoires des Negociations de la Paix de Ryswick, 1707.

FN 802 Characters of all the three French ministers are given by
Saint Simon.

FN 803 Actes et Memoires des Negociations de la Paix de Ryswick.

FN 804 An engraving and ground plan of the mansion will be found
in the Actes et Memoires.

FN 805 Whoever wishes to be fully informed as to the idle
controversies and mummeries in which the Congress wasted its
time, may consult the Actes et Memoires.

FN 806 Saint Simon was certainly as good a judge of men as any of
those English grumblers who called Portland a dunce and a boor;
Saint Simon too had every opportunity of forming a correct
judgment; for he saw Portland in a situation full of
difficulties; and Saint Simon says, in one place, "Benting,
discret, secret, poli aux autres, fidele a son maitre, adroit en
affaires, le servit tres utilement;" in another, "Portland parut
avec un eclat personnel, une politesse, un air de monde et de
cour, une galanterie et des graces qui surprirent; avec cela,
beaucoup de dignite, meme (le hauteur, mais avec discernement et
un jugement prompt sans rien de hasarde." Boufflers too extols
Portland's good breeding and tact. Boufflers to Lewis, July 9.
1697. This letter is in the archives of the French Foreign
Office. A translation will be found in the valuable collection
published by M. Grimblot.

FN 807 Boufflers to Lewis, June 21/July 1 1697; Lewis to
Boufflers, June 22/July 2; Boufflers to Lewis, June 25/July 5

FN 808 Boufflers to Lewis June 28/July 8, June 29/July 9 1697

FN 809 My account of this negotiation I have taken chiefly from
the despatches in the French Foreign Office. Translations of
those despatches have been published by M. Grimblot. See also
Burnet, ii. 200, 201.

It has been frequently asserted that William promised to pay Mary
of Modena fifty thousand pounds a year. Whoever takes the trouble
to read the Protocol of Sept. 10/20 1697, among the Acts of the
Peace of Ryswick, will see that my account is correct. Prior
evidently understood the protocol as I understand it. For he
says, in a letter to Lexington of Sept. 17. 1697, "No. 2. is the
thing to which the King consents as to Queen Marie's settlements.
It is fairly giving her what the law allows her. The mediator is
to dictate this paper to the French, and enter it into his
protocol; and so I think we shall come off a bon marche upon that
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 by which it was stipulated that, after the death of
William, the Prince of Wales should succeed to the English
throne. This fable has often been repeated, but was never
believed by men of sense, and can hardly, since the publication
of the letters which passed between Lewis and Boufflers, find
credit even with the weakest. Dalrymple and other writers
imagined that they had found in the Life of James (ii. 574, 575.)
proof that the story of the secret article was true. The passage
on which they relied was certainly not written by James, nor
under his direction; and the authority of those portions of the
Life which were not written by him, or under his direction, is
but small. Moreover, when we examine this passage, we shall find
that it not only does not bear out the story of the secret
article, but directly contradicts that story. The compiler of the
Life tells us that, after James had declared that he never would
consent to purchase the English throne for his posterity by
surrendering his own rights, nothing more was said on the
subject. Now it is quite certain that James in his Memorial
published in March 1697, a Memorial which will be found both in
the Life (ii. 566,) and in the Acts of the Peace of Ryswick,
declared to all Europe that he never would stoop to so low and
degenerate an action as to permit the Prince of Orange to reign
on condition that the Prince of Wales should succeed. It follows,
therefore, that nothing can have been said on this subject after
March 1697. Nothing therefore, can have been said on this subject
in the conferences between Boufflers and Portland, which did not
begin till late in June.

Was there then absolutely no foundation for the story? I believe
that there was a foundation; and I have already related the facts
on which this superstructure of fiction has been reared. It is
quite certain that Lewis, in 1693, intimated to the allies
through the government of Sweden, his hope that some expedient
might be devised which would reconcile the Princes who laid claim
to the English crown. The expedient at which be hinted was, no
doubt, that the Prince of Wales should succeed William and Mary.
It is possible that, as the compiler of the Life of James says,
William may have "show'd no great aversness" to this arrangement.
He had no reason, public or private, for preferring his sister in
law to his brother in law, if his brother in law were bred a
Protestant. But William could do nothing without the concurrence
of the Parliament; and it is in the highest degree improbable
that either he or the Parliament would ever have consented to
make the settlement of the English crown a matter of stipulation
with France. What he would or would not have done, however, we
cannot with certainty pronounce. For James proved impracticable.
Lewis consequently gave up all thoughts of effecting a compromise
and promised, as we have seen, to recognise William as King of
England "without any difficulty, restriction, condition, or
reserve." It seems certain that, after this promise, which was
made in December 1696, the Prince of Wales was not again
mentioned in the negotiations.

FN 810 Prior MS.; Williamson to Lexington, July 20/30. 1697;
Williamson to Shrewsbury, July 23/Aug 2

FN 811 The note of the French ministers, dated July 10/20 1697,
will be found in the Actes et Memoires.

FN 812 Monthly Mercuries for August and September, 1697.

FN 813 Life of James, ii: 565.

FN 814 Actes et Memoires des Negociations de la Paix de Ryswick;
Life of James, ii. 566.

FN 815 James's Protest will be found in his Life, ii. 572.

FN 816 Actes et Memoires des Negociations de la Paix de Ryswick;
Williamson to Lexington, Sept 14/24 1697; Prior MS.

FN 817 Prior MS.

FN 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.

FN 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.

FN 820 L'Hermitage, Sept 17/27, Sept 25/Oct 4 1697 Oct 19/29;
Postman, Nov. 20.

FN 821 L'Hermitage, Sept 21/Oct 1 Nov 2/12 I697; Paris Gazette,
Nov. 20/30; Postboy, Nov. 2. At this time appeared a pasquinade
entitled, A Satyr upon the French King, written after the Peace
was concluded at Reswick, anno 1697, by a Non-Swearing Parson,
and said to be drop'd out of his Pocket at Sam's Coffee House. I
quote a few of the most 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."

FN 822 London Gazettes; Postboy of Nov. 18 1697; L'Hermitage,
Nov. 5/15.

FN 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

FN 824 Evelyn's Diary, Dec, 2. 1697. The sermon is extant; and I
must acknowledge that it deserves Evelyn's censure.

FN 825 London Gazette, Dec. 6. 1697; Postman, Dec. 4.; Van
Cleverskirke, Dec. 2/12; L'Hermitage, Nov. 19/29.